Reading

Notes for Access to Academics

You can work with colleagues as long as you have a deep understanding of the content in each chapter. Use the Key
Issues Chart at the beginning of each chapter to guide your thinking. Read and tab/underline key points in each chapter.
Add descriptions, page numbers, or lists as part of your note keeping. This is the foundation for your study for teaching
English as a second language and is very important that you come to a deep understanding of this material.

Take notes on these key points and add missing points based on the Key Issues Chart at the
beginning of each chapter. Your notes must be sufficient for you to attain and retain the basic
information in each chapter and to effectively lead a class group discussion when asked to do so.
You will be defining, summarizing and/or describing the various key components in each chapter.
Ch. 1: 1. Explain language of school
Language o Use of language (how to listen, speak, read, write in order to reach goals, registers or specialized
varieties of language)
of School
o Through language (learning all about the world inside and outside the classroom)
o About language (what are the difference among languages, historical aspects of language, cultural
influences on language)
2. Social Language: the language between people (every day, intercultural, and instructional)
3. Academic Language: varies between subject to subject (vocabulary, grammar/syntax, and discourse)

4. Linguistic Features/content areas- each content area has different general academic vocabulary, specialized
academic vocabulary, technical academic vocabulary, and different types of discourse.

5. BICS- basic interpersonal communication skills: refers to the development of conversational language
6. CALP- cognitive academic language proficiency: refers to the academic dimension of language necessary for
school success
7. Google academic language register and define: ability to identify language that conforms to academic
language expectations.
Ch. 2: • Language Proficiency: the ability to use language accurately and appropriately in its oral and written forms in
a variety of settings.
• Language Domains: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
• Can Do descriptors: descriptors that have been written to provide a starting point for planning and
implementing instruction.
• Elements of Communicative Competence: Communicative competence does not apply only to oral language.
Communicative competence means competence in all four language domains – both the productive and the
receptive. When talking of communicative competence, we need to consider four important elements;
grammatical or linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic.
• Resources: resources in the chapter include: hearnames.com; PreK-12 English Language Proficiency
Standards; CAN DO Descriptors: ELL outlook; bilingual books; and WIDA.

Ch. 3 • Learning Strengths and Needs of EL Students – List/describe

o Survey: general questions are asked in a questionnaire format.
o Conversations: teachers or other communicants have casual conversations as time allows.
o Wall-write: student answer questions or reply to statements by signing their name or responding on a
piece of paper taped to the wall.
o Moving Questions: students answer a question by moving to one side or corner of the room.
o Dialogue Journals: students communicate with the teacher or another student on a regular basis,
using a variety of modes for writing journal entries and responses in the form of journal entries.
o Story retelling: after reading, students describe what they understood.
o Role playing: students act out what they know or what they understood about a topic or reading.
o Oral reporting: students produce a short extemporaneous or formal oral report about a topic.
o Brainstorming: students generate ideas informally either in groups or alone.
o Playing games: students participate in games involving language reception and production.
• Guidelines for understanding student strengths and needs: List/describe
o Guideline 1: Model the Techniques – model for students the desired and expected behavior.
o Guideline 2: Try Not to Assume – find out, rather than assume something.
o Guideline 3: Embrace Variety – embrace the variety that exists in the world, and incorporate variety
in your teaching strategies.

Ch. 4 • Explain- all teachers are language teachers – every teacher will be using some kind of language. Between
subjects, the vocabulary may differ both in use or meaning. Every class in an opportunity for students to
 learn, therefore the teacher should always be encouraging this.
• Objective writing – objectives indicate what the student will do. This must be observable and measurable.
• Measurable Verbs: Link to Common Core State Standards – measurable verbs can be used to state the
measureable outcome. These can help you differentiate between content standard and a learning objective.
• Direct Instruction Overview: incorporate the objectives into your direct instruction.
• ELD Adaptations: finding ways to differentiate to all learners, including ELD
• Teaching the Language of the Discipline: Vocabulary lesson model introduced
• General Assessment information across disciplines
• Teaching to Language Objectives Guidelines: List and summarize
o Guideline 1: Integrate Language and Content – language objectives should also be integrated into
the lesson and not taught in isolation from it.
o Guideline 2: Use Pedagogically Sound Techniques – effective language instruction should be
authentic, language is taught both explicitly implicitly, it is multimodal, it is relevant, and it is based on
social interaction.
o Guideline 3: Break Down the Language – each language objective can imply a variety of aspects,
there it can be helpful to go from whole to part and back.

Ch. 5 • Connecting to Students: How do you do this? Summarize supporting research. – there are personal
connections, academic/content connections, pedagogical/instructional connections.
• How do you make academic connections? – teachers make a connection via a specific focus, more general
ideas, and most common idea.
• Building Background Knowledge: Explain How and Why – pre-teach and reinforce vocabulary, cue-do-review
and other techniques, field trips or hands-on experiences, visitors, visuals. Developing connections is the first
step in helping students access the content and language outlined by the lesson objectives. The next step is
to help students make these connections by integrating them into the lesson introduction.
• What is an anticipatory Set? How do you use them to engage learners? Provide an example. Anticipatory
sets provide continuity from previous lessons; allude to familiar concepts and vocabulary; tell students briefly
what the lesson will be about, being sure to point out and discuss the language and content objectives for the
lesson; gauge the student’s level of collective background knowledge of the subject to help inform instruction;
activate the students’ existing knowledge base; whet students’ appetite for the subject at hand; briefly expose
the students to the lesson objectives and how you will lead the students to the end result. Example for math
is polygons and nonpolygons, where you point out the student-friendly learning targets written on the board.
Invite students to take out the “polygon treasure hunt” worksheets that they completed at home. Briefly
discuss the previous lesson’s discoveries about polygons. Have students, in pairs, share their polygon
treasure hunt discoveries from home. As needed, ask questions about their process and outcomes. Ink to the
current lesson by reading with students a story about the pyramids.
• Using VAPA and PE Content for making connections to students explain the guidelines for connections (p.76)
o Guideline 1: Be Deliberate
o Guideline 2: Help Students Transfer Connections Back to Their Lives
o Guideline 3: Consider Culture

