Knowledge
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Want to know?
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Learned
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Thematic
approach: I know that connecting content and skills to thematic units
create connected learning that relates to student interest and building
cultural background knowledge in order to develop speaking, listening, reading
and writing language skills in academic content areas. A teacher using thematic
units helps create long term memory of the skills and make it easier to
recall.
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How can we build interdisciplinary units in the
middle school when we do not have teaming?
Can we get 1050 students or may be grade level
thematic units? Who has done this? How do you get everyone involved?
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Develop themes across all disciplines: One example
was using many topics from the Caribbean and Central America. Another school
uses global literacy across all disciplines. Teachers can link cross-culture
commonalities and differences to political,
ecological, economic, technological systems, and apply concepts locally through
community service projects. Thematic units do not have to be interdisciplinary.
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Culture
is important in math and science to help students build connections to what
they know and what they are going to learn. Relating to students culture or
funds of knowledge will help increase engagement, interest, and inquiry.
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What are some culture activities that help build
class culture?
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Ovando & Combs (2012) describe “ ‘Ehnomathematics’ and ‘ethnoscience’
enable us to see mathematical and scientific systems within their rich
cultural contexts.” Teachers can use
these cultural references to build a positive multicultural classroom
environment for ELLs and non-ELLs. The class is taught to accept differences
and embrace diversity respectfully. Some of the cultural contexts can refer
to the history of numbers like pi (π) and the different cultural references:
Babylonians, Greeks, Bible, Chinese, etc.
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Applying multiple
approaches in teaching social studies allows students to connect with the
material through different learning modalities. These learning styles help
students build procedural and critical thinking skills through multiple
intelligence.
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If there are so many different learning styles in
the classroom, do we really need to keep track? As long as we are using
different modalities throughout a unit, all students will have opportunities
to learn. Besides students should be developing the multiple intelligence
they are not strong in?
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Social Studies curriculum has low context-concepts,
a large amount of vocabulary that is difficult to visualize and explain,
complex sentence structure, and high language demands. Teachers need to
actively engage students in the content using role play or language
experience. These concrete strategies bring the content to the cognitive and
linguistic level of the students to gain content understanding. Critical
thinking skills need to be incorporated to prepare students for high school
and college or career ready.
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There are different
methods for teaching bilingual learners with special needs in content
areas. All tasks can be scaffolded to
meet the cognitive demands and the language proficiency of students. Some
strategies that can be used to help all students have access to high
standards is to differentiate the input or the process or the output, using
cooperative groups, and cultural connections. Specific strategies I have used
in the past are sentence starters, illustrations, multimedia representations,
modeling, gradual release, cooperative learning, building cultural
background, hands on materials, use of surveys, Project base learning, and
Portfolios.
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How can I get the students to work as hard as me in
the classroom?
How can I reduce the amount of grading I do?
How can I get the students to be self-directed learner.
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Thematic units engage special needs ELLs in content
area material. These units engage students in critical thinking with
multicultural and global perspective. Graphic organizers can support the development
of concepts and reduce the linguistic demands. Explicitly teaching the
concepts of chronology, compare/contrast, cause and effect, problem-solution,
description, and enumeration. Instruction of special needs ELLs take
extra care to scaffold and differentiate material to ensure comprehensible
input and zone of proximal development.
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Resources:
Colorincolorado. (n.d.). Special education and English language learners. Retrieved from http://www.colorincolorado.org/educators/special_education/
Fredricks, A. (2007). Much more social studies through children's literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Company. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?id=opol8i8XragC&source=gbs_navlinks_s
Makofsky, S. (n.d.) Free ESL lesson plans. Retrieved from http://www.mastersinesl.org/teaching-esl/free-esl-lesson-plans/
Radical Math. (n.d.). Browse resources for 'ethnomathematics'. Retrieved from http://www.radicalmath.org/browse_socialjustice.php?t=ethnomathematics
