Teacher, do you find it challenging to strike the right balance between offering support and nurturing students' independence in their language acquisition?

In this enlightening episode, we welcome to the show, the brilliant Dr. Lillian Ardell of Language Matters. Host Beth Vaucher and Dr. Ardell delve into the art of linguistic scaffolding and oracy to help you transform your classroom. Discover how to harness the power of linguistic scaffolds to propel your ELL students forward, boost their confidence, and create a dynamic classroom environment where language learning becomes an exciting journey. Join us as we aim to equip you with valuable tools to unlock your ELL students' full potential!

Resources:

• ⁠⁠⁠Join the Equipping ELLs Membership (We have everything you need for your school year!)
• Shop our TpT Store
• Language Matters
• Follow Dr. Lillian Ardell on Instagram
• Connect with Dr. Lillian Ardell on LinkedIn
• Blogpost on Disrupting the Monolingual Bias
• Workshop for Reading Comprehension

So today, though, we are going to be talking about scaffolds and specifically linguistic scaffolds. So why don't you dive into that topic and share just a little bit about what our linguistic scaffolds, what are not. What does that mean? When we talk about linguistic scaffolds? Great question. So I know that a lot of the audience are EFL teachers. And so your default is to think about language. Not the level of instruction. I'm your people. I'm always that way. And I also know that the purview of an esl teacher is to support non language specialized teachers that do not have language as top of mind. And so. That type of professional will think of a scaffold as okay, that gradual release model grouping is a scaffold. Maybe they'll throw some vocabulary up there or. Have the understanding of a sentence stem, but it really is rather limited because they want to always hang on to those sentence stems and they don't know when the appropriate time is to remove that scaffold. So let me dial back and say. Not all scaffolds are linguistic, and here are sort of the criteria that I like to go through for it to count as a linguistic scaffold. The scaffold in some way has to meaningfully move a learner along the proficiency spectrum. That's the first. Super helpful. Second thing you have to see that students are engaging in more output. Verbal output, written output that you're hearing or learning more from. The student on the basis of using that scaffold, so that's where conversation sticks to help them be able to participate in the conversation is a really powerful linguistic scaffold. How come because you're hearing from your students. Right. A third thing I would say is that in some ways. It has to have linguistic equity as the backbone, as the foundation. So when I talk about linguistic equity. I say who's taking the airtime up in the room? Are you involving meaningfully you're more emerging or newcomer students. Which also goes back to that idea of attitudes about the learners themselves. If a teacher is sitting there thinking they don't have the language, how can they possibly communicate or participate in this classroom. Then a linguistic scaffold is a shorthand way to start to involve a learner to feel like they belong there and they have rights to the airtime. I'll say that again that student belongs in the classroom talk and they also have rights to the airtime. Wow. I love that. And going back to what you were doing your research on and really hitting on that point. I've talked about that many times here in this podcast of just that assets based approach is so. Necessary before we even begin to think about the work we're going to be doing with our students. It's really about looking at us as a teacher. And saying, how do I see these students and the gifts they're bringing in my classroom, or am I seeing it like you say, oh, well, they don't have the language, like they can't participate. They can't do these things. And we're already just disregarding them. I think what's nice about the linguistic scaffold is you can start to do the practice and almost reverse engineer the negative attitude into an asset one, because once you start to see that learners do have things to say and that they blow you away and surprise you, it will be harder. To hang on to the story that they don't know or they can't participate because they just proved you wrong. Yes. That's how I think all of us have that story. That student we can think of where we think that time, that maybe we thought they didn't have it in and they just shocked us. And we're like, okay. This is one of the most rewarding things about teaching in my opinion, is just seeing allow yourself to invite yourself to be blown away. Absolutely. I love that. So we're going to get into something else and think about it. Why don't you share? Maybe just I know you said. The conversation sticks. It's a great scaffold. You have maybe two or three other just quick suggestions you can give that you don't have to go in depth of what they are. But just maybe to spark some ideas for our listeners. Yeah. So I would think that an esl teacher is hip to a language objective. So I can speak a little bit about the role of language objectives and linguistics scaffolds. So here's a bad one. Let me start with a bad one, and then we'll move into a good one. Okay. The language objective would be something like I will use linguistic scaffold in my math talk group today. Super vague, very generic. A colleague that looks at that lesson plan isn't going to understand anything more about it. So we want to move away from vague, and we want to get really specific. Here would be a better one. The students will explain. Orally and in writing, so that might be one. The algorithm for that math problem. The students will use the language of explaining, such as. I found it by or my data showed me this. So then you're actually inserting the sound bite right there. Orally. Here's another one. My emerging students will explain. So now you've labeled