I was talking with one our AP’s today who is bright and actually sat in on the classes I did with Krashen here last year. She gets it. She was ALL OVER the jGR and I sent her a copy of that and then added the following:
Gabriella the rubric I sent could be used in any subject. Teachers in any field can assign a percentage up to 40% of the grade or so (I use 30%) and thus require students – since this rubric is connected to a national Communication standard and directly affects their grade – to sit up with their shoulders squared and help the lesson along, as per the attached Classroom Rules that I created some years ago. The Rules work in tandem with the jGR rubric so I am sending them as a follow up to my previous email.
Another point I wanted to share with you is that, in my opinion, ELL’s are put through too much output (writing mainly but also speaking) too early. If we we cannot respect that output skills just cannot appear as if by magic without huge periods of listening and reading input (Krashen)*, then we sabotage the entire ELA program with (output) expectations that simply cannot be realized and the kids languish. In that light, while on this link:
http://www.corestandards.org/assets/application-for-english-learners.pdf
I was particularly concerned about this sentence:
…the Common Core State Standards for English language arts (ELA) articulate rigorous grade-level expectations in the areas of speaking, listening, reading, and writing….
This really is a sentence from the last century and allows, as we said this morning, ELA and WL teachers everywhere to do what we used to do by copping out to the writing standard and using it as an excuse to teach discrete grammar and discrete morphemes and such stuff that don’t bring the students any further along, which is now unconscionable in the field of teaching any second language in the light of current research.
However, in the remainder of that CC text, I found no sentences that advocated early forced output in writing and speaking, which is a good sign. Focusing on input with ELL’s just seems to be the right thing to do now. I can try to get a copy of The Power of Reading for you, I think Diana has an extra copy. If we can get the kids reading more, we can do what is best for them at Lincoln, in my opinion.
*Krashen has shown that doing more writing (output) does not actually increase writing skills. Annick Chen proved that here at Lincoln a few years ago, when I was at East. She focused on writing all year and her writing skills actually went down.
Also, in The Power of Reading, Krashen demonstrates through many research studies that if we want a child to read better, they need but read more. So more listening and writing for language learners and less writing and focus on discrete morphemes and all that old stuff is what I am thinking might help us best at Lincoln.
Ben
Here is a link to the above referenced Classroom Rules on this site for anyone who is not familiar with them:
https://benslavic.com/tprs-posters.html