by Sarah Said

Over a decade ago, I had a boy in my class who liked to put his head down.  He was a new student who had only been in the states for less than three months.  He was from Lithuania and had a little more command for the English language than most of my newer students.  But, at seventeen, he was forced by his family to move to the United States from the comfort of his home country.  He was also forced to process a new language in what would be his senior year of high school. When he put his head down, like any newer teacher, I would assume the worst.  “He doesn’t care! He doesn’t want to do the work! He’s just putting his head down to rebel against me!”

I had enough of what he was dishing out to me.  I was going to flex my muscles as a newer teacher to send a clear message that he had to sit up and pay attention to me.  He was going to pay attention, take his notes, participate in class discussions, and do his work. So, I gave him “the look”, you know “that look” we are told to give in our teacher prep programs to communicate we aren’t happy with a student’s behavior, and told him he needed to stay after class in toughest voice I could.  In conversation, I told him that he was NEVER to put his head down in my class and he was to focus. He looked at me and said “You give me headaches! I have to put my head down.”

I was shocked.  I mean, yes I’m a little eccentric.  I can be animated and expressive. I can also be loud.  Think of it this way, my whispering is like anyone else’s talking.  I am who I am. But I was livid. “Excuse me?” I said. I wasn’t about to let him get away with telling me that I was giving him a headache.  Then he proceeded to explain that we all gave him headaches, all of his teachers. He then told me that all day long he has to hear English and he is not used to it. We also talk fast and expect quick responses.  It caused him to have severe headaches and just tune out. He said he wish we just all slowed down.

I was schooled in understanding what was really going on in the minds of our students.  We needed to rethink our instructional practices as a highschool that had housed a good amount of English Learners.  We also really needed to work on our comprehensible input and  strategic methods for wait time within our instruction.  Wait time is not something that we think about in our planning as teachers.

Yes….waiting. Waiting for students to process what we say and respond to it. We think about standards, objectives, activities, and materials. However, that glitz and glamour of our activities sometimes takes over the plan for communicating with our English Learners.  What’s really important is how we are ensuring a whole-school approach so that every educator can work effectively with ELLs.

We needed to remember that:

1. Our kids will go through a silent period when they are newer to the country.

2. Our kids need more time to understand what we are saying in order to process   information that they are trying to comprehend from us.

3. Our kids need us to create ways to support them in order to be able to respond to us (their teacher) and their peers.

Why Do Students Stay Silent When They Are First Learning The Language?

Students may come to an English speaking country with an inability to produce language because they are still processing how to produce the language.  This is called the “silent period”. I have had plenty of teachers come to me alarmed because after a month or two in the United States, a student was still not speaking to them.  Students will speak when ready. “The silent period occurs before ELLs are ready to produce oral language and is generally referred to as the preproduction stage of language learning. ELLs should not be forced to speak before they are ready.” (Haynes 2007) As teachers, we need to give our students a chance to take in the environment, new stressors and the language. All we need is just a little patience...

Approaching this with a growth mindset is important.  All children grow at different rates. Our brains are growing and they are always changing.  As a we continue to hear and process language we can become more proficient in that language.  Many times in my teaching career, the student who chose not to speak eventually became the leader in class discussions. Does that mean we need to force intensive English on students in the classroom?  No, it means we need to gradually ease them into the language so that they can reach levels of proficiency.

What Happens When An English Learner Hears Us Speak English All Day Long?

Think of it this way, class after class, hour after hour, these students are hearing words, sentences, and tones they are not used to.  After minutes of hearing us speak in English, we begin to sound like adults in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Wawawawa… Students get to the point where they don’t even try to comprehend the speech they hear. The over exposure of language that is coming to the student is exhausting to them.  

Before even thinking about wait time, we need to think about how our language that we are using is comprehensible for students. Comprehensible Input is a term used for methods of communicating concepts for English Learners. “Students who are at the beginning levels of language proficiency benefit from teachers who slow down their rate of speech, use pauses, and enunciate clearly while speaking.” (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short 2017)  This means that we really need to reflect on how we talk to our students as we are introducing new material to them.

To be able to reach a student who needs language support, teachers may need to be more animated and find various ways to support students’ understanding.Using strategies that are TPR (Total Physical Response) influenced will reach learners of all ages when terminology is being explained.  Slowing down our speech and highlighting key vocabulary is helpful. Also, using visuals and realia (When you use realia, you are using real life objects to teach a concept.) will help bring the gap for all learners.  I am not telling you anything new. This is just good teaching.

About Wait Time…

Wait time is an art.  Really, it is an art that teachers of English Learners develop as they continue to teach and perfect their craft.  A teacher really needs to think about the wait time strategies that work for them in order to make it work. It is also important for teachers to understand that some cultures have different response timings and also that children globally respond to adults in different ways.

Strategies that Help Teachers Make Wait Time Work

Mentally Count to Five…

I always counted to five (in my head) after posing a question to the class.  Eventually, it became a natural habit for me to just wait for students to respond to me in a question/answer format. This gave students more time to process what I was saying to them.  Students gave more fruitful responses than “I agree” or “okay”.

Life Saver…

Life Saver is a strategy that gives English Learners a chance to seek support from their classmates.  Students have three options to get support from classmates in the classroom environment. They can “text a friend” (ask a neighbor), have the option for “either/ or” (have the teacher give them two options for answers), or “ask the class” (this is where they student can survey the class).  The teacher can first start this off by explaining the strategy to the class. They can then model the strategy for students in the classroom. This will first start with the teacher giving the class constant reminders such as “where are your life savers?” If the teacher stays consistent with the reminders, it will become habit.

(Echevarria, Vogt,& Washman 2015)

Sentence and Question Stem Key Rings…

It’s always good for us to have a crutch for students to hold on to linguistically. The Sentence and Question Stem Key Rings help students if they need support speaking and responding in the classroom.

The rings are usually color coded by category. In the picture is a question stem ring that is color coded by Bloom’s Taxonomy.  Of course, before using this in the classroom, I would teach students explicitly about Bloom’s Taxonomy and then teach them how to use the key ring.

For sentence starters I would categorize them based on your content area or your classroom format.

Some examples of stems are….

I think that _____________________________

I can __________________________

It is important because_______________________________

The tangible item is support for students who need a little boost in order to speak in the classroom.  It can make students feel safe because it is in their hands and easily accessible.

My run in with this student years ago taught me that I needed to be more innovative in my planning of classroom discussion and balancing my own speech.  When I came into this profession, I didn’t even know what the term “wait time” meant. It’s now such an important concept to me when I’m working with students or coaching teachers.  Different cultures communicate at different speeds and children all process information differently. The key hear is meeting our students’ needs and making them feel comfortable in classroom conversations.  We are not lowering the bar when we do this, we are equalizing the playing field.

Citations

• Echevarria, Vogt & Short (2017). Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model,Fifth Edition. New York, New York: Pearson.

• Echevarria, Vogt,& Washam (2015). 99 More Ideas And Activities For Teaching English Learners with The SIOP Model: Lesson Planning for the Common Core.Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson

• Haynes, J. (2007). Getting started with English language learners: How educators can meet the challenge. Alexandria, Va: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.