the actual student that you're going to be focusing on. For that one, my emerging students will explain using the following two vocabulary words algorithm and the preposition by. Okay, so what I like about those is it's setting you up for drilling. Into the language function, which. We could have a whole conversation about language functions and how they're done poorly, how they're done moderately, and how you can really thrive in a language function space. Yeah. You're then offering the exact language that you could model, because I just want to point out to an esl teacher, you are giving free professional development to your colleagues every time you're in their classroom. And I want you to sit in that power and recognize that you're doing a few things. Not only are you service providers to your English learners. You're also modeling good language teaching practices for a colleague that if they're dialed in enough. They're actually benefiting. So if they can see on the lesson plan what a successful language objective looks like and observe how you're doing that with a small group of students. You have just built greater capacity through linguistics Council. Absolutely. I love that. So a few quickly, more because I do want to actually answer a question. I'm aware when I don't answer questions. No, this is fascinating. I love it. I'm also an interviewer. Is. I like to always be expanding the linguistic repertoire of myself and of my learners. And so doing a lot of synonym work where they start at maybe the tier One word and then start to build out Ward walls of synonyms that they could plop into and start to elevate from that initial tier one. So here's an example. Today. I feel blank. Right? So using the sort of closed passage verbally today I feel a student says, Today I feel funny. Today I feel strange today I feel sad. And so from any of those emotion words, starting to build out two or three additional synonyms that they could put. In place of there and then training their noticing apparatus, which our brains are good at doing for plucking those words that they were introduced to from any texts, any movies, anything that you might see throughout the week. Hey, we just saw that word melancholy, but we already learned that at the top of. The week because my friend, instead of Sad, said I feel melancholy, so I talk about sprinkling in metal linguistic moments. Across the instructional Day hat tip to Dr. Lily Wong FILMORE because she inspired me to think of it that way. Any moments where you can open them up like sort of have them start to notice. Language. Intentionally. That starts to grow their repertoires. You'll start to see that in their output again. Back to the top of what makes a scaffold linguistic. They're starting to expand their language stores and blow you away. Oh, melancholica. So they have that in Spanish, also. To make those connections as well. Does that make sense? Absolutely. I love that. And I actually just shared something recently on the podcast hitting to that same point of as teachers. I think sometimes we have the weight of us that we think we need to be responsible for holding the key to unlock all language and vocabulary. And really it's about creating these students who are like word detectives that they're starting to make. These connections. That they're exactly. That they see the word melancholy. Melancholynkolia. And then they're starting to naturally make connections because of the way that we're exposing them in those small moments. And that may be the whole group. They're not already for that. But maybe two or three are like they got that. And they remember, oh, this is on the word. Well, I'm going to use this in my writing now. And then maybe other kids in the group pick up with some other words that you're just using in conversation. And I think that's kind of the weight we need to take off of us as teachers is we are not. The sole responsible people of the key to unlock all language for these students, really just creating. An atmosphere where they feel excited to learn the language. They feel safe. They feel welcome. And there's just that excitement to explore language, all languages, bringing in their native language, bringing in their as a teacher, just getting excited about learning. Some words from our students native languages as well. Really helps create that environment where language learning. Is an exciting thing. So I love that point that you made of just really bridging it and helping them to have those strategies where they remember, oh, on the word wall, I remember there's some synonyms that I can use so I can kind of strengthen this and not use the word sad again. Like, let me see what other word I can use and kids really catch on with it. That's what's so exciting is exactly that. They're going to blow you away when you start to just give them those little moments of I love that. The medic cognitive. What did you say? What was it. Metalinguistic moments. Meta language moments where they're noticing and they're thinking and wondering. And I want to say something a little subversive right now. I haven't said this before. I don't like the word graveyard. I think that's trash. Why would we ever say don't use words that you already know, right. I think that that can incite some real anxiety from a student just arrived. All they might have is done right now with skulls and dead. These words are dead. Yeah. No. If you're creating a culture where you're aspiring to grow. The language. Then no words exist in a graveyard. You're just amplifying. Maybe it should be like a word. Balloon. I don't know. Like a hot air balloon of words. Where you're just from that tier. One word, right? There are so many others that we have access to. So let's do away with it. Also. What a sad, metaphor. Grave. I know. Yeah. Okay. Let's move on to something that I see happen a lot. And I was guilty of this as well. There's just this dance that happens when you are supporting multilingual learners and you're providing