Short on Time? Prioritize Learning Processes Over Content Overload
As educators of multilingual students, we often face the challenge of balancing rigorous academic content with the diverse needs of our learners. In the hustle of daily teaching, it’s easy to get caught up in the pressure to cover a vast curriculum. However, focusing on learning processes rather than content overload can significantly enhance the learning experience for our students.
Understanding the Importance of Learning Processes
Research highlights that the brain learns language through two primary pathways: receptive skills (listening and reading) and productive skills (speaking and writing). These pathways are critical for developing proficiency in a second language and for academic success. When we prioritize these learning processes, we create a more effective and engaging learning environment.
Receptive Skills: Building a Strong Foundation
Receptive skills lay the groundwork for understanding new information. Here are effective strategies to enhance these skills in your classroom, along with examples:
Visual Aids: Use images, charts, and graphic organizers to help students connect ideas and concepts.
Example: When introducing a unit on ecosystems, use a graphic organizer like a concept map to visually represent the relationships between producers, consumers, and decomposers.
Highlighting Key Details: Encourage students to highlight or underline key details in texts during reading activities. This helps them focus on essential information.
Example: Provide students with a passage about a historical event and have them highlight key dates, names, and events, which aids comprehension and retention.
Contextual Learning: Teach students to use context clues from the surrounding text to infer meanings, and incorporate cognates to facilitate understanding.
Example: Provide a passage with unfamiliar vocabulary alongside cognates. For instance, if students encounter the word "information," they can recognize "información" in Spanish, helping them infer meaning from context.
Productive Skills: Making Learning Visible
Once students have grasped foundational concepts, it’s essential to focus on productive skills, where students express their understanding. Here are some strategies to promote productive skills with examples:
Collaborative Learning: Engage students in group activities where they can share ideas, enhancing their speaking and writing skills.
Example: Have students work in pairs to create a poster that summarizes a recent lesson. They can present their poster to the class, practicing both their speaking and listening skills.
Kagan Strategies: Implement cooperative learning strategies to promote interaction and engagement.
Example: Use the "Rally Robin" strategy, where students take turns sharing ideas in pairs about a topic. This fosters collaboration and ensures that every student participates actively.
Thinking Maps: Utilize thinking maps to help students organize their thoughts and visually represent their understanding.
Example: After reading a text, students can create a Circle Map. In the inner circle, they write the main idea, and in the outer circle, they fill in supporting details that reinforce this central concept. This visual representation helps them see the connection between key details and the overarching idea.
Implementing TWRLS for Effective Learning
The TWRLS framework—Think, Write, Read, Listen, Speak—provides a structured approach to integrating these receptive and productive skills into a single lesson. Here’s how to apply TWRLS effectively while reminding teachers to keep thinking at the forefront throughout the lesson:
Think: Activate prior knowledge and set learning goals.
Example: Begin the lesson by discussing the concept of main ideas and key details. Ask students, “What do we need to look for in a text to find the main idea?” Use this opportunity to keep students focused on their thinking throughout the lesson.
Write: Have students create a Circle Map to identify the key details and main idea of the content they are reading.
Example: Students fill in the center of the Circle Map with the main idea and branch out to include supporting details in the outer circle. This reinforces their understanding of how the details connect to the overarching concept.
Read: Provide students with a text aligned with the lesson's theme, allowing them to practice identifying key details and the main idea.
Example: Distribute a short article related to the topic. Students should read and highlight key details that will help them determine the main idea.
Listen: Facilitate listening exercises that promote comprehension and engagement using Kagan strategies like Rally Robin.
Example: In a Rally Robin activity, students can take turns sharing their identified key details and main ideas with a partner. While they discuss, provide students with sentence frames, such as "The main idea is ___" and "A key detail to support the main idea is ____."
Speak: Create opportunities for students to articulate their ideas using the sentence frames introduced during the listening phase.
Example: After the Rally Robin activity, ask students to present their findings to the class using the sentence frames. This helps them communicate their thoughts clearly and effectively.
The TWRLS Look-For Chart serves as a practical guide for educators to observe and assess student engagement during lessons. Use this chart to enhance students' opportunities to access grade-level texts by strengthening their pathways to reading comprehension.
In our fast-paced educational environment, it is crucial to prioritize learning processes over content overload, especially for our multilingual students. By focusing on receptive and productive skills and utilizing the TWRLS framework, specialists for multilingual learners can work smarter, not harder. This framework allows for thoughtful planning that can be applied across multiple grade levels, making it adaptable to any content area.
By purposefully providing opportunities to build receptive and productive skills, educators solidify learning in the brain and support non-EL teachers without them overly relying on EL specialists. Students can transfer their learning and access comprehensible input in both specialized language instruction and general education classes.
Let’s empower our students to thrive by simplifying our teaching methods and fostering a dynamic learning experience that leads to independent learning.
Questions for Reflection:
How can you implement the TWRLS framework in your classroom?
What strategies can you use to differentiate instruction for multilingual learners?
How will you assess understanding of key details and main ideas using TWRLS?
References
Echevarria, J., Vogt, M. E., & Short, D. J. (2017). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP model (4th ed.). Pearson.
Grabe, W., & Stoller, F. L. (2011). Teaching and researching reading. Pearson Education.
Harmer, J. (2007). The practice of English language teaching. Pearson Longman.
Sousa, D. A. (2016). How the brain learns (5th ed.). Corwin Press.
Teyechea, N. (2024). Prioritize learning processes over content overload. Finita Teachers. Retrieved from https://www.finitateachers.com/blog
