Click and Clunk and Word Sorts to Increase Comprehension of Weather Words in Grade 1

This week in Grade 1, students began to do more work with describing weather by exploring and using words related to weather as they inquired deeper into the central idea "Understanding how the weather words helps us to make plans."

Using Click and Clunk to Explore New Words and as a Reflection Tool

In groups facilitated by a teacher, students first engaged in a language acquisition strategy called "Click and Clunk". When engaging in this strategy, students have to make a quick decision whether they know a word or not after it is read to them by a teacher or after they attempt to read it themselves. If students know a word, they put a check or write it in the "click" column. If they do not know what a word means, they put a check or write it in the "clunk" column.

In working through this activity, students were prompted to think about what it meant to "know" a word. Could you use it in a sentence? Could you read it without a teacher? Could you draw a picture of it? Could you introduce it to your friends?

Click and Clunk Weather Words Level 1

Click and Clunk Weather Words Level 2

This click and clunk could then be revisited at the end of the unit in order to reflect on how much students have learned.

At this stage, teachers also began to request students to discuss which weather words they were most interested in. Students thus began to form preferences of weather conditions they wanted to inquire into. In later lessons, teachers will prompt students to form questions about these conditions.

Closed Sorts Help Build Meaning

Next, teachers gave student pairs cut out versions of these words and asked them to sort the words by matching words together. More proficient readers were matched with beginning readers to make sure that most words could be accurately decoded within student pairs. First, students were asked to match words that looked similar. This closed sort helped students notice that certain words had noun and adjective forms such as: rain/rainy; sun/sunny; fog/foggy.

The purpose of this sort was to help students begin to distinguish that different functions of language needed to accurately discuss weather "like an expert". This helped students see that in order to describe the weather, we use the adjective form of weather words, as in "It is a rainy day", but we can describe and maybe even find out about the weather condition of rain.

In order to then add meaning to these words, we asked students to shuffle words and match words that were opposites. Students then created interesting combinations that indicated their current thinking about these words.

These two students showed they naturally grouped clouds and cloudy together, but had misread cold. They learned a lesson about focusing in on the spelling.

These students associated foggy with cold, rain with wet, dry with hot. They also made plain they were not sure what the meaning of humid is. 

As the vocabulary students use for the unit grows in complexity, they will do future sorts for meaning. For example, students may sort weather words into the following groups: tools to measure weather, weather disasters, words to describe weather, etc. 

Future learning climate in Grade 1? 

Cognitive academic language proficiency with a chance of weather research!

Supporting Writing Through Scaffolds and the Writing Process and Reading Through Teaching Cognitive Academic Language in Grade 2

It was a busy week with assemblies, Back-to-School Night, and meetings but Ms. Mom and I managed to provide our Grade 2 EAL students (and homeroom students in general) with the following learning engagements this week:

On Monday, we jumped right into a Finding Out research/reading/viewing series of lessons in which students learned about how the amount of sleep they need compares to the amount of sleep needed by various animals. Us EAL teachers saw this as an opportunity to practice speaking and using English for the language purpose of "comparing". As such, Mom and I modelled having different amounts of paintbrushes and asked students to compare using the key sentence frames of:

(Name) has more/less (paintbrushes) than (Name).

We then each pretended to sleep and wake up after different amounts of time and transferred this comparison language to:

(Name) gets more/less (sleep) than (Name).

Students practiced saying these model sentences in various formats and we wrote them onto our small instructional whiteboard so that they would be visible throughout the instruction.

We then analysed an information gathering graphic organiser and it's accompanying text together that we would use while viewing a slideshow on iPads about sleep on Kids Health.org. We used this graphic organiser both to teach the terms "table", "columns", and "rows" and as a device to preview the information students would find on the slideshow. We previewed this information by asking students to make predictions as to whether they thought animals got more or less sleep than they themselves did. We discussed how we were going to view a slideshow to see if our predictions were correct.

On Tuesday, these students then viewed the slideshow and were able to orally discuss the comparisons of sleep amounts in full sentences. Students also began to discuss whose final responsibility it was to get the recommended amount of sleep, 10 - 11 hours, THEIR OWN! They also discussed reasons why it was important to get this amount of sleep.

In another grade 2 class, as an EAL team, we created scaffolds for all students to help them draft a poem about an emotion of their choice in an effort to help them understand these emotions and how they might affect our senses of wellbeing. Together with the homeroom teacher. we modelled use of this scaffold, also taking the opportunity to introduce the concept of the writing process.

We discussed how we had done some prewriting together, coming up with ideas for different emotions, and that now we were going to draft. Students drafted, at times being supported and encouraged to think deeper by the homeroom teacher, Ms. Mom, and myself. Afterwards, students shared with a buddy, and some students volunteered to share their work on the carpet. Tagging on to this, the homeroom teacher and I asked, "As good writers, are we finished with these poems?" Students answered no and we affirmed that tomorrow we were going to learn one way that good writers can revise their work, by getting feedback from peers!

The next morning, as a team, the homeroom teacher and I introduced students to the concept of peer conferencing as a way to gain ideas for revision. One method of peer conferencing that we conceived of, which also ties into teaching students to inquire, involves asking each other questions about our writing. We first asked students to remind us of the question words that would give us the most information. We listed these on the whiteboard for student reference. I then modelled coming up with questions that came to mind when I read the first draft of the homeroom teacher's emotion poem that she had modelled writing yesterday. I wrote these questions down on sticky notes, which I then stuck at the appropriate places in her poem. She in turn modelled adding to her poem, based on information I requested on the stickies.

