What's a Powerful Word?

Me: “What’s a powerful word?”

Student: “One that makes you see a picture.”  

Oh, joy! I think I’ve finally cleared the hurdle of students thinking a word has to be 5 syllables long to count as powerful! Thanks to reading a book that doesn’t have a lot of 5-syllable words, but does have a lot of powerful words (A Long Walk to Water), and thanks to the discipline of asking students every day what powerful words they found--and offering my own the first couple of days. I want them to develop the habit of reading like writers--noticing not just words they don't know, but also words they know that are really cool and descriptive, but they probably wouldn't yet think of to use in their own writing.

I ask why they picked a word, and sometimes a student will say he didn’t know what it meant (like monotonous and emerge), and sometimes she’ll say she liked the picture it made or the way it felt (like quench or cling). We look at the context and get a definition or just appreciate the power of the image. (I even found a creative way to make a word wall in a classroom where testing situations may require them to come down! See photo above.)

There are the unknown words that need a picture to build background knowledge so readers can envision images: sorghum, cassava, acacia, tamarind, antelope. (See last week’s blog). 

Then there’s ululate. I saw it coming. I knew from past experience that I didn’t want to try a demonstration myself because it comes out sounding like Tarzan. So I came prepared with a really good definition. The room full of 6th and 7th graders in an international school in Japan just stared at me blankly. Teacher fail. We moved on. 

As I walked out of class it hit me like a blinding flash of the obvious: This is where I needed an audio recording. No idea why it hadn't occurred to me earlier. I found this YouTube video with lots of different examples. The kids were so intrigued that they listened to it for 2 minutes BEFORE class started the next day. One student did a much better imitation than I’m capable of!

One other thing I’m not doing well: cold calling on students for their words. There are a couple that have become so excited to offer their finds, I have a hard time turning them down in order to cultivate the expectation that everyone will find powerful words. Next step for next week.

Visualizing Images: Google Images Partnership in Reading Strategies

 

"Oh, THAT'S what they were doing!"

A student epiphany blossomed from the back of the darkened room when I showed a 2-minute video clip at the beginning of 6th and 7th grade English class Thursday morning. The homework reading had been the chapter from A Long Walk to Water where the refugees build reed boats to cross the White Nile in Sudan. I had sketched it out in my reading notes, figuring most of the students would have trouble visualizing what exactly was happening. Looking at them with a critical eye, my sketches were not that helpful, given my lack of visual artistic talent and training. So I searched for images and found something even better—the video.

We know reading builds background knowledge. We know that envisioning images is something that effective readers do. We know that students need background knowledge to be effective readers. And I want to expand my students’ knowledge of the world with their reading. This all becomes a big circuitous swirl that we just have to grab some place to switch from vicious to virtual. Google Image is good for something. 

Another student called out, “Did you find out what sorghum looks like yet?” “Yes!” I replied. “I have that image cued up next!” Students had been asking questions over the last several days: What is sorghum? What is an antelope? I’d responded with words, but not with images. And, as we all know, a picture is worth a thousand of those. They’d asked, “What is ‘ritual,’” but not “What is ‘ritual scarring’?” so I’d also decided it was time to search for an image of a traditional Dinka face and a traditional Nuer face. I asked, “What would Salva have felt if he saw this face? What would Nya have felt if she saw this face?” (I’d also cued an image of the particular type of antelope referred to—a topi.)

Thursday we started with an image fest. First the video of building a reed boat. Then some sorghum—both cooked and growing in a field. Then antelope in general and topi in particular Then a Dinka face and a Nuer face with their ritual scarring. We referred back to the map in the front of the book, and realized how early in the trek we still were. A student made a spontaneous prediction of what would happen along the rest of the way. We used Google Maps to put it all in the larger perspective.

A little voice of doubt in the back of my head whispers, “Why aren’t THEY searching for the answers to their questions?” Yes, that’s the next step. But at least, for now, they’re ASKING their questions. I’ll show them how satisfying (and easy!) it is to find the answers. 

And I have a couple more images cued for Monday because of the questions students asked me while they did a close reading of a nonfiction background article on Friday: “hump-backed cattle” and “AK-47.” 

