Navigating the Common Core with English Language Learners. Sypnieski Katie

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      2. They are all accessible to Intermediate and Advanced English Language Learners. Some may not be practical for very early ELL Beginners to complete in English. However, if the teacher or an aide speaks the home language of the student, then there is value in having him/her do these activities in that language to help them develop skills they can apply to learning English. We need to “keep our eyes on the prize,” which is helping our students acquire English skills as quickly as possible. On more than one occasion, their use of a home language will likely be a very effective means to that end.

      3. The strategies and lessons we'll be recommending also correspond to specific skills listed in the Common Core Standards themselves.

      You will also find that many of the teaching ideas in this chapter and throughout the book emphasize what researchers have identified as four key qualities that encourage the development of intrinsic motivation:

      1. Autonomy: Having some degree of control over what needs to happen and how it can be done

      2. Competence: Feeling that one has the ability to be successful in doing it

      3. Relatedness: Feeling connected to others, and feeling cared about by people whom they respect

      4. Relevance: Seeing work as interesting and useful to their present lives and/or hopes for the future83

      In our last book, The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide, we also shared specific lessons – on the advantages of being bilingual or multilingual and another on the qualities of a successful language learner – designed to help ELL students develop further intrinsic motivation for learning a new language.84

      These “skills and dispositions,” taught in the context of encouraging intrinsic motivation, are important for all learners. They are especially critical to apply in the ELL classroom because of the extra challenges most of our students face: They are adapting to a new culture, customs, and country; they are learning the content knowledge all the other students are learning while at the same time acquiring a new, difficult-to-learn language; some might be recovering from trauma they experienced in their home countries; and a number are coming from uneven and limited academic backgrounds. Many of our ELL students, because of their background, might very well have a number of these skills and dispositions – perseverance, for example – precisely because of the previous challenges they have faced. Yet, they may need help in learning how to channel those mindsets into an academic context.

      We teach these same skills and dispositions to our mainstream students, as well. So even though these lessons and strategies are accessible to ELLs, please do not hesitate to use them with your non-ELL students, too – either as they are or in a modified form.

      Skills

      Goal-setting, metacognition, critical thinking, and creativity/innovation are the four skills considered most important for effective learning.

      Goal-setting

      Extensive research has shown that a scaffolded and supported goal-setting process, particularly one where students choose their own goals, enhances student motivation and academic achievement85 and specifically helps in developing second-language proficiency.86

      Researchers typically divide goals into two types – learning goals (also known as mastery goals) and performance goals. Learning goals are motivated by a desire to increase one's skills and ability in an area or in accomplishing a task, while performance goals tend to be more motivated by a desire for recognition – from friends, teachers, or family – and a competitive desire to “be better” than others. Students have been found to persist more when they face obstacles if they are focusing on learning, rather than on performance goals.87

      This heightened level of perseverance is generated because learning goals can often be more likely achieved by effort without a finite end point (“I want to be more focused in class” or “I want to speak English more clearly and with more confidence”). Performance goals are more easily attributed to innate ability with a more definitive ending – that is also based on an outsider recognizing it – so a student can give up on working toward achieving it more easily if it doesn't appear in reach at some point (“I want to get an ‘A’ this semester” or “I want to read 10 books this semester”) or cease trying once it's assured.

      Interestingly, those who make a higher priority of learning goals have been shown to achieve higher performance levels than those who actually emphasize performance goals.88 When students are focused on a performance goal, they tend to pay less attention to “understanding” and more on “the score.” For example, one of the formative assessment tools we regularly use with our students is having them read passages to us – individually – for a minute each and then count the number of words they read accurately, while at the same time noting their level of prosody (reading with feeling and intonation). A performance-goal-oriented student might try to rush through this evaluation of reading fluency to get the highest word count number possible, notwithstanding our cautions about accuracy and prosody, and may not care if they know the meaning of many the words they are reading. On the other hand, a student with a learning goal of improving their reading comprehension, fluency, and prosody is likely to have a much higher increase in their overall literacy level.

That is not to say that performance goals are evil. We live in the world as it is, not the world as we would like it to be. In the world as it is, most school cultures (and the culture outside the four walls of educational institutions) put a high value on performance goals – grades, test scores, and so forth. As you will see in the Goal Setting and Planning Sheet (see Exhibit 2.1), the form does include space for one performance goal, with several other spaces for learning ones. As with most things, it's not a question of either/or. Rather, it's more of a question of where we place an emphasis. Researchers suggest that including a performance goal is fine as long as the person “has the knowledge to attain it.”89 This is just one of many reasons we began this section discussing a “scaffolded and supported” goal-setting process. Teachers can play a key role in helping students choose challenging, yet realistic, goals. However, it's critical that students take the lead in setting their goals because of the effect it can have on increasing intrinsic motivation, its effectiveness in helping them more ably suppress distractions, and its impact on strengthening perseverance.90

      Recent research suggests that self-perception also plays a major role in accomplishing goals, and that it might be valuable to say, “I am a writer, and will learn the skills needed to write better in English over the next two months” instead of just saying “I will learn the skills needed to be better in English over the next two months.”91

      The next “Goal-Setting Lesson Plan” provides step-by-step instructions on how to apply these points in the classroom. You can also find additional lesson plans and other resources about goals in our previous book, The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide92 and in Larry's books, Helping Students Motivate Themselves,93 Self-Driven Learning,94 and Building a Community of Self-Motivated Learners.95

      Goal-setting Lesson Plan

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