scaffolds. And I love your point of really the purpose is to continue to move them on the proficiency levels. You want to move them forward of their language development. And so I think it's really important to know, when are we over scaffolding and when we need to start to remove some scaffolds. Our whole purpose is to help our students become responsible for their own learning, for their own, helping them take that responsibility, become independent. We don't want them to rely for scaffolds and get expected to have that we want. To really give them what they need, but then also have a good idea of when it's time to remove it and maybe add in a new scaffold that's for a higher proficiency level because they're ready for it and they're ready for the higher expectation. So why don't you share more about that of. What does it look like? When do you have any cues that you've seen? Where? You know what? Okay, it's time to remove the scaffold. We're over scaffolding right now. This isn't beneficial to our students. Yeah, this is an easy one. When their responses and their output. Sounds formulaic. When it sounds formulaic and they're just parroting something and you get the felt sense that they don't own the language yet. And if it's happening for too long. And it doesn't feel like there's an authenticity to their responses, whether it's orally or in writing. I think oftentimes it actually happens for writing. That the scaffolds continue to stick around. Then invite the revision process and say, we're going to jazz this up and we're going to make it a little bit more. Start to throw in some trend languaging or some home language heritage language words in there so that it starts to sound more like the voice of the child. So that would be one way. I remember going into seeing sort of kindergarten or first grade. The display bulletin board outside. And. It's all identical. Every single student's responses were exactly the same, and. It's like how boring and how deeply uninterested. And I know those kids weren't enjoying the process because. When a child's creativity comes alive and jumps off the page, I mean, shoot. My Instagram and TikTok is filled with interesting responses of students. We know that they're creative. We don't want them to go to school, to have their creativity die. I can't think of anything more. Deficit. So I would say that and then also sometimes it feels like a risk on the part of the teacher. To just remove it and see what happens. Be what they're capable of doing on their own. You might have to white knuckle through that experience. But trust your students. I think part of it is finding a way to go back to trusting them because that's real assessment. And that's when, you know, you can really see along the proficiency spectrum. Now don't do that on a day where the kid comes in, like super hot or dysregulated. I mean, think of sort of like an emotionally stable time to take it away. But the reality is that they're not going to have scaffolds on the high stakes assessments either. So you're not doing them any great favors by having them continue to stick around for too long. So I think that. There's a time reality and also a contextual reality that they want to feel that confidence when they're showing you signs of confidence, that would be a third point. When they're showing that they're ready and you can offer it to them. Do you think you need this anymore? Let the student tell you no, maestra, I'm good right now. I think I can do it on my own. And that also requires. Sort of instructional scaffolding to give. Different enough tasks that they've done it enough times where you can really see it upset. Interim Assessment Role right there. What are they made of. I love that. And I think too, just for teachers who are like, I don't know, just removing the scaffold or feeling I think too just making those opportunities like you're saying, having that discussion or putting it back on them and say, you know, a lot of times I give you a word bank when you're writing. Can you come up with three or four words that you would put in the word Bank. And maybe helping spell them or maybe if that kind of catches them up that they're just feeling that anxiety over spelling the words correctly or whatever, but putting that on them and continuing to kind of place that on them and say, hey, why don't you come up with the word bank words or what sentence them? Should I give to this student and really just continue to have them reflect on that and they're learning in that way too. I think helps. To kind of remove that scaffold from them depending on you for that. Great. I love that. Okay, so lillian, talk to me about okay, share with me the ire sequence. What this means, how this impacts teaching all of those good things. So I'm actually going to skip ahead to the Aurisy piece because I can't talk about the ire until got it. Okay. Oracle. Emily Delete. That last question. Okay. So do you want me to ask you this about talk about oracle? All right, so, lillian, let's move into something that. I actually love this topic as well, because just in different research I've done, I've seen the power behind orthe. But there's not a lot of talk that's happening around this role. In bilingual and ell education in classroom. So let's hit on that for a second. Tell me about the role of oracy and just what that means and how that impacts teaching. Oh, my gosh. So metal linguistic moments. I love if there were really a silver bullet like my one straight up answer for how are we going to forever change. Academic outcomes for our English Language learners. The answer is more oracy in the classrooms. Yes. Absolutely. More orac so oracy just want to spell it out so that the listener can think about what it looks like. Yeah. Sounds a little bit like literacy, right. So if literacy is the formal instruction of reading and writing in academic and classrooms. Then orac is the formal instruction and development of oral language skills. And academic settings. So oracle is anchored