Powerful Shifts in Learning

When technology started to become an integral part of our lives, I used to tell my students that the jobs they would get had not been invented yet.

This season, over turkey and eggnog, I realized that the time had already arrived. Chatting with my children, nephews and nieces, and other family members, I realized that I had no idea what their job titles meant and that I could not have imagined that job even a decade ago.

My next thought was – what are we doing to keep up with our students and the world that they will inherit? Are we making the necessary changes so that they leave us ready to take on the world and be successful in life and career? I started to think back at my teaching career and how each year meant one more layer of something – cooperative learning, multiple intelligences, literacies and technology, etc. – and how unwieldy it became as all these little pieces added to an already crowded and difficult timeline.

Just in time, I saw this article by Terry Heick (January 3, 2019) and it mirrored my feelings about the future of the classroom, and it also gave some pointers towards a path for making the necessary changes to meet those future needs. What the pragmatist in me liked is that it referred to “shifts” not “changes” and that “the most compelling and powerful trends, concepts, and resources that represent its promise” were already available (and didn’t require tons of money and hours of training).

Even the title Tomorrow’s Learning Today: 7 Shifts To Create A Classroom Of The Future didn’t leave me breathless and exhausted but curious and hopeful.

Before even getting into the meat of the article, the author acknowledged the biggest challenge that teachers face: IMPLEMENTATION. By addressing this first and stating that “many of the elements of a progressive learning environment…work together…and, that collectively they can reduce the burden on those managing the learning because they place the learner at the center…” gave me a feeling of I Can Do This. The new shifts use “integration” not “tacking on”.

The seven shifts made sense to me, but the last two made my heart sing… “Spaces and places matter”… “authentic learning experiences allow learners to self-direct personal change in pursuit of social change–and that starts small, at home and surrounding intimate communities” and finally “self-directed learning is at the core of the future of learning”.

Small changes make for big results in the end. I can teach to this end.

Happy New Year!

https://www.teachthought.com/the-future-of-learning/shift-learning-the-7-most-powerful-ideas-shifts-in-learning-today/

Blended Learning - New Idea or Trend?

Blended learning is one of our new “go to” pieces of educational jargon.  It seems everyone is either doing it, thinking about it, or planning to do it.  It sports different names – blended education, hybrid learning, flipping the classroom and is being touted as the new way to deliver instruction. 

So what is blended learning?  It is a model of delivery of instruction that combines classroom and online education.  This trend is propelled forward by the reality of the way we live - surrounded by technology.  Why only last evening, I asked Siri to wake me up at six; then asked her to send a message to my children and set a reminder to take the potatoes off the stove.  I also dictated notes to myself about new ideas for my lesson during my daily walk and had Siri e-mail them to me. 

As teachers we incorporate and apply theories; design lessons using varied strategies; and look to meet the needs of students that have different learning styles and requirements.  It’s part of the job and the only differences are the tools at our disposal.  When I started teaching we relied on mimeograph machines, overhead projectors, and books for research. Now we have wireless printers, smart classrooms, and instant access to information via the internet. 

The tools have changed. 

What hasn’t changed is the fact that we still need to teach our students to think critically and to evaluate what they read, regardless of where the information comes from.

For our students to be engaged, we need to keep pace with them and embrace the ways they use to communicate.  The tools for education and the way we use them must be relevant in order to engage students in the importance of the content.  If the way we deliver the message is antiquated, then why would our students think that the subject is any less so. 

Tapping into prior knowledge, frontloading, and all the tricks of our trade have just had a face lift.  Watching a lecture ahead of time, engaging peers in an online discussion, uploading assignments to the teacher’s website and receiving annotated responses is only the next level of using the tools at our disposal.  The need to move our students to higher and deeper levels of thinking hasn’t changed.

So….is blended learning a revolutionary new idea or just the latest trend in our educational pendulum?

Maybe it is either or both.  It doesn’t matter.  What we do with it is what matters.

And, by the way, the potatoes came out wonderful !  Thank you Siri.

Chasing Beautiful Questions

“What if you found that creative genius does not lie in knowing all of the answers?”  That’s how a relatively boring flight to visit family became an adventure in revamping some of my favorite lessons.  As I rapidly approach the beginning of the school year (for the 40^th time), I am starting to think of lessons, activities, and how to motivate my students for yet another year.

