Author: Colleen Elep

It is pretty typical to wonder how newcomer students who are just starting to learn English acquire the language in a mainstream classroom. Educators often ask: what will the student even learn in the classroom if they cannot understand what I am saying? How can I even assess this student?

Most professional learning about English language learners (ELLs), or multilingual language learners (MLLs) address this topic by focusing on program adaptation and instructional tips. I’m not convinced that those approaches have always been effective, especially since we don’t often think about language acquisition from the perspective of the learner.

This blog will first focus on exactly how students learn English, or the language of instruction, in Ontario. We will then explore practical ways educators can enhance language acquisition through instruction and program adaptations, using a student-centred perspective.

How do We Learn a New Language?

Language learning is something that most Canadian teachers are familiar with to some degree. Even if you haven’t invested time in learning an additional language, you still live in a bilingual country where everything from road signs and toothpaste labels are in at least two different languages. At this point, you have probably learned a handful of French words and phrases, simply by reading and re-reading environmental print.

As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time language learning and travelling in places where English is not typically the first language spoken, I can confidently say that a lot of the best learning I have experienced comes from listening, attempting to decode environmental print, and having to interact with others in practical situations like asking for directions or purchasing something.

Yes, explicit instruction makes a big difference. When you take time to learn a new language in a class, study and complete activities from a language learning activity book, or consult a phrase book or digital translator, you can enter a linguistically foreign context armed with much more background knowledge that helps you to navigate situations more easily.

It is no different for newcomer students (students that have recently arrived to Canada for the first time) that enter a new country, community, school, and classroom. Many students come with some background knowledge of English learned in school or through media exposure. Others may not, and will be exposed to English for the first time during the time they join your classroom.

In either case, you will want to consider the environment you work in and the content you teach  to be two powerful pathways newcomer students can acquire English language skills.

A Quick Note on Content

It is important to note that much of the content you use will not teach English as a second or additional language explicitly, especially if you are teaching older students in the intermediate grades. Because you are teaching curriculum to a large and diverse group of students, it is important to reframe the way you think about how your teaching will land differently with a newcomer student.

One way to understand content based instruction to ELLs is to put yourself in their shoes. Find a piece of content on an academic topic in another language using a search engine. Watch a news report in a language you are completely unfamiliar with.

What information can you actually extract or learn from that text, or piece of content? What would you need to make that content more comprehensible?

We will explore how to reframe the content you teach by making it more comprehensible in the second part of this blog.

Language Acquisition through the Learning Environment

Let’s get back to focusing on the learning environment – how might a newcomer student acquire English by simply being in the classroom?

You have may have heard about the Reggio Emilia philosophy of peers being the “second teacher”, and the classroom being “the third teacher”. When an environment is set up effectively for learners with opportunities to explore and problem-solve, they can be active participants in their own learning.

While this concept has roots in learning in the early years, it can also be incredibly relevant to supporting language development in older, newcomer students that are acquiring English while learning alongside non-ELL peers in a mainstream class environment.

Perhaps more importantly, it leverages an additional teaching resource – the environment; in other words, your classroom is also doing some of the work! Consider “tweaking” your classroom for English language development by taking the following actions:

• Label common objects (ex. Whiteboard, clock, garbage can, computers, bins, etc.). You can even add labels in the home languages of your students if they have literacy skills in those languages.
• Include literacy materials around the class that address a range of different reading levels. For example, display non-fiction texts that have lots of features like subheadings, pictures, and table of contents. Have a selection of graphic novels and picture books that students can explore.
• Make a large scale timetable for students to reference, with visuals or symbols that support the subject being learned during a specific period.
• Provide opportunities for informal, low risk conversations among students in small groups or play games in large groups. Listening is a rich way for ELLs to acquire language, and all students benefit from activities that build community.
• Encourage all students in the class to use translation tools to bridge communication gaps in spontaneous conversation.
• Use the outdoors as much as possible, whether it is time for unstructured play and socializing or a guided walk through nature or the community. Language acquisition is powerful when the learning is experiential, and you are referring to concrete elements. The break from the classroom environment and tech also supports your students well-being.
• Have charts with common sentence starters and frequently used academic language (ex. transition words, mathematical vocabulary) posted around your room and refer to them frequently as you teach.
• Leverage phonics resources like sound walls in the classroom to help students, including ELLs, with their decoding skills.

