This project will look at the growth of ELL students when skill instruction in reading and writing is centered on specific science content. The project will study if ELL students perform better on reading/writing assessments when they are driven through content that they are given multiple exposure to. The content will be 3rd grade science content that will be explored through engineering projects. In addition, reading and writing skill instruction will have ties to the science content. Many researchers have determined that students need many exposures to vocabulary before it becomes integrated into the students’ repertoire. This project looks to enhance ELL learning by making sure they are receiving multiple exposures to concepts and vocabulary across curriculum areas. Having taught different models of ELL instruction, such as transitional bilingual, dual-language and Sheltered English Immersion, I am interested to see if content driven instruction can be an additional support to ELLs in the mainstream classroom.
Emily Bellush graduated from Quinnipiac University with a Masters in Elementary Education and bachelors in Spanish. After teaching two years of first grade bilingual in New Haven, Connecticut, she relocated to Boston. In Boston, she taught second grade dual-language at the Dever before moving to a third-grade SEI position at the JFK in Jamaica Plain. Having taught different models of ELL instruction as well as extensive course work on second language acquisition, Emily has a strong interest in best practices for ELLs. By integrating all skill instruction around a central content ELLs will develop better vocabulary and be better able to access skill instruction.
BLOG POST #1
My experience transitioning from a bilingual classroom to a dual-language classroom and now a Sheltered English Immersion classroom has led me to explore the relationship between language acquisition and content instruction.
I spent the beginning of my teaching career in a bilingual classroom in New Haven, Connecticut with twenty-six native Spanish speakers. My task was to instruct these students in their native language and then, within the ten months that they were with me, transition them to primarily English instruction. In the first year of teaching I struggled. I did my best to teach literacy in Spanish and used a boxed ESL curriculum to teach the kids “hello” and the names of colors and clothing. Needless to say, this wasn’t the rigorous 21st century education other six year olds were receiving. I continued taking courses to understand how we acquire language and the best ways to do it.
When I moved to Boston, I taught on the English side of a dual-language program and then moved to an SEI classroom. Now, teaching in English all the time has changed the way I think about ELL instruction. In my previous experiences, both as a student and a teacher, I realized it was easiest to learn when I was immersed, not just in language, but also in content. I knew all the words for the furniture in my classroom in Spanish because I needed them daily. I knew how to explain reading strategies in Spanish because I needed to. This has led me to explore how to create a “need” for words in my classroom. As an English Language Learner or as a student with special education needs, how do I gain confidence using the needed words?
As I thought more about this idea of “need,” it reminded me of integrated content instruction. By teaching a theme or content, rather than skills, you reach many different subjects (reading, writing, math) within one knowledge base. I had read about UDL and Project-Based Learning and thought about how those students needed the vocabulary of the content to engage in their learning. I had been teaching reading, writing and math, but I had not been truly teaching content.
To address, over the summer when planning my curriculum I considered two questions:
- What is the content that my students need to know?
- How does that lend itself to teaching the reading, writing and math skills they need to master?
This integration of content led me to a year-long map, more focused planning, and more engineering and social studies in my daily instruction. I am looking forward to see if teaching the content gives my students the words they need to participate in learning.
BLOG POST #2
Now that we are halfway through the school year, I have had a chance to pause and reflect on my teaching and students learning so far this year. I entered this year excited–with a map for the year in hand–ready to set off on integrated content learning. Like every plan, there have been some struggles in implementation, but overall the payoff has been considerable.
Being more meaningful in planning, both by drawing connections between the topics explicitly for students and implicitly in planning has led to serious gains in learning. I have noticed that I now have three distinct groups of students:
- my highest performing students who either began high or on the cusp and are now well above grade level
- my middle of the road students who are now at grade level but still have some lagging skills and
- my ELL/SPEd students who are making above average growth but are still below benchmark.
