Using Pair and Group Work to Develop ELLs’ Oral Language Skills

In our last post, we shared information about the new Teaching Channel ELL series based on Academic Conversations (2011) by Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford featuring related classroom videos developed in partnership with the Oakland Unified School District. This week we'd like to delve deeper into these resources and provide strategies for building the oral language skills of ELLs across content areas that are framed around four practices.

Most teachers understand that pair and group work provide excellent opportunities for ELLs' oral language development because each student has more time to talk than in a large group discussion, and students often feel more comfortable sharing their ideas in a small group environment. However, in order to build on the skills described in the CCSS, it may be necessary to re-envision pair and group work and provide additional supports for ELLs. ELLs may find group work challenging if they do not understand their expected role in the task they are working on, or if they do not feel confident in using the language required for the task.

In this blog post we will first examine two speaking and listening standards that can be used to help frame group work. Next, we will highlight four student practices based on recommendations from Zwiers & Crawford (2011) and the practices demonstrated in the Teaching Channel classroom video clips. These four student practices will foster oral language development and support ELLs in meeting the standards. For each of the practices, we will provide an explanation and share some Teaching Channel video clips that show the practices in action.

Four Practices for Fostering ELLs' Oral Language Development

These four practices are:

1. Coming to the discussion prepared
2. Using appropriate body language for discussions
3. Participating by taking turns
4. Making connections to what others have said

Guiding Common Core State Standards

First, let's take a look at two standards that are part of the Speaking and Listening Anchor Standards for K-12 that are most relevant for our purpose.

According to the standards listed above, all students (including ELLs) will need practice in holding discussions with varied partners, learning to effectively express their ideas with supporting evidence, and learning to build on the ideas of other students. Teachers can help ELLs meet those standards with the following practices.

Come to the discussion prepared

As we discussed in our Socratic Circles blog post, it is important for students to have sufficient preparation in the content they will be discussing. To view a model of ways teachers can help students prepare and engage in academic discussions through small group work, take a look at the video of Ms. Groves' class discussion of Siddhartha's Journey. In the video, Ms. Groves described having students do several close reading of the Siddhartha's text and answer text-dependent questions that are open-ended, are not only limited to questions with one right response, and require students to answer using evidence from the text. Students then shared their responses to the text-dependent questions in small groups.

In making recommendations for the types of questions and prompts teachers can develop to help students plan for think-pair-share activities, Zwiers (2010) makes some suggestions in the table below. Teachers can provide these types of prompts in a graphic organizer or a journal prompt prior to classroom discussions. It is important to note that these types of questions and prompts can be used across content areas and academic conversations should not be limited only English language arts.

Types of Questions and Examples

Adapted from: ALDNetwork.org (2013). Think pair share tips. Retrieved from http://www.jeffzwiers.org

In structuring group and pair discussions, it is helpful for ELLs to have their written ideas or notes for reference. However, it is also important to help students transition to being able to speak without the use of notes. As you saw in the video of Ms. Groves' class, she suggested that her students not always read from their notes. Similarly, this video clip of Ms. Brewer's class shows how sticky notes can be used to support student discussion. Sticky notes will help students hold on to their ideas without allowing them to rely too heavily on written notes in a discussion.

Use appropriate body language for discussions

It is important that students learn the body language associated with academic discussions. Zwiers and Crawford (2011) identify behaviors that are valued in school:

• Appropriate eye contact (which can mean not constantly staring at the other person but also not always looking down, away, or past the other person)
• Facing each other with the entire body
• Leaning toward the partner
• Showing understanding through head nodding
• Appropriate gesturing (not rolling eyes, sighing, or folding arms)

ELLs may need some direct instruction in what is considered culturally appropriate body language for discussions in U.S. classrooms. All the while, teachers of ELLs should recognize and respect how ELLs might show respect and engage in discussions in their cultures. This video of Ms. Nguyen's 6th grade less provides an example of a participation protocol that demonstrates one way to teach students how to appropriately use body language to engage in a discussion. She includes the following criteria in her class' participation protocol: look at your partner, lean towards your partner, lower your voice, listen attentively, and use evidence and examples. As students are having discussions, she uses a checklist to monitor how well they are meeting these criteria.

Participate by taking turns

It is important for students to take turns speaking. In pairs, it is likely that turn taking will occur naturally. However, in a small or large group, a tool such as a talking rock or talking stick (a rock or a stick that students hold to “give them the floor” to talk) can encourage all members of the group to take part in the discussion. Students can pass the talking rock or talking stick around in a circle, and the student who has the rock or stick can take the opportunity to say something or pass. The rock or stick can also be placed in the center of the group and students can take it as they have something to say. In the video of Ms. Groves' class, we saw students pass around a talking rock as a way to support students taking turns and to encourage all members of the group to participate.

An additional way to encourage turn taking is to teach and model strategies for inviting someone into the conversation (e.g., Manuel, what do you predict the girl in the story will do next?)

Make connections to what others have said

Not only do students need to be able to share their own opinions by using evidence from texts or content material being studied, they also need to interact with the ideas of others. Modeling and providing ELs with key phrases can support them in their efforts to build on the ideas of others.

More specifically, Talk moves are the discourse behaviors that students need to practice in order to effectively engage in a discussion. Such behaviors include: restating what was said, agreeing and disagreeing, asking clarifying questions, adding to or piggybacking on what someone has said, and making connections between ideas.

In this video clip, the students in Ms. Simpson's class practice using talk moves in a whole group discussion during a math lesson. Students will need practice with talk moves before they are able to use them on their own in small groups or pairs.

In the video of Ms. Groves classroom, we saw that she had sentence stems that were easily accessible to support students' use of talk moves, and when monitoring the small groups she referred students back to these stems. Another idea for using talk moves would be for each student to have a handout or index card with sentence stems that can be used that students could have in front of them during discussions. The table below provides some possible sentence stems for specific types of talk moves.

Talk Moves Sentence Stems

Zwiers and Crawford (2011) also propose conversation mini-lessons that provide teachers opportunities to introduce a conversation skill to students and then have them practice it in a relatively short time period. Examples of possible mini lessons could include asking each other for supporting examples, building on a partner's idea, and paraphrasing conversations themes. Mini lessons should include opportunities to analyze strong conversation skills, teacher or student modeling, some type of scaffolded support (e.g., graphic organizers, sentence stems), and opportunities to practice and build independent skills.

Summary

We have shared a lot of information with you in this blog post! To help you keep it all straight, the following table provides a summary of the four student practices that support ELLs' participation in pair and small group work. We also define each practice and share the accompanying Teaching Channel videos that show you what the practice looks like in action. Most of the videos are the same as were mentioned above. However, there are also a couple of additional videos added that model the student practices.

Student Oral Language Practice, Definition of Practice, and Video Examples of Practice

More Resources on Building ELLs' Oral Language

For additional resources and videos on this topic, take a look at the following:

• Jeff Zwiers' Academic Language and Literacy website
• Jeff Zwiers article on Key Strategies for Developing Oral Language on the Teaching Channel
• Zwiers & Crawford's book Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings
• Carrie Kamm's article on Building Common Core Skills: Beyond “Turn and Talk” on the Teaching Channel
• Lily Jones' blog Video Playlist: Engaging ELLs in Academic Conversations on the Teaching Channel
• Nicole Knight's blog Why are Academic Discussions So Important for our ELLs? on the Teaching Channel

We hope these suggestions and supporting video clips give you some new ideas for group work in your classroom. Let us know what works well for your class!