Albertazzi Inspiration

Becky Albertazzi Home Learn More Standards Inspiration About the Author

What Can You Unlock With the Power of Talk?

Edutopia. 2016,. (September 20). Oracy in the Classroom: Strategies for Effective Talk. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ADAY9AQm54

#1- ELL Shadowing Inspiration

In the Spring of 2017, Napa Valley Unified had schools participate in ELL Shadowing. ELL Shadowing is a protocol in which teachers observed the amount of talking done by second language learners within a given hour.

ELL Shadowing is a protocol created by second language acquisition expert Ivannia Soto from Whittier College to study the language and the achievement gap for second language learners. Educators agree that English learners need to use the language in order to become proficient, however, that is not what is happening in most schools.

"In fact, English-language learners spend less than 2 percent of the school day improving their academic oral language, she says, even though it’s a critical foundation of literacy."

Teachers, administrators, and academic specialists were assigned an ELL student to shadow for one hour. Every 5 minutes, the observer was to note, who was talking, the teacher or the student? Was the student listening? Were they off task? The observations complied and the results were telling. Here are the results:

1379 observations were made.
63% of talk is done by teachers.
46% of talk is done by teachers to the whole class.
18% is student-to-student talk.
78% of the time observed, the ELL student was not talking.

The data clearly shows that teachers do most of the talking. However, this data does have its limitations.

What are the students talking about?
Are these one-word answers?
Are they using academic language?
When one student is talking, what are the rest of the students doing?

This ELL Shadowing data exposed how little students were actually talking in class. This data got me thinking. How can we expect students to speak fluently if they aren't given the opportunity to practice the language? Knowing that speaking comes before reading and writing, how will they ever learn to read and write fluently without oral language? This line of questioning led me to my action research topic.

Action Research Abstract

Approximately 25% of students in California identify as English Language Learners. In 2013-2014, ELLs scored only 41 percent proficient or advanced compared to English-only students scoring 65 percent proficient, a difference of 24 percentage points. In various studies about the effect of oral language on reading skills research has found that reading fluency was a powerful predictor of reading comprehension. Yet, for ELL student oral language skills also play a key role in reading acquisition. For the scope of this action research, specifically how will increasing academic oral language affect reading fluency? To increase academic oral fluency, students were provided with sentence and response stems that included academic language related to content and academic language functions which would include summarizing, analyzing, questioning and clarifying. This mixed methods study design analyzed quantitative data from reading fluency tests and qualitative data based on student responses in a discussion group. Students showed an average of twenty words per minute growth between the pre and post reading fluency test. The study showed a positive relationship between academic oral fluency and reading fluency.

#2 -Oracy Inspiration

What is Oracy? I was introduced to the idea of Oracy, or the ablitity to express oneself fluently throught the spoken word, in the Edutopia video above. The video highlights School 21, a public school in Stratford, England in which they would like Oracy to be on the same importance level as reading and writing.

"Speaking is a huge priority," stresses Amy Gaunt, a Year 3 teacher. "It's one of the biggest indicators of success later in life. It's important in terms of their employability as they get older. It's important in terms of wellbeing. If children aren't able to express themselves and communicate how they're feeling, they're not going to be able to be successful members of society."

The video shows eloquent students engaging in high level academic conversations. These conversations don't happen by accident, nor are they a result from their British upbringing. These conversations were intentionally, planned and structured. These students were systematically taught how to debate, argue effectively, listen, and build onto each other's ideas. These students were expected, to talk multiple times, in every subject, every day.

Although many of these students are second language learners, this was only about language learners. This was about elevating the language for everyone. This is about empowering student to question, express themselves and feel confident with their voice.

I watched the video several times. The video is accompanied by an article about their Oracy project. I soon realized that this went beyond increasing the opportunities for talk, but systematically teaching student how to communicate.

I was so inspired, I started to explore other resources like:

Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk that Fosters Thinking & Content Understandings by Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford

Content-Area Conversations by
Douglas Fisher, Nancy Frey, and Carol Rothenberg- Planning purposeful academic conversations to improve learning.

Making Thinking Visible by Ron Ritchhart, Mark Church & Karin Morrison- A great book about creating conversations to spark inquiry.

All of these text promoted the importance of students using academic language. Not just to improve language skills. But to improve all skills.

I was intrigued. Could it be true? Could increasing academic conversation increase overall academic performance?

Inspired Again...

What does research say about teaching kids to read? Nancy Fisher, Douglas Frey & John Hattie explore that topic in their book, Visible Thinking for Literacy. This text explores researched based literacy strategies. As I compiled information and strategies for my capstone, I kept their expertise in mind when choosing tried and true strategies like; Think-Pair-Share, Student Talk, and Clarity of protocols. Watch the video below to see a summary of their research.

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