Tag: ELL

The Imitation Game

Recently I’ve been given to much pause of thought about learning and education, not the least following watching the movie “The imitation game” about Alan Turing’s code breaking during WW2 on the plane, followed by three days of intensive attending of presentations at 21CLHK.   It’s taken a while to try and crystallise my thoughts, and they’re probably still not as coherent as they should be, but these are my main takeaways.

While Turing is attempting to build a machine that will, in the long term, take over the work of cracking this (and other) codes, everyone around him is desperately engaged in a race against the clock. And at midnight each day the clock is reset, all work they did that day is useless and they start again from nothing the next day.  While I know that education is not exactly like that, I sometimes feel that a school year is like that Bletchley park day with a teacher racing against the daily clock, against the time-tabled period which they’re allotted to do one thing or another and then the bell goes or the summer holiday starts and we’re back at square one, but the child is handed over to the next person.  I’ve said before this is fine for the “middle”. It’s the children at the extremes where this handing over is most acutely observed, either in a positive or negative sense as they lurch through the process of learning and hopefully becoming educated beings.

Far worse is not only is Turing not supported, but the mediocre middle are out to destroy not only his machine, but him as well.

Ironically it is always easier, and more appreciated,  to work extremely hard at a huge volume of output,  than to openly take a step back and reconsider the foundation upon which practices and assumptions lie.

I’ve often decried the lack of longitudinal research in education. Our current high schoolers, what do they “look” like now (from a literacy standpoint which is my optical focus) and what did they look like when they were in G4 (my area of concern for my BWB club). And my G4’s where did they come from? How soon did their literacy attempts start to diverge from the middle? How about the ELL students? We know that the process of learning a language to CALP (cognitive academic language proficiency) level is a 5-7 year process. So when they exit an ELL programme after 2-3 years we haven’t even scratched the surface.

I attended quite a few sessions / presentations at 21CLHK that were symptomatic and typical of this “information” age. A deluge of ideas and devices and applications, delivered at a rate exceeding the absorption of most of the (highly intelligent) brains present.  I fear we employ the same methodology with our students. I know that I do. I get 40 minutes a week with my G5&6s and 20 minutes a week with the rest. Lessons and wisdom (in as much as I can claim to have any) needs to be imparted within a fraction of that to allow time for browsing of books. Teach the teacher they admonish. The teacher who has no time, as they race through a curriculum, that while enquiry based, demands 6 inquiries in 8 months. And where none of the units in G1 look at cars and planes or dinosaurs or dogs and cats or insects or space or the other obsessions a 6 year old has.

book-of-mistakes.jpg

I can read stories. Stories that I hope will cut through the clutter and touch their hearts. And I can but try to shove the right books in the right hands before the next group of wonderful eager expectant hugging children walk in. I sometimes say to my more illustrious and famous ex-MBA friends that I’m paid in hugs rather than dollars, and its true. I can try to show, not tell, them that mistakes aren’t important, it’s what you do with them that matters.

And then the Social-emotional (SE) dimension. Back to Turing. By the movie depiction he was socially inept, cared more for his work and ideas and machine than for the people around him. The movie at least gave a nice nod to the ideas of development of relationships and collaboration and the notion that a good team needs more than just raw intelligence. I do badger on a bit on SE Learning and the need for books and picture books to aid discussions and self-exploration / understanding.  I am confronted daily with students who struggle in this area, many of whom don’t have the “brilliant mind” that people like Turing had to perhaps compensate. The children who return a book and say – “it was an important book, because you know I’m also being bullied” and I look at them and I can see why their cohort would target them and how hard it is to protect them and turn the tide of otherwise nice kids performing macro and micro aggressions on children who are just slightly off kilter enough to merit the worst kind of attention.

