Supporting MLLs

Exhibited by:

• Mary Phelan

PLO Attended:

• Manhattan FSC Workshop for ELL Leads – District 3 and District 4

Coached by:

• Fanny Castro

Supporting MLLs - The Dictogloss

The dictogloss is a classroom dictation activity where participants reconstruct(recreate) a text, or transcription from an audio clip, using the four modalities of speaking, listening, reading, writing. It is used to provide MLLs (multilingual learners) opportunities to listen, talk, read, write, make notes, reflect on language use, clarify content, and use academic language for themselves.

Goal: to create a reconstruction that is nearly identical to the original text/transcription

→ with a focus on sentence structure, vocabulary, etc.

STEPS to Conducting a Dictogloss:

1. Preparation - introduce the topic, the language focus, and the key vocabulary.

1. Dictation - read the text at a speed a little bit slower than native speaker speed. Read the text again at native speaker speed and on the second reading students individually make very brief notes (sentence fragments) on main ideas. Remember that the purpose is to get the main ideas, not every word exactly as it appears in the text, so do not read too slowly.

1. Reconstruction - the students work in pairs and then fours to compare notes and write a shared version of the text, editing for accurate punctuation, spelling and inclusion of the main ideas.

1. Analysis and correction - the students compare reconstructions with other groups and with the original. Discuss the differences. Dictogloss takes about 1 hour if done carefully.

PLO:

District 3 ELL Professional Learning Cycle - Become Commanding--Demystifying NYSESLAT Inform Planning

PLO Goals:

My goals for attending the Become Commanding--Demystifying NYSESLAT to Inform Planning PLO were as follows:

• Have all of my students, who at the time were long-term MLLs test commanding on the NYSESLAT
• Learn new strategies and activities that I could share with the full-staff
• Improve the writing skills of my MLLs through the implementation of fun and exciting writing strategies

PLO Learnings:

We covered quite a lot during our session together. We analyzed the linguistic demands at each performance level for the four modalities of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. We discussed the capabilities of a student at each proficiency level prior to becoming commanding. And, we also participated in an experiential learning of several strategies that can be utilized in the classroom to insure language growth. These strategies included the following:

• using the dictogloss
• teaching factual, interpretive, and evaluative questions
• understanding and scaffolding the writing of complex sentences
• using echo reading

Implementation of Techniques and Practices:

Upon completion of the PLO, I devised a plan to share my learning with the full-staff at MS 258, Community Action School. Being the ENL teacher, I provide the staff with professional development meetings four times per year that focus on strategies that could be easily implemented in the content classrooms. Following my meetings, where I hope to create an experiential learning experience, I send out a Google Form survey in order to collect feedback from my peers. Based on this feedback, I may choose to alter the focus of my next session. I also make myself quite available for anyone that may wish to carry out the strategies I present. And, of course, all materials are shared with the staff via an online folder.

Aside from teaching my peers how they can utilize these strategies in their own classrooms, I have implemented the dictogloss strategy within my classroom numerous times.

Impact:

As a result of implementing the dictogloss activity in my classrooms, my students have showed changes in their writing samples. They were also, while completing the reconstruction portion of the activity, able to utilize their deep understanding of complex sentence structure. They were prompted, if they could not remember exactly what was shared, to use their knowledge of sentence structure to construct a complex sentence that would appropriately fill that gap. And, lastly, students were not working alone. The dictogloss allowed students to collaborate. This is highly useful for MLLs as they grow their English language skills.

Conclusion:

I have seen nothing but positive outcomes as a result of implementing the dictogloss. I was asked to observe the social studies teacher and his special education co-teacher use the strategy within their classroom last year. The students were incredibly engaged and highly motivated to “beat” the other groups by developing the best reconstruction of the original text.

Within my own classes, I have seen student writing improve. And, I have heard, through written and verbal reflections of the process that it was beneficial to their understanding of the text/audio. Students could fully grasp a difficult concept (The Danger of a Single Story) through repetition and collaboration with their peers throughout the reconstruction stage of the dictogloss.

Next Steps:

Seeing as this strategy was not reintroduced this year, I am unsure as to whether or not any of my coworkers have continued working with it. I have, but I would love for my peers to continue to manipulate the strategies I present to them in order to mold them to fit their own needs. I plan to reintroduce the dictogloss strategy during an early in the year professional development meeting at MS 258, Community Action School.