www.fisherandfrey.com

Doug Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Diane LappSan Diego State University

Pam Cole Kennesaw State University

Teaching English Learners with the Brain in Mind

This Session’s Agenda

• Examine reading processes from a neurological standpoint

• Review brain anatomy• Discuss the unique characteristics of the

bilingual brain• Analyze mirror neuron systems and their role

in teacher modeling• Consider the linkage between neuroscience

and academic discourse for English learners

Pyramid of Reading Behaviors

Wolf, 2007Genetic Foundation

Neurons and circuits

Neural structures

CognitivePerceptual/Motor

Behavioral

It took the species 2000 years of insights to develop an

alphabetic system. A child is given 2000 days to gain the

same insights. --Maryanne Wolf

A Quick Tour of the Brain

2 Hemispheres

Left and Right

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The hemispheres are connected by the

CORPUS CALLOSUM

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Each Hemisphere has Four Lobes

• Frontal

• Parietal

• Occipital

• TemporalQuickTime™ and a

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Frontal Lobe

• Memory, emotion, planning

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Temporal Lobe

• Auditory processing

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Occipital Lobe

• Processes visual information and integrates vision with other senses

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Cerebellum

• “Small Brain” responsible for movement and motor control (balance, posture, automatic motor functions)

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“Specialized Areas”

• Sensory strip

• Motor strip

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Fitting Two Languages Into One Brain

Neuroanatomy of the Bilingual Brain• Competition for cortical space (Doidge, 2008)• Neuroplasticity: Learning and experiences

change the way the brain physiologically (Mahncke & Merzenich, 2006)

• Bilingual brains have more dense grey matter (Mechelli et al., 2004)

• Recruit more parts of the brain than monolinguals including those not typically utilized for language, especially right hemisphere (Price et al., 1999)

• Pathways utilized for listening differ from those used to speak, read, and write

Educating the Bilingual Brain• Translation is typically approached as a non-automatized

task (Dehaene, 1999)• Automaticity frees working memory• Exposure to two languages does not leave children

language delayed, or language-confused (Petitto, 2002)• Students must learn English, not just in English (Dutro &

Moran, 2003)• Late-bilingual students (second language after the age of

5) achieve mastery of a new language through “highly systematic and multiple contexts that are richly varied involving both home and community” (Petitto & Dunbar, 2004)

The Power of Modeling

• Why?– Humans mimic or imitate– Mirror neuron systems activate

pathways similar to the pathways used by the person performing the action

– Reading about the actions of characters in a narrative activates similar pathways (Zacks, 2009)

Mirror Neuron Systems

• Brain cells that respond both when we do something, and when we watch someone else do it

• The more expert the observer is, the more brain cells are fired (Glaser et al., 2004)

• Evidence that mirror neuron systems are necessary for social cognition, especially for predicting another person’s intentions (Iacoboni & Dapretto, 2006)

Embodied semantics

Hypothesis: The same brain area that processes sensory-motor

experiences also processes the semantics related to that

experience

What Do Effective Teachers Model?

• Analysis of the practices of 25 expert teachers, as identified by principals and coaches in San Diego County

• Observed 75 lessons

Fisher, D., Frey, N., & Lapp, D. (2008). Shared readings: Modeling comprehension, vocabulary, text structures, and text features for older readers. The Reading Teacher, 61, 548-566. ,

Selecting Participants

• 100 site administrators and peer coaches

• Expert classroom teachers in grades 3-8

• Expert (models for others, presents in professional development forums, recognized as excellent in teacher

Participants

• 74 responders

• 67 experts identified

• 25 teachers representing 25 schools

What Happened?

• 3 x 2

• Inter-observer reliability for the 75 lessons was .88.

• Observations and field notes

What We Saw

• Four major areas of modeling instruction (comprehension, vocabulary, text structures, and text features)

• students could see the text – a class set of books– photocopies of specific texts– projected the text on a screen using an overhead

or document camera

• fluent reading • clearly practiced the selections

What We Saw

• Teachers modeled their thinking, not ask students individual questions

• Students encouraged to partner talk, write reflections, indicate agreement through unison responses such as fist-to-five

• Students asking questions

#1: They Model Comprehension B/D/A

• Inference

• Summarize

• Predict

• Clarify

• Question

• Visualize• Monitor • Synthesize• Evaluate• Connect

Bundled Strategies

“I used to do it that way, focus on one comprehension strategy at a time. But I think that’s a problem. I don’t really read that way and if I don’t read that way it’s not really an authentic shared reading and think aloud, right?”

Metacognition

“I hope you’re not suggesting that we should model one at a time. For me, the shared reading is about consolidation. We need to show students how to incorporate these things automatically and not artificially stop and summarize or question or whatever. I use my guided instructional time to focus on specific strategies with specific students who need attention in a specific area.”

“Yes, I agree. And it’s also about metacognition; knowing that you’re doing this but not paying a lot of attention to it.”

#2: They Model Word Solving

• Context clues

• Word parts (prefix, suffix, root, base, cognates)

• Resources (others, Internet, dictionary)

What Teachers Want

“I want students to have both inside and outside word strategies. I want them to be able to go outside of the word, to context clues. I also want them to be able to go inside the word, using parts of words, to figure out or make educated guesses about, the word’s meaning.”

What Teachers Modeled

Context clues: Coming on Home Soon (Woodson, 2004)• “When she put her dress into the satchel, I held my breath” (p.

1) and said, “I’m not sure what a satchel is. I’ll read this page and check out the picture. If I can’t figure it out from this information, I’ll ask someone for some help.”

