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Building Background Knowledge and Oracy: Why, When, and How? Part 2 of 2

In order to ensure that students have the foundational knowledge required to engage with new learning, it is essential for instructional time to include the development of oracy and the building of background knowledge. Oracy development activities provide scaffolds for language development that ensure students are able to use the language, while background building activities provide students with knowledge they need to be able to access new content. While dedicating instructional time to do both benefits all students, they are essential for increasing the participation and engagement of language learners. In this blog, Jenny shares her experience and reflections of incorporating oracy development activities into her lessons.

Jenny is a 5th grade teacher in a Chinese-English Dual Language program. In her classroom, about half of her students are considered ‘native speakers’, students that speak Chinese at home and have a strong foundation of social vocabulary and language structures. The other half of her students are considered ‘language learners’, students that speak English at home and are learning Chinese. These students are building their social and academic language simultaneously and are not able to practice Chinese outside of school.

Prior to including oracy development strategies into her classroom, Jenny was frustrated by the lack of participation and engagement of her native English-speaking students during her lessons. She was also uneasy about how to teach American History in Chinese to such a diverse group of learners. As she developed units for her students, she initially felt the demands of the Common Core Literacy standards were too rigorous. So, she turned to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) standards, which primarily focus on the development of social language. While she felt that using the ACTFL standards for literacy was a more attainable goal for her language learners, she found that the focus on social language created a disparity between the students in the classroom because half of them were already proficient in this social language. Additionally, she found that it was hard to integrate these ACTFL standards with the rigorous fifth grade social studies standards. In this audio clip, Jenny explains more about her students, class and program, and further explains some of the challenges she feels in teaching her students.

 

 

When I first approached Jenny about replacing the ACTFL standards with the Reading and Writing Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in her units she expressed significant concern. She worried that her students learning Chinese would not be able to produce so much language, and thus, not come close to meeting the CCSS standards. Additionally, she worried that the incorporation of oracy development and background building strategies would slow her down in achieving the rigor that the standards demanded. However, after incorporating some of these strategies, she noticed that the academic language of both her native speakers and non-native speakers had increased. This was evidenced through small group conversations that she observed, student work samples, and the summative assessment. As she describes in this audio clip, the incorporation of these strategies has leveled the playing field, or created “the same start line” for all students.

 

 

As Jenny’s experience highlights, teachers of students in dual language programs are both language teachers and teachers of content. The inclusion of oracy development strategies follows the theory of language acquisition and ensures that students have both the content knowledge and language skills to be able to engage in rigorous instruction aligned to standards. As Jenny describes in the next audio clip, oracy development is not a one-time thing. This is something that she has to do constantly to ensure that her students are able to engage with rigorous 5th grade level content of literacy and social studies that is defined in her program’s content allocation plan. Additionally, it requires knowledge of the standards, grade level expectations, and the students in the classroom in order to identify which language structures and vocabulary to focus on.

 

 

For continued reading on the benefits of and strategies that build background knowledge, check out Robert Marzano’s (2004) Building Background Knowledge for Academic Achievement and ReLeah Cossett Lent’s (2012) Overcoming Textbook Fatigue.

For more information on the benefits of and strategies that build oracy, check these links to resources on our website.

Additionally, you may want to check out:

  • The WIDA Resource Packet, especially page 7 where they explain the features of academic language at the word, sentence, and discourse level, and page 11 where they explain the three types of supports language learners need in every lesson.
  • The SIOP Model (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol), especially as they talk about building background, comprehensibility input, and the use of strategies.
  • Project GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design), and their use of strategies to develop oracy, background knowledge, and comprehensibility for language learners.
  • Biliteracy From the Start, especially the section on why oral language development is necessary (p. 19-37).

Comment (1)

  1. Kalee April 20, 2016 at 4:48 am

    I can empathize with Jenny’s struggles with trying to cover rigorous content material while also properly preparing her students to be able to successfully discuss the topics at hand with such a wide variety of language levels. It is common for teachers to focus on developing social language with students in their lessons as the process lends itself to quicker implementation. However, by watering down the language students are required to use in class, we essentially water down the content therefore putting students at a disadvantage in their understanding of the material as well as their academic language growth. We need to find strategies like Jenny mentioned in her audio clip to include in our everyday instruction to make content and language accessible to students such as TPR, sign language, content attachment, sorting activities, etc. These activities help students build background knowledge and provide the vocabulary needed to “empower” them in classroom conversations.

    Thanks for the information, Melody.

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