There is a crack in our nation’s foundation. Although it is historically referred to as the achievement gap, today we more accurately call this the teaching and learning gap. When children fail to reach their full potential, this weakens families’ fundamental ability to thrive. Over 30 years ago, the National Center for Families Learning (NCFL) developed a family literacy model that is still showing positive results for families as they strive to improve their academic and economic trajectories through multigenerational learning.
Over the decades, there have been some well-intentioned programs and money spent trying to close the gap by focusing solely on children’s education. But doing so essentially places a Band-Aid over a growing divide, rather than addressing the underlying issue—that is, how can children succeed when their parents or caregivers are struggling themselves? To truly close the gap in achievement between low-income and higher-income students, we must invest in the entire family. Family literacy offers a space for both children and their families to learn—together. In NCFL’s family literacy programs, children are becoming kindergarten ready or are reading at grade level while their parents or caregivers are learning job skills and how to navigate school systems, advocate for their children, and support their children’s education.
When families learn together, they set themselves on a new trajectory. Learning and education become a part of the families’ DNA moving forward. When we look at research in education, we see a strong correlation between a child’s academic achievement and the educational attainment of the parent, particularly the mother. Adult education is an important piece of the puzzle, and when we combine children’s education with adult education, the impact is greater and stronger for families. Children learn the value of education from seeing their parents achieve.
Many of the children who have been identified as underachieving come from families who have some of the biggest hurdles to overcome—generational poverty, language barriers, and a lack of academic support—to name a few. Parents and caregivers with low literacy rates have fewer employment opportunities and don’t have the tools to improve their situations. Improving literacy rates translates to developing a stronger workforce. As parents or caregivers achieve their educational goals, they become better candidates for jobs. NCFL has witnessed millions of families improve their education and economic attainment through family literacy. In NCFL family literacy programming, as parents work toward their academic goals, it has been demonstrated that they become more engaged in their children’s education.
The family literacy model NCFL deploys is producing dramatic results. Independent evaluations of family literacy programs have found:
Children whose parents help them learn to read score ten points higher on standardized reading tests than those whose parents are less involved in their learning (NCFL research).
Children who attend family literacy programs attend, on average, 16 more days of school each year (Detroit Family Literacy Programs).
Of the parents who participated in NCFL family literacy programming for longer than six weeks, 56% reported they got a job or a better job. This is one demonstration of how NCFL family literacy programming translates into employability skills (NCFL research).
To effect lasting change, it’s time to invest in the entire family. Family literacy should be incorporated into existing safety-net services. Educational efforts that embrace an intergenerational approach will fill the gap and lay a solid foundation for generations to come. Building a stronger family is building a stronger country.
Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students who began kindergarten as English learners (ELs), on average, progressed to eighth grade with academic achievement similar to or better than their peers who began kindergarten proficient in English, finds a new study by the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.
Nearly 80% of CPS ELs achieved English proficiency by eighth grade, with the majority (76%) becoming proficient by fifth grade. ELs who demonstrated English proficiency by eighth grade had higher attendance, math test scores, and core course grades than their peers who were never classified as ELs; reading test scores and Freshman OnTrack rates were similar.
For the one in five ELs who did not reach proficiency by the end of eighth grade, school was more challenging—attendance, grades, and test scores were lower than those of their peers who did attain proficiency by the end of eighth grade. More effective supports are needed to serve these students, and the authors suggest there may be an opportunity to identify these students early on—in kindergarten or first grade.
The groundbreaking study, English Learners in Chicago Public Schools: A New Perspective, stands in contrast to previous publicly available data that has shown ELs academically far behind their peers. Previous studies have reported data on active ELs—defined as those students who have not yet reached proficiency on a state English test—at a specific moment in time.
“The Consortium study is different because for the first time we analyzed the long-term trajectories of 18,000 CPS students who began kindergarten as ELs and followed their progress all the way through eighth grade,” said Marisa de la Torre, senior research associate and managing director at the UChicago Consortium. “EL students are making progress, but the growth is not apparent when you’re looking at different groups of students each year.”
The study’s methodology and key findings are important because one-third of CPS students are classified as ELs at some point in their academic careers. The report demonstrates that the statistics currently used for accountability overlook how well most ELs are performing in school.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) of the U.S. has released guidance for institutes of higher education with students participating in foreign exchange or study abroad programs.
The CDC suggests students consider postponing or canceling student foreign exchange programs and has released the following message:
Given the global outbreak of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) institutes of higher education (IHEs) should consider postponing or canceling upcoming student foreign exchange programs. IHEs should consider asking current program participants to return to their home country. Those overseeing student foreign exchange programs should be aware that students may face unpredictable circumstances, travel restrictions, and challenges in returning home or accessing health care while abroad.
IHEs should consider asking students participating in study abroad programs to return to the U.S.
IHEs should work with state and local public health officials to determine the best approach for when and how (e.g., chartered transportation for countries or areas assessed as high-risk for exposure) their study abroad students might return. All plans for returning study abroad students should be designed to protect participants from stigma and discrimination.
The COVID-19 situation is dynamic. Given the speed of spread and the number of countries experiencing human-to-human transmission, IHEs should evaluate the risks associated with choosing to maintain programs abroad and take the appropriate proactive measures.
IHEs that continue to maintain programs abroad should monitor cdc.gov/COVID-19 for additional information.
During the past few years, blended learning has been hailed by schools worldwide as everything from the future of education to the conduit that will finally make true differentiated instruction a reality. And it is not all hype: the best blended-learning programs truly can move away from the lecture-based instructional model many of us grew up with and free educators to completely reimagine what learning looks like from the ground up. But setting up a new program is a tall order for even the most well-provisioned districts, and the monumental change can be difficult for leaders, who may look to technology as the solution instead of one part of an overall blueprint for success.