And then you see an article like this one, announcing an OECD Pisa-like test for Social-Emotional skills. Please take the time to read and absorb the article and its implications. There is part of me that says perhaps the children who so desperately need interventions will get them. There is another (larger) part of me that knows that we do all sorts of other math and literacy testing that doesn’t lead to additional help so how on earth would we find the people, the expertise, the money, the time to devote to this area? And once it’s tested, and the tests are far reaching – even into the untouchable of untouchables in education – student’s homes, what will happen to the results? I’ve seen students desperately in need of having reading disability testing where parents have refused as they’re terrified of the stigma of a label even as innocuous as dyslexia as the child goes through school.

So I wonder, what can and should our responses be? Can we, should we, slow things down? Try to look at school as the whole process and learning as life-long – as we so often purport to do or hear the meaninglessly bandied phrase “life long learning” when all we actually do in schools is cut short every attempt a child makes at extending learning?

Chris Crutcher (author of Whale talk amongst other books) posted this on his Facebook in December (it takes a while to find amongst all his US-politics angst, so I will repost it here). I’ll leave you to think about it.

Almost everyone I know who dismisses the teaching profession wouldn’t last a day with this cool little dude (age 6!) – in a classroom where a whole bunch of kids see the world 180 degrees from him – before making him think he’s awful. This is the gamut range in EVERY classroom, k-16 and beyond. His teachers KNOW there isn’t an easy answer, but they come back and come back and come back, looking for what works; in an American educational environment crafted largely by non educators who would rather score high on mind-numbing tests of memory, than celebrate – and PAY for – creativity and expression and wildly different learning styles.

SO…this is for anyone who ever tells you teachers take that job so they can have three months off, or that “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach,” and for anyone who needs a great example of why it isn’t:

WORD FOR WORD

12-4-17

N. School is hard.

?

N. I want them to leave me alone.

?

N. Grown ups. They want me to do work, but I am too tired. Then they keep bothering me with words. I just want to stay one hour cause school bothers me. I hate school.

?

N. Boring. It’s so boring. I don’t want to go to school.

?

N. I want to stay home and have fun. I can teach myself. I like to use my brain and think and learn without being in a big building. They don’t help us learn, they just suspend us. I already know what they say. I’m just bored. Games help me learn. Building things help me learn. I study things and learn and not in a big building. Computers help me learn. They tell me stuff I don’t know. They don’t let me learn there at school. I have to sit there and listen. I want to learn non-fiction because I’m a scientist. They are wasting my time.

?

I could be learning. I want non-fiction so I can study. They read fiction stories but I like non-fiction books and computers. They’re making me dumb cause they don’t tell me non-fiction. They want me to be normal, but I want to be a robot maker. They try to make me normal but I don’t want to.

? Normal?

N. Sit there and listen which I don’t want to. That is so dumb. I want to do stuff so I can learn.

? If you were the teacher?

N. I would have kids do cool stuff like learn how to build cool bridges. I never got to go to the computer lab. They make me do dumb papers but I want to use the computer, cause computers know cool stuff. I want to learn everything, but school is holding me back.

?

It takes me away from studying and learning. (Chris Crutcher, Facebook, 11 December 2017)

 

A short tale of grit and resilience

As a teacher-librarian who still has one foot deeply immersed in academia I spend a considerable time wondering if the things we do are the “right” things. And that’s before I’ve opened any social media related to the profession where people are posting articles about the wrongs of everything from levelled reading to literature circles, reading competitions, to accelerated reading programs, to not ‘over’ encouraging reading, even down to whether we’ve really considered academic honesty properly.

So sure, we probably do somethings wrong. In fact daily I’m deeply aware that I’m failing some students some of the days, and a small number of students all of the time. And yet.  There are moments when I do think things come together and they allow our students to shine – and those are the tales of grit and resilience that the popular educational press love. And so too, at the danger of following the bandwagon, I’ll add my tales too.

Yesterday, our school had their trials to select the students who would form the teams for the “Readers’ Cup” competition.  We’ve been meeting weekly preparing for this competition, students have busily been reading the 6 books in their category, creating questions, quizzing each other and re-reading the books. We had about 40 students and could only choose 4 teams of 6.  At which point some educators would be crying “foul” and “no fair”. But hear me out, and the tales of 3 students.

