Teaching Academic Language to Multilingual Learners at the Sentence and Discourse Levels

Academic Language Practice in the Kindergarten Classroom

• Case Study: Ms. Zavala-Aguilera at Oakwood Elementary

  • Oakwood Elementary is a school located in an urban school district where $38\%$ of students qualify for English language development (ELD) services.
  • The vast majority of these students come from Spanish-speaking homes.
  • Academic language practice is systematically integrated into the daily calendar routine to ensure students practice language throughout the school day.

• Calendar Routine Components

  • Bilingual Integration: Literacy and cultural pride are fostered by singing the days of the week and months of the year in both English and Spanish.
  • Literacy Practice: Students identify the number of syllables in the name of the current month.
  • Sentence Foundations: Daily practice of full sentences using time-based structures: "Yesterday was…", "Today is…", and "Tomorrow will be…".
  • Mathematical Tracking: Students track the number of days in school (out of a $180$-day school year) using numbers, tally marks, and ten-frames.

• Mathematical Language and Physical Gestures

  • Tally Marks: To visualize groups of five, students use a specific chant and physical gesture: "When we tally we go $1, 2, 3, 4$, diagonal."
  • Ten-Frames:
    • Students explain that it is called a ten-frame because "it has ten spaces."
    • Cognitive strategy: When the frame is full, they count by $10\text{s}$; when it is not full, they "count on."
    • Sentence frames: Students use the frame "_ and _ make $10$" and then convert this verbal statement into an equation such as $x + y = 10$.
  • Graphing: The final step involves the weather graph, where a "calendar helper" colors in blocks to represent weather patterns, such as identifying the season as spring and the weather as cold.

Defining the Levels of Academic Language

• Beyond Vocabulary

  • Instruction must move beyond the word/phrase level to include sentence and discourse levels to support comprehension of complex content.
  • The goal is not exhaustive study of grammatical terms, but understanding function, meaning, and organization to deconstruct texts, engage in discourse, and produce cohesive writing.

• The Sentence Level

  • Definition: The grammar and syntax needed to access complex concepts and engage with peers and teachers.
  • WIDA ELD Standards Framework (2020a): Describes this level as the "grammatical complexity of language."
  • Key Features:
    • Simple, compound, and complex sentences.
    • Coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.
    • Dependent and independent clauses.

• The Discourse Level

  • Definition: The organization, structure, and purpose of text or talk as a whole.
  • Zwiers (2008): Defines it as the "message level" of communication, including voice, register (formality level), clarity, coherence, purpose, functions, and audience.
  • WIDA (2020a) Characteristics:
    • Organization: How ideas are ordered to support the text's purpose.
    • Cohesion: How language connects ideas within and across sentences.
    • Density: How loosely or tightly language is packed throughout a text.
  • Genre Families: Categories of texts sharing specific characteristics (e.g., persuasive texts vs. informative texts).

Grammatical Features of the Sentence Level: Definitions and Examples

• Clauses

  • Clause: A group of words containing a subject and a predicate (the part containing the verb). Not every clause is a standalone sentence.
  • Independent Clause: A clause that can stand independently as a complete sentence (e.g., "I see a house.").
  • Dependent (Subordinate) Clause: A clause that cannot stand independently (e.g., "Before I go to school").

• Sentence Types

  • Simple Sentence: Consists of at least one subject and one predicate and can stand alone (e.g., "She bought a car.").
  • Compound Sentence: Consists of two or more independent clauses of equal grammatical importance joined together (e.g., "I went to the park, but my sister stayed home.").
  • Complex Sentence: Consists of a main independent clause and one or more dependent clauses; clauses can be embedded (e.g., "I didn't go to the game because it was raining.").

• Conjunctions

  • Coordinating Conjunctions: Words joining grammatically equal elements (e.g., "and", "but", "or"). Example: "Jorge lives in Virginia, but Rebecca lives in Oregon."
  • Subordinating Conjunctions: Words that join a dependent clause to a main independent clause (e.g., "because", "although", "while", "whenever", "before"). Example: "Although we were hungry, we didn't stop to eat."

Analytical Application: Science and Math Texts

• Deconstructing Science Sentences

  • Sentence 1: "The water table can rise or fall depending on the amount of water in the aquifer."
    • Type: Complex.
    • Challenge: The phrase "depending on" introduces a relationship between clauses that may be unfamiliar to MLs.
  • Sentence 2: "Groundwater is either stored or it flows underground."
    • Type: Compound.
    • Challenge: Requires understanding the "either/or" structure and pronoun reference (the word "it").
  • Sentence 3: "Water from precipitation may seep below the surface and become groundwater."
    • Type: Simple.
    • Structure: Includes a compound predicate ("may seep" and "become").
  • Sentence 4: "The storage space in an aquifer is measured by porosity, the percentage of the rock that is composed of pore space."
    • Type: Complex.
    • Feature: Contains an embedded definition without a conjunction.

• Analyzing Math Problems (Addison's Scooter Problem)

  • Example Problem: "Addison wants to ride her scooter more than $100$ miles this month. She has already ridden her scooter $12$ miles. Which inequality could be used to determine the mean number of miles, $m$, she would need to ride her scooter each day for $20$ more days to achieve her goal?"
  • Correct Solution: $20m + 12 > 100$
  • Language Demands: MLs must decode complex phrasing like "more than", "already ridden", "mean number of miles", and "achieve her goal" to translate the word problem into a symbolic inequality.

