Session 3: Building Knowledge of Vocabulary

Materials: You will need to bring poster paper and markers for LA 3.5. 

In this session several of the activities ask them to teach each other about the understandings they developed in their homework. If the presentation by teachers runs long skim these as you prepare so that you can think of which might be shortened or eliminated. You could combine LA 3.3 and LA 3.4. 

LA 3.1 (10 min): Sharing My Learning and Professional Development. They do the same thing as last week, only now they need to think about their learning of language and literacy development. 

LA 3.2 (40 min): Presentation on SEP. The teacher group assigned to teach about Language and Learning Development will present. (Last week because of the teacher centers we only allowed 35 minutes--but this week we set aside 40 min.) After the presentation, the class members should be able to answer this question: How can I include Language and Literacy Development in my MSDLAs and my teaching so all learners have access? Have teachers share quickly their answer. 

LA 3.3 (20 min): Considering Text Modification and Vocabulary Learning in Making Content Comprehensible. In small groups, teachers will discuss how they have applied ideas from SIOP ch. 3 and 4 and share how it went. Then they need to discuss what they learned about vocabulary, text modification, contextualization, and language and learning to design supports for students. After a brief discussion time, ask them to share out things they talked about, what they wonder about, and ahas. 

LA 3.4 (15 min): Learning to Attend to Vocabulary in Making Concepts Comprehensible. In the same groups, they  discuss what they learned from watching the video and reading the article from homework. They can use their notes to share things that rang true to them, things new to them, and things they had questions about. Together they should try to answer each other’s questions. Communicate their thinking about how they want to modify text and how they will teach the vocabulary needed in their MSDLAs. (direct instruction of words, using a glossary, or interaction requiring the use of vocabulary. 

LA 3.5 (40 min): Sharing Your Learning about Vocabulary in the Texts of your Discipline. Group teachers in fours according to the corpus study they read for homework.  In the group there should be one person representing each of the contents of the corpus studies. In this group, they share information from their studies and identify principles they can use to guide vocabulary instruction. The group will make a poster of the principles they dentified to hang in the room and everyone participates in a gallery walk to glean ideas from the work of others.  

LA 3.6 (30 min): Building Strategies and Techniques and Techniques for Developing Academic Language. The teachers working in their group of four read the summarized article by Kate Kinsella about building academic vocabulary in reading and writing. They need to answer the bulleted list of questions in the directions (#2). Together, they will create their own sentence frame appropriate to their content area and consider how to make this kind of frame a regular part of their teaching. Have them hand in their sentence frames.  

LA 3.X: Consulting with the Facilitator on Presentation—Challenging Activities. Work with this group as they consider how to teach Challenging Activities to the rest of the class. Remind them that they have 40 minutes to present, and students need to be able to answer this question: How Can I attend to challenging activities so all learners have access?  

HW 3.1: Reflection on My Practice in Developing ELs’ Content and Language Proficiency. This is the weekly reflection homework, but focuses on Language and Literacy development for ELs. 

HW 3.2: Learning Teaching through Multi-media Cases and Expert Perspectives. Teachers watch the teacher they selected to watch for study challenging activities. They use the worksheet provided to take notes from the videos and all the perspectives. They need to identify 3 ahas to share next week.  

HW 3.3: Considering Text Modification and Vocabulary Learning in Making Content Comprehensible. Teachers read ch. 5 and 6 from Making Content Comprehensible. They fill in the answers to the questions provided in the reading guide. They turn in the note sheet next week, and need to prepare to share something they tried based on this reading.  

HW 3.4: Developing Language Objectives. Teachers need to read an article from Colorin Colorado they click the link in the homework activity. Call attention to the website Colorin Colorado so they know that it’s a really good place to go to learn specifics about teaching ELs. They click on the worksheet and answer the questions there. They need to bring this to the next session.  

HW 3.5: Reviewing Knowledge about Text Structures. They review a video on text structure from the literacy course and they need to think about corpus studies, developing academic language and designing MSDLAs. There is a link in the directions that gives them all they need to know to access the video. They take notes about the ideas they found interesting, new insights, and adjusting or modifying texts. 

HW 3.6: Exploring Teaching Strategy Marketplaces. For this homework, before they leave session 3 within each group, Teachers need to assign each member of their group to read half of the strategies in each of the two marketplaces (from assessment and literacy). Two people are assigned to read half of the comprehension marketplace, and the other two read the other half of the assessment marketplace (They have studied more intensely the assessment marketplace in Assessment and they will study the comprehension marketplace more thoroughly in the Literacy course. This is another example of strategic redundancy). There are links in the marketplace documents.  As they read through the activities, they each identify 2 strategies they would like to use in their teaching or the MSDLA assignment. The ones they choose should be something new for them. Then they select one and create a flyer persuading peers to use a strategy from the 2 they selected and bring it to class next week. 

HW 3.7: Exploring Funds of Knowledge.The facilitator assigns everyone in the class one of the chapters from the Funds of Knowledge book—7, 8, 9, 10. After each person reads their assigned chapter, they need to make a graphic organizer—there is a good website link for them to peruse if they need an idea for the graphic organizer. In the second part of the assignment, they select one of their own students and consider the student's potential funds of knowledge that the teacher could integrate into their teaching. Bring the graphic organizer to class in session 4. 

This content is provided to you freely by Equity Press.

Access it online or download it at https://equitypress.org/tell_facilitator_guide/session_3S.