Deeper Learning for English Language Learners Transcript

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Card:
Tch
Teaching Channel
In Partnership With
The William and Flora
Hewlett
Foundation

Card:
Deeper Learning
Elevating Student Thinking and Student Voice

Card:
• Deeper Learning Competencies
• Master core academic content
• Think critically and solve complex problems
• Work collaboratively
• Communicate effectively
• Learn how to learn
• Develop academic mindsets

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Claire Sylvan: All of our kids are recently arrived immigrants. We provide a rigorous and safe environment for them to flourish.
Student: If you don’t speak English well you don’t have to think about it. Like you can use different ideas from different people.
Claire Sylvan: They’re working in small groups because they need to be using English actively.
Haola “Tutu”: Did you understand what I’m trying to say?
Student: Yeah, I understand.
Haola “Tutu”: Okay.

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Fred Wambolt: They’re able to spend quality time delving deeply into subjects that warrant more than learning some cursory facts.
Jordan Wolf: You need a good verb that describes going into a cell taking the DN…
Student: Extract.
Jordan Wolf: Extract. With English language learners you need repetition of topics and concepts and language and vocabulary.
Faiza: We thought it was a time of reform where there’s a lot of people trying to reach out for their American dreams, but then it seems to be impossible.

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Fred Wambolt: Over time, the language barriers start to get smaller and smaller. The twelve graders, they’re mixed hanging out speaking English.

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Card:
Deeper Learning for English Language Learners
Featured organization:
Internationals Networks

Lower Third:
Flushing International High School
Flushing, New York
Rosmery Milczewski: Hi, good morning, Class F.
Students: Good morning, Miss.
Lower Third:
Claire Sylvan
Internationals Network for Public Schools
Executive Director

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Claire Sylvan: All of our kids in the vast majority of our schools are recently arrived immigrants. We expect diversity and we honor it and we are thrilled that our students come to us from 119 countries, speak 90 languages. Some of them come in without a word of English but are fully fluent and literate in their home languages.

Lower Third:
9th/10th Grade Integrated Algebra
Rosmery Milczewski: But can you translate it for me, please.
Lower Third:
Summarize what you did today and explain what you did answers the essential question.

Student: Summarize what you did today and explain what you did answers the essential question.

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Claire Sylvan: Approaching learning in a very deep way works for these kids. We provide a rigorous and safe environment for them to flourish through project based learning.
Rosmery Milczewski: Take a look at that space and come up with at least one question that can become a mathematics problem.
Lower Third:
Rosmery Milczewski
9th/10th Grade Math Teacher
Flushing International High School, Flushing, New York

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Rosmery Milczewski: I came to this country when I was 16. Just like my students I came with no knowledge of English. And I went to the International High School at La Guardia Community College. Ever since then I felt like everything that my teachers did for me, the best way to pay it off was by going into teaching and doing the same thing they did for me.
Rosmery Milczewski: What mathematical concept is that question asking?
Chao: It may ask about volume or area.
Rosmery Milczewski: Or area.
Rosmery Milczewski: I can relate to them but more importantly they can relate to them.

Rosmery Milczewski: What is the height of the wall that is in the back?

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Student: What is the height of the wall that is in the back?
Rosmery Milczewski: Okay. What is the height of the… The wall.
Student: The wall.
Rosmery Milczewski: The wall in the back. Yes.
Rosmery Milczewski: The one common language we have is English. Whether it’s perfect or not we have to force ourselves to get our message across, to suffer and struggle with that is how they’re going to be learning.
Chao: The angle this one.
Student: This one is 24.

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Rosmery Milczewski: I wanted them to answer this essential question of this unit which is about how can we measure length indirectly? This lesson is part of the one project we’re working on currently. It is about making a scale model of the school building. So the kids went outside to measure the height of the different trees or different objects that surround the school building.

Student: One hundred eighty-four.
Rosmery Milczewski: So they needed to indirectly measure them using the inclinometer which will help them measure the angle of elevation.

Lower Third:
Chao
10th Grade Student
Flushing International High School, Flushing, NY

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Chao: Before I came to this school my English is terrible. I afraid to raise my hand and I don’t think I can’t talk to anyone in English.
Chao: Last one.
Student: Yeah, the last one.
Chao: The front tree.
Chao: I feel comfortable at class. I can practice my English in class. I can make friends in my class.