When I started teaching, I felt that my main purpose was to provide my students with the correct answers to their questions.  The problem turned out to be what whatever was the correct answer to the question one day could very well be the wrong answer the next day.  I also became troubled by the idea that I was producing clones of myself as my students adopted my “interpretations” of literature, events, and life, in general.  I then started to think about the power of questions – but not just any questions – the ones that matter and to which we don’t have the answers.

About the time I started training teachers, I had given up on the futile attempt of giving answers and announced to my students that if they came to my class looking for answers, they would be disappointed because I had none.  Instead, we could spend our time looking at questions that are interesting and see if we could find some answers that made sense.

The article “Chasing Beautiful Questions” started me thinking of how – forty years later – we are still engaged in providing answers instead of promoting questions in the classroom.  “What is a beautiful question?  It’s one that challenges assumptions, considers new possibilities, and has potential to serve as a catalyst for action and change.”  Organizing our thinking around what we don’t know is a perfectly plausible way to start each year, each semester, each day.  We can generalize about our student population, look at census data and test scores, but any answers we get are more likely to generate more questions rather than point to a definitive path. 

As teachers, we may feel uncomfortable with the idea of not having all of the answers and therefore discourage our students from asking too many “open-ended” questions.  It is also difficult to grade answers when each student is coming up with a different answer to the same question.  We are a system based on getting the right answer, and that answer needs to be known to us (the teachers) ahead of time.  Thus we shy away from “beautiful questions” because we are not certain that we have any beautiful answers.  But are beautiful answers what our students expect from us?  Or do they just want an opportunity to explore their own beautiful questions and all they want from us is encouragement and a bit of guidance?

Looking at how innovators come up with new ideas, the article shows us that questioning is a key to innovative thinking.  “To question well and productively requires stepping back from habits, assumptions, and familiar thoughts; listening to and closely observing the world around you; being unafraid to ask naïve or fundamental questions; and being willing to stay with the questions as you endeavor to understand and act on them.”

So maybe we need to start focusing on our questions and challenge our assumptions on a regular basis because, as Warren Berger states at the end of his article “answers have a way of becoming insufficient or obsolete over time.  Only the question endures.”

Additional Resources Added

Summer always seems to bring not only a time of reflection but a time of "spring cleaning" and preparing for the new school year. For me personally, it is also a time of packing and moving this particular summer...As I have been sorting and resorting, I decided it was time to add some resources to our blog in order to round out our "collections" for teachers.

That being said, I am distracted from our postings on the Common Core, but will be back commenting in future posts.

So...some recent additions to the blog include www.wordsift.com  under Picture File Cards. Cut and paste a passage and it will lift vocabulary and find sources for images. Great for making chants and poems more comprehensible.

Tag Galaxy www.taggalaxy.de/ finds images for you when you type in key words, and don't forget both National Geographic www.nationalgeographic.com and National Geographic for Kids Photo Gallery kids.nationalgeographic/kids/photos/gallery/.

Two other recent picture file card additions include Kitzu - collections from Orange County Dept of Ed. and Calisphere - collections compiled by the University of California.

Other additions are GLAD units found on school sites like Forest Grove and North Clackamas. Find their links on the right-hand side of our blog...

And there is MORE!

I also added the GLAD resource book from Los Angeles Unified School district. Thank you Main Street teachers! It is a handy little booklet of GLAD strategies and pictures of those strategies from different grade levels. Many teachers have commented about how useful this little booklet is.

And last, but not least...Marcia Brechtel's book -- Bringing It All Together...a handbook on GLAD strategies written by the creator of the model.

Enjoy!

More Reflections - Common Core and English Language Learners

One of the reasons my partner and I started this blog several years ago was to provide resources for teachers that we were training in EL strategies, especially since nothing was "out there" for our particular audience at the time. Since then, we developed our website (which is a continuing work in progress) which also lists resources for teachers. Teachers find our sites incredibly helpful, especially when we are doing follow up and/or coaching.

I was recently reminded of the importance of mentioning authors of resources and links by Larry Ferlazzo, an ESL teacher based in the Sacramento, CA area who posts constantly about what is working or not working in his ESL classroom. He has some of the best sites for ELs listed on his blog site and tweets resources 30-40 times a day, believe it or not! Well, I have yet to get there. :)

Here is the title of one of his "bests" lists - The Best Resources For Learning About Common Core Standards and English Language Learners. The link is: larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2011/08/03/the-best-resources-for-learning-about-common-core-standards-english-language-learners/

I have yet to peruse all of the articles listed on Larry's best list, but will pick out a couple of my favorites for my next posting. Since Common Core is on everyone in the teaching world's minds right now, I think it is an appropriate place to start when thinking about the new year that is fast approaching. Can't believe we are mid-way through the summer already!