“The temptation for a district when they say they’re going to do blended learning, or these days, personalized learning, is to buy a bunch of tools and then ask educators to try and fit those into their practice,” says Julia Freeland Fisher, the director of education at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, which specializes in research on blended learning. “Instead, we would encourage people to ask, ‘What’s the problem with practice you’re trying to solve?’”
With a core subject such as reading, that problem might be figuring out how to use a blended model to boost test scores for a subset of students or how to give teachers more time to do small-group instruction or guided reading. Part of the difficulty with planning blended-learning models is that there is no one-size-fits-all model, and it often looks different from district to district or even among classrooms. “It can be all over the map in terms of problems of practice,” says Freeland Fisher, whose institute recently released an interactive framework for designing blended-learning programs at blendedlearning.org. “But it always comes down to using technology to scale a new instructional model, rather than cramming it into your old model.”
While technology is a critical part of any blended-learning initiative, those with experience stress that it is far from the only aspect, or even the most important one. Even as technology helps provide new layers of differentiation that were not previously available in the old paradigm, good instruction and instructors are the true heart of blended learning. In other words, according to another expert in the field, Eileen Buckley Murphy, “We cannot over-charge software—no matter how adaptive and wonderful it may be on the label—with doing the job of a thinking human.” Buckley Murphy, a former district administrator who is currently CEO of ThinkCERCA, a blended-literacy program that focuses on self-paced and collaborative learning, adds, “The teacher’s role in creating the context in which it’s meaningful for the student to learn is still essential.”
Again, take reading as an example. The advent of adaptive software, which adjusts to emerging readers and presents content on their personal levels, helps students not only to learn to read but to complete lesson content as well, says Amanda Psarovarkas, a Texas educator who recently completed a two-year thesis in successful blended-learning models as part of her master’s in education technology at Lamar University. “It helps you to hit all the students on their level, and then do a very Vygotsky stepping ladder,” she said, referring to the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, whose work posits that students learn concepts in progressive stages, provided they are receiving the right help from someone further up the ladder than they are, like a teacher or more advanced peer.
That instructor-led support is crucial to creating a program where students are not just using technology mindlessly to check off tasks but rather in conjunction with the support they receive from their teacher, says Buckley Murphy. “Some people have a view of blended learning that is all about leveraging technology to teach the kids, instead of teachers teaching kids,” she says. “When it comes to the skills hardest to teach, a true blend is required. The technology can’t just be for the students to learn from alone in isolation. It has to be technology that teachers can use to teach and that students can use to collaborate with together.”
Perhaps the most ideal approach, according to Psarovarkas, is one in which students are given freedom to learn in ways that suit them best and teachers are given the flexibility to work more closely with students as they see best. In this model, learning is “no longer something that’s done to the student,” she says, “but rather the student and the teachers are true partners in the relationship.”
Blending in Action
So what does a good blended-learning program look like, and how do schools go about creating it? In the case of Kyla Cook and Robyn Kendrick, both second-grade teachers at Stanton County USD in Kansas, it all starts with a strong foundation.
Cook and Kendrick have been teaching with each other for more than 13 years, and in that time they have blended a lot together. There is the formal blended-learning reading program that Cook and Kendrick co-run, which has been running strong for a few years at this point, but the pair have also blended the lines of their classrooms as well as their professional development and decision making about the program. In short, they do a lot of sharing.
“We have our own separate classrooms, but some of my students come into Robyn’s class for part of the day and some of hers come into mine,” explains Cook. “I don’t feel like I’m just responsible for my students but for mine and Robyn’s, and she feels the same. It helps with our collaboration. We feel like we’re in this together as a team.”
Both teachers’ classrooms are 1:1 with Chromebooks, and for about 90 minutes each day, students work in a highly structured reading program using a station-rotation model. Each day’s reading block begins with a review designed to make sure students have mastered previous skills before moving on to new ones. Then, there are about 15 minutes dedicated to whole-group instruction, during which a new skill—say, phonetic awareness or phonics—is introduced via a software program called Reading Horizons, which provides much of the structure during computer time. After the new skill has been introduced, students take their places at the large dry-erase boards around the classroom and write words as their teacher dictates to them. The dictation helps reinforce the new skill, but it also serves as baked-in formative assessment.
“What I like about the dictation is being able to see all the students at one time,” Kendrick says. “It’s the immediate feedback of being able to evaluate them and let them know immediately what their mistake is, and to give them a chance to give reasons for why they made the mistake.”
After a quick five-minute transfer, where the new skill is projected onto the board and discussed as a group one last time, students splinter off into small groups for their station-rotation time. Typically, Cook and Kendrick separate students into three groups based on comparative reading level; stronger readers are grouped together, as are emerging readers. One group stays with the teacher, who conducts a small-group lesson based on what those particular students need the most help with. Another will be on the Chromebooks working on a lesson based on the new skill introduced at the beginning of the block. Students in that group read independently, periodically taking short quizzes to measure their understanding. A third group works either as a group or with a paraprofessional, getting extra attention on developing their vocabulary and fluency skills. Every 20 minutes, groups switch.
“Since students are spending about 20 minutes by themselves at the computer, we spend a lot of time at the beginning of the year training the students on our expectations,” Kendrick says. “We teach them how to self-monitor through the computer program, and we show them what we expect out of them during our blended-learning model.”
Part of self-monitoring, she says, includes knowing exactly what lessons they should be working on for the day. “That is something that didn’t work well in the beginning: the kids just progressed at their own pace,” Kendrick says. “So some kids were struggling, and some were several lessons ahead of what we were teaching. And then we realized that to have the most impact, we needed the computer lessons to match what we were instructing in class.”
With older kids, both teachers agree, it might be a different story. But with second graders—kids as young as seven and eight—Kendrick and Cook want to be sure that the introduction of new skills is coming directly from them. “We want to be the ones that are providing that primary instruction, rather than the computer,” Kendrick says. “And then the computer is a supplementary or supportive piece for that.”