We then paired students together and asked them to do the same thing! Students loved reading each other's poems and asking questions. In this lesson many students also began the process of revision by adding the requested information.

In later lessons, as a team, we planned to have students revise for sentence variety as well, by asking students to try and think of adjectives related to sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch in favour of sentences discussing how an emotion was "like" an object.

We also plan to help our EAL students and all writers in the class to make connections between the writing cycle and a growth mindset, the idea behind our current unit of inquiry being that "Our choices and mindset affect our personal wellbeing." We want students to understand that good writers believe in growth. They believe that through seeking feedback, revising, and changing what they have written in first drafts they create more satisfying and communicative pieces.

Empowering Grade 3 EAL Students to Understand Transdisciplinary Themes

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As the International School of Phnom Penh is a Primary Years Programme school, our students face some intimidatingly complex vocabulary in the language of the curriculum framework. As EAL teachers, we try to help our language learners orient themselves when beginning a new unit by picking apart and constructing meaning from the Transdisciplinary theme, Central Idea, and Lines of Inquiry.

For example, our Grade 3 students have just begun a unit in which they will inquire into children's rights that comes under the Transdisciplinary theme of Sharing the Planet:

"An inquiry into rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and with other living things; communities and the relationships within and between them; access to equal opportunities; peace and conflict resolution."

After exposing students to videos rich in imagery related to children's rights, Katy Perry's "Unconditionally" made as a part of her work with UNICEF, we sat down to look at the Transdisciplinary theme and how it relates to children's rights.

Students read through the theme and underlined words they were unsure of, in this case "finite", "resources", "access", "struggle", "conflict", "relationships", and "resolution". We then recorded these words on our class whiteboard and evenly distributed responsibility for finding out the meaning and explaining of these words. Students then researched using hard copy and online dictionaries such as www.dictionary.com and www.thesaurus.com, and translation services such as Google Translate. Students used a variety of methods and strategies to add meaning to these rich words, such as webbing, drawing pictures, and orally discussing the words (and translations) in their first languages.

Our next class will involve students trying to rewrite the Transdisciplinary theme in their own words, using the meanings they have discovered.

In having students engage the theme in this manner, we hope to give students a larger sense of where the knowledge, concepts, and skills they will learn and practice during the unit fit in to.

An example of how EAL teachers help to raise comprehension of English information in Grade 1

Grade 1 recently completed a unit with the central idea: "Understanding weather allows us to make plans." As part of this unit, students inquired into different types of weather, weather measuring instruments, how choices for clothing and activities can be influenced by weather reports, and meteorology. In order to extend students' understanding of the central idea, teachers contacted a former meteorologist from the U.S. Navy, John Whelan, who helped the children understand how understanding weather patterns could influence the plans of such a large and global fleet. A date was set for the Grade 1 students to interview Mr. Whelan by Skype as a year group.

PLANNING FOR THE INTERVIEW

The Grade 1 Homeroom teachers and EAL teachers quickly realised that for ALL students (not only English Language Learners) to learn as much as possible from Mr. Whelan during this interview, they would have to be familiar with some important vocabulary and concepts that he was likely to use and discuss during this interview.

EAL teachers thought about the nature of the interview itself in order to decide what sort of strategy would be needed to help our Grade 1 students; they determined that taking part in and understanding the information that would be gained in an interview was in effect an exercise in comprehension. Teachers therefore decided to use a reading strategy known as an "Anticipation Guide" to help students prepare for the interview.

As students at this point had already done a lot of work with learning and using vocabulary about types of weather and weather instruments, the EAL teachers picked out important vocabulary that students would need to know in order to understand Mr. Whelan and his work such as: meteorologist, weather stations, navy, ships, submarines, satellites, and radar.  They then designed a very visual, discussion based Google Slides presentation that would help prepare students for the upcoming interview along with an Anticipation Guide designed to prompt students to engage with the above vocabulary.

WHAT STUDENTS DID BEFORE THE INTERVIEW

Anticipation Guide for Presentation About John Whelan, Meterologist

Before viewing the Google Slides presentation, students were put in pairs. Each pair was instructed to read along as the EAL teacher read each statement and decide together whether or not the statement was true. Students were also asked to underline words that they were unsure of, and were assured that by the end of the presentation they would understand and be able to use each word. 

After students had heard and decided whether each statement was true or false, they showed with their bodies what they had decided about each statement by moving to a predetermined place in the classroom. This gave teachers a quick understanding of points that needed clarification during the Google Slides presentation. Students also shared their own understandings of the statements in a short class discussion in which some vocabulary was nearly completely explained. Then students viewed the Google Slides presentation, in which they consistently connected visual information with important vocabulary and concepts.

In previous and consecutive lessons, the EAL and Homeroom teachers reviewed with students how to form questions that must be answered with information other than yes or no and that must begin with "wh-question words". Students then came up with questions such as:

Questions students developed about weather...

More questions students developed about weather...

Students then practiced their questions which they would be able to ask Mr. Whelan on the day of the Skype interview. Overall, preparing for this interview gave students an authentic reason to comprehend information and learn and use new vocabulary related to weather, in order to speak with a REAL expert! 

The Skype Interview with John Whelan, Meteorologist