I think another appropriate theme when thinking about the new teaching year and about Common Core is year-long planning--how to develop one and how to then develop units with strong common threads and connections.

So, thank you Larry Ferlazzo for your lists and fabulous resources and for inspiring me to keep on posting for the teachers and colleagues that I work with! Next post -- continuing with the Common Core and then on to year-long planning....

Reflections

One school year has ended and the next is (hopefully after a time of rest) soon to begin. Summer is a good time to reflect upon what worked in my classes and what did not. What will I keep? What will I change? What will I eliminate? What would I like to tweak or try?

Reflective practice... is the habitual and judicious use of communication, knowledge, technical skills, reasoning, emotions, values and reflection in daily practice for the benefit of the individuals and communities being served. (Epstein and Hundert, 2002)

 Introduced in 1987 by Donald Schon, the concept of reflective practice is a way for beginning teachers to match their own practices to those of successful practitioners and for experienced educators to reflect on the effectiveness of their lessons and to be aware of the need to change practices and/or direction as their student population changes. As the concept grew in popularity, many schools, colleges, and departments of education began designing teacher education and professional development programs based on this concept.  

Unfortunately, in our need to reduce everything to its most basic components so that we can do it faster and have more people doing it, ended up giving us what Boud and Walker (1998) refer to as a “checklist” or “reflection on demand” mentality, where the reflective processes have no link to conceptual frameworks, and teachers are required to reflect without an established context for their particular teaching/learning situation. Reflection then becomes just another piece of “fluff and stuff” that teachers must do in order to maintain their status.

And yet…. reflecting on teaching is frequently cited as a fundamental practice for personal and professional development (Biggs, 2003; Boud et al., 1985; Lyons, 2002), although few see it as more than a time-consuming, abstract concept with no real practical benefits.

Reflecting on my practice as a teacher is what allowed me to spend over 40 years in education without burning out.  Teaching is complex and, as practitioners, we are faced with hundreds of decisions during our lesson planning as well as during delivery of said lesson.  It is the perfect example of “ongoing assessment” as we are led from the pre-assessment (or what our students know), to interim assessments (how the lesson is going and what our students are deriving from it), to summative assessments (what have we accomplished and what do our students know and are able to do).

The ability to reflect on what we do, how we do it and, especially, why we do it and then to develop, adapt, and change our plans to fit our particular student population – a population that is becoming ever so diverse in its composition and its needs – is what takes us on the road from newbie to expert.

Why do we need to make time to reflect now more than ever? 

The major changes in education make it necessary for us to rethink our role as teachers, to focus on curricular integration, teaching for meaning, interactive dialogue, socialization, and collaboration within the context of the classroom.  The move from the teacher-directed classroom has been in the making for many years, and yet we are, on a daily basis, bombarded by models, programs, and books that take away our ability to interact with our teaching environment and our students, by providing us with canned and scripted lessons that are only superficially interactive or meaningful.

If excellence in teaching, and improved educational outcomes for all students is what we aspire to achieve, then we need to regularly make time to evaluate our approaches to teaching and learning.  This includes knowing WHO are our students are and what their needs are; building partnerships within our schools, communities and businesses; establishing flexible learning environments utilizing those partnerships; creating new contexts for learning and revamping the old ones; and exploring what our students need to learn and how best to expose them to that learning.

Critical reflection allows us to become expert teachers, relying on a large set of skills and strategies that we often weave into our teaching instinctively.  Reflection allows us to look back at our choices and actions to remind us that they are based on sound educational principles and the knowledge that we have of our students.

Another Game Site

We've added a new game site to our resources listed on the right-hand side of our blog. This site is a great source for creating board games with your students. Enjoy!

Games

Hi Everyone!

We have a new category of links posted on our blog on the right-hand side....ESL games. Take a look and let us know your favorites.

Chant Writing

In case some of you want to try your hand at writing chants, start with the niehs website.  On that website, there is a section on games and songs.  That is where you'll find the MIDI files for the music.  Here is the direct link to that part of the website:

http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/games/songs/index.htm

When writing a chant, start by pulling out the academic information from text or content-area. Make sure you have all the vocabulary words that need to be included.  Try NOT to write things down in complete sentences so that you have the flexibility of using whatever music is available.  