The Learning Environment is Just a Starting Point

Setting up your learning environment to support language development for newcomer ELLs is just a starting point. The main takeaway is that you can support English language acquisition through “implicit” forms of instruction instead of relying solely on program adaptation and explicit instruction – which we will explore in this blog series!

It can seem overwhelming to have emergent speakers of English in your mainstream classroom, especially when you are balancing the needs of the rest of your class. As we have explored in the previous two parts of this blog series, it is critical to leverage the learning environment and student peers as part of your program. The third element involves critically examining and tweaking your direct instruction while always keeping language development in mind.

So what does the instruction you provide as a teacher look like when you have newcomer ELLs in your class who are just starting to learn the language of instruction? While there are many ways to approach this topic, I will focus on how to reframe content based instruction for all learners.

Critically Examine the Content you Plan to Teach

Re-examining the content you are going to teach, especially if you are a teacher of intermediate ELLs, is important. A few key questions to consider are:

• What are the language demands of the content?
• Will an early STEP ELL be able to understand the texts and media resources of the lesson?
• What can be done to make the content more comprehensible?
• What can I do in my teaching to make the content comprehensible?

When the learning is content based (Ex. Science or social studies), and reading is involved, encourage early STEP ELLs to use tools like multilingual dictionaries or translation tools. When students have literacy in their home language, it is an important and critical skill they can leverage to access the curriculum and continue building their literacy skills.

Offer simplified versions of the content when possible, or bring in media resources like videos and audio. Slow the pace of the video or audio, and use subtitles and text forms so that students can follow along as best they can develop phonological awareness in English.

Set Appropriate Learning Expectations to Assess

Setting learning expectations for ELLs that are aligned with STEP will help you be more intentional with your instruction and also provide you with a starting point for assessment. When you have a sense of which learning goals will support and challenge your ELLs, you can design tasks, report and assess with purpose.

To do this, consider where the student is on the STEP continua in the areas of reading, oral communication, and writing. Your school should have this information documented, or you can start by printing out the continua (you can find the different continua with a quick search or check out www.ergo-on.ca).

Then, consider the curriculum expectations you are teaching and plan to assess and develop an appropriate learning goal for the student. Here is an example:

Grade 7: Syntax and Sentence Structure

B3.1 use their knowledge of sentence types and forms to construct sentences that communicate ideas effectively, including using and creating complex sentences that combine phrases and clauses to express relationships among ideas.

Modified for a STEP 1 (Writing) student:

“Student will communicate their ideas using translanguaging tools and scaffolds like models and sentence frames to create simple sentences in English.”

Once you adapt learning expectations a few times, it becomes much easier to understand what you can do to scaffold instruction for ELLs.

Provide Ample Opportunities for ELLs to use Academic Language

ELLs will often acquire social or practical language first through play, conversations, and regular interactions with people in and outside of school. Academic language, or the use of words and vocabulary that are not often heard outside of a school context, can be a challenge for ELLs to acquire because these words are not heard as frequently.

Providing ample opportunities for ELLs (and all the students in your classroom) to speak and write less frequently used words is imperative for their academic success. You can do this by posting word walls or charts, providing sentence frames where they can utilize transition words, or structured group projects and presentations that will get students using academic language with purpose.

Here are some examples of activities that will enable students to use academic language in meaningful ways:

• Create a podcast with an interviewer and “expert”
• Script and perform a news report
• Write a blog post or news article
• Develop a game with science/social studies vocabulary for that unit

Here are a couple of resources that you can use to get ideas for sentence frames and questioning.

Blooms Taxonomy for ELLs:

Sentence Frames (created by S. Kim)

Monitor Progress in Language Acquisition

With the learning environment, peers, and direct instruction set up to support English language acquisition, you can monitor for growth and change using the STEP continua.

Keep in mind that language acquisition will vary depending on the student – each student is on their own unique and individual journey.

How will you know if an ELL is progressing? Remember that conversations, observations, and products – also known as triangulated evidence – will give you a sense of where they are. Notice when they respond differently in conversations, take risks in writing and speaking in class, and start socializing more with others.

Summing it Up

We are of course just scratching the surface when it comes to providing instructional support for ELLs in this short blog post. You will find no shortage of ideas on the topic from a number of prolific educators in the field, such as Tan Huynh, Diane Staehr-Fenner, and Oscar Corrigan, and Andrea Honigsfeld just to name a few.

What will you focus on to adapt instruction for the ELLs you are teaching?