By integrating my instruction around central themes my students have ALL grown, many of them at above average rates (as measured by reading levels). The impact of integrated content instruction has shown up most obviously in reading because it has quickly and deeply built their background knowledge.
An additional and unexpected benefit is that my ELL and SpEd students participate more noticeably in the classroom. The integrated content has provided students with the vocabulary and concepts needed to participate confidently because they see them repeatedly in different contexts.
This benefit has been seen with one student in particular, who was a newcomer last year and entered this third-grade year reading at a kindergarten level. I retained her last year in order to give her more time to acquire English as her second language. This year, with integrated instruction, she has made progress in reading and now regularly participates in class.
One of the activities that has made a big difference in class is concept mapping. We have a large chart paper in our room and every Friday we take what we learned about that week and connect it to our schema. This process makes explicit what is happening when we learn. Students go up to the board and draw the connections that they are making between old knowledge and new knowledge. This encourages them to make meaningful connections between the work that we do in ways that make sense to them.
As a result of this activity, students now offer connections without prompting. I have also noticed an improvement in students’ retention of information. My students will reference things that we did months ago and use them to help themselves understand new information. I am excited to continue deepening and adjusting my practice of integrated curriculum and hope to continue seeing increased benefits for students.
BLOG POST #3
As the school year comes to a close it has given my students and me an opportunity to reflect on our learning and growth so far. Through the course of this year, teaching with more integrated content and promoting cross-curricular connections, has benefited both me and my students.
Two of the major results have been the teacher learning and student learning. As a teacher, thoughtfully reflecting on what is the content that my students need to know and how does that lend itself to teaching the reading, writing and math skills they need to master has led to more purposeful teaching. Instead of just teaching the skills, I have used content like structures of life or sound to help students access those skills.
Example of week by week breakout of instruction:
(image coming soon)
For my students, they have increased confidence and participation because they know the content and can use it to learn new skills. This has also made my students more independent learners. They thoughtfully make connections and use schema to learn new things.
Recently, I asked students to reflect on the integration of content this year by answering the following questions:
- Why do we make connections when we are learning?
- How has making connections helped you learn?
- What is your favorite thing we learned about this year?
- Give an example of something we learned that helped you learn something else, or two things we learned that you think are connected.
Students report that:
- “We make connections when we are learning to understand it”
- “It helped me learn to connect to things and helped me learn to what might happen”
- “Water and sound (are connected) because water makes sound”
- “Water and all under life is unique area connected”
- “It helped me learn by connecting ideas”
- “If two things are the same we can make relations”
- “One time I was confused and Ms. B gave me 1 little example and I figured it out”
- “Making connections has helped me understand more”
- “Something that we learned that is connected is that times and division goes a few times together”
- “I learned Pokemon because they teach lessons like do not steal stuff like food”
- “We make connections when we are learning so we can get deeper in our learning. For an example we make connections from/to different books like Clementine and Dyamonde“
- “Making connections helped me learn so if I don’t understand something and I understand the other thing it helps me understand what I don’t know”
- “I like that we made our spider web to help us learn I also like that instead of just doing one thing we do a lot of different things”
- “Making connections helps me remember”
- “We make connections when we are learning because it helps me think more”
The next steps for me are thinking about scale and consistency. How can using more content in our instruction help across a grade level? Is there a way that we can plan content vertically throughout a school that will guide students to deeper levels of learning? Some examples of this are schools that use UDL or project based learning and plan to spiral their instruction so that students learning builds throughout the grades.
Another challenge has been integrating content into decontextualized areas of focus such as math. One way I tried to integrate content was by giving authentic math tasks rather than using direct instruction. For example, when studying water, using data around water to teach graphical representation. However, this type of authentic math instruction is challenging when trying to teach skills in a certain order or practice a skill repeatedly.
The work that I embarked on this year had many challenges and benefits. In the future, I will continue reflecting on best practices for ELLs/SPED students and I believe that thoughtful integration of content was a positive step.
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