The first is an ELL (English Language Learner) student – been learning English for about 2 years. Nervous about joining at all initially, bolstered by a friend who was also taking part. Enters the library to take part in the competition yesterday with a little notebook which is promptly removed by me. Look of dismay. I explain that we only allow a pencil and the iPad for the multiple choice round.  The competition ends. She’s a solid contender, right there in the middle of the pack. She’s in!  While tidying up, we find the notebook we’d put aside. Extensive notes on each and every book… *

The next, a student who decides to join the competition just before the Spring break. She’s read none of the books, but I tell her she’s welcome to try anyway, and the library is open all holiday.  From time-to-time in the vacation I get a little email to say she’s finished another book and I congratulate her. Then on Saturday the blow falls – she’d been reading the books in the wrong (higher) category and had only actually read two books at the right level… I write back to her and tell her not to panic, she still has 4 days, and I suggest a schedule whereby she reads the longest most challenging books first and leaves the picture book for last, and say if necessary I’ll come into the library over the weekend to open it for her, and she can come and read in the library every recess and lunch time (usually the times are staggered by grade). She says it’s OK, she’ll manage. And manage she does. Not only does she finish all 6 books by the deadline, but she’s the highest scorer in her category.

The third are two sisters. One a very strong reader, one a little less so, and younger. The older student is constantly encouraging the younger to keep reading. Spends time both at home and at school quizzing her on the books she’s completed. Keeps me updated on their progress.  Both sisters are selected in their categories, both top scorers. But I’m pretty sure the younger student would not have done as well without the home support and encouragement.

Invariably there are disappointments. We selected two “back-up” students per category, and after attrition from conflicts with other activities and last minute dropping out for various reasons, each category had 3 students who wouldn’t take part. Of the 6 students, 5 had not finished all the books, didn’t take it perhaps as seriously as they could have if they’d truly wanted to take part. Didn’t attend meetings or make questions or really try. But one I feel responsible for, he’s a good reader. A voracious reader. He’d wanted to take part in they younger category, but I convinced him to try for the older, but it was apparently too much for him. A misjudgement on my part. And I’m not sure what I should do now. Certainly in the future I’ll trust a students’ own judgement more and not try to convince them otherwise.

——————–
* She was not the only student who had an ELL background, for a large percentage of our students English is a second language, but she’s still in the ELL program, whereas the rest have ‘graduated’ over the years.

Picking the locks one-by-one

A few months ago a tradesman came to the door to fix something. Here in Singapore such people are often Muslim and therefore petrified of dogs. So my helper put the dog in a separate part of the house and closed the door, not knowing that it was one of those doors that lock themselves if the button is pressed in, which it was for some inexplicable reason. And although that part of the house has two doors leading to outside which are usually open all day every day, they’d been closed and locked due to a late afternoon rainstorm accompanied by a lot of wind.  Before calling the landlord’s agent for a spare key, I did what every other independent woman would do, I googled “how to pick a lock”. The instructions, video and otherwise all boiled down to the same simple steps.

