Content-based exams should gauge understanding of discipline-specific skills and concepts. But for many multilingual students exams are a reading and writing test in disguise. Language specialists Tan Huynh and Beth Skelton show how we can engineer justice into the assessment of MLs.
Ideally, the “you do together” phase of GRR is a student-led experience that acts as a catalyst for learning. But how often does this kind of student interaction really happen in classrooms? Cummins and Webb consider what teachers can do to foster true collaboration.
Sometimes things fall apart when we’re trying to implement the gradual release of responsibility. Students struggle unproductively. Our guided and independent practice falls flat. Experts Cummins and Webb offer strategies to recalibrate or even restart when GRR goes awry.
A Teacher’s Guide to Mentor Texts offers a winning combination – a structured lesson approach, a range of suggested mentor texts, and an overall message adaptable to specific students. Teachers at multiple levels of experience will find it invaluable, writes Sara Pennington.
Short-term projects with specific techniques and ample examples fill Shelley Harwayne’s book, Above and Beyond the Writing Workshop. Helene Alalouf recommends the book’s authentic and interesting writing assignments complete with scaffolds and templates.
Educator and author Nancy Boyles helps teachers plan for accelerating reading comprehension in post-pandemic classrooms by rethinking answer frames and strengthening instruction using more nuanced strategies that involve all students in complex tasks for complex texts.
Since EL specialist Tan Huynh can’t be in every co-teaching class every day to co-instruct with content teachers, he has developed strategies to guide learning from afar across grade levels and disciplines. Discover his BATS: boxes, acronyms, templates, and structures.
PBL expert Dayna Laur packs her book with 8 chapters of learning sciences-based practical examples, offering authentic challenges and connecting content standards to teens’ real lives. The complex student-centered activities earn a thumbs up from teacher Susi Durand.
Assessing ELs / The Unstoppable ML Teacher
by Valentina Gonzalez · Published 10/27/2019 · Last modified 12/14/2019
Teachers need to learn what our students know and understand, but assessment can be difficult if language is a barrier for English learners. EL specialist Valentina Gonzalez offers tips to recognize unconscious bias, support learning with formative assessment, and more.
Limiting feedback to final drafts means lots of teacher work and little student learning. What if, Sarah Cooper wondered, she could give students enough scaffolding – using an outline organizer and peer response – that their rough drafts included everything she wanted?
