Planning for Academic LanguageLanguage Objectives
Why?How?
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Why is academic language so important?
• Students who master academic language are more likely to:– be successful in academic and professional settings
• Students who do not learn language may:– struggle academically – be at a higher risk of dropping out of school
Let’s first begin by thinking about the language of school.
04/21/23 ELA pr 2
What is academic language?Academic language is:
– the language used in the classroom and workplace.– the language of text.– the language of assessments.– the language of academic success.– the language of power.
It is the language our students need
to access.
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Try This..1. Think about your best friend.2. How would you describe him or her to a colleague? Take a moment to think this through..
3. Now think about the 911 tragedy and describe the events that occurred that day to a colleague.
Would you use different words? Would your sentence structure change?
You probably use more “formal” language and you were careful in the way you phrased the events. Yes. your register changed, your tenor, field and mode and
audience.
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Social Language vs. Academic Language
• When using social, or informal, English in daily conversation, it’s possible to communicate by using slang and without using English in a grammatically correct way.
• You can be understood without using:– articles– prepositions– sophisticated vocabulary– pronoun reference
Our students still need social
language as a bridge to academic
language.
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Recognizing Social vs. Academic Language
Informal Formal
Repetition of words
Sentences start with “and “but”
Use of slang, “guy, “cool “and “awesome”
Variety of words, more sophisticated vocabulary
Sentences start with transition words, such as “however”, moreover,” and “in addition”
No slang Do you feel that
we need to explicitly explain these differences to our students?
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Academic Language
The language needed by students to do the work in schools. It includes, for example, discipline-specific
vocabulary, grammar and punctuation, and applications of rhetorical conventions and devices that are typical
for a content area (e.g., essays, lab reports, discussions of a controversial issue).
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What we know.
• “Students must learn how to think, act, believe, speak, listen, read and write in a way that is expected in school” , Freedman and Freedman (2009)
• So we recognize that academic language needs to be embedded into our content areas.
How do we plan strategically for this in our content areas?
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Language Objectives
Specify the language that students need to understand academic content and to further demonstrate that understanding.
ELA pr
Writing a Language Objective
1. What is the language your English Language Learner needs to process or produce to demonstrate their learning?
2. Content Objectives : What?
3. Language Objective : How?.
4. How will you provide the opportunity to practice the language? (Support)
Ask yourself.
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• We think about the functions of language: How will the language be used?
• Will the students, ask questions, compare and contrast, explain etc.?
• What are some of the forms of language students will use when using a particular type of function; content vocabulary, grammatical structures etc.?
When we think of language.
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Language Functions and Forms
How will the student use the language? (Function )
Domain: speaking, listening, reading or writing
What grammatical structures and vocabulary of the language will be used? (Forms)
Compare and ContrastRetellAnalyzePersuadeSynthesisInferDescribeExplainSequence
Syntax and sentence structureAcademic vocabularyGrammatical features (parts of speech, tense and mood, subject/verb agreement, adjectives, adverbs etc.)
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Writing a Language Objective
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Sentence stems to support intentional language development
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Writing a Language Objective
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Sentence stems to support intentional language development
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Students will identify with labels the parts of the water cycle by using evaporation, condensation, and precipitation on a diagram.
Function
Form Support
Content Objective: The student will understand the parts of the water cycle.
Domain
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Functions for Language Objectives: This list can help you write great Language Objectives for each language domain.
Listening Speaking Reading Writing
Act, arrange, distinguish, duplicate, categorize, choose, copy, follow directions, identify, indicate, label, listen, match, order, point, recognize, role play, show, sort, tell
Agree/disagree, answer, ask, converse, debate, define, describe, discuss, explain, express, give instructions, identify, name, practice, predict, pronounce, rehearse, repeat, rephrase, respond, restate, say steps in a process, share, state, summarize, tell, use vocabulary
Discover, distinguish, explore, find, find specific info, identity, infer, interpret, locate, make connections, match preview, predict, read, read aloud, skim
Ask and answer, questions, brainstorm, classify, collect, compare, contrast, create, describe, edit, evaluate, explain, illustrate, journal, label, list, order, organize, record, revise, state and justify, opinions, summarize, support, take notes, write
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Types of Supports Sensory Supports Visual Supports Group Supports
• Real-life objects (realia)
• Manipulatives• Pictures &
photographs• Illustrations,
diagrams & drawings
• Magazines & newspapers
• Physical activities• Videos & films• Broadcasts• Models & figures
• Charts• Graphic
organizers• Tables• Graphs• Timelines• Number lines
• In pairs or partners
• In triads or small groups
• In a whole group• Using cooperative
groupstructures• With the Internet
(Websites) or software programs
• In the native language (L1)
• With mentors
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Try this…..
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Supports
ELA pr
A thought..It is not just words that our
kids need to learn,
but how to articulate those words, read and understand them, and use them in their writing.
04/21/23 ELA pr 21
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