Writing has become a hot topic for Ontario educators, with the new language curriculum emphasizing the importance of explicitly teaching specific language conventions to boost the written communication skills of students.

What I fear that has been lost in the race toward implementing structured literacy is the joy that comes with writing creatively. While it is undeniably important to know morphology, complex sentences, conjunctions, and all the different conventions of writing, what has always “hooked” me and many students I have taught is the ways in which we can use writing for artistic self expression.

The team of ESL/ELD educators I work with decided to plan a writing project that would explore the possibilities written expression across languages. Funded by the Council of Ontario Directors of Education (CODE), we selected several classes across the board to participate in a learning cycle that would culminate in an exhibition of student work. For the purpose of gauging impact and effect, we chose middle school classes from French Immersion, mainstream, and English language learner contexts. One group was exclusively students in English language development programs, meaning that they had significant interruptions to their formal schooling.

Learning and Working with Living Hyphen

To lead the workshops, we brought in Living Hyphen, a Toronto-based arts organization dedicated to empowering the voices of diverse communities through writing. Living Hyphen’s website is an exciting place, filled with dates of upcoming sessions and opportunities to purchase their books and magazines.

I first learned about Living Hyphen with the provincial group of educators I work with in the field of language acquisition,  ESL/ELD Resource Group of Ontario (ERGO). At a meeting last year, Justine Abigail Yu, the founder, delivered a presentation and writing workshop on supporting multilingual students in sharing their own lived experiences through creative writing.

We invited her to lead workshops for a project we wanted to organize for several classes in my board. In her relaxed, engaging, and unique workshops, students explored multiple writing prompts that brought out the nuances of their home language, the complexity of their identities, and their personal connections with place.

Some of the writing prompts included:

Tell me where you’re from without telling me where you’re from.

What brings you comfort?

While these prompts seem simple, they were powerful ways to get kids writing. I was actually surprised how engaged kids could be with just a pen and a notebook – a radical shift from the world of technological tools, graphic organizers, and multi-step activities we often work so hard to plan for classes.

Perhaps most importantly, students were excited to write and engaged with the work. While it does always help to have someone new in your classroom, Justine brought her skills of relationship building and her unique perspective as a writer and activist to motivate students toward producing amazing ideas to build upon later.

And yes, every student in the class could participate and find their entry point into the writing. Of course, you may need to provide scaffolds for students – translators, scribing, and additional prompting – but by the end every student produced something new.

By the end of the workshop, students had a notebook full of brainstorms and ideas they could evolve into longer, polished pieces.

After the Workshop

When the workshops were finished, we were tasked with the very “teacherly” task of motivating students to develop their brainstorms into a polished piece of written work and a piece of art. To add a sense of purpose, we decided to create an anthology of student writing just as Living Hyphen had done with their writers.

We also teamed up with our Empowering Modern Learners team, who went to each class and provided a workshop on how to use different tech tools to create video and digital art to compliment their writing. Students were excited to learn about the features of Adobe Express: students can easily make narrated videos with their slides.

Finally, we brought in a variety of art supplies for students to experiment with. Students created paintings and sculptures to display alongside their poems.

The final and most exciting step is to take the students to the Peel Archive and Museum of Art to exhibit their work to their families. There is an existing exhibit that parallels the student’s work, done by adults, so we will be contributing art and work across generations.

In part one of my post, I talked about the importance of breaking from narratives about the outdoors that do not serve the communities we teach. What are some next steps we can take toward helping students feel a sense of belonging in the Canadian outdoors?

We can start by reimagining outdoor learning from a stance of cultural responsiveness.

In her book, Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain, Zaretta Hammond provides an anti-oppressive and anti-racist framework for teaching culturally and linguistically diverse learners. While I will even attempt to summarize her entire work, I want to draw your attention to a few key ideas that will help us make our final learning goal actionable.

Based on Hammond’s framework for culturally responsive teaching, here are 6 approaches we can use as outdoor educators to support student well being.

1. Know and Own your Privilege

To assume a culturally responsive stance, it is important to be aware of your own social position in the outdoors. Explore the following questions:

What is your relationship with the land you inhabit?

What is your proximity to power?

How might you use your understanding of your intersected identities to rethink the way you plan and program for learners?

You can use tools like the Wheel of Power and Privilege to reflect on your social position so you can be better prepared to practice compassion and listen openly to others, especially the students you work with.