Then select the music by sampling the MIDI files on the NIEHS website.  The children's songs and popular songs are good places to start. (If you are teaching adult students, these are the songs that they will probably be exposed to from their children.  This adds a "culture" component to the activity.)

Finally, go to RhymeZone and get to writing.  Switch the words around to make the best rhymes, but songs don't always have to rhyme if they have rhythm. 

Hope this is helpful!

Flipped Classroom - Part 2 (Reflections)

1)   The flipped classroom was definitely a success.  My lectures were more focused and shorter.  Students were able to go through the material at their own pace. Students who were more familiar with the content or were already teaching could go through the lecture at a faster pace.  Students who were not native speakers of English could take their time and look up words they did not understand.  They could also check in their book and in the other resources for explanations of the concepts.

2)    Students found the forums time-consuming at first but in the end said that they were valuable as a tool for getting to know each other, applying the concepts that they had learned, exchanging ideas with their peers, and it also provided a valuable assessment tool for me.

3)    The classroom discussions and activities were the big winners. Having the students come prepared for discussions (and me not having to do a long lecture) allowed plenty of time for group activities which then afforded me the time to listen in, and pose questions as an informal assessment.

4)    I felt that my assessments were varied enough to allow each student to excel in the class regardless of their learning modality.  By the end of the course, I was able to assess my students’ ability to: a) comprehend the text, b) apply the principles to their student population, c) lead and participate in discussions, and d) participate in a group activity with an oral component.  The forums and journals also allowed me to assess writing expression and ability.

Feedback from my students and self-reflection gave me some ideas of what I would do differently the next time I teach my course.

1)    The most difficult thing for me to do was to let go of control. Feedback from my students said that the sessions where I felt the need to go over the lecture notes again were the least interesting. I must trust that my students will do what they need to do in order to come to class prepared.

2)    I definitely need to rework my syllabus so that students know exactly what they need to prepare before coming to class, what they need to be prepared to do in class, and what is expected of them after class.  The timeline for preparation, discussion and activities, and responding to the forums needs to be more explicit.  This is something that can also be addressed by changing the format of my school website.  Right now, it is mostly a list of resources followed by links for assignments.

3)    Although I like the discussions and activities as I have prepared them, I would like to continue to refine them so that they become a better assessment tool.  I would also like to look for alternate assignments so that students have a choice in tasks and projects.

4)    The final change is technical in nature.  I’d like to make my presentation more visually appealing by including short video clips, using the tools available through the Faculte Studio, and providing additional assistance via the Q & A capability of the website.  My school website also allows for self-paced quizzes to ensure that students have gotten the correct information.  I would not use them for grading, but they would allow students to gauge their level of comprehension of the topic and ask questions for clarification.

I am also looking forward to getting ideas from the book I purchased as well as from the many websites available on the topic.  After all this time, I’m still learning and still loving it! 

The Times They Are A-Changin' (Part 1 - Flipped Classroom Reflections)

(by Dr. Alva Lefevre - the "L" in L&M Educational Consulting)

I’ve been teaching for what seems to be a very long time.  I’ve studied the research, practiced the strategies, and gathered a lot of information about my students. Some things worked and, over time, became part of my repertoire and others fell flat and eventually disappeared.  I tried models; didn’t like them; and finally realized that I must redefine the way I teach with each new group of students. 

I am presently teaching a course titled “Theories of Second Language Acquisition” at the university level and my students often joke that the name alone is enough to put you to sleep.  Over the last several years, parts of my course have been moving online making it a “hybrid”, with some sessions taking place on campus and others being in an online format (asynchronous). 

Embracing technology was not hard. Learning to live with it was another matter.

It was already a challenge to get to know my students when the course met on campus, as it only met once a week for a three-hour session and the “lecture” took up much of it.  Every quarter, my students would fill out an evaluation and tell me that the “best” part of the course was when they could discuss the materials with their peers and the class activities.  As much as I longed to be the "guide on the side", I almost always ended up being the "sage on the stage".  This was a very scary notion as I recalled my graduate school days of desperately trying to stay awake through boring lectures after a long day working.

Because the material can be overwhelming and I wanted my students to be ready to apply their knowledge when they took the methodology course, I spent a good part of each session explaining the theories, showing how the concepts would apply to the classroom, and I tried to challenge my students to figure out how the application would change depending on their teaching environment and their particular student population.  That didn’t always leave much time for activities and discussion and I would find myself rushing through a lecture to make time for the activities only to find out that not all students had understood the material. With my class composition being half native English speakers and half speakers of other languages; I felt that the pace was too slow for some and too fast for the rest.  The activities and discussions were fun; but not always fruitful from my perspective.  The students enjoyed them but were not always closer to understanding the theories or how they influenced curriculum design.

