—Brigitta Hunter, Teacher, Mark West Union School District
Co-teaching is another powerful approach to collaborative inquiry designed specifically for EL specialists and core teachers working together. Read Collaboration and Co-Teaching (Honigsfeld & Dove, 2010), referenced below, to get started.
Additional Reading to Foster This Mindset
Honigsfeld, A., & Dove, M. (2010). Collaboration and co-teaching: Strategies for English learners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Singer, T. W. (2015). Opening doors to equity: A practical guide to observation-based teacher learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Reflect on Chapter 2
How do you value EL assets in your everyday teaching? What is one new approach you want to try?
In what specific ways do ELs in your context access opportunities to realize success with high expectations? What is one action you want to take to make high expectations a reality for all ELs?
How and when do you reflect on your impact as you teach? How is your approach similar to or different from the cycle in Figure 2.2?
Section II Engage
This section empowers you with strategies to engage every student in active learning every day. Active learning is good for everyone, and also an imperative to ensure ELs thrive in core classrooms.
3. Engage Every EL 42What Is Student Engagement? 42Why Collaborative Conversations? 46
CONVERSATION STRUCTURES3.1 Whole-Class Conversation Structures 523.2 Partner Conversation Structures 543.3 Small-Group Conversation Structures 563.4 Up and Moving Conversation Structures 583.5 Fishbowl Structure 60
CONVERSATION SCAFFOLDS3.6 Listening to Conversations as Formative Data 623.7 Tools to Differentiate Student Conversations 643.8 Linguistic Frames for Conversations 70
ACTIVE PARTICIPATION STRATEGIES3.9 Strategies to Actively Engage Emerging ELs 723.10 Total Physical Response Strategies 763.11 Read and Annotate Strategies 783.12 Collaborate to Write Strategies 80
Chapter 3 Engage Every EL
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“When kids are engaged, when they are active co-constructors of their knowledge, then they are more likely to take ownership, to discover relevance, and to ask why and why not; they are more likely to feel inspired when they realize their voice matters and their questions count more than their answers.”
—Kyleen Beers & Robert E. Probst (2013, p. 27)
What Is Student Engagement?
We love student engagement. We want more student engagement every day. But what, specifically, do we mean by “student engagement”? Let’s build a shared understanding about our goal before digging into the specific strategies of how to make it happen.
Imagine the ideal moment in your classroom when every student is 100 percent engaged. What do you see? What do you notice? What does active engagement look like and sound like? Jot down your ideas, and ideally collaborate with colleagues to compare notes.
When I think of engagement, I think of both students’ internal experience as learners and their active participation. Internal experiences include students’ thoughts and feelings. Active participation is what students do to engage in tasks. Both are important for engaging English learners (ELs) in core classrooms. Let’s dig into each.
Engagement From the Inside Out
One way of thinking about student engagement is the engagement that happens inside a learner’s heart and mind. As teachers, we can’t get inside students’ heads to know their thoughts and feelings, but we often get clues in body language, facial expressions, and the things students say or write as they participate in class. Through these clues, we may notice the following types of engagement:
Interest: Wow. This is fascinating. I love this! Cool.
SENSE OF PURPOSE: I want to learn this because I understand why it is important to help me move toward goals I value.
RELEVANCE: This is relevant to me. I see myself in this goal.
CONNECTION: This reminds me of . . . This is similar to . . .
CHOICE: I choose this book because . . . I want to write about . . . I want to create . . . I want to research this question . . . I want to solve the problem . . .
CURIOSITY: I wonder . . . ? What will happen if . . . ?
SELF-EFFICACY: I know I can do this. To move closer to that goal, I’ll try . . .
Internal engagement is really the most important engagement as it is, in a nutshell, learning. It is the students’ brain experiencing safety, relevance, interest, curiosity, and self-efficacy to grow. We foster this type of engagement for ELs in many different ways that I address throughout this book. Figure 3.1 gives you a quick overview of the strategies and where to find them in this guide.
Engagement Through Active Participation
Another way of thinking about student engagement is active participation through student actions and expression. The focus in this definition of engagement is on what students do in a classroom. You may call this active participation and save the term engagement for the thinking/feeling aspects of engagement I described above. No matter the terms we use, the concept that matters is that students don’t just sit and listen to the teacher but actively participate in lesson tasks. We teachers structure active participation when we create tasks that require students to engage in the following:
COLLABORATE IN CONVERSATION: Students collaborate with peers to express ideas, negotiate meaning, and build up ideas together.
READ: Students preview texts, read for meaning, and reread to analyze and find text evidence to stretch and support their ideas.