Note to self: When using reading to broaden students’ background knowledge, make generous use of Google images. Because a picture is worth a thousand words, and a video is probably worth ten-thousand.  

ELL Reading Comprehension: Mixing It Up

Mansion, not manshon: Photo by Nick Romanov on Unsplash

When mansion made the leap from English to Japanese, it somehow came to mean an apartment—though a little higher class than an apaato apartment, which is rented and generally less high quality than a manshon which is purchased. 

This week in EFL class, we read a story that included a mansion and a luxury car with chauffeur. The first time I asked students to draw a picture summary of what we’d read, even though we’d discussed this semantic difference and I’d shown them Google images of the American understanding of “mansion,” the majority of students drew high rise buildings. Also cute little cars, though I’m not sure of the reason for this, other than the Japanese middle school penchant for cuteness. 

So I showed off one drawing of a true American mansion, and I drew my own limousine on the whiteboard. (My drawings always cause a good deal of hilarity--but that's all to the good where learning is concerned!) The next day when we continued the story and the drawing, I noted, “Oh, good! More people are drawing American mansions!” When I pointed out to one student that she’d drawn a Japanese mansion again, she heatedly denied it, and quickly added 2-story wings on each side of the narrow, several-storied building. Actually, quite an effective transformation!

Drawings, I discovered, are a great way to check comprehension, taking all the hesitancy about vocabulary and grammar out of the equation and cutting straight to what the student is actually envisioning. 

My EFL middle schoolers have been plodding through their reading and looking at me blankly when I ask them to summarize. We needed some revitalizing. I take responsibility—I’d had a Ferlazzo strategy in the lesson plan, and then I didn’t look carefully and half forgot to do it, and what I did do, I did all wrong. So back to the drawing board--but getting familiar enough with some of The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox strategies that I could piece them together in different ways. Here are some I used this week:

1. Don’t have EFL students read out loud. At first this puzzled me. I thought I needed to hear and address their hesitancies and errors. But actually, they need to hear a good model. but in that case, how do I ensure they focus on the model and practice? After I read a sentence out loud with students following along in the book, I call on a student to look up and repeat the sentence I just read. Not all the time. Maybe for 1 paragraph. Or to review a paragraph from the previous day. Or 1 sentence from each paragraph. I haven’t yet tried cold calling. What I’ve done is alert the student before I read the sentence, so they’re paying special attention. 
2. As an alternative to verbal summary, draw a picture. This week I had students fold a blank page into quarters—8 frames, front and back. Then, at the end of each chunk of text, after taking questions, I’d say, “One-minute picture!” and set the timer on my phone while students sketched a summary of the chunk.
3. At the end of the whole reading, students acted out the story in groups of 4. No papers allowed. (One tried that.) We reviewed. We talked. We laughed. And I knew that they’d understood the reading.

Adding tools to my toolbox one micro-strategy at a time! 

Processing Current Events Through Literature

This week my combined 6th and 7th grade English language arts class started studying the book A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park. Set in southern Sudan, the narration alternates between an 11-year-old Dinka boy in 1985 and an 11-year-old Nuer girl in 2008. On Wednesday we were discussing a background article on the civil war leading up to the creation of South Sudan, and the resurfacing of ethnic conflict in the new country afterwards. One student asked, “Why did they go so quickly to violence instead of using words?” I said, “That’s a good question. I wonder that, too.”

Thursday morning I woke up to the news of an armed mob storming the US Capitol. 

If you find the timeline confusing, it’s because I’m in Japan, many time zones and an International Date Line away from the events unfolding in Washington, D.C. It was surreal to watch  the kinds of actions that have always happened in other places happening in my home country. It's different for my students, though. They hold an assortment of passports, but none from the US. To them, it’s still one of those other places. 

“Why did they go so quickly to violence instead of using words?” The middle schooler's inquiry from the day before about Sudan became a burning question for me about my own country. I turned to BBC News, a good source for explaining the US to people outside the US, and read the article “US election 2020: The people who still believe Trump won.” I realized they believed that words had already failed. And they’re afraid. Like the characters in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” that we’d read in 6th and 7th grade right before Christmas break, showing how quickly fear breeds suspicion, prejudice, and violence. That fear triggers herd behavior, which we’d read an article on in response to the bullying in Wonder, which we’d studied earlier in the fall. Who knew that the 6th and 7th grade English curriculum would help the teacher process current events?

