Communication in the classroom: Reflecting on the power of language




If you look at this picture below it gives a good indication of the language present in our classroom--and what is communicated to our students daily. This is a corner of the classroom that holds most of our math routines and daily written objectives. Moreover it became a prompt for me to think reflectively about the power of language and how to access it.


This is a snapshot our ESL teacher took during a recent math lesson. We have been teaching cooperatively during these afternoon lessons, and when she showed me this picture after the day, I could have an outside perspective about how the lesson was going. From my angle I could see that most of our kindergarteners were engaged in this fairly challenging lesson about using drawings to represent number sentences. However from this picture I realized my bilingual friend sitting to the right of me (left in picture), was easily tuned out to the conversational lesson. Later I held up the board for all to see, but for a couple minutes of recording student thinking, the numbers and images appeared upside to her, just like they did for me as I was writing them. It is only when I seek to see through the eyes of my students can I appropriately gauge what supports are needed to promote academic and social language for the lesson.

Throughout planning and implementation of the lesson, I attempt to structure supports to differentiate learning. In this lesson I wanted to make the concept of drawing to represent a number sentence accessible to our English language learners as well as to our students with high math fluency. As per literacy lessons, math requires a practice of new language acquisition. As visible (somewhat blurry) in the picture, we have both one or two written math objectives for the day and posted number charts to help visualize number understanding. Throughout the day I seek to encourage students to speak and demonstrate understanding of routine practices. Even our shyest students are given roles to say sentence frames or point to number sentences when I am modeling. It is critical for me to model language and conduct learning in an 'I do, We do, You do' method. 

In this picture, you can only see a few of the students in the class; which is also how I started reflecting about how we see our class during a lesson. Rarely do we pay attention to those students who fade into the crowd. I honestly am focused on those who I know are lower academically so that I can engage them in the learning, or the students who readily answer. I want students to develop independence and self-efficacy by practicing both in whole group, with peer partners and on their own. This empowerment is only fostered by practice--both math and literacy practice. Therefore throughout a math lesson I provide both written, oral, and visual explanation of a concept--however the most important part of the lesson is when they get to do the work themselves! 



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