While computer time might be supportive, it is still a fundamental part of the program, both in getting students to improve their skills independently and in improving instruction for the teachers. Since every keystroke and assessment question is carefully logged in the Reading Horizons platform, Cook and Kendrick have a trove of data to fall back on, telling them how students are faring with new skills and where they might need additional supports.
“For those kids that know the skill, it differentiates within the computer program for them,” Kendrick says. When the software realizes the student is applying the skill readily and without much error, it moves him or her along at a faster pace. “They don’t have to go through every step that a struggling student does,” she says. “I love that it differentiates based on how they score on activities and whether or not it has to give them more practice.”
Later, the teachers go in and pore over that data, checking where students are struggling and readjusting their groups and teaching methods accordingly. “We’re looking at that data regularly so we know students aren’t over there for 20 minutes just playing around on the computer,” Cook says. When students become well acquainted with the routine after a few months, the teachers can begin to give students a little more freedom, and trust, during the day.
“Now that we’re halfway through the year, students are getting a lot more proficient at asking questions, and that’s a higher-level skill itself,” Cook says. Both teachers regularly use their data and observations to shift groups around, pairing strong readers with those who need extra attention on a skill.
“We teach them at the beginning: do not tell them the answers or their mistakes,” Cook says. “Ask them questions, so that they have to figure out where their error occurred and how they’re going to fix that. We tell the kids, ‘Now both of your brains are working.’”
For Cook and Kendrick, every year is different, bringing new students, new resources, and new challenges. Part of the success of their model, as they see it, is the inherent support that comes with co-planning and co-teaching. But they’ve also worked hard to keep their program flexible, while remaining intricately structured and timed almost to the minute during the reading block. “A lot of it was trial and error, but we definitely do not do the same thing every year,” Cook explains. “We as teachers have to look at it like this: each year, the students’ needs are different, so we need to be very flexible. We don’t change the whole model from year to year; we do minor tweaks. It’s constantly changing dynamics in our classrooms.”
This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in March, 2017. At the time, Stephen Noonoo was a freelance writer and consultant covering the intersection of education and technology. He was based in Los Angeles.
Fill in the blank with the correct form of the word.
Select the correct tense of the verb for the following statements.
Which subject pronoun is correct?
If this is reminiscent of your language study experiences, you are not alone. Over the past century, the majority of language study has resulted in little more than flashbacks of blank filling, memorized dialogue practice, and conjugation drills.
Traditionally, language instruction was driven by the notion that by simply memorizing grammar rules and vocabulary lists, students would be able to mechanically manipulate language enough to communicate. All learners needed was practice, but what worked in theory is not what actually happened in the classroom. All of that practice resulted in many good grades, but in little to no actual communication.
The contemporary definition of communication, according to Sandra Savignon (as edited by Dr. Bill VanPatten), is “the expression, interpretation, [and sometimes] negotiation of meaning [in a given context or social situation].” The language classroom is its own specific context, far different from the infinite number of authentic contexts and social situations that one encounters outside the classroom. Teachers are often trapped in the fixed context of the classroom and, as a result, tend to create contrived situations for the sake of practicing communication.
The notion that humans can somehow overtly practice memorized words and grammar rules and then move them into an unconscious linguistic system is like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole or like trying to meld water and oil. We plainly see that these physical items do not fit together, but understanding language acquisition is not quite so obvious, since we cannot see it, it is not a static process, and the rate of acquisition varies from person to person.
So how can language teachers facilitate “communicative” experiences that will lead to real communication and result in acquisition? The first step is to shift one’s mindset from that of being an instructor to that of being a facilitator, since explicit instruction will not result in unconscious acquisition. The second step is to recognize that acquisition can only be facilitated by providing sufficient doses of comprehensible input (CI).
There are a handful of contemporary communicative approaches that show great promise for facilitating acquisition, but there is also a great deal of debate about which one is best. There is danger in believing that a single approach is best for every group of learners every day of the year. The approach and the teacher’s adaptation of each approach should change based on the unique group dynamic of the learners who are in front of that teacher and the unique circumstances and personalities that pervade the learning environment. In addition to the uniqueness of learners—individually and collectively—another factor to consider is that brains crave novelty. Students need consistent access to comprehensible input, but novel ways to access it.
Although the approach one uses may change from day to day or week to week, there is one component of each approach that will not: comprehensible input. As a facilitator of acquisition, I strive to create communicative experiences that are natural, engaging, and so compelling that students focus exclusively on the message, not on the class or the task of learning. The approach I choose will be dependent upon the needs of learners and also on the purpose of the experience (e.g., teaching content/required information; discussing personally relevant situations; preparing for a communicative experience, such as a reading, a song, a visitor, a task; etc.).
If each experience is truly communicative, it will be rich in high-frequency vocabulary, which is the linguistic data (words and phrases) that are inherently part of everyday conversations. The presence of high-frequency words is not necessarily intentional, nor is it unnaturally constrained. It is simply the by-product of authentic communicative experiences. One cannot avoid them. There may be other content-specific and context-specific words that come into play, but the bulk of each communicative experience will be driven by everyday high-frequency terms.
As I plan curriculum and lessons, I first consider the needs of my students. As an ESL and Spanish teacher of professional baseball players, I have students with unique needs. They must be prepared to communicate about a variety of topics, including body parts, injury and health, and baseball-specific issues; to engage in appropriate locker-room talk; to order and shop for food; to meet and greet friends, coaches, and reporters; and to have everyday conversations with teammates and opponents. As I consider the wide variety of contexts and the vast amount of linguistic data needed for each, I evaluate which approaches will most effectively help me facilitate acquisition, and I build cohesiveness over time by focusing on one overarching theme. To illustrate, I will share what a complete unit based on multiple approaches and contexts looks like.
