Interview with an ELL (Part 2)

Good morning everyone. Welcome back from the commercial break on Thinking in the Challenge Zone. With us today is Adam, an ESL student from a local 5th grade class. Let’s get back to business…

Me: Moving along, Adam…the next question has to do with taking on new roles and relating your school learning to real-world contexts. Can you tell me how you presented the information you learned in social studies in the format of a TV show? What did you learn from that?

A: We acted like adults (took on adult-like roles) and made a weather report and some of us interviewed each other about environmental issues. We pretended to be “experts” about weather.

Me: So, basically what you did was transform what you have learned of the disciplinary “content” into a TV show. In order to do this you had to manipulate the information and ideas in order to synthesize, explain and interpret the information to design a TV show context. Wow! That’s really impressive!

A: Thanks!

Me: Gibbons also talks about making links between concrete knowledge and abstract theoretical knowledge. (Intellectual practice 3). Intellectual practice 4 is engaging in substantive conversations, which we’ve already seen you demonstrate, and Intellectual practice 5 if making connections between the spoken and written language of the subject and other discipline-related ways of making meaning. Intellectual practice 6 is students taking a critical stance toward knowledge and information. Adam, I think you do practice this critical stance in your classroom, right?

A: Yes, when we read a story in our textbook, say like about the first Thanksgiving, we know that that’s only giving one account of the first Thanksgiving. It’s that of the pilgrims. But, when we did research about that topic, we learned that the Native Americans had a story to tell also, and it didn’t make the textbooks.

Me: I’m sure we would find that to be the case often in the textbooks.

A: (nod)

Me: Intellectual practice 7 is where you use metalanguage in the context of learning about other things. This is where you talk about and reflect upon language itself. Gibbons ties all these Intellectual practices together with the idea of “apprenticeship”. This is how we learn most naturally. Do you know anything about this?

A: Yes, it’s when my teacher helps us learn to think and reason and solve problems. She calls this, “making thinking visible and explicit”. This is what she calls a cognitive apprenticeship. She always tells us to “mirror” an expert or adult, which helps us to begin to think and act like they do. Also, she tries to make us make our thinking “visible”. This is where she deliberatively brings thinking to the surface, whether it’s in reading, writing or problem solving.

Me: Quite interesting, Adam. What about modeling? Does your teacher ever model things for you?

A: Yes. Quite a bit. She always models a task before she asks us to do it.

Me: That’s another great teaching strategy. 

Me: Well, folks, that's all that we have time for today. Be sure to tune in for the next episode of Thinking in the Challenge Zone!