Tools for Teaching Sentence-Level Academic Language

• Unpacking "Juicy Sentences"

  • Originating from Wong Fillmore and Fillmore (2012).
  • Process:
    1. Select a complex sentence from a grade-level text.
    2. Display the sentence and break it into chunks.
    3. Students "unpack" meaning by summarizing chunks in their own words, acting them out, or sketching them.
    4. Students summarize the whole sentence and then create new sentences using the same language structures.
  • Example from Ms. Hoover's 1st Grade Class:
    • Sentence: "They sniff, search, for foods that… REEK!"
    • Chunks: "They sniff" was summarized as "they smell things"; "search" became "look for"; students identified "REEK!" as "smelly", "gross", and "asqueroso".

• Structured Sentence Books (Dr. Katie Toppel)

  • Sentence stems and frames are planned to foster complex language, such as cause-and-effect or compound structures.
  • Open-ended prompts allow students to bring their own perspectives and background knowledge rather than just filling in a single vocabulary word.
  • Example stems used for a unit on bats:
    • "I heard a squeak, so I used echo location to catch food."
    • "When the bat hears the echo, they find food."

• Picture Scene Descriptions

  • A strategy using images to elicit oral language.
  • Levels of scaffolding:
    • New to English: Point to specific nouns.
    • Emerging: Provide simple noun + verb sentences.
    • Advanced: Subject + verb + adjective + detail (prepositional phrases) or specific compound/cause-and-effect structures.
  • Example: Students looking at a picture of a park used "if… then" stems: "If the dog does not have a leash, then the dog will go everywhere."

Tools for Teaching Discourse-Level Academic Language

• Analyzing Mentor Texts

  • Students deconstruct authentic or teacher-created texts to see how a specific genre is modeled.
  • Analysis questions focus on organization, connectors, sentence types, verb choice, descriptive language, and punctuation.

• Analyzing Sequencing in Texts

  • A sentence strip sorting activity where students determine the order of a text using clues like pronouns or language references (e.g., text about the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871).
  • Focuses on cohesion devices rather than just simple signal words like "first" or "next."

• Visual Scaffolds and the "Writing Recipe"

  • Color-Coding (Matt Clements): A three-color system for claims, evidence, and reasons.
    • Claim (Shortest): "I believe…", "In my opinion…"
    • Evidence (Medium): "According to the text…", "For example…"
    • Reason (Longest): "This is important because…"
  • The Writing Recipe (Dorina Sackman): Using large index cards to create a manipulative.
    • Introduction and conclusion cards are the same color to show they frame the arguments.
    • Body paragraph cards are each outlined in different colors to represent distinct supporting points.

Collaboration and Professional Awareness

• Checklist for Increasing Academic-Language Awareness

  • Educators should collaborate across departments (ELD, content, specialists) to analyze texts for:
    • Word/Phrase Level: Everyday vs. technical language and word-learning strategies (cognates, affixes).
    • Sentence Level: Challenging grammar, verb tenses, and complex sentences.
    • Discourse Level: Text structure, cohesive devices, and density.
    • Sociocultural Context: Assumptions about background knowledge or home culture impact.

• Case Study: Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11

  • Teachers Mr. Marhamati and Ms. Peake analyzed Brian Floca's text.
  • Word Level: Focused on "practiced", "trained", "weighs", "tower", "launch", "mission", and "click."
  • Sentence Level: Addressed present perfect tense ("have studied") and complex sentences involving "If… then" logic.
  • Discourse Level: Recognized it as narrative nonfiction with stanzas like a poem, using the word "click" to signify sequencing.

• Collaborative Planning Steps

  1. Content teacher identifies standards and objectives.
  2. ELD teacher identifies supporting ELD standards.
  3. Both teachers analyze text and language expectations.
  4. Both teachers design mini-lessons for challenging language.
  5. ELD teacher integrates scaffolds for proficiency levels.
  6. Both teachers teach the lesson.
  7. Both reflect on effectiveness.
  8. Both revise based on reflection.

Considerations for Newcomers and SLIFE

• Relevance: Connect academic language to career goals and social mobility.
• Register Awareness: Discuss how language changes across contexts and audiences.
• Fortify a Conversation (Zwiers & Soto): An activity where students take an informal dialogue and refine it into an academic discussion using evidence.
• Bridging Social to Academic (Mx. Martin): A scenario where students first use sequencing language ("first", "next", "finally") to describe morning routines before applying that same language to explain math problem-solving steps in recordings.

Equity, Advocacy, and Leadership

• Access to Grade-Level Content: Restricting MLs to simplified texts denies them the complexity needed for success beyond Grade $12$. Educators must use grade-level texts with high levels of scaffolding.
• Asset-Based Perspective: Avoid the "deficit perspective" that focuses only on what MLs lack. Leverage what they do bring, such as rich oral traditions even if they are not literate in their home language.
• Supplementing Material: Supplying texts at MLs' reading levels to preview or reinforce content while keeping grade-level exposure as the primary objective.