In 2013, my theme for all levels was civil rights. Keep in mind that under the veil of my theme, I am required to help my students communicate in a wide variety of contexts. We started by focusing on psychosocial aspects of language in an effort to help players get to know their teammates. To accomplish this, I organized various video exchanges to help foreign-born ESL students get to know their U.S.-born counterparts, who are also required to study Spanish. Each video introduction was brief, and each player spoke in his first language to provide authentic sound bites of CI in a relevant way. Each year, I ask a different question, based on the theme of the season. For civil rights, I simply had students state their names, their homes, and what they liked to do (e.g., dance, listen to music, play sports, watch movies, play video games, etc.). During subsequent classes, we watched a few of the video clips, compared and contrasted likes and dislikes, and determined if there was a cultural difference in preferences. We discussed that although listening to music is globally universal, the type of music preferred is not. We also learned that movie preference is more sensitive to gender than ethnicity. But most importantly, we all got to know each other and learned to appreciate cultural differences and similarities—all in the target language.
Whenever possible, I like to use what I call “human #authres” as a platform for providing CI and enriching our themes. My students and I have been blessed with visits from Felipe Alou, the first player to be recruited out of the Dominican Republic (DR) to play Major League Baseball, Orlando Cepeda, a Hall of Fame inductee from Puerto Rico, and even Hall of Famer Willie Mays. Admittedly, my beginning students struggle with understanding guest speakers. To improve comprehension, I ask guests to speak slowly, to pause between points, to allow me to interject comments and questions, and to invite questions from students. In spite of my efforts, much of the input is still not comprehensible enough for most novice-level students. In those cases, I increase comprehension by reviewing videotaped footage of the discourse, selecting key parts of the discussion in short increments of 30 to 60 seconds.
I begin class discussion by reviewing a few points that the speaker made, strategically embedding into the discussion the linguistic data used by the speaker. Following the review, we read a written transcript of the selected sound bite from the visitor’s discourse, discussing various points and making personal connections and comparisons as we read. We watch and rewatch the clip until learners have reached an acceptable level of comprehension. Depending on the interest level of students and the relevancy of the content, we continue to move on in a similar fashion to other sound bites from the discourse.
In addition to live guests, I also invite a large number of cyber visitors into the classroom, one of my favorites being Dr. Martin Luther King. I select level-appropriate sound bites from a speech, following the same procedure as described above. I strategically embed words (linguistic data) into class discussion, read and discuss the transcript, and listen and relisten to parts of the speech as many times as students need or desire. While ESL students are learning about MLK and other heroes of the civil rights movement, (U.S.-born) Spanish students are learning about leaders who were key figures in the civil rights movement in the Dominican Republic.
Because videos of all types are a powerful tool for engaging students and delivering CI, I use them in a variety of ways. One video-based approach that I use is a modified version of MovieTalk, a focal skills approach to teaching language created by Dr. Ashley Hastings to develop students’ listening comprehension skills. In terms of civil rights, I use the movie trailer for the movie 42 (the Jackie Robinson story) to hook students and teach U.S. history. Meanwhile, my Spanish students focus on the trailer for the movie In the Time of the Butterflies, about the Mirabal sisters, who were key figures in the civil rights movement in the Dominican Republic.
I begin by strategically weaving linguistic data from the movie trailer into class discussion, which is driven by scaffolded questions in the target language. (E.g., Does discrimination exist in [your country]? Have you been the victim of discrimination in the U.S. or [your country]? Which of the following are motives for discrimination: skin color, financial situation, weight, physical appearance, etc.? How do you respond to acts of discrimination?) As key linguistic data emerge from the discussion, I write words and phrases on the board and continue the discussion as long as I can sustain it, generally 20 to 30 minutes.
Following the discussion, I play a select portion of the movie trailer, muting the sound and starting and stopping the video, discussing what students see happening, making inferences about the possible content of dialogue, and making predictions about what will happen next. It is a process of playing a few seconds of footage, asking questions, making predictions, rewinding the video, and replaying the clip incrementally until the full clip has been played and discussed. Finally, I replay the entire clip without stopping and with the sound unmuted. For novice-level students, I have the transcript available to read and discuss before we view the entire clip. When available, I also like to include the movie subtitles (in the target language). In addition to movie trailers, I use video clips of hidden-camera pranks, TV commercials, public service announcements, news footage, movie shorts, and even home videos.
Music is another powerful tool for providing CI and for helping students develop cultural competence. We begin by linking meaning to the chorus of a song and, if the lyrics are level appropriate and relevant, we will incrementally discuss and make meaning of the lyrics as well. In relation to civil rights, I introduce ESL students to the song “Black and Blue” by Louis Armstrong and Spanish students to “Colores, Colores” by Bacilos. Each song is reflective of discrimination and diversity and contains relevant vocabulary (linguistic data).
In addition to videos and music, I use TPRS (teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling) to engage students, improve comprehension of key linguistic data, and in some cases build background knowledge of various topics or events. Some stories are original stories that students cooperatively created, as I ask hundreds (literally) of “story-asking” questions. Other stories are cooperatively developed from various sources, such as picture-based stories (from Tell Me More, Picture Stories for Beginning Communication, or Easy True Stories), news articles, legends, fairy tales, culture-based vignettes, content-based stories, and historical events.
All of the previous activities provide background information to prepare ESL and Spanish students to read the nonfiction book Felipe Alou: From the Valleys to the Mountains, a comprehension-based reader published by Fluency Matters. The book provides an overview of the historical events that encompassed the civil rights movements of both the U.S. and the DR while telling the true story of Felipe Alou.
The story is highly comprehensible to even beginning language students and is strategically written to provide repeated exposure to high-frequency vocabulary via a compelling story. Students are so engaged in the story (focused on the message) that they do not notice repetition of vocabulary and key phrases, nor do they consciously focus on learning language.
