Golden Apple Session III - Language Demands

To date you have done the following things...

1. Read Chapter I
2. Discussed language and identity
3. Identified and analyzed how language and identity influence learning experiences
4. Discussed how teacher ideology about language influences teaching approach
5. Critiqued the social policies of language

What is the discourse of schools?
School is not the place where conformity should take place. Try to make sense of how students know when the language code changes and why it changes. What is to be learned from the changing language code?

Chapter Seven
What does it take In order for students to be successful in reading? Reading begins to change as student get older. Reading changes at grade four. Why does reading change?

You go from learning to read (phonics, sounds) to reading to learn (increase in informational text). Reading becomes more complex at fourth grade, students are reading to provide explanations and respond to thinking demands.

What should students be doing to support the increase in thinking demands?

1. Think abstractly and connect it qconcrete concepts. (Text to self connection)
2. Using tools to sift through materials (Brain folders)
3. Make connections from text to prior knowledge.

As a teacher you have to be able to anticipate student responses and accept them...this facilitates engagement. Engagement is an extension of allowing students to relate, explain and become connected to the concept.

Which key comprehension strategy directly connects to your style of teaching?
(You must pay attention to the age level of your students) What was the complicated strategy and why?

Figurative language -Special needs students
What do you need to do?  Draw pictures of the figurative meaning, using stories as examples, develop another set of literacy skills as a source for the next step, improv.
Echo read p.189
Modeling punctuation with your voice and having students repeat this modeling.
Brain Folders 
Developing the meta cognitive skills so students understand why they are doing what they are doing.

In your lesson where and how do you show your students how to use the academic language?
(Whenever you get a rubric of expectation, go to the highest level and work from that.)

Language demands are not limited to special needs students or ELL Learners but extend to communities, and socio and economic foundations, too. You must be able to address all of these.

Small Group Discussions

1. What key concepts of your content area have specific vocabulary?
2. How do you plants develop comceptual understanding of that vocabulary?
3. What methods will you use to assist students in being able to use that vocabulary when engaging in instructional activities?

Bring in a typed outline for a key concept students will learn in your course

Include a list of key vocabulary words that are central to that concept.

Using one of the strategies outlined in Chapt. 7, write your mini lesson (10-15 mins) articulating your teaching of the concept using one of the vocabulary words.

- Be conceptually brief 

- Refer to rubric for guidance