Since I could access the garage and all the tools and assorted things like paperclips and hairclips (grateful for once for stuff lying around the house instead of being tidied up) – I set to work. In the process I discovered that the lock was “the wrong way round” to my sensibilities – do you notice that – doors and locks having to be turned “the other way” to what you’re used to in your home country?
Needless to say, there is a good reason why I’m not a burglar, nor a locksmith and the spare key had to be called into action. If you want to find out more about locks and security – here’s a great episode of 99% invisible.
After that huge digression to come to my point. As I wrote earlier, I have a large population of ELL students who come through the library and I’m always trying to find “that” book that will unlock their desire to read in English (actually I’m trying that for everyone, just this population seems to have the highest and most immediate needs.
Sometimes things happen quite by accident.
My G4 classes have been doing a unit on poetry as part of “how we express ourselves” and besides some great activities with spine poetry (much to the horror of my library assistants who are not used to such free-wheeling attitudes to taking books off the shelf) one day I decided to promote verse novels.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m no expert on any aspect of children’s literature, but I’m a keen learner, so I looked for some lists of verse novels for elementary students and then tried to see how many I had on hand. I’d read “inside out and back again” which is a fabulous book, so I felt it may work.
For each of my next G4 classes I had a pile of verse novels and I picked out one page to read from each.  Since my darling dog had just been put down the previous night, it was with a chocked voice I read from “Love that Dog” and luckily I had a whole pile of those to dish out since one of my predecessors had the foresight to order them in duplicate.
After the lesson a few of the books were borrowed and I didn’t think that much of it. Then a week later one of my Chinese students sidled up to me during lunch time and asked me for a book “like that dog” book, and I gave him “Hate that cat”, and yesterday he came to me and said he’d finished it and wanted more books like that.  I said “more about animals, or more like poetry” and he affirmed more like poetry, and I passed on “Inside out and back again” and told him it was one of my personal favourite – he quickly scanned inside the book and happily said “yes”.
And yes of course it would work.  I’ve not studied this stuff and I’m feeling my way along, but sometimes our students just help us to discover what it is they want and need.  Coming back to it rationally – verse is short and beautiful and evocative and free. And now it’s just one more tool in my arsenal of lock-picking equipment.
Here are some resources:

 

English Language Learner (ELL) resources

One of the wonderful things about the school I’m teaching at, is that they accept ELLs up to Grade 6 at any level of English.  It is also one of the challenging things.  It impacts me slightly as I try to help them with making choices for reading books each week, somewhat more when I’m teaching a unit for example Information literacy to prepare G6 students for their PYP exhibition and I see that a few students in each class just cannot engage with the lesson as it is moving too fast and at a too high level for their comprehension. It impacts our teacher a LOT all the time.  And out of all the challenges and considerations that keep my brain buzzing overtime, this is one that concerns me the most.

Free resource from: http://www.clipartpanda.com/categories/english-language-learning

I’m looking to order some books for classroom libraries and the main school library, so I reached out to my networks asking for books for pleasure that would be suitable for our ELL students. I also did internet searches for ELL suitable books, books for reluctant readers (even though they often are NOT reluctant readers).

I would very much like to distinguish between reading to learn to read and reading for pleasure, because I believe (and research appears to back me up) but it is the pleasure and interest reading that will take my students both into the next level of reading and also help them to create, maintain and sustain a love of reading. Yes I know there is a plethora of resources for teaching reading to ELL students and that English as a language is richly blessed with a wide variety of graded readers. But that’s not what I’m looking for. I want books that they will WANT to read for the sake of the content or story or character. Not because it’s level D or 14 or 2.7. (Here is a great article with good resources on motivating ELL student readers).

It would also be very nice when all the students are reading literature circle books that there are also books available to ELL students to read.  Of course if you have two or three ELL students who share a language, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t read a book at the appropriate level in that language – however it does lead to some complications for teachers interacting with them if the book isn’t also available in English.

Here are a few of the suggestions / ideas:

With thanks and gratitude to the iSkoodle library folks and to Asia School Library Connection:

A few of the books in my catalog that I and our ELL department recommend to parents and teachers including wordless books.  Here are some suggestions for using wordless books. They are also useful for the interlingual classroom as Eithne Gallagher suggests.

Graphic novels and comics are a great bridge for ELL students, although this article deals with use in High School, the principles can be transferred to Primary (see “great comics for early readers” above).

And don’t forget AudioBooks – some great resources have just been released including a very good infographic on using listening by the Audio Publishers Association. I attribute my childrens’ large vocabulary and working knowledge and love of the classics, including poetry to Naxos’ Spoken Word library and CDs.

Accessing lessons and other material

Up to now, all I’ve been doing is ensuring that the Information Literacy classes I do are also on my libguides with all videos and links so that students can access them in their own time and go through them at their own pace at home or revisit them as and when needed. It would be helpful to have resources in multiple languages – UNESCO has such a guide with resources in many languages. The challenge would be to access and use these as appropriate in our environment.
Any comments or suggestions?  When I have time I’d like to try and “level” this list but I need to start reading some course work for my next M Ed. study unit.