Although my thematic units are strategically planned, I am flexible in how they progress and evolve. I use my curriculum map as a guide, not an anchor, because true communication is spontaneous and therefore cannot be planned. If I have learned anything over the years, it is that true communication requires me to pay more attention to my students than to my curriculum. Never has this been this more apparent than a few years ago while I was teaching ESL in the DR. It was December, and I was charged with the task of preparing students to travel to the U.S. in the upcoming months. To accomplish this, I used the John Denver song “Leaving on a Jet Plane” as my theme.
Because it was December, I included a cultural comparison of Christmas in the DR and the U.S. I had asked numerous questions about what gifts students give to their fathers, mothers, and girlfriends. At one point, a student excitedly asked, “Teacher, how you say noche inolvidable (unforgettable night)?” After I gave him the answer, he went on to say, “I give my girlfriend present for unforgettable night.” As students were roaring with laughter, I quickly pulled up the music and lyrics to the song “Unforgettable,” sung by Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole.
As soon as students heard the music, they were completely captivated by the song. They hung on every word of the lyrics, wanting desperately to understand the message of the beautiful melody. They refused to leave class, wanting to listen to the song over and over again, and I let them—even though the song was not part of my thematic plan. Several days later, after a long week of intensive classes, my students were streaming away from our last class of the season when one student turned around and said, “Teacher, you [are] unforgettable.” That was an unforgettable reminder to focus on the learners in front of me, not on a method, a curriculum, or a plan.
This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in March, 2017. Founder of Fluency Matters and organizer of the iFLT conference, Carol Gaab has been providing training in CI-based strategies since 1996. She was a presenter for the Bureau of Education and Research for nine years and a Spanish/ESL teacher for 25 years, most notably 20 years teaching/directing the San Francisco Giants’ U.S. and Dominican language programs. Carol also writes/publishes SLA-friendly resources for novice to advanced levels.
“Our students aren’t creative,” claimed one of the language teachers in the professional development workshop. The other participating teachers nodded in agreement.
“How do you know?” asked the workshop facilitator.
The teacher hesitated. “Well,” she said, “I guess I don’t. We don’t ask them to do anything creative, mostly because we teachers are not creative either.”
The teacher in this real-life scenario was not only stating an assumption commonly held in many parts of the world but also pointing to a lack of professional development in an area that relates directly to student achievement in language learning. To address this issue, this article explains how supporting creativity in the language classroom can engage both teachers and students and provide opportunities for students to develop essential language and thinking skills. All humans have natural creative abilities, and this does not differ by culture, language background, previous education, or language level (Huh and Egbert, 2010; Torrance, 1962). Creative thinking is commonly understood as the process of thinking, acting, and/or producing differently, also known as divergent thinking. Producing art like Van Gogh and Shakespeare or inventing an electric car is considered creative because there is some aspect of novelty or innovation involved; however, creativity can also be found in much smaller outcomes, such as a child’s painting of a pink elephant or a language learner’s story about her superhero. Creativity can entail critical thinking and the assessment and validation of an issue, and it appears in making assumptions, generating new hypotheses, and developing analogical problem solving to come up with many different answers and possibilities. However, while critical thinking focuses on achieving a single answer or possibility (e.g., taking the train as the best way to escape traffic), creativity can employ critical thinking skills to seek different ways (e.g., driving different routes or flying a helicopter) to solve a problem. Creativity can also result from an inspired “Eureka!” moment; for example, when Percy Spencer observed a peanut butter candy bar melting in his pocket, it stimulated ideas that led to the invention of the microwave oven (Tweedie, 2015).
Guilford’s seminal article (1967) characterizes creativity as a process that produces numerous ideas (fluency), produces ideas of various types (flexibility), builds on and extends existing ideas (elaboration), and produces new ideas (originality). Examples of these aspects of creativity in the language classroom include:
Fluency: Brainstorming alternative words to describe a feeling (e.g., anger);
Flexibility: Changing the views, ideas, or actions of someone in a folktale;
Elaboration: Explaining in detail why humans should explore space;
Originality: Creating a product to solve world hunger.
Educators can focus on these four simple elements to develop and support creative thinking in language classrooms. Teaching and allowing for creativity in language classrooms, even in incremental doses, can result in better language learning and improved learner capability to address a variety of situations in life (Huh and Egbert, 2010).
Creativity, Engagement, and Language Learning
The ability to think creatively in general can facilitate students’ abilities to solve problems, to see alternatives, and to use language in new ways; more specifically, creative, open-ended tasks are often engaging for students, and student levels of engagement during language tasks is directly related to their language achievement (Reschly and Christenson, 2012). In the classroom context, learners can be engaged in creativity tasks when they participate in activities that are meaningful and have some real-life application, are given opportunities to interact with peers and others around the task, are challenged by the task, and receive sufficient support to complete the task. Since creativity can be included in any topic or task, language educators can provide a wide range of opportunities and choices for learners to utilize so they can use language in divergent ways.
For example, according to Jordan and Carlile (2013), creativity tasks can provide many opportunities for social interaction; in language classrooms, tasks can be based in collaborative work where learners are exposed to a variety of input and have opportunities to negotiate meaning in the target language (Egbert, 2009). In creating a novel work or solving an open-ended problem, language learners articulate new thoughts and ideas, express opinions, and make inferences, using language as the foundation. Because engaged language learners are typically focused on doing whatever they can to complete the task, this process generates opportunities for learning new concepts and language structures through recreating, paraphrasing, summarizing, and learning and using other skills needed to reach their goal. In this dynamic environment, students can be pushed past their current language abilities to express new meanings, “leading to greater linguistic intake and success in second-language acquisition” (Albert and Kormos, 2011, p. 90).