• “Mama folded another dress and put it in the bag” (p. 1) “Another dress in the bag? She already put a dress in the satchel. I bet that a satchel is a special kind of bag, but it looks like a suitcase in the picture. I’m going to re-read this page with the word suitcase in place of both bag and satchel to see if this makes sense… [Rereads sentences.] Yes, it does. So there’s another word for a suitcase, a special kind of bag for traveling.”

What Teachers Modeled

Word Parts: 4th grade teacher

“Carnivore reminds me of carne in Spanish meaning ‘meat.’ It also reminds me of carne asada, a kind of meat, but that just makes me hungry. So, I use carne to remind me that carnivores eat meat.”

What Teachers Modeled

Resources7th grade teacher Patrol: An American Soldier in

Vietnam (Myers, 2002):“Two clicks away, there are flashes of gunfire. Two

clicks is the distance of my enemy” (p. 15). She then paused and said, “I’ve heard of clicks before but mostly about the Internet, you know click on this page and stuff. I think I want to know what this is and I don’t have any context clues to use to figure it out. I’m going to look it up really quick.”

What Teachers Modeled

Wide Reading

• “I know that students will learn a lot of words from reading, so I have them reading all of the time. I also know that they will learn to solve unknown words when they’re taught how to do this. They need my modeling to figure out how to do this.”

#3: They Model Using Text Structure

• Informational Texts– Problem/Solution, Compare/Contrast,

Sequence, Cause/Effect, Description

• Narrative Texts– Story grammar (plot, setting, character) – Dialogue– Literary devices

Modeling Text Structures

7th grade teacher The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli: “I think that Machiavelli is comparing and contrasting here.

I’ve thinking that he wants me to understand the difference in the two types of fighting he discusses. I see here, where he says ‘You should consider then, that there are two ways of fight, one with laws and the other with force.’ I think he’s setting up to compare and contrast these two ways. This leads me to organize my thinking into to categories that I can use to help me remember what Machiavelli believes.”

#4: They Model Using Text Features

• Headings

• Captions

• Illustrations

• Charts

• Graphs

• Bold words

• Table of contents• Glossary• Index• Tables• Margin notes

Modeling Text Features

“In some cases, the text features may even confuse the reader.” “At minimum, students need to know when to attend to the text features. For example, when should they read the graph? Before reading the text, while reading the text, or after reading the text? The answer is, it depends. And any time that’s the answer, students need a lot of modeling and practice.”

Teaching•Establishing a purpose

•Modeling

•Guiding Learning

•Supporting productive group work

Pam B. Cole, Ph.D.

Kennesaw State University

pcole@kennesaw.edu

Classroom Discourse

Oral/written language used by teachers and students to communicate.

Pictorial, symbolic, numerical, and graphic, body language

Classroom Discourse

Language is the instrument of education.

Importance of Classroom Discourse

Teacher modeling requires discourse.

Importance of Classroom Discourse

• Ex. Writing an argumentative paper

(focus on form)• Students need…

– to know how to question and disagree with points of an argument.

– to ask questions and have deep discussion based on those questions.

– to think through the process of constructing an argument.

– to “talk” through and develop their understandings

Show. Don’t Tell. Experience.

• Pedagogic language routines take specific forms (Bernstein, 1990; Wells, 1999)

• Student learning takes place through these language routines

Discourse Patterns: Structure

A. Teacher asks a question

B. One or two students answer

C. Teacher comments (sometimes summarizing and/or clarifying and/or evaluating)

D. Teacher asks another question

E. Cyclic Pattern Repeats

Discourse Pattern: Cyclic Structure

• Question. Answer. Evaluation.

• Initiation. Response. Evaluation.

Most common pattern

Possibly accounts for 70% of teacher-student interactions (Nassaji & Wells 2000)

Q & A

QAE Pattern or IRE Pattern

Q & A routine marginalizes some learners

Enables different learners unequally

Closes classroom discourse

Privileged learners can readily recognize, predict, & recall patterns

Subject/content specific

Dense content specific vocabulary

Teacher controls conversation/vocabulary

Differs from home/social discourse

Why worth talking about?

• Language Diversity

• Cultural differences (questioning patterns may be different; vocabulary/lexicon; home/family)

• Linguistic differences (confusion and miscues with vocabulary/sound-symbols)

• Dialectic (confusion with variations in language)

• Learning problems

Opening Up Classroom Discourse

Shared ownership in classroom discourse

• Validating responses• Room for deep

conversation• Reading/Learning not on

a “fixed” schedule• Assessment isn’t a

“threat”• Safe environment• Sensitivity and

understanding of different belief systems

• Rewriting “classroom experience”

• Student choice• Student ownership• “Select” class activities• A level playing field• Multiple answers• Fluid curriculum• Respect for where

adolescents “are” cognitively/emotionally

• Comfortable in our own “skins”

• Opportunities for students to “see how we think” (modeling)

Tell yourself right now you can’t know everything, but you can be a lifelong learner.

Accept that you may stumble and feel awkward at times.

Enter class discussions expecting (and wanting) to learn from students.

Don’t fudge.

Recognize when a student’s intelligence intimidates you and learn to embrace and celebrate his/her aptitude.

Let students know you value learning from them.

Shock effect questions & your “Achilles’ heel”

Awkward silences are good.

Remember…

Some of the best questions have no answers, but multiple possibilities. They may raise additional questions.

What questions do you have?

versus

Do you have questions?

Facilitate discussions.

Spread the conversation around.

Listen.

Be aware of put downs.

Scaffold students’ responses (avoid the laundry list of questions)

QAR– Right there– Think and search– Author & reader– On your own

Question Guess

Categorizing Questions

QtA (question the author)

(ex. “how to” instructions)

Thick & Thin(Harvey & Goudvis, 2000)

Ranking Questions

Questioning Circles(Christenbury & Kelly,

1983)

Socratic Circles