Language-centered Teaching

I was just thinking about how one of the most powerful learning experiences I had in my career as a teacher was being involved in K-12 writing reviews. We gathered writing samples from across schools and grades all written to the same topic and looked for trends.  That's how I saw that ELs tended to write pages and pages of strings of sentences. They didn't know how to group like ideas together to avoid redundancy and develop an argument. And this is how I started to think I needed to come up with an analogy for organizing info into paragraphs.  You have to organize details into paragraphs just like you organize your clothes into drawers. Ali is helping me think it through and get it right. Katja thinks it will work.

Lately, statements like this are standing out to me: Allow students to respond. Model the activity before allowing students to try on their own. I'm pretty sure I was the first to use  allow ... But, do I really want us to reinforce the idea that students must be given permission to participate/engage in their own learning? Would people notice if I snuck in statements like: Teach and model until students allow you to stop. Give examples until students assure you that you have taught them well enough. In very subtle ways, diction can reinforce messages about who is in charge in the classroom. This is where my mind goes when I'm trying to do a "quick" review...

The best way to end a day of work is with big dreams: Hi Raq, Today I revised the L1/L2 teaches and completed the L3 teach. I had a moment of crazy fantasizing where a student who was taught these lessons went on to become a huge coastal environment advocate and saved the world from overfishing. It might happen. xo, Ani With our lessons in hundreds of classrooms, I think it WILL happen. And that makes my heart warm and fingers light and tingly.

I just had a thought about a comment I heard about teachers saying that our unit content can be boring after a couple of weeks - "a month is a long time to stay on one topic..." Aidé thinks that teachers can hype up the content and excite the students, and I believe that. But I just realized that this is where we can show/reinforce that the content is just the vehicle to learn and practice the language. The content is not the point of the teaching in ELD lessons. It's a bonus. If I were teaching my lessons day in and out, what I would be hyping is expression. I would want my students to develop their ownership of being able to think about what they think and play around with all the ways they can say it.