Ch. 6 • Student Engagement: Explain engagement and tasks

o Engagement: involves student involvement and ownership, the persistence in and absorption with
reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking even when there are other choices available.
o Tasks: involve the process and product.
• Pedagogical Connections: to design effective tasks, teacher can make pedagogical connections; they should
think about the backgrounds and interests of their students while designing tasks.
• List/explain elements of task process and product:
o Task process: instructional groupings, modes, task structure, time and pacing, scaffolding,
resources/texts, teacher/student roles, and procedural tools.
o Task product: include audience and mode.
• List /explain guidelines for task for connecting instruction to students’ lives:
o Guideline 1: Give Students a Reason to Listen – students need a reason to listen to ensure that they
do.
o Guideline 2: Do Not Do What Students Can Do – the more students have invested in a task or
lesson, the more engaged they tend to be.
Ch. 7 • How do you assess before, during and after a lesson? – you can assess before by giving a pre-assessment.
This can shed light on how much scaffolding you may or may not need to give during your lesson. During
your lesson, you can use formative assessments to continuously gather information of student understanding.
You can assess after a lesson by giving exit slips.
• Assessing student process and product: teachers can adapt traditional classroom assessments, as they have
disadvantages.
 • Developing assessments to measure content standard achievement: consider the following guidelines, being
transparent, reconsider grades, and assess the lesson.
• Creating multiple opportunities for students to learn content: How and Why? Find multiple ways to teach the
same concepts. For example, visual, auditory, kinesthetic. This allows learners of different types, all an
opportunity to learn in their preferred learning style.
Ch. 8 • ELD: Language of the disciplines: Explain key points in each discipline -Making: observations, posing:
questions, examining books and other sources of information to see what is already known, Planning
investigations, reviewing what is already known in light of experimental evidence. Using tools to gather,
analyze, and interpret data, proposing answers, explanations, and predictions, Communicating the results.
o Science texts, materials, and process may present many challenges to English language
learners (ELLs).
o Hands-on, inquiry-based, and experimental science activities provide an ideal setting for
learning language and content simultaneously.
o The specialized language of science is filled with technical terms and features needed to
describe the natural and physical world.
o Practicing compare and contrast and cause and effect methods and the language of
scientific inquiry can benefit all students, particularly ELLS.
o A key component in learning to “talk science” is to analyze the Greek and Latin roots as well
as the prefixes and suffixes that permeate scientific language.
• Adaptations in disciplines: creating graphic organizers ahead of time.
• Integration of PE and content Areas: highlighting vocabulary and connect it to different meanings across
different content areas.
• Language of the discipline applied to VAPA and PE

Ch. 9 • ELD: Language of the disciplines: Explain key points in each discipline
o The mathematics reform movement, with its current emphasis on communicating
mathematically, may pose some challenges for English language learners (ELLs).
o The language of mathematics uses unique symbols, technical language, and diverse
representations.
o Mathematics may not always be a universal language; there are many variations across
languages and cultures
o Mathematical language used in tasks, tests, texts, and teacher talk can have many confusing
usages.
o Explicit instruction, speech modification, and modeling are necessary for students to learn
the language of mathematics.
• Adaptations in disciplines: creating graphic organizers ahead of time
• Integration of PE and content Areas
• Language of the discipline applied to VAPA and PE

Ch. 10 • ELD: Language of the disciplines: Explain key points in each discipline
o English texts and tasks, with their abundance of idioms, figurative language, imagery, and
symbolism, present challenges for English language learners (ELLs).
o The language arts include reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, and visually
representing.
o Educators need to affirm and draw on the different literacy practices that students develop in
and out of school.
o Early elementary grades focus on learning to read; later the focus is on reading to learn.
o Students benefit from receiving extensive and varied vocabulary instruction.
• Adaptations in disciplines: creating graphic organizers ahead of time
• Integration of PE and content Areas: highlighting vocabulary and connect it to different meanings across
different content areas.
• Language of the discipline applied to VAPA and PE

Ch. 11 • ELD: Language of the disciplines: Explain key points in each discipline
o The field of social studies includes many disciplines, each with its own set of language
demands.
o Social students may be the most difficult content area for English =language learners
because they bay be unfamiliar with any of the topics particular in relation to history.
o Many terms in social students are abstract, hard to translate, and culturally based.
o Social studies textbooks a curricula assume that students have a great deal of background
knowledge – knowledge that U.S. students accumulate over time from one grade level to the
next.
 o Many strategies and approaches are available for enhancing the learning experiences of
English language learners (ELLs) in social studies classroom of all types.
• Adaptations in disciplines: creating graphic organizers ahead of time
• Integration of PE and content Areas: highlighting vocabulary and connect it to different meanings across
different content areas.
• Language of the discipline applied to VAPA and PE

Ch. 12 Review and discuss learning for EL students across all disciplines.
List 5 key points that are new learning that you will use in instructional practice from this reading.
Reflect: How will you bring this research in to your professional practice?
• Every lesson must be accessible to all students.
• Every lesson can be improved in some way.
• Create engaging tasks.
• Rethink grading
• Adapting lessons
Many of these key points are practices I already try to include, but I think they are among some of the many
important lessons from the book. Making your content engaging and accessible to all is a very important
responsibility of the teacher. By doing this, learning and engagement increases and makes time in the classroom
more effective.