Chapter 3: Building Background

Discuss these questions prior to reading:

1) What are you students´ strengths in the area of background?

2) How have you helped your students make connections to their background in the past?

3) How will making greater efforts to connect to students’ background knowledge help students make greater gains in achievement?

Before you read a chapter, ask yourself: What will this chapter be about? Jot down any questions or predictions you have.

Questions after reading:
Pick one or more questions you want to discuss in your study groups. Or you can come up with your own questions.

On page 54, feature 7, “Concepts Explicitly Linked to Students’ Background Experiences” is explained. What strategies do you use to connect concepts to your students’ experiences? What new ideas did you learn?
Have you heard of the word “Schemata” before? How would you define it? What does it have to do with students’ background knowledge?


Answer the 3 questions on page 56:
What does activating prior knowledge mean?
What does building background knowledge mean?
How do they differ instructionally?

List 3 additional ways you can introduce, write, post, repeat and highlight vocabulary for students to see.

Page 61 to 62. Do you think it is important to spend time teaching academic words? What are some of the academic words that your students struggle with?


On page 63, the book says “There is little benefit to selecting 25-30 isolated vocabulary terms and asking ELs to copy them from the board and look up the definitions in the dictionary. Do you agree or disagree?
Why do you the research would indicate that this is ineffective?

Page 63 to 68. Pick 2-3 new ideas for vocabulary instruction. Share your favorites with your colleagues in your books study.
Alternate activity: The Lesson on Building Background and Teaching Scenarios. Read the section from 68 to 77. Score each teacher according to the rubric on pages 70, 73 and 74.

For your reflection, think about the discussion and new ideas you learned from the text. Reflect on what you feel was most important to your teaching. Write a 2-3 paragraph reflection.
Quyana!

Book Study, this FRIDAY! Feb 12th!

We will have a book study this Friday, Feb 12th. Each group will have a facilitator, to help guide the meeting. We are on chapter 2, Lesson Prep. This will be good review and time to talk about what is working in our lesson prep.

Remember, you do not have to answer all the questions. You can pick which questions you would like to answer as a group.

Please read chapter 2, Lesson Prep, Pages 22 through 51, before FRIDAY. When you are done with the book study, please reflect on the most valuable things you have learned, from the book and the discussion with your colleagues, and write a 1-paragraph reflection.

Post your reflection on the blog. Do not post answers to the questions.

Book study groups:
Group 1) Noel, Julia, Paul, Melissa, Sandy and Katie
Group 2) Jeff, John F., Erin, John, Matthew, Vonnie and ChanaSue

Making Meaning Comprehensible, Ch 2: Lesson Preparation

Pages 22 through 51.

We are going into our 5th month of SIOP implementation here in Chefornak. By now you have learned a great deal about SIOP Lesson Prep. How is it going? You can share with your colleagues some of your successes and some things that you still want to improve.

Just to review the 6 features of Lesson Prep:

1) Clearly define content objectives for students
2) Clearly define language objectives for students
3) Content concepts appropriate for age and educational background level of students.
4) Supplementary materials used to a high degree, making the lesson clear and meaningful (e.g., computer programs, graphs, models, visuals)
5) Adaptation of content to all levels of student proficiency
6) Provide meaningful and authentic activities that integrate lesson concepts with language practice opportunities


Pre-reading Questions

1) Why do lesson plans for Sheltered Instruction take extra considerations?
2) What has been your experience with SIOP lesson planning over the last couple of months? What has worked well for you? What feature of Lesson Prep has helped you the most?
3) Do you notice any improvements with your students and their learning in your classes, since you have added some of the SIOP features to your planning?
4) What feature would you like to work on more?
5) What do you not understand about SIOP Lesson Prep?

After reading Ch. 2: Lesson Prep (you may choose from these questions or come up with your own)

1) What do we need to do, if a major part of the information we need to teach are students is in textbooks that are above their level of English proficiency? (p. 24)
2) What is one new thing you learned about content and language objectives that you learned from reviewing the information on pages 24 to 32?
3) What supplementary material could you add to your lessons that could help students master the language and content objectives? (Feature 4, pgs 33 to 34)
4) Share one example with your colleagues about how you can use a scaffolded outline (p. 35) for the grade level and subjects that you teach?
5) How could you use Native language text in your class to help increase comprehension (p. 38)
6) Read the SIOP lesson teaching scenarios about the Gold Rush, on pages 39-45. Score the lessons according to the protocol for lesson prep on pages 42-45. You can have 1-2 people in each group read about one teacher and score their lesson. Then compare your scores with the scores and analysis on pages 46 to 50.

You can also use the questions on pages 50 to 51. Question 2 is a great one to discuss with your colleagues.

Chefornak SIOP Superstars

This blog is for Chefornak teachers to post their reflections following their book study. We have just read the introduction to the book, Making Content Comprehensible. Our first book study took place on Saturday, January 30th, was great. It was wonderful hearing all your ideas.

If you did not answer the following questions in your book study, take time to share some of your thoughts now. "How does the book define Sheltered Instruction? How is Sheltered Instruction different than Content-based ESL Instruction?"

Also: Skim through pages 15 through 20. What is one new thing that you have learned about SIOP that you did not understand before? What makes you excited about teaching SIOP? Write a 1-paragraph reflection.