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Claire Sylvan: They’re working in small groups because they need to be using language actively. So you make the content accessible and kids may be doing some thinking or even accessing online materials in their native language, but they’re accessing rigorous content but allow them to learn their new language by engaging in very hands on projects using English to work together. And they’re using English to present out at that end.

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Chao: Through this angle, we can get the length of this side.

Lower Third:
9th/10th Grade Biology

Jordan Wolf: All right guys, welcome to another exciting day. We have a lot of stuff to get done this week. The first thing take out your fish journals from last week.

Lower Third:
Jordan Wolf
9th/10th Grade Science Teacher
Flushing International High School, Flushing New York
Jordan Wolf: Through this project based environment you see a thread develop from day to day. Especially with English language learners you need repetition of topics and concepts and language and vocabulary.

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Jordan Wolf: We need a good verb that describes going into a cell taking the DNA.
Student: Extract.
Jordan Wolf: Extract. So we extracted your DNA last week. This week, we need to copy your DNA.
Jordan Wolf: If what you do in Monday is related to what you’re doing for the next three weeks you start to see students take ownership of the language and the new vocabulary. Today, we’re looking at a pretty abstract process of DNA replication.

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Jordan Wolf: All of the words we need for today template, replicate, et cetera. These are also on your paper. Try and give us your best translation into your language, what do these words mean?
Jordan Wolf: I want to see if I’m accessing anything that they all ready know. I want them to realize that if you know it in your native language as well as in English you’re developing literacy in two places, in two languages.
Lower Third:
Heidi
10th Grade Student
Flushing International High School, Flushing, NY
Heidi: I think it helps you learn more English because they put you in groups that have a different nationality than you are, so you really have to talk in English. So I think that helps in your English learning.
Jordan Wolf: Go all the way into the pink and spit out the DNA.

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Jordan Wolf: The project is always hands on. The project is always giving them something more than just words to grab on to. The language becomes a vehicle for describing what’s going on in the classroom.
Jordan Wolf: That’s it. Not-- ugh! Just a little bit and then go in.
Jordan Wolf: At the beginning of the year I look at it and say, oh wow, this kid doesn’t speak any English. You know, and at some point during the year I’m looking at their writing, I’m hearing them talk in class and I say, okay you got it. You’re fluently getting through a two-minute conversation. When somebody gets to that point of speaking and interacting you know that they’ve kind of made it.

Lower Third:
Brooklyn International High School
Brooklyn, New York

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Claire Sylvan: Having students who understand how to navigate a global world and speak multiple languages is a huge strength. Critical thinkers who can communicate well, who can cite evidence for their views and can work with diverse groups of people can collaborate really across diversity is not just an idea but is a reality.
Lower Third:
11th Grade Humanities Class
Fred Wambolt: Good morning, Class. Is everyone in the station that they left off yesterday?
Students: Yes.
Fred Wambolt: Okay. Let’s take about three to five minutes to just finish up. If you have finished, talk with each other.
Lower Third:
Fred Wambolt
11th Grade Humanities Teacher
Brooklyn International High School, Brooklyn, NY

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Fred Wambolt: The fact that the students are English language learners is always in my mind. But I plan my courses in the same way that I would plan if I were teaching all native language speakers. The goal is the same. There have to be some scaffolds to help them reach that goal.
Student: Mien Lu [ph?] was an area where they were many…
Haola “Tutu”: Viet Cong.
Student: Viet Cong Communists in this out fighting against the Americans.

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Fred Wambolt: There’s one section where they’re reading to get some information to fill out a timeline. Some of the information that they were accessing from website, it was filled with a lot of jargon that they just weren’t able to sift through. So I kept the sophistication of the language but scaffolded to not include so much jargon that they would just be lost in it.
Student: They went deeper in the south.
Haola “Tutu”: They went deeper.

