Improving Learning for ELLs through Leadership

 

 

Get All Your Employees to Ask Questions: 5 Steps

 BY WILL YAKOWICZ  @WILLYAKOWICZ

INSEAD innovation professor Hal Gregersen describes how you can systemize question asking to encourage creativity and solve problems.

Is your company starting to stagnate? You may not be asking enough questions.

According to Hal Gregersen, a leadership and innovation professor at INSEAD and co-author of the book "The Innovator's DNA," asking questions is a practical tool to help you come up with new ideas, solve problems, and gain different perspectives.

To that end, Gregersen developed a questioning method, which he calls "Catalytic Questioning." In a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, he describes how you can use Catalytic Questioning to nurture creative brainstorming, unearth new directions for your team or business, engage your employees, and determine innovative solutions. 

Here's how to implement this strategy:

1. Be Question-Centric

The method starts with gathering your team around a white board or flip chart, and encouraging everyone to ask questions about a particular problem in a rapid-fire style. Leave all assumptions at the door. The point is to bring "fresh eyes through fresh questions."

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2. Engage Head and Heart

Pick a problem that your team cares about and wants to solve. Make sure the "opportunity," or problem (if you're not an optimist) truly does not already have a solution. 

3. Question Everything

Use this time to only ask questions. Gregerson calls this "pure question talk." Have one team member write down verbatim each question that's asked. No one should retort with answers. Just keep the questions coming. Your goal should be to collect 50 to 75 questions, and to make each one better than the last. Don't give up. Push through when your mind goes blank and ask even more provocative questions. You'll need patience and persistence to exhaust your group's questioning "capacity." The exercise should take 10 minutes to 20 minutes.

4. Find the Catalyst

Step back and pinpoint the most "catalytic" questions. These are the questions that the group cannot answer--the ones that will "disrupt the status quo" if you do answer them. You should then cut your list down to just three or four.

5. Come Up With Answers

Now that you have a focused question for a particular problem, it's time to solve it. This step will be different for each company, depending on how you like to gather information. If you like to observe, go out in the field and "systematically observe" to get answers. Or you can get fresh ideas by networking; talk with diverse groups who don't think and act like you to get new perspectives. Then, start working on a few prototypes for "fast, cheap, virtual experiments," and get feedback on which one might be best. 

After these steps, regroup with the answers you've come up with and brainstorm. Gregersen says you should pull together "all your new input" to create a better solution. If needed, repeat.

 

 

WCKE for ELLs

All ELL students participate in the WKCE math (translation in Hmong/Spanish available), and some may qualify for a one year exemption on the language arts assessment, see below.

"Regulations describing a one-time English/Language Arts exemption for ELLs new in the US less than one calendar year can be found at (See 34 CFR § 200.6 (b) (4)). Specifically, any students who have arrived within the last 12 calendar months may be permitted to abstain one time from the English/Language Arts portions Smarter Balanced Assessment or the reading portion only of the ACT suites including the ACT plus writing and Aspire"

Please read this list of accommodations for English Learners if you are responsible for proctoring a WKCE assessment for a student.

LIst of ELL accommodations:

http://oea.dpi.wi.gov/files/oea/Accomell.pdf

ESL License Opportunity-ACT FAST!

CTELL Program Description

In the past ten years, the percentage of English Language Learners (ELLs) has doubled in the state of Wisconsin. Districts of every size and geography throughout the state have witnessed first-hand the unique challenges of this increasing and unique population. While urban and larger school districts in WI may have larger populations of ELLs in their individual schools, nearly half (46%) of all ELL students in the state are spread across 302 small and rural districts. As the population of ELLs continues to grow in our state, professional development opportunities and academic coursework about the unique challenges of this population take on an importance for almost every educator, no matter the size or placement of their school.

Until now, most professional development opportunities or academic courses on this critical subject have been targeted exclusively toward teachers in elementary grades or have grouped all grade levels together, K-12. That’s why Edgewood College’s CTELL Program is so unique.

Connecting Teachers to English Language Learners (CTELL) is designed to group educators in cohorts that teach similar grades and content areas, demonstrating how you can better serve this student population within the context of a particular subject area and grade level.

Funded through a 1.5 million dollar grant from the Federal Office of English Language Acquisition, public school teachers accepted into the CTELL program are eligible for six graduate credits supported by full-tuition scholarships. From around our state, more than 270 educators from 54 districts have benefited from this unique program. CTELL is open to any educator in the state of Wisconsin through regional partnerships with CESAs 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 11.

Applications for the 2015 cohort will be accepted beginning May 1 and until November 1, 2014. All selected scholars will be notified by December 1, 2014.

Questions about any portion of the CTELL program, please contact John Kibler, OELA Grant Project Coordinator, at jkibler@edgewood.edu or 608-663-2287.

Too old to learn a language?

Why “younger” is not always “better” in foreign language learning

Posted on 8 October, 2014 by Bryony

This post was contributed by Professor Jean-Marc Dewaele of Birkbeck’s Department of Applied Linguistics and Communications.