Arriving in 1st period, I asked if any of the students had heard about the violence in the US Capitol. A handful looked like they were vaguely aware of something. I supplied a brief outline of events and referred to the student’s question from the previous day: “Why did they go so quickly to violence instead of using words?” I said, “I think I have the beginning of an answer,” and I shared my string of connections to what we’d read earlier in the year.

“We’re learning political science in English class!” one student burst out.

“Political science involves human nature, and literature involves human nature, and we are all human, learning about how to live with and for each other,” I answered.

Becoming a Globally Competent Teacher

Good thing I was in the middle of reading Becoming a Globally Competent Teacher or I might have missed the simplest of opportunities to be one... 

A couple of days ago I was thinking about a January back-to-school mini-unit for a middle school ESL class. I’d used some really great materials from the ESL/EFL teachers’ resource website TeachThis last term (totally worth the membership after I tried the free stuff!), so I searched the site for “New Years” and came up with a worksheet for making New Years’ resolutions. Minimal guidance, though. Then I remembered a NewsELA article I’d seen on making and keeping New Years’ goals. Perfect! Leveled reading practice together with a great chance to review last term’s goals, pre-holiday exam results, an American tradition, and to set some new goals. 

I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me until I was lying in bed that night that I’d completely forgotten to make a very easy global connection: in addition to a traditions from the US (like resolutions) and from Japan (where I teach), what are other traditions? I make a firm mental note, and when I got to my desk the next morning, I quickly found a BBC article “How Do People Celebrate New Years around the World?” 

I’m still shaking my head at the whole oversight, because I think of myself as a pretty globally aware educator. After all, I’m an American living and teaching in Japan. Most of my students are bilingual. Last term my high school class watched Sheryl WuDunn’s TED Talk “Our Century’s Greatest Injustice” and developed a line of inquiry from it to make their own presentation on. Next term a middle school class is reading A Long Walk to Water. And I’ve spent many years as a world lit teacher reading as widely as I can to expand from my mostly American/British lit training to find books that my international students can see themselves and their cultures in. 

We hear those catch phrases a lot—“global citizens,” and the like. Who’s against that? The pandemic of 2020 has shown us again just how interconnected we are. And yet, what exactly does a globally aware education look like? So I snatched up this book when I saw it and read it over the Christmas vacation. I’ll be coming back to it again for a slower, more interactive read, and some of the categories were more distinct and helpful than others, but I found it really helpful for some kind of traction to have some kind of set of discrete elements. These authors come up with 12 elements grouped into 3 sets: dispositions, knowledge, and skills. Here's a quick list:   

Dispositions

• Empathy and Valuing Multiple Perspectives
• Commitment to Equity

Knowledge

• Global Conditions and Current Events
• Global Interconnectedness
• Experiential Understanding of Diverse Cultures
• Intercultural Communication

Skills

• Communicating in Multiple Languages
• Creating a Classroom Environment that Values Diversity and Global Engagement
• Integrating Global Learning Experiences
• Facilitating Intercultural Conversations
• Developing Glocal Partnerships
• Assessing Students’ Global Competence Development

I gleaned a number of things from my initial cursory reading. It confirmed for me that I am moving in the right direction. It also reminded to—duh—add that global dimension to my New Year’s lesson! It prompted me to continue to articulate to my students the why of bilingual and global education—just like I continually articulate to them of the why of reading! (“The Benefits of a Bilingual Brain” 5-minute  TED-Ed) And it motivated me to finally take advantage of that Japan Times introductory subscription offer that’s been showing up everywhere in my Facebook feed—6 months for $6. After all, to connect the local and the global, I have to have more local knowledge than BBC gives me for Japan. 

Happy New Year, one and all! I know that whatever else 2021 may bring, it will be a year of challenge and growth. I’m curious to see where we all end up this time next year, and I’m content to take it one week, one day, at a time.