When I started to hear about the “flipped classroom”, I thought it made a lot of sense for me.  My students were motivated; and, for the most part, already used to having technology facilitate their learning.  Although the concept was not totally new, it intrigued me and I felt I was ready do things differently and to use technology as a teaching and learning tool rather than just as a way to access information and materials.

Flipping my classroom would entail having the "lecture" done at home via teacher-created presentations and having the class time used for activities and discussions.  This would give the students time in class to work on key learning activities and would provide a means to increase interaction and personalized contact between teacher and students.

The idea of the flipped classroom also appealed to me because it was a blending of direct instruction with constructivist learning and it catered to the three distinct roles in constructivism: the active learner, the social learner, and the creative learner.  Flipping my classroom would allow all three to flourish.

Students would be able to listen to a short lecture presentation at home, at their own pace, and read the additional materials.  They would come to class prepared to discuss the topic and to participate in group activities. 

During the classroom discussions, the students take an active role. Instead of just listening to the lecture and taking notes, reading the textbook and answering questions; they discuss ideas, debate hypotheses, investigate and design instruction as they begin to formulate ideas about their potential student population.  The group activities also bring into play the social learner.  Knowledge and understanding are constructed through dialogue with others and through the application to real-life scenarios. Finally, as creative learners, students examine their potential population and make educated guesses as to how the theories would apply to them.  This engages them in a discovery process and yields deeper understanding as they learn to make connections between the theories and their “real” environment.  It’s one way of engaging learners in an active problem-solving exercise that connects the knowledge they are acquiring with a real world application.

Putting my plan into action meant that I needed to focus my lectures so that, in recorded form, they would not be longer than thirty minutes.  It also meant that all ancillary materials had to either expand my students’ knowledge of the topic or lead them to make connections with other concepts.  At all times, they needed to be brought back to their potential student population. 

Packaging and narrating the presentations was time-consuming but received a thumbs-up from my students.  The discussions and activities were successful and it seemed that, from the formative and summative assessments, my students had a deeper understanding of how theory and application connected with students and classroom. 

In the second part of this blog, I would like to look at what worked in more depth and analyzed what needs to change – the how and the why.  I have found that there are many resources on the internet about the flipped classroom and that they can be as individual as we are.  A good reference is :

 Flip Your Classroom: Reach Every Student in Every Class Every Day, by flipped classroom pioneers Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, is available through ASCD

Fun and Games (continued) - Student Engagement

With summer almost gone, it’s time to scour the ads for school supplies and to gear up for the new school year.  The beginning of school always brings up conflicting emotions for me.  First and foremost, the excitement and anticipation of meeting new students and trying new lessons, but also the anxiety of trying to meet so many new needs.

Continuing with the trend of Fun and Games and with the understanding that engagement comes when students feel a connection with what they’re learning, here are some ideas gathered from two sources that inspired me this summer:

1)    David Warlick’s Smartbrief identified “four qualities of gaming and social networking experiences that provoke active and deliberate investment from the learner, into what they’re learning.”  He cites:

a.     Responsiveness (“Choices work or don’t, but everything gets feedback”);

b.     Collaboration (Learners discuss and build off one other to participate and achieve); 

c.     Personal Meaningfulness (quantifiable value and rewards (unlocking new levels, getting likes or comments), and player and participant identities are valued);

d.     Guided Learning in a Safe Environment (Players and participants learn from what works and what doesn’t and adapt their strategy). 

Sounds familiar?  It should.  These are the building blocks of a successful classroom. The final question: “What would happen if students and teachers were free to play with learning?”  filled me with new energy and enthusiasm as I started to work on my Fall Syllabus.

The Art and Science of Teaching  by Robert Marzano identifies five common factors related to student engagement:

High Energy—Teachers can use physical activity, appropriate pacing, and communication of enthusiasm and intensity in working with students to promote engagement and motivation.

Missing Information—Teachers can capitalize on the innate human need for closure by asking students to discover and supply missing information.

The Self-System—Effective engagement of students also involves incorporating topics, ideas, and processes that students find inherently interesting and valuable to them.

