Among my class assignments at my school this year is a 9th grade class that contains the students with the lowest levels of English in the grade. In fact, the class became notorious last year--their 8th grade year-- for having very undeveloped English skills, and some academic concerns across all areas of study.
Despite these claims and the class' reputation, I am looking forward to seeing what we can do this year. 9th grade is the year classes switch English Language tracks, from mostly acquisition and BICS (Basic InterCommunication Skills) English to a more academic focus or CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) focus--no doubt, we'll have some big challenges. It is highly possible many students in this class will not be ready for the challenges of the material.
I expect to teach a unit this semester about HOME--which contains lessons about nomadic cultures, as well as home design and automation. The unit will culminate in a mini-project wherein students will design their dream home and present the home design to their classmates in a casual show and tell type of setting.
Because of the class' projected skills, I will expect to have students mostly in the following stages of Acquisition: Early Production, Speech Emergent, and Beginning Fluency. I doubt many students will actually be in the Pre-Production Acquisition stage, but may appear to be as they will not readily produce spoken or written materials for fear of being incorrect, as it is highly likely these students are aware of their language deficiencies as compared to their peers.
As the teacher, I will have to make sure I am scaffolding my language at all times and speaking in simple terms, clearly and slowly. There may emerge students with more advanced receptive skills than others, which I will strive to put in supportive roles assisting their classmates in understanding material and making applications (if it fits the student's disposition).
Let's examine the Reading lesson which describes futuristic technology people can use to automate their homes. Some objectives we have in this lesson include learning how to read and annotate, that is, make notes within the text to help us understand/demarcate what we consider important or requiring further investigation. Additionally, I hope to tie in content ideas from the reading into the Dream House mini-project at the end of the unit.
For the PreProduction learner: Reinforce vocabulary by creating picture/word matching cards. For selected vocabulary from the unit and the reading, offer a corresponding phonetic display and picture. The students then determine which pictures correspond to each word, and can practice using the phonetic display. This task can be made paperless and time-saving by using online flashcard creators such as Quizlet. The student then identifies each new word in the reading by using annotation methods, such as underlining or highlighting. The student reads silently or to himself/herself, reading aloud if comfortable.
For the Early Production learner: This student will still need vocabulary practice using flashcard activity from above. but they may be more confident in their speaking when learning the new words. A good activity may be to have them gauge their pronunciation using online tools, and paired with a PreProduction learner. They will go on to identify and annotate the text.
For the Speech Emergent learner: They will complete the vocabulary and annotation tasks. They will be asked to read sentences/chunks of text aloud that contain the target vocabulary. They will access prior knowledge by creating simple sentences from a prompt.
For the Beginning Fluency learner: They will recall equipment or terminology regarding home automation to access prior knowledge. They will create simple sentences from a prompt and share them with their group, or with the class. They will participate in the vocabulary activity, or be asked to develop their own vocabulary activity for their classmates. They will demonstrate annotation methods for the class and will be asked to expand on the topic as they are able.
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