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Teacher Aid: Which is what they’re trying to do, right. They’re trying to go keeper into the south.
Haola “Tutu”: Okay.
Teacher Aid: Good.
Fred Wambolt: We’re reading “The Things They Carried” which is a novel about the Vietnam War. So the activity today was designed for them to access as much background information as they could about the Vietnam War to place the novel in the proper context.
Haola “Tutu”: Did you understand what they’re trying to say?
Student: Yeah, I understand.
Haola “Tutu”: Okay.
Fred Wambolt: The project based learning definitely leads to deeper learning in so many ways. They’re able to spend quality time delving deeply into subjects that warrant more than learning some cursory facts.
Haola “Tutu”: Can I ask you a question?
Student: Yeah.
Haola “Tutu”: North is the good or the bad?
Student: North is the bad.
Haola “Tutu”: Oh yeah, because they wanted to go deeper into the south.
Lower Third:
Haola “Tutu”
11th Grade Student
Brooklyn International High School, Brooklyn, NY

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Haola “Tutu”: Study is very different from the school that I have been because it’s like here they teach for you to understand. I learn from these students just because their English is kind of low but they’re good at something and they have something too, to show. So working with them is going to show me how to use their knowledge, too, to help others. So it’s not just about me.
Fred Wambolt: Who else was surprised?
Haola “Tutu”: People back home.
Fred Wambolt: Right.
Haola “Tutu”: Because they heard that America was losing.
Fred Wambolt: It’s really a family and a community more than other places that I’ve been. It’s very collaborative in all aspects.

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Student: Everyone is here in the school learning English so you don’t have to think that if you don’t speak English well you don’t have to think about it. You can use different ideas from different people and makes you think and makes you organized.

Fred Wambolt: Over time, the language barriers start to get smaller and smaller. And then if I walk down the hall to the 12th graders, they’re mixed, hanging out speaking English.

Lower Third:
12th Grade English Class

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Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom: We’re going to continue working on project today for “The Great Gatsby.” Who would like to share with the class? Go ahead, Faiza.
Faiza: Okay. How does F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character in “The Great Gatsby” serve as a reflection of society in America during the 1920s? So we thought it was a time of reform where there’s a lot of people trying to reach out for their American dreams but then it seems to be impossible.
Lower Third:
Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom
12th Grade Humanities Teacher
Brooklyn International High School, Brooklyn, NY
Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom: I teach a course that I call American studies. It’s English but what we do is we study the history around a novel, poetry, essays, whatever we’re reading, we’re looking at the history around that piece.

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Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom: I want to move us towards your projects which you started yesterday. I’d love it if everybody could sort of just tell the class what project you’re working on.
Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom: The way project based looks or works in my class is that we’ll read a piece and as they’re reading, they’re doing collaborative work. They’re investigating a question. With “The Great Gatsby” project I tried to give them five or six choices.
Lower Third:
We are planning to write the eulogy.

Student: We are planning to write the eulogy.

Lower Third:
Trying to create a movie trailer.

Student: Trying to create a movie trailer.

Lower Third:
We are going to film ourselves.

Student: We are going to film ourselves.

Lower Third:
We want to do a playlist of songs.

Student: We want to do a playlist of songs.

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Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom: The scaffolds that I sort of tried to put together is really looking at symbolism, looking at dialog, looking at plot development, looking at characterization, looking at themes.
Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom: Either about the social classes, about race, about men and women.
Student: From Jordan’s point of view.
Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom: You don’t have to do it from Jordan’s point of view today.
Student: Or just to be from a general.
Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom: Yeah, you can do it in general.
Student: I feel if you’re going to write a personal letter you will have to take from the scene in the movie.
Faiza: A letter, right. Okay. A love letter.
Student: A love letter.
Lower Third:
Faiza
12th Grade Student
Brooklyn International High School, Brooklyn, NY

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Faiza: I came here and I had a little more English than some of the students because I went to middle school. So I was always trying to help out. And I know some students had more English than I did. So it’s like you understand that we need each other. So we help push each other forward.
Lower Third:
This one is to… talk to Jay Gatsby or talk to someone else.

Student: This one is to… talk to Jay Gatsby or talk to someone else.
Student: Because Jay Gatsby all ready died.
Student: Yes.
Student: So we need to talk to other people.
Student: About him?
Student: About him.
Student: Okay.

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Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom: The International’s work has always been common core. We’ve always looked for evidence. Have students really support what they’re thinking and doing with evidence. We have always analyzed literary text. To me, that’s really deeper learning.
Student: You cannot own someone’s love.
Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom: Okay. So I see you’re saying a theme is that love cannot be possessed.
Student: Yes.

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Claire Sylvan: Our kids have a contribution to make. They’re learning to think very critically, communicate well. And can collaborate really across diversity.
Faiza: Our situation is like magnet. Every time you put them together they go in the opposite direction.

Shahzia Pirani-Mellstrom: I really feel like my seniors are at this point with all of the work that they’ve done it’s just made them adults. It’s made them ready for college which makes me really proud.
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