2. Leverage Representation to reduce social and emotional stress

Studies over the last 20 years indicate that historically, racialized and marginalized groups are underrepresented in the outdoors. As a kid, I remember reading the popular story of outdoor survival, Hatchet, and then still seeing it taught in schools as a much older educator. Does anyone here know that book? It’s absolutely riveting – but there are lots of other great choices to offer students in today’s increasingly diverse publishing world.

Representation matters, and when students see and hear stories where they can see themselves and their community in an authentic way, the impact is powerful. And I want to take a moment to emphasize the importance of authenticity, because there are many books that will tell the same stories but simply change the colour of the character’s skin, especially in picture books.

The publishing industry, like many other media platforms, have started to diversify its cent. As someone who has rarely ever seen people that look like me show up in books and media, I can personally attest that the shift in representation has been exciting and identity affirming.

3. Recognize the difference between individualism & collectivism and how they show up in different activities.

Let’s move on to the next culturally responsive approach, which is to recognize the difference between individualism and collectivism, and how they show up in different activities.

Individualism is typically associated with Western societies that value traits like independence, competition, and achievement without any outside help. Many cultures outside of Canada are more oriented toward collectivism, which is associated with interdependence and community.

We don’t always realize it, but the games we play and the activities we plan often reflect deep cultural values. Many outdoor activities celebrate and explore individualism, conquest, aggression and competition – which may not be valued by all communities. As a result, some students may experience a lot of discomfort when engaging in such activities.

For a more culturally responsive approach, incorporate outdoor activities that encourage community building, self-reflection, and personal wellness. Providing different options for kids to choose from can go a long way in fostering a connection between your students and the natural world.

4. Broaden your understanding of how different communities interact with the outdoors.

This brings me to the next approach, which is to broaden your understanding of how different communities interact with outdoor spaces.

It is a powerful practice to honour the different ways students and their families already engage with the outdoors as a foundation for learning.

People from different cultures bring different knowledge about the outdoors and the environment. As an educator, it is totally worthwhile to talk with students about what they do with their families outside, what types of clothing they wear in different conditions, and how their communities connect with and interpret nature.

They may camp, play sports, visit the beach, picnic, play music, or gather in large groups. Some communities may cope with environmental challenges differently, especially if they have arrived from a climate that is significantly different from Canada’s.

It is important to understand these differences so we can better respond to student needs and help them to feel more confident in challenging physical environments. Talking about nature in this way also builds cultural competence, and positions students as partners in learning with educators.

5. Make instructions, activities, & information comprehensible and relevant to students and families.

Next, let’s talk about the importance of making instructions, activities, and information comprehensible and relevant to students and families. As a teacher of multilingual learners, I cannot stress enough how important it is to bridge communication gaps between the school and home. In an outdoor learning context, where there is often an element of risk, maintaining clear communication is critical.

In my school board, more than half the learners are multilingual and in the process of acquiring proficiency in English. They often have families that are also learning the dominant languages in Canada. It is becoming increasingly commonplace for students to arrive with limited and interrupted schooling due to environmental events and political crises.

When we are engaging in land based and outdoor activities, it is important to know linguistic variability among students so you can provide appropriate scaffolding to make the learning, information, and instructions comprehensible.

Create a supported environment by pairing or connecting same language speakers during lessons, adjusting the pace of your speaking, or by using physical gestures to help students understand whatever activity you are engaging in.

Communicating with families about outdoor learning in the school in the languages spoken throughout the community may also help families feel more secure and confident when field trips and offsite learning is being offered. They will also know more about the role of outdoor learning in their child’s education.

6. Create supportive, trauma-informed environments that cultivate a desire to explore, play, take risks, and experience awe.

Finally, I want to talk about the last approach: create supportive, trauma-informed environments that cultivate a desire to explore, take risks, and experience awe.

Newcomers to Canada and marginalized communities often experience economic and physical barriers to outdoor spaces and may not come with the same background experiences as their peers. Though outdoor learning challenges that involve risky play are excellent ways for students to build confidence and problem solving skills, it is important to understand that some students may approach the activity much differently based on their lived experience and background knowledge.  Challenge and support students based on their level of safety and comfort.

Take into consideration that some students may have complex relationships with recreation and play. This is something I struggle with personally as a child of immigrants. My parents worked a lot, especially during time of economic uncertainty, and play and relaxation was something I believed needed to be “earned” or “worked for”.