Creativity Tasks in the Language Classroom
A creative classroom environment, then, is active, safe, challenging, and motivating and provides engaging, open-ended opportunities for brainstorming, problem solving, interaction, collaboration, hands-on experience, and real-life applications. The teacher’s role is to support and extend learners’ creative thinking within a safe environment by, for example, encouraging them to think “outside the box,” elaborate on their responses, address the question from a different angle, and/or take a risk on something new. The following are some ways to nurture creativity in the language classroom:
Questioning Techniques
Teachers can support students’ active participation in the learning process by, instead of lecturing, posing purposeful questions that assist students in making connections, generating hypotheses, and arriving at a variety of conclusions. To model this, during the presentation stage of a lesson, the teacher can pose questions and then answer the questions in a kind of think-aloud, making reasoning visible to students. Whether it is a grammar, reading, listening, or speaking lesson, the teacher can model creative thinking to students by wondering.
Creative Responses to Assignments
When creating an assignment, teachers can provide students with more than one format in which to complete the assignment; the teacher can also provide the choice for students to develop their own products. The same goes for assessment; teachers can leave room for creativity in how students demonstrate their understanding of a specific language skill or content item. For example, to demonstrate mastery of a learning objective, instead of writing sentences or completing a handout that contains the target grammar or vocabulary, students can choose to write a poem, a short story, a song, or another option to exhibit their knowledge. This supports the fundamental premise of creativity—that there are diverse paths and methods for expressing an idea—and creative pieces can also be much more engaging for the teacher to assess and discuss.
Hands-On Lessons and Collaboration
As noted previously, instead of—or in addition to—completing worksheets with practice drills and fill-in-the-blank exercises, students need opportunities to manipulate language and content. Teachers can work with their students to design hands-on lessons that integrate role plays, drama, artwork, and other creative outcomes to support language production. Grammar and other skills can be integrated into creativity tasks. For example, students can work together to act out a reading to demonstrate reading comprehension; create a role play by manipulating a dialogue from the textbook/audio to practice speaking, vocabulary, stress, and intonation; describe objects or pictures that they find intriguing with adjectives to try to get peers to “buy” their product; reinvent stories by inventing new characters, plots, and endings to practice narration (fanfiction websites can be popular vehicles for doing this); or use imperatives to give someone directions to a place students make up. Larry Ferlazzo provides engaging ways to teach creatively while addressing creative thinking and language through the use of photographs in “Using Photos with English-Language Learners” on the Edutopia website (www.edutopia.org/blog/ell-engagment-using-photos, 2016).
Students as Partners in Teaching
Students can use creative thinking to teach and create activities and materials for their peers. Students can be responsible for explaining a specific learning outcome to class using any means they find effective. This is a great way for students to get a chance to be creative and learn the material well—as the old saying goes, “the best way to learn is to teach.” Student-led discussion, including debate, is another great way for them to question what they read, verbalize their reasoning, and expand their thinking through listening to other perspectives. Additionally, students can work in groups to create games on a particular topic and then play each other’s games. They can also be challenged to summarize an assigned topic/unit in a creative and effective way to help their classmates understand the material. Empowering students by treating them as partners in teaching can boost their engagement and help them become active thinkers.
Incorporating Technology
In addition to creating and getting feedback on fanfiction at sites such as fanfiction.net, technology can be used in many ways to support teacher and student creative thinking and language. A simple example is to take advantage of brainstorming and graphic-organization software tools such as the Popplet app (available from the Apple Store) or those listed on Mashable (mashable.com/2013/09/25/mind-mapping-tools/#lQKnf6f_qkqr). These tools can be used to start projects or at any point in the process where more divergent thinking is needed. Students can also design comic strips using simple sentences (e.g., to practice the verb “to be,” subject pronouns, and object pronouns) with web sites such as Pixton (www.pixton.com) and MakeBeliefsComix (www.makebeliefscomix.com). They can think of creative ways to develop and use room escapes with Room Escape Maker (roomescapemaker.com) and similar sites, or they can create videos to explain a process, compare and contrast, or argue for/against a controversial topic. Wixie (www.wixie.com), Microsoft Word, and other programs with text, graphics, and audio capabilities can be used to create brochures advertising a hotel or business or a menu to practice food vocabulary. Students may even build a website using a free website builder such as Wix (www.wix.com) or Weebly (www.weebly.com) for their favorite team, hobby, or book character; in the process, they use various sentence types, grammar, and vocabulary. Teachers and students can make hilarious short videos for any task, from introductions to impromptu speeches, with blabberize.com. A quick search on Google for “ELL” and “creativity” produces links to all kinds of technologies that can support creativity and language.
Challenges and Solutions
There are a number of factors that can prevent creativity in the classroom. For example, a restrictive school environment and standardized instructions may make teachers think that there is little room for creativity. A lack of resources (e.g., technology, storybooks, photos) and time constraints can also limit the focus on creativity. More importantly, teachers may not consider themselves creative or have ever considered the importance of creativity in language learning, and so not address it. Cultural attitudes toward creativity may also play a role in how it is considered. For example, some teachers may believe that students who think out of the box are questioning the teacher’s authority; others may regard creativity as wasting time, or associate being imaginative with wrong answers. In addition, students may display different attitudes toward creativity (Green, 1993) when rote learning and teacher-based instruction are pivotal to the learning processes of their home countries.
To overcome challenges that educators may face when integrating creativity into the language classroom, the first step is for teachers to take it slowly. Creativity can be encouraged in small ways. Educators can bring up the idea of creative thinking with the class by discussing the conversation questions about creativity from the Internet TESL Journal (iteslj.org/questions/creativity.html). Another idea is to ask one open-ended question (one that does not have a right or wrong answer) in each class session and allow students to propose even the wildest ideas they can think of in response. A five-minute period when no criticism is allowed and all ideas are explored can be a great beginning to supporting creative thinking and language fluency. Another small step is asking a different student to tell a short story on an impromptu topic to the class (or a smaller group) each time the class meets. This can be a great warmup for the class, does not take a lot of time, and can engage students in learning during the rest of the lesson.