Politicians can be forgiven for not having much time to read the fine print when asking advisers to translate research findings into workable policies. Or does it work the other way round? Do politicians decide on policies first and subsequently ask advisers for appropriate research findings to back up the policy?  This seems the case when considering the wide consensus across the world about the benefits of early introduction of foreign languages (FLs) in pupils’ school curriculum. The expression “younger is better” in education sounds perfectly plausible, is simple and convincing, and must be a vote winner.

In the UK, FLs used to be introduced in secondary education. Estelle Morris, then Secretary of State for Education, changed this policy in 2002, scrapping compulsory modern FLs for 14- to 16-year-olds, and introducing them in primary schools. She claimed in 2006 that: “Starting at a much younger age is the best way of making sure we get more pupils taking exams and, more importantly, more of them enjoying and feeling confident about speaking a language other than their own”.

In other countries, FL teaching has even been introduced in nursery schools.  There seems to be a universal consensus among politicians that an early start in FLs will lead to a smoother, quasi-effortless learning process leading to high levels of proficiency in the FLs. Is this a myth?!

Counter-intuitively, research suggests that adolescents and adults progress more quickly than children when learning FLs in a school context (so-called “instructed FL learning”). Many researchers have serious doubts about age of onset being the most important variable in successful FL learning. Indeed, research shows quite clearly that starting age is only one of many independent variables in very complex question.

A crucial distinction exists between so-called naturalisticand instructed FL learning.  Research on naturalistic learners, typically immigrants, shows that younger children are indeed more likely to become undistinguishable from native speakers of the FL compared to their parents and older siblings. However, the picture is not so clear in research on instructed FL learning, a crucial distinction that is commonly overlooked.

A large-scale study in Barcelona has shown that no differences existed among 30 year-olds who had started learning English at school early (age 8) and those who started later (age 11). However, the amount of input in the FL played an important role: those who had studied English for longer, had used the language more frequently in and out of school outperformed those who had had less input.

Another study found no advantages of an early start among Swiss learners of English even after a five years of instruction. The writing skills of late starters caught up with those of the early starters within six months.  One possible explanation is that older learners have greater metalinguistic, metacognitive and strategic skills.

This does not mean that there are no age effects at all in learning and later use of the FLs.  Indeed, younger children seem to be more motivated in learning FLs. In my own research on language choice and self-perceived proficiency among more than 1500 adult bi- and multilinguals, I found that early starters in a FL felt more proficient in speaking,comprehending, reading and writing their FLs. They were also more likely to choose the FL for the expression of anger and feelings, for inner speech and mental calculation.  Interestingly, the effect of mode of instruction was even stronger than age of onset: participants who had acquired the FL naturalistically or in mixed mode (formal instruction combined with authentic use) outperformed participants who had learned the FL through classroom instruction only.

In their excellent overview of the literature on age and the teaching of FLs, Lambelet and Berthele (2014) point out that more research is needed on improving age-appropriate teaching techniques in order to boost motivation levels and metalinguistic awareness of FL learners of all ages. Moreover, extra thought needs to be given to the primary school teachers who are suddenly expected to teach a FL and who may lack in confidence and competence. In other words, those arguing for an early introduction of FLs at school need to take the nuanced research findings into account and avoid promising miracles.

At what age did you start learning a foreign language? How do you think this affected your fluency and confidence in the language? Please leave your comments below.

New English Learner? This is a REAL Psychological Phenomena

The Stages of Culture Shock

'Culture shock' is used to describe the emotional rollercoaster that someone experiences when living in a new country. Anyone that has worked and lived in a foreign country will experience culture shock of some sort.

Culture shock affects anyone from business personnel and their families, to EFL teachers to sports stars. Recognising culture shock is an important way of being able to deal with it. Dealing with it helps minimise the risk of becoming disillusioned with a new country and the possibility of deciding that a quick return 'home' is the only solution.

Experts agree that culture shock has stages and all agree that once people get beyond the initial and most difficult stages, life in a new country becomes a lot better.

Outlined below is an example of the stages people go through with culture shock:

Stage 1 - Excitement

The individual experiences a holiday or 'honeymoon' period with their new surroundings.

They:
. Feel very positive about the culture 
. Are overwhelmed with impressions
. Find the new culture exotic and are fascinated (joins activities, gets involved with hope and openness)
. Are passive, meaning they have little experience of the culture

Stage 2 - Withdrawal

The individual now has some more face to face experience of the culture and starts to find things different, strange and frustrating.

They:
. Find the behaviour of the people unusual and unpredictable
. Begin to dislike the culture and react negatively to the behaviour 
. Feel anxious
. Start to withdraw (attendance, truancy become coping mechanisms)
. Begin to criticize, mock or show animosity to the people 

Stage 3 - Adjustment

The individual now has a routine, feels more settled and is more confident in dealing with the new culture.

They:
. Understand and accept the behaviour of the people
. Feel less isolated 
. Regains their sense of humour
Attendance, engagement and other prosocial behaviors improve

Stage 4 - Enthusiasm

The individual now feels 'at home'.

They:
. Enjoy being in the culture
. Functions well in the culture
. Prefer certain cultural traits of the new culture rather than their own 
. Adopt certain behaviours from the new culture