In her book “Permission to Come Home” – which I recommend for any of my East and Southeast Asian colleagues here today – Psychologist Dr. Jenny T. Wang writes about the difficulty many communities have accessing play as a result of learning in childhood that play must be postponed for survival. As educators we can use this awareness to support students in finding their way to play so they can experience its gifts: rest, joy, creativity, and the freedom to explore and experience awe in nature.

Finally, with any activity, know your learner, especially if they have experienced recent or significant trauma that may impact the way they show up in the outdoor learning environment. Leverage nature as a resource for practicing activities that reduce anxiety or provide an outlet for releasing difficult emotions, such as meditation or other sensory activities.

Finding your place as an outdoor educator can be a challenge at first. You may not immediately see the connections between the outdoors and the subjects you teach. You may also be curious about which pedagogical frameworks and approaches will make sense for your classroom.

This is where an organization like Take Me Outside can make a critical difference. Take Me Outside (TMO) is a Canadian education organization dedicated to getting students and educators engaged with outdoor learning. What is wonderful about TMO is the various events, professional learning sessions, and materials it offers educators in a variety of contexts.

I highly recommend any and every educator to explore TMO’s website to see the full range of resources and activities they have organized for educators. The work is inspiring and fulsome.

I had the unique opportunity of joining TMO for their annual conference this year. Jade, a team member with boundless energy and passion for outdoor learning, invited me to present on the topic of student well-being at the conference months before the event took place. She had found a blog post that a colleague and I had co-authored about inclusion and belonging in the outdoors, and was interested in having us share our work.

To be honest, I was surprised and a little intimidated by the offer: as someone that doesn’t actually work in an outdoor education department or taken their outdoor education additional qualification course, I felt a bit underprepared. And against all of my rational thoughts – I agreed.

What I did not expect was the journey of learning I would undertake to write the presentation. And I certainly did not imagine how transformative a conference could be when I arrived.

The Journey

Presenting and facilitating professional learning isn’t something new for me, but researching and writing an entire presentation for hundreds – in an area I felt like I had very little expertise – is a whole new ballgame. I listened to countless audiobooks about the outdoors, read academic papers and reports, took a wellness course, and even signed up for an Outdoor Learning AQ (which I ended up dropping when I realized it was not actually meeting my needs). Imposter syndrome was in full effect, and I used every opportunity to connect my learning to this conference presentation.

One surprise I had along the way was how much I enjoyed the process of preparation. I learned things so seemingly unrelated from my regular sandbox of English literacy and language learning, which was motivating and exciting. The personal wellness course I took with an incredible Toronto studio, SAOR, introduced me to a whole body of knowledge. Eventually, all the learning and reading started to intersect with my day-to-day work.

I re-wrote and re-published our original blog, presented at my board’s early years conference, and continued experimenting with different ideas in my writing. What started as a gracious invitation to share ideas turned into a full blown passion project that changed the trajectory of my professional growth.

The Conference

The Take Me Outside Conference exceeded my expectations. The event took place at the spectacular Banff Centre in Alberta, nestled high in the mountains with unreal views, access to trails, and wonderful food. I took full advantage of my local’s professional learning pathways to get the release time for the event.

Outdoor educators are among the friendliest, open-minded, and joyful group of people you will meet. While I ended up attending the conference on my own, I had no problem making new friends and connecting with other educators across the country.

The learning was as inspiring as the scenery that surrounded the conference centre. Workshops on the pillars of well-being, the environment and climate change, and Indigenous learning took place outdoors in the forests and seemingly unrelenting sunshine we were met with that entire week.

I learned the story and thinking behind Elder Albert Marshall and Louise Zimanyi’s wondrous picture book, “Walking Together”. Dr. Chuk Odenigbe gave a deeply insightful and beautiful talk on the issues of environmental racism, and nature as place of therapy and despair.

As one of the final presenters, there was an element of excitement and anxiety that accompanied me over the days of the conference. I fussed over my presentation, rehearsed, and took long walks. By the time I was up – I realized I had absolutely nothing to worry about. I was in front of one of the most warm, welcoming, and supportive groups of professionals I think I will ever meet. I had so many kind words of encouragement from my new friends, and hundreds of smiles from my fellow educators. We talked about the importance of holding space for each other and the students we teach, and how cultural responsiveness can be a starting point for fostering connections between diverse students and the outdoors.

The Aftermath

I left the conference with so many feelings of excitement, connectedness, and insights about learning from the land. I have new goals for my teaching practice, and a whole new perspective on what it takes to build educator capacity on critical topics related to land based learning and play. I feel like I am right at the beginning.