in this. If I can think it, if I can say it, then I can write it. Sort of a model. You want to have there be a lot of rich classroom dialogue and conversations for the students to participate and start to build that academic register. Orally, first and foremost. And for some students, it will be longer on that path than others. Right before you start to move. Into the writing pieces too much or to do it as an accompaniment to the writing piece. One of the greatest hacks that I feel like with oracle is this notion of an oral rehearsal for my kiddos. Where maybe they would have a stuffy in the classroom, or they would pretend to hold a microphone to their hands, and they would sort of whisper responses just for themselves to start to practice. What the response would sound like. I would do that as a step before my turn and talk. Actually, I would have them vocalized just for themselves as a first pass. That's orosy, then talk to a partner to start to have that listening and that exchange thing. That's the second pass and then the third one. Would be sharing it out to the entire group. All of that is anchored in a rich oracy classroom, right. Absolutely. Yeah. I want to add if any of you are by literacy fans in the audience and you have followed the work of kathy escamilla and sandra Bodolovsky and the Literacy from the squared paradigm, or if he is one of the cornerstones of their framework, oracy happens in a lot of the home countries that our students. Are coming from so that's already happening and that the parents might actually know from that as well. And so yeah. I just think that all of the language study and building out those different language function first and foremost happens in an oral language exchange. I hope that's clear. Yeah. No. I mean, that really sums up many different moments of research that I've done of just seeing the power and personally. I took ten years of Spanish in the States. Came and moved abroad, and I couldn't speak a word because I realized my listening comprehension is horrible. I don't know at all what this person just said. And I have a minor in Spanish. Like what? There's something wrong here. Because I'm trying to conjugate verbs and do all these things I'm like. But. I don't have the oral or the Oracle that I needed. And once I started really focusing on it, I'd start to watch things in Spanish. And as soon as I realized like, wow, I just understood that without translating and really started to develop that ear and work on just the oral activities and things like that. Then. It started to really increase rapidly. And I share that a lot here of the power behind focusing on that listening domain. Really strengthening the listening and speaking before we get to reading and writing because those directly will impact how they do with reading and writing. And if we move there too fast. We're missing out on so many opportunities when they can really enjoy the language process. By really focusing on those first two. And I think that there's things to be said around too quickly paced classrooms. Absolutely. Two quickly paste curricula where there's real felt pressure to move through things and to check off the content boxes that is such a threat. To an aura C focused classroom, and I want to name that if you're feeling like, are you going to come in and tell my administrator that I'm behind. The most sacrificial word, no. We want to dial down because then your rate of speech. A comprehensible input can be a little bit more measured processing time, which, by the way, is good for any neurodivergent student. Exactly. And if you can do slightly less in terms of the amount of content. And give away to the richness of oracy. Your students will shine. Guarantee. Who's going to take up that challenge? Come on, we believe it will happen. Now I can talk with you about the ire, if you'd like. Yeah, let's talk about the ire. Tell us what that means. How does impacts teaching all those good things. So. In your oracle rich classroom that we've now established is a fundamental of good practice with our English language learners in our emergent bilinguals. So the ire stands for Initiate, respond. And evaluate and it's what sounds like a ping pong between a teacher and a single learner type of a talk structure. So I'll say that again, a talk structure. Our classrooms default Fox structures. Are the ping pong model. Okay. However. In natural flowing Conversations between people. There's more fluidity and there's more. Okay. Can you follow up on what you're telling me? Or I didn't quite get that. Or if there's three people in a conversation. I mean, a classroom is 20 to 30 humans all vying for talk time. Let's just state the reality of what that is. So if you want to move away from an ire, which effectively is like a verbal quiz, is essentially what it is. The teacher knows the answer. A student is being asked something, and the teacher is evaluating. The legitimacy or the strength of that response of the student. In a dialogic conversation. The teacher talk time is dialed down. And the learner responses and engagement is dialed way up. So one of the most surefire ways to get into a dialogic classroom model. Is putting a Press on student output. And that is another linguistic scaffold in the full conversation of linguistic scaffolds. So putting a Press. Might be the teacher, says. What are one of the branches of government, so that's the initiate, javier says. They're sort of like fishing around for executive and the teacher. Says, I know you've got it. Take your time or the teacher might say, do you want to look over the word wall to remember? So any of these nudges or these opportunities for them to give the response, oh, yeah, it's over there. Class. Let's say it together. Egg secutive. And then instead of moving on to another kiddo, cool, javier, what do you remember about the executive branch and giving the kid even another opportunity to say more or to expand. Their response about executive the kid might clam up and say, I don't