As students and teachers become more used to the creative-thinking process, they can apply the four elements described previously in additional ways. The internet has an amazing array of creative-thinking resources for educators, students, and parents; the use of these materials can save time and effort in lesson planning and implementation and provide ideas for incorporating creative thinking in even the most restrictive classroom environments.
In addition, educators at all levels need to have time and support to practice creative thinking themselves. This is important because teacher beliefs influence their pedagogy, and if they, like the teachers in the workshop in the opening scenario, do not believe that they or their students are creative, they are not likely to facilitate creative thinking in their classrooms. Workshops and professional development that demonstrate the ubiquity and importance of creativity, along with its centrality in language learning, could help in this regard.
Conclusion
Creative thinking is not language specific, so any chance that learners have to practice in any language can advance their ability. If creativity cannot be addressed sufficiently in the language classroom, learners can be encouraged to use their creative-thinking skills outside of the classroom as they participate in social media, make up and play games with friends, and even tell bedtime stories with their families. However, with guidance from educators who understand not only their own creative abilities but the importance of creative thinking to language learning, work, and life, students can become better problem solvers, employees, and global citizens.
References
Albert, A., and J. Kormos. (2011). “Creativity and Narrative Task Performance: An exploratory study.” Language Learning 61(1): 73–99.
Egbert, J. (2009). Supporting Learning with Technology: Essentials of Classroom Practice. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.
Green, S. N. (1993). Curious and Creative: Critical Thinking and Language Development. New York: Addison Wesley Publishing Company.
Guilford, J. (1967). The Nature of Human Intelligence. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Huh, K., and J. Egbert. (2010). “1+1 Does Not Always Equal 2: Exploring creativity, language learning, and field experience.” TESOL Journal 1(2): 206–226.
Jordan, A., and O. Carlile. (2013). Approaches to Creativity: A Guide for Teachers. London, UK: McGraw-Hill Education.
Reschly, A. L., and S. L. Christenson. (2012). “Jingle, Jangle, and
Conceptual Haziness: Evolution and future directions of the engagement
construct.” In S. L. Christenson, A. L. Reschly, and C. Wylie (eds.), Handbook of Research on Student Engagement (3–19). New York: Springer.
Torrance, E. P. (1962). Guiding Creative Talent. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Tweedie, S. (2015, July 3). “How the Microwave Was Invented by a
Radar Engineer Who Accidentally Cooked a Candy Bar in His Pocket.” Business Insider.http://www.businessinsider.com/how-the-microwave-oven-was-invented-by-accident-2015-4.
This article originally appeared in Language Magazine in February, 2017.
Mohamed Elhess is an adjunct faculty at the College of Education at Washington State University. He teaches courses in the English as Second Language (ESL) endorsement. His research interests include student engagement, creativity, and addressing the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse learner.
Eman Elturki has a PhD in Language, Literacy and Technology from Washington State University and a master’s degree in TESOL from the University of Southern California. She teaches ESL and serves as Associate Director of Curriculum and Assessment at the Intensive American Language Center of Washington State University.
Joy Egbert is professor of ELL and Education Technology at Washington State University, Pullman, where she coordinates the ELL teacher education programs. Dr. Egbert’s research and teaching focus on task engagement and computer supported language learning. She was the Editor of TESOL Journal from 2016 to 2018.
While having full-on conversations with babies can seem
bizarre, it actually boost language skills, according to a new study. Unlike
traditional ‘baby talk’, which typically includes talking with a different
cadence at a higher tone using incorrect grammar, (think, “My widdle chiddle
muhchkin”), “parentese” is a version of ‘baby talk’ that follows adult grammar
patterns, just in a different tone of voice—think “Are you my widdle munchkin?
Yes you are. What do you want for breakfast, oh is it milk?”
“It uses real words and correct grammar, but it does
use a higher pitch, a slower tempo and an exaggerated intonation,” said
Naja Ferjan Ramirez, an assistant professor at the department of linguistics at
the University of Washington.
“What people think of as baby talk is a combination of
silly sounds and words, sometimes with incorrect grammar,” Ferjan Ramirez
explained, “like ‘Oooh, your shozie wozies on your widdle feets.”
“Parentese has three characteristics,” said
Patricia Kuhl, the co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain
Sciences at the University of Washington, who has been studying children’s early
language learning for decades.
“One of them is that it has a higher overall pitch,
about an octave higher,” Kuhl said. “Another is that intonation
contours are very curvy; the highs are higher, the lows are lower, and it
sounds excited and happy.
“And then it’s slower, with pauses between phrases to
give the baby time to participate in this social interaction,” Kuhl said.
The new study comes from the Institute for Learning &
Brain Sciences, or I-LABS, at the University of Washington. Researchers examined
how parent coaching about the value of parentese affected adults’ use of it
with their own infants, and demonstrated that increases in the use of parentese
enhanced children’s later language skills.
The study, published online Feb. 3 in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, finds that parents who participated in individual
coaching sessions used parentese more often than control-group parents who were
not coached, and that coaching produced more parent-child “conversational
turns” and increased the child’s language skills months later.
“We’ve known for some time that the use of parentese is
associated with improved language outcomes,” said Patricia Kuhl, I-LABS
co-director and professor of speech and hearing sciences at the UW. “But
we didn’t know why. We believe parentese makes language learning easier because
of its simpler linguistic structure and exaggerated sounds. But this new work
suggests a more fundamental reason.
“We now think parentese works because it’s a social
hook for the baby brain—its high pitch and slower tempo are socially engaging
and invite the baby to respond.”
The study points to the fact that parents can actually learn
about parentese through coaching, and improve language levels of their children
through becoming more knowledgeable in how to properly utilize the speaking
style.
