Celebrate Our Rising Stars Summit V

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Project SAILL Success through Academic
Interventions in Language and Literacy

• University of Houston
• University of Texas at Austin
• Center for Applied Linguistics
• University of Miami

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Acknowledgements

• Institute of Education Sciences, US Department of
  Education
• Brownsville Independent School District

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Overview of Presentation

• Topics Presented
• Overview of the study (Diane August, Elsa Hagan)
• SIOP (Ari Sherris)
• Phonics and phonemic awareness (Elsa Hagan)
• Reading and skills practice (Diane August)
• Grammar and writing (Diane August)
• Storybook reading (Diane August, María Díaz)
• Process
• Brief description
• Video clip/demonstration
• Discussion

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Study Organizational Chart
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Overview of Study Design

• One district Brownsville Independent School
  District
• Two language of instruction models
• Very early transition (VET)
• Traditional bilingual education (TBE)
• School continues to implement the general model
  that the school has adopted
• Half the classrooms randomly assigned to teach as
  usual and half use research-enhanced curriculum
  and teaching practices
• Study is implemented in one grade per year
• Begin with K in 2004-2005 and continue through
  third grade
• Currently in second grade classrooms

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Language of Instruction Models

• Very Early Transition- Emphasis in Kinder-garten
  on English language and literacy development with
  some Spanish oral language support - Emphasis in
  Grades 13 on English language and literacy
  development

• Traditional Bilingual - Emphasis in K Grade 1
  on Spanish language and literacy development with
  English oral language development- Emphasis in
  Grades 2-3 on Spanish and English language and
  literacy development

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Assessment and Observations

• Students assessed in English and in Spanish
• Student assessment in the beginning of the year
  and the end of the year in grades K-3
• Assessments
• Phonological Awareness
• Letter Names and Letter Sounds
• Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery Letter
  Word ID, Passage Comprehension
• Woodcock Language Proficiency Battery Picture
  Vocabulary, Listening Comprehension
• Authentic measures of English proficiency (story
  retell)
• Observations of classroom language and literacy
  practices in all classrooms
• Observations for fidelity of implementation in
  research-enhanced classrooms

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Ongoing Support

• Professional Development
• Prior to the school year
• Every two months
• Observations by mentors with feedback to teacher
• In-class mentoring
• Weekly planning meetings

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3-Tiers of Instruction

• Tier 1
• Phonics (Language Enrichment/Esperanza/ Esperanza
  Transition)
• Reading Practice and Skills
• Modified MacMillan grammar and writing
• Modified MacMillan reading
• Oral language development (story book and
  expository text reading)
• SIOP
• Tiers 2 and 3
• Small group tutoring to build word reading,
  spelling, fluency, and vocabulary skills

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Schedule Bilingual Program/Grade 2

• Reading block (90 minutes)
• Spanish reading practice (modified MacMillan)
• Spanish grammar and writing (modified
  MacMillan)
• Transition phonics (Language Enrichment
  transition)
• ESOL block (60 minutes)
• English oral language development (read-alouds)
  English reading practice (modified MacMillan)
• SIOP
• Tiers 2 and 3

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Schedule English Program/grade 2

• 90 minute reading block
• English phonics (Language Enrichment)
• English reading and skills practice (modified
  MacMillan)
• Oral language development (read alouds)
• ESOL block
• English grammar and writing (modified
  MacMillan)
• SIOP
• Tiers 2 and 3

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Project Benefits to Teachers

• Effective research-based approach to delivering
  and organizing instruction for ELLs
• Additional materials
• Project tutors provide Tier 2 and Tier 3
  intervention
• Ongoing, long-term staff development and
  mentoring
• Opportunities to collaborate with colleagues
• Participation in a study of national significance

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National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority
Children and Youth Research findings that
support our approach

• Instruction in the native language aids
  achievement
• Meta-analysis of all acceptable studies that
  compared English-only instruction with
  instruction that used some native language
• 15 acceptable studies that generated 71 effect
  sizes across 26 samples
• Bilingual education has a statistically
  significant positive effect on reading in English
  (with an effect size of about .40)
• These findings are consistent with other recent
  meta-analyses (Greene, 1997 Rolstad, Mahoney,
  Glass, 2005)
• To provide some perspective, the National Reading
  Panel estimated that the average effect size of
  phonics instruction to be 0.44