Mild Pressure—When students experience mild pressure while engaging in such activities as questioning, games, and competitions, they tend to focus their attention on key elements of the learning process.

Mild Controversy and Competition—Teachers can structure and manage non-threatening forms of controversy and competition through such processes as debates, tournaments, and related forms of team-based activities.

(Source is ASCD Website)

Module 13 focuses on the use of games and other forms of non-threatening competition as catalysts for promoting student engagement and Modules 14 and 15 present strategies based on these five factors that teachers can use to engage students.

More Games and Activities

Here's another link to ESL games: http://www.manythings.org/e/abc.html. This is the alphabetical list on the "Many Things" website. The idioms and slang sections are a great reference for intermediate proficiency level students.

Games and Activities 2 - Review of Instant Poetry Forms

Hi Everyone!

I have been taking some time to play with the Instant Poetry Forms (especially since I am writing some poetry for some world languages units :) ). It is listed under poetry resources on the right-hand side of our blog. I know that we had some interest in this site before, but I thought it would be worthwhile to remind you all of how fun these are! There are a ton of poetry frames. Here's one from my daughter that she wrote about her new beta fish:

I am a beta fish blue as an ocean.
I swim through my log.
I eat freeze-dried worms.
I can play guitar on my fins.
I can stare at my best buddy, Liv.
I am a beta fish.

Try some of the forms out and post them here or on our Facebook page!

Also, I just visited the New Mexico Chant Bank to see if I could find some inspiration for my own writing. They have a TON of new poems posted since I last checked them out (which was several months ago at least) . I like that you can add your own chants/poetry to the bank, too. Please take a minute to visit their site and let us know what you think.

July Focus - Games and Activities

Hello everyone! Since summer is in full swing, we decided to make our focus for July -- games and activities.

Here are a couple of links for you. The first one has thematic crossword puzzles that you might enjoy: http://www.englishclub.com/esl-games/ 

 The second one fun matching games:
http://www.vocabulary.co.il/ 


Have fun and let us know which ones you like best!!

Pat Wolfe - Mind Matters (Resource)

Can't believe it is the end of June already! Time flies...

We have already posted Pat Wolfe's "Mind Matters" site on the right-hand side of our blog, but here is a page within her site that posts brain research related articles:

http://patwolfe.com/articles-about-the-brain/

Happy reading!!

Creative Problem-Solving - A Whole Brain Activity

In this article, Ben Johnson talks about the Common Core and how the new standards address problem-solving. How is this related to brain research as it applies to our students? Creatively solving problems is a whole brain activity. And just what does problem-solving entail? According to Johnson, "a problem must be compelling enough to require a solution. The solution to a problem must be believable, plausible and doable." And furthermore, "a solution to a problem must be so integrated (like the brain) that the parts and pieces cannot be separated." He ends with a question: How do you get students to solve problems in your classroom? And I would add, what are some of the most compelling problems that your students have solved and what were the resolutions?

Here is his article for further reading:

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/common-core-standards-problem-solving-ben-johnson#.T4NoWlEKyTw.email

Brain Research and the Bilingual Brain

Dr. Judy Willis is an authority on brain research and how it relates to learning. Here is some of what she says about the "bilingual brain," and some of the implications of the research.

A selective attentive focus and the ability to block out distraction are seminal executive functions that are minimally developed in youngsters. These functions gradually become stronger throughout the years of prefrontal cortex maturation, which last into the twenties. It is with regard to these executive functions that research about the "bilingual brain" is particularly exciting.

The research refers to children raised with a language at home that differs from the dominant language outside the home, such as in school. Compared to monolinguals, the bilingual children develop greater attention focus, distraction resistance, decision-making judgment and responsiveness to feedback. The correlated fMRI scans of these children reveal more activity in the prefrontal cortex networks that control these executive functions.

Exercising Their Thinking Brains Early and Often

The leading explanation for this correlation is the need of bilinguals to frequently "select" which language is needed, what words fit the linguistic criteria and how to convey their intended meaning each time they communicate. To do this, the brain must actively evaluate between the competing language systems and deliberately focus attention on the chosen language.

The research interpretation of the fMRI and cognitive tests is that the ongoing evaluation and selection process in bilingual children exercises brain circuits which regulate attention control and block distraction. This neural network activation of the executive functions is one suggested explanation for the higher performance in cognitive tests by children who have had five to ten years of bilingual exposure (Bialystok, 2009; Kaushanskaya & Marian, 2007). Further studies are investigating whether similar benefits are found in children who have exposure to a second language later in life.