The study also has larger implications for literacy levels
later in life. “We know that language skills in infancy predict subsequent
stages in language development, so enhancements in language behaviors in
infancy could therefore have cascading effects on speech development over
time,” said Ferjan Ramírez.
Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) has introduced the Biliteracy Education Seal and Teaching (BEST) Act (S. 3328) into the U.S. senate. The act broadens the definition of “second language” to include Native American languages, and Classical Languages.
The BEST Act: To further promote biliteracy across the country, the BEST Act would authorize $10 million to award grants to states to establish, improve, and implement Seal of Biliteracy programs.Endorsing organizations include the Joint National Committee for Languages—National Council for Languages and International Studies,National Association for Bilingual Education, American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, National Coalition of Native American Language Schools and Programs, and American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.
Seals of Biliteracy: In states and school districts, graduating seniors receive Seals of Biliteracy on their transcripts to illustrate their proficiency in two languages. Recognition of student achievement in language proficiency enable colleges and universities, as well employers, to distinguish the valuable expertise of bilingual students in both academia and the workplace.States like Utah, Arizona, Washington, and New Mexico have demonstrated the viability of testingand awarding Seals in all languages.Through innovative partnerships with communities and test makers many states provide the opportunity for all students to earn a Seal of Biliteracy. For example, Utah and Washington both offer Seals of Biliteracy in languages ranging from Spanish, to Korean, to Zuni.
“We will work with our House counterparts to replace their BEST Act language with ours in the House’s College Affordability Act,” said Schatz. The introduced bill can be seen in its entirety here.
February 21 is International Mother Language Day (IMLD) and
every year since 2000, UNESCO has led the world in celebrating the occasion.
IMLD was first proposed by Bangladesh, a UN Member State, in 1998 and its
observance was approved by the UNESCO General Conference in 1999. February 21 represents
much more for Bangladeshis, however, than a desire to promote linguistic
diversity. Known as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh, February 21 represents
the culmination of years of institutional racism and police brutality.
In 1947, the British ceded control of India and the country was
partitioned into two sovereign nations: the Dominion of India and the Dominion
of Pakistan. Subsequently, a dispute arose among Pakistanis as to what the
country’s official language should be. Western Pakistanis, who numbered
approximately 25 million, argued that Urdu should be the sole national language.
Eastern Pakistanis, who numbered approximately 44 million, argued that both
Urdu and Bengali should be Pakistan’s official languages.
From 1947 to 1952, tensions were high between western and eastern
Pakistanis. The government of Pakistan, largely comprised of western
Pakistanis, omitted Bengali from the country’s stamps, currency, and navy
recruitment tests. Eastern Pakistanis, particularly college students and
professors, staged protests and demanded that Bengali be given official status
as a national language. Police attempted to clamp down on public demonstrations
by attacking and arresting protesters.
On February 21, 1952, tensions came to a head. Student
protesters gathered at the University of Dhaka and armed police surrounded the
campus. Students attempted to break the police line at the university gate and
police began firing tear gas shells toward the gate. Some students attempted to
leave the premises but were arrested as they fled.
Outraged by the arrests of some of their peers, students congregated
outside the East Bengal Legislative Assembly. They attempted to storm the
building and police opened fire on them, killing several people. As news of the
shootings spread, shops closed, public transportation came to a halt, and a
general strike ensued. In 1954, after a lengthy period of violence and unrest, the
Pakistani government granted Bengali official status as a national language.
Unfortunately, that didn’t completely extinguish the flames
of unrest. From 1956 to 1959, the Pakistani military attempted to reestablish
Urdu as the sole national language. Though it failed to do so, eastern
Pakistanis continued to struggle under the weight of discriminatory policies.
They were under-represented in civil and military services and received far
less state funding than their western counterparts.
In 1971, the Pakistani military carried out Operation
Searchlight. One of the stated goals of the operation was to arrest eastern
Pakistanis in favor of independence from western Pakistan. In actuality, the
operation claimed the lives of tens of thousands of eastern Pakistanis. Though
eastern Pakistanis declared independence that same year, they have never
forgotten all those who lost their lives during the Bengali Language Movement.
A doctoral student in Peru, Roxana Quispe Collantes, is the first to write and defend a thesis in Quechua. The indigenous language, which boasts over eight million speakers, is widely known for being the main language of the Incan Empire and is the second most-spoken language in Peru. Despite its popularity, the language has been largely absent in academia, and scholars say that it is the first time in the history of Lima’s San Marcos University (the oldest university in the Americas, with a 468-year history) that a student has written and defended a thesis entirely in the indigenous language. She grew up speaking Quechua with her parents and grandparents in the Acomayo district of Cusco.
Quispe Collantes studied Peruvian and Latin American literature at Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM) and focused on poetry written in Quechua, according to the Guardian. She began her presentation with a traditional ceremony using coca leaves and the alcoholic drink chicha which is commonly drunk in Peru and is made from corn, before she presented her study titled Yawar Para, or blood rain.
“It’s been a long road but it was worth it,” said Collantes, who travelled to highland communities in the Canas to verify words used in the Collao dialect of the language used in the Cusco region. “I’ve always wanted to study in Quechua, in my original language,” she told The Observer.
In an interview with Peru 21, Quispe Collantes stated that she wanted to write the thesis in Quechua because she wanted to demonstrate that the language can and should be used in academic spaces, in scientific spaces, and in universities.
Notably, Collantes not only wrote and defended her thesis in Quechua, but all of the support for the thesis was also in the indigenous language. She began research in 2012, and began reviewing poetry in Quechua, beginning with “Yawar Para” by Andrés Alencastre Gutiérrez (who has a pseudonym of Kilku Warak’a).
Quispe Collantes hopes that her thesis and defense will extend beyond just that of a political gesture and that Quechua will be used more often in formal fields of academia and science.
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