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National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority
Children and Youth Research findings that
support our approach

• Good instruction for English-language learners is
  similar to good instruction monolingual English
  students
• English-language learners benefit from explicit
  instruction that builds phonological awareness,
  word reading skills, fluency, vocabulary,
  comprehension and writing

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National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority
Children and Youth Research findings that
support our approach

• Adjustments are important
• Effect sizes for English-language learners are
  lower and more variable than those for
  native-English-speaking students, suggesting that
  such teaching is likely to be necessary but
  insufficient for improving literacy achievement
  among the English-language learners. It is
  possible that combining high-quality instruction
  in the literacy components with efforts to
  enhance English oral language development in the
  context of this literacy instruction would lead
  to higher effect sizes.

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National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority
Children and Youth Research findings that
support our approach

• We work in a bilingual program where first
  language literacy development is encouraged while
  students acquire English literacy
• We explicitly teach phonological awareness,
  phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension and
  writing
• Build on effective methods used with monolingual
  speakers
• Follow a format of introduce a concept, model and
  group practice, individual practice, and review
• Develop skills systematically and sequentially
• Differentiate instruction

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National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority
Children and Youth Research findings that
support our approach

• We make accommodations to standard instruction
• Introduce read-alouds (both narrative and
  expository) to build oral language proficiency,
  including vocabulary and listening comprehension
• Provide a lot more scaffolding (e.g., pre-teach
  some vocabulary, paraphrase text, ask ongoing
  questions to build comprehension, provide
  glossaries that include pictures as well as
  definitions) to ensure students understand the
  texts they are reading and listening to
• Capitalize on students first language
  proficiency and literacy (e.g., cognate
  awareness transition phonics)

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Results for First Grade

• No statistically significant differences between
  treatment and control group on early reading
  skills
• Despite less time spent in reading practice for
  treatment groups
• All students doing well on early reading skills
• Significant differences between treatment and
  control groups on standardized measures of oral
  language proficiency
• Vocabulary
• Listening comprehension

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The SIOP Model

• A means for making grade-level academic content
  (science, social studies, math) more accessible
  to second-language learners while at the same
  time promoting their English language
  development.

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The SIOP Model Sheltered Instruction for
Academic Achievement (Echevarria, Vogt,
Short, 2004)

• Preparation
• Building Background
• Comprehensible Input
• Strategies

• Interaction
• Practice Application
• Lesson Delivery
• Review Assessment

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SIOP Model of Sheltered Math Instruction
Strategies
Background Information
Structured Pairwork
Spoken Written Math Discourse Development
Scaffolding
Math Journaling
Math Manipulatives
Think Alouds
Feedback
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Grade 2 Math Lesson

• Typical Gr. 2 math lesson from district
• math presentation practice
• high on teacher talk, low on visuals
• lacks systematic treatment of math language
• Enhanced Gr. 2 math lesson in treatment
  classrooms
• explicit content and language objectives
• concept definition map
• links to prior knowledge and learner background
• goal directed oral pairwork (e.g., information
  gap activities in math)
• math Journals

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English Phonics Instruction for Students in
all-English Program

• Phonics review
• Review of previously learned reading concepts
  (e.g., ch, ng)
• Word study review (affixes)
• New concept introduction
• Introduction of new reading concepts using four
  modalities- visual, auditory, kinesthetic,
  tactile
• Reading and spelling practice
• Reading, spelling, and writing practice of new
  concepts
• Review
• New days learning
• 2-3 previously learned concepts

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Transition Phonics Instruction for Students in
Bilingual Program

• Phonics review
• Review of previously learned reading concepts
  (e.g., ch, ng)
• Word study review (affixes)
• New concept introduction
• Introduction of new reading concepts using four
  modalities- visual, auditory, kinesthetic,
  tactile
• Reading and spelling practice
• Reading, spelling, and writing practice of new
  concepts
• Review
• New days learning
• 2-3 previously learned concepts