Implications for Brighter Starts

The incoming research supports encouraging parents to retain use of their native language in the home. The implications also raise considerations of what other early exposures and in-school experiences can be designed to promote these executive function activations in all children. What other planned learning activities can be so engaging as to promote the activation and strengthening of young children's developing networks of attentive focus? Should second language instruction begin earlier in elementary school?

I'll keep you posted as further research becomes available, and I look forward to your contributions to this dialogue.

---

Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/neuroscience-bilingual-brain-judy-willis-md

Practical Ways Brain-based Research Applies to ESL

Here's Judy Lombardi's article on Brain-based research and how it applies to ESL learners. 


Introduction

These are exciting times for ESL teachers. We are in the midst of a revolution in new teaching and learning strategies, i.e.,

“…accelerated learning; action research; applied learning; arts in education; character education; cognitive coaching; cooperative learning; democratic classrooms; emotional intelligence; environmental education; environments for learning; graphic tools; instrumental enrichment; keeping fit for learning; learning styles; literacy; multicultural education; multiple intelligences; service learning; teaching for understanding; technology in education; thinking skills”(http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/front_strategies.html, 2002

ESL faculty are infusing nontraditional types of instructional strategies, from portfolios to case studies to gallery walks, into their teaching.

Brain-based and second language acquisition research has taught us, thankfully, that the old school method--assign a chapter, take a test, and discuss the test—will not result in quality and depth of thought. Our ESL students are not tape recorders, waiting eagerly to receive our golden nuggets of wisdom. Instead, they are multi-taskers who can play video games, talk on cell phones, and listen to music, all without missing a beat.

ESL teachers who want to update, refresh, and rejuvenate their teaching should apply mind/brain learning principles, as described by Caine and Caine (1994). These principles can become the basis of second language teaching and learning at the highest quality levels:

Principle 1. The Brain Is a Complex Adaptive System.

The brain can function on many levels and in many ways simultaneously. A complex and multifaceted task, learning should be approached in a variety of ways. For an exciting, new way to look at learning styles and strategies for second language learners, visit Andrew Cohen’s work at the University of Minnesota (http://www.carla.umn.edu/about/ profiles/CohenPapers/LearningStylesSurvey.pdf, 2003). In Levine’s pivotal work, A Mind at a Time (2003), he recommends transforming a verbal into a visual task, and a visual task into a kinesthetic one. Challenging the brain, not numbing it with overload, keeps the mind happily humming and is essential to the ESL classroom. Activity shifting and teaching around the wheel of learning styles stimulate thought and action in second language learner classrooms.

Principle 2. The Brain is a Social Brain.

John Donne got it right in 1684: no man is an island. The brain likes and responds well to social engagement and oral sharing. Witness the best-studied of all educational strategies, cooperative learning. Structuring the task, assigning roles and teams, sharing of materials, and requiring interdependability of team members are all essential to quality cooperative learning in the ESL classroom, breathing life into subjects and classes (Johnson, Johnson, and Holubec,1994; Kagan, 1997). Cooperative learning has an essential role in ESL instruction, especially in regard to listening and speaking, and in providing support mechanisms for anxious learners.

Principle 3. The Search for Meaning Is Innate.                                              

The brain not only wants to make sense of what it learns, but also wants to know that learning has purpose and value. Adler believes that people learn things, when they need to know them (1998). The search for meaning extends from deep-seated philosophical questions of the Eriksonian crisis (Who am I? What do I want? Where am I going?) to the rationale students demand for making sense of assignments. Simply put, the brain likes explanations. When ESL teachers share with students the why of what they are doing, not just the what and the how, the brain appreciates it and more deeply values the learning.

Principle 4. The Search for Meaning Occurs Through Patterning.             

When the brain encounters a new idea, it searches for prior knowledge and experiences similar to the new concept.  Effective ESL teachers use frontloading, by integrating graphic organizers, using prediction strategies, introducing vocabulary, conducting pair-shares, and presenting video clips, to prepare the brain for the new knowledge to come. Helping second language learners ground new ideas in current knowledge makes learning meaningful, as they climb the ladder of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.

Principle 5. Emotions Are Critical to Patterning.                                           

The term “emotional intelligence” was coined by psychologists John Mayer and Peter Salovey in 1990. The principle of EQ, or emotional quotient, is described in Daniel Goleman’s pivotal work, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (1997). The premise of emotional intelligence is that optimists with effective people skills are more successful than individuals  with  only  high  IQs  or  book  smarts  but  poor  interpersonal  skills.  Emotional intelligence also champions the concept of impulse control, the ability to delay gratification for a greater reward. In the ESL classroom, a warm, supportive, encouraging educational climate is conducive to successful learning outcomes, i.e., using a variety of teaching strategies and creating lessons that are engaging and exciting to second language learners.

Principle  6. Every Brain Simultaneously  Perceives and Creates Parts and Wholes.

Left-right brain research is only the beginning of understanding the way the brain divides learning  tasks  between  verbal  and  visual,  analytical  and  global,  logical  and  creative. Successful ESL instructors engage learners in tasks that require both sides of the brain to engage, e.g., using art to teach a math lesson or music to teach physics. In ESL classrooms, crossdisciplinary approaches embrace the multifaceted aspects of the brain and recognize the interaction of both hemispheres in meaningful learning.

Principle 7. Learning Involves Both Focused Attention and Peripheral Perception.

The brain absorbs direct information, but also pays attention to what Ruggiero calls  fringe thoughts (2000). Think of a bull’s eye on a target: the brain focuses on the central target but also notices the rings around the bull’s eye. Frequently, it is the off-handed remark, the subtext of a speech, and the nuances of a lesson that ESL learners respond to, as the mind perceives subtleties.  The  ESL  instructor’s  belief  systems  and  attitudes  toward  subjects  also  come through, no matter how well the instructor thinks they are hidden from students.

Principle  8.    Learning    Always    Involves    Both    Conscious  and Unconscious Processes.

In this iceberg principle of learning, much of what is learned lies beneath the surface. At the surface level of awareness, ESL learners discuss and take notes. Deeply ingrained learning comes later, when students digest what they have learned, connect it to life experience, or apply the knowledge to life events. To bring invisible, unconscious thought alive in the classroom, ESL instructors use reflection and metacognition, through questioning and application of learning. How does this knowledge apply? relate? work in reality?

Principle 9. We Have at Least Two Ways of Organizing Memory.

Theories on long-term and short-term memory have been around since the 1960s. Caine and Caine (1994) refer to the neuropsychology of memory systems described by O’Keefe and Nadel (1978) as taxon/locale and spatial/autobiographical. Taxon/locale memory, motivated by rewards and punishments, recalls seemingly unrelated information. Spatial/autobiographical memory recalls experiences instantly, such as the shirt you wore yesterday (Caine & Caine,1994). These two types of memory help ESL learners record completely all their experiences, as important and unimportant details get categorized and stored differently. ESL instructors can attend to both types of memory by organizing activities into meaningful parts, placing ideas in context, and infusing a range of learning styles and multiple intelligences into classroom practice.

Principle 10. Learning is Developmental.

While the brain is hard-wired by genetics and certain environmental aspects, the good news is that Scheibel and Diamond’s dendritic fireworks theory of the 1980s links brain enhancement to environmental enrichment. Learning something new actually helps the brain to grow by building  new,  neural  pathways  and  connections.  ESL  instructors  take  advantage  of  this research by applying a myriad of new learning strategies to their second language learner classrooms, including all the modalities of learning.

Principle 11. Complex Learning Is Enhanced by Challenge and Inhibited by Threat.                                                                                                            

At what level should we teach our ESL students? If we teach beneath them, they are insulted and understimulated. If we teach at their level, we teach them in their comfort zone, where they do not learn much. Teaching at a slightly elevated level, challenging but not impossible, encourages our students to strive. Today’s learning climate in the ESL classroom is more effective as a partnership, not a them vs. us situation of intimidation and gamesmanship.

Principle 12. Every Brain Is Uniquely Organized.

Levine’s The Myth of Laziness (2002) chronicles the frustration and attitudinal problems that stem from unaddressed dysfunction in learners. Gardner’s multiple intelligences theory (1993), which challenges traditional notions of a single, fixed IQ, emphasizes not how smart the learner is, but how the learner is smart. Given the right kind of assistance in organizing their learning through work plans, alternative approaches, and assignment previews, ESL students can improve their skills and attitudes.

Summary                                                                                                             

Today's ESL students have little patience with long-winded lecturing and a lack of dialogue in the classroom. ESL students must be invited into the excitement of learning, through strategies that honor the amazing power of the brain and the unbridled energy of the human spirit.

             http://iteslj.org/Articles/Lombardi-BrainResearch.html 
            (References are listed in the original article.)