Linguistic Responsiveness in the Hybrid Classroom
With distance learning here to stay, the sooner we integrate best practices on content-language teaching, the better.
Elsewhere I’ve written about teacher pedagogical language knowledge, or to put it simply: what (I believe) teachers need to know about language when working with ELLs/Emergent Bilinguals. With distance learning infiltrating all areas of education, modifications for ELL instruction now pose more of a challenge than they did for in-classroom learning. Ironically, with most students “going to school" through screens this year, I’ve come to realize that all students are in some sense experiencing the challenges that plague ELLs/EBs. In other words, without the benefit of physical proximity and 360-view of a classroom, the primary medium of instruction (language) is compromised. This means the kind of advice I’d give to bilingual, ESL or mainstream teachers is now more than ever appropriate for all classrooms in distance learning spaces.
The good news is we have 8 months of data on how to modify our pedagogy for virtual spaces. Some benefits of this new pedagogical design include message abundancy (through technology, the same message can be presented in many modes- orally, visually, graphically) and time-splicing (work time is more efficient and learners can move at their own pace). Adding to this some insights on how to build a linguistically responsive classroom (h/t Tamara Lucas, Ana María Villegas and Luciana de Oliveira), I recommend we blend the tenants of this pedagogy with the best practices for distance learning. In sum, the following strategies promote linguistically responsive teaching for a hybrid classroom.
Linguistically Responsive Teaching or LRT (Lucas, de Oliveira, & Villegas, 2014; de Oliveira & Schoffner, 2017) acknowledges the relationship between language, identity and culture as resources for meaning making in education. While its sister framework, Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1992) centers the role of culture in learning, an LRT approach considers language at the forefront of an ELL/EB’s learning experience. The following principles clarify what is meant by an LRT approach:
Ready, set, TEACH!
The following section blends the principles of LRT with best practices for online/remote learning.
If you want to learn about your ELLs’/EBs’ language histories…
Tackle culturally relevant themes throughout the year. Here are some examples:
boundaries and boarders (geographical, cultural, linguistic)
journeys/travel
belonging/friendship
resilience
DO NOW:
Compare your ancestors/parents’ stories of resilience to how you’ve managed during the pandemic. Read books like Dreamers by Yury Morales, The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and Once I was You by María Hinajosa and watch TV shows like One Day At a Time to broaden students’ perspectives on resilience.
With support from an older sibling/parent, assign a writing prompt in the home language, and then save this draft. Next, use a translation tool to determine your student’s approximate native language proficiency level. Consult with a literacy specialist or ESL teacher for additional support.
If you want to apply principles of Second Language Acquisition…
Offer the same text in two versions (grade-level and an early-reader level) Pro tip: if you’ve got a student teacher or teacher’s aid, ask them to create modified versions of grade-level texts to build out a library. You can use sites like The Times in Plain English to find news stories that have been modified for English Learner populations (ideal for grades 3+)
DO NOW:
Create homogenous small groups on the basis of text complexity. Ask the students to read through the text, offering supports (word banks, translation tools, visuals). Then, jigsaw the students into heterogenous groups to discuss the content/ideas of the text (use your learning target to determine prompts and protocols).
The Oral Development Jigsaw: This multi-day activity asks students to engage with 4 picture cards that tell a story. Students must first describe what they notice in each card as a means to answer the question, “What’s happening in this story?”. Use the break-out room feature to place them in base groups (where 5 students are describing 1 picture) followed by the Jigsaw groups (where each student shares their descriptions from the base group image). This activity builds genre-awareness, is appropriate for ELLs/EBs of all proficiency levels, and concludes with a writing task.
If you want to identify the language demands of the classroom…
This is something you can do on your own planning time with a literacy coach or language specialist (like the ESL teacher). Bolster your working knowledge of grammar and language forms by reading up on work by Pauline Gibbons, Mary Schleppegrell and Meg Gebhard.
DO NOW:
The Juicy Sentence Protocol is a close reading exercise on steroids! The activity asks you to plan around the language demands of a single text, while mapping language forms (e.g. noun phrases, prepositions, verb-types etc…) onto the choices made by the author/writer. Google’s Jamboard is a great platform to annotate text, where you can model and ask students to do their own annotations in groups.