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Phonics Instruction for Students

• Alignment of phonics instruction and reading
  practice
• In the transition program, explicit instruction
  in similarities and differences between English
  and Spanish word reading, spelling, and
  grammatical conventions

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English Reading and Skills Practice for Students
in English-only Program

• Students learn second grade concepts
• Second grade MacMillan reading program used to
  give students practice reading connected text and
  building skills
• Schedule
• Days 1-2 Whole class guided reading of decodable
  story
• Days 3-4 Small group differentiated instruction
  using SAILL Safari/teacher choice of materials to
  reinforce reading concepts
• Day 5 Skill instruction and assessment
• Day 6 Flex day

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English Reading and Skills Practice for Students
in Bilingual Program

• Bilingual Program
• Students learn first and second grade concepts
• First grade MacMillan reading program used to
  give students practice reading connected text and
  practice reading skills
• Schedule
• Day 1 Guided Reading of Decodable Story
• Days 2-3 Teacher choice to reinforce reading
  concepts
• Day 4 Skill
• Day 5 Assessment
• Day 6 Flex day

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Spanish Reading and Skills Practice for Students
in Bilingual Program

• Very similar to English reading and skills
  practice
• Days 1 - 2 Guided reading of decodable text,
  including pre-teaching of vocabulary
• Days 3 - 4 Differentiated instruction to build
  decoding and comprehension and to learn reading
  skills
• Day 5 Assessment and review in Spanish of
  concepts introduced in the English expository
  text
• Day 6 Flex day

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Grammar and Writing English and Spanish

• Day 1 new grammar concept or skill (e.g.,plural
  nouns)
• Day 2 grammar mechanics (e.g., letter writing
  conventions)
• Day 3 grammar assessment
• Day 4 Writing
• Day 5 Writing

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Writing English and Spanish

• 5 week sequence for each genre (e.g. personal
  narrative, persuasive writing)
• Week 1 Modeling present genre, explore the
  structure of the genre
• Week 2 Group drafting group practice to develop
  ideas and structure, group drafting)
• Week 3 Students draft composition
• Week 4 Student revisions (genre and conventions)
  based on teacher feedback
• Week 5 Students produce finished composition
  based on teacher feedback

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Oral Language Development

• Use of rich childrens literature and expository
  text to build oral language proficiency, literacy
  and content knowledge
• Teachers guide
• High quality childrens literature and expository
  text aligned with second grade science curriculum
• Picture cards

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Oral Language Development Schedule

• Days 1 and 2
• Pre-teach key words
• Interactive Reading
• Closing Discussion
• Days 3 and 4
• Interactive Reading
• Closing Discussion
• Extending Word Meaning
• Key Words
• Basic Words
• Other Words and Phrases
• Day 5
• Assessment

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Oral Language Development

• Techniques
• Pre-teaching of key words
• use of visuals and act-outs (grade 1)
• Interactive reading
• Using pictures and demonstration to clarify
  meaning
• Paraphrasing key vocabulary and complicated
  chunks of text
• Building background knowledge
• Questioning techniques that allow the teacher to
  model comprehension strategies and clarify text
  (visualizing, drawing inferences, making
  connections from text-to-text and text-to-self,
  summarizing, inferring word meaning

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Oral Language Development

• Techniques (cont.)
• Closing discussion
• Predictions and inferences
• Compare/contrast
• Summarization
• Connect text to own experience
• Evaluate the book
• Extending word meanings
• Basic words connected to theme (e.g. vehicles)
• Other words and phrases (e.g., idioms and other
  words that are challenging such as phrasal verbs,
  words with multiple meanings, adverbs,
  prepositions)
• Review
• Use of glossary that includes pictures of all the
  words and games
• Assessment
• Vocabulary
• Comprehension

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Oral Language Development

• Techniques (cont.)
• Partner-talk
• Repeat, elaborate, and rephrase

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Education is not the filling of a pail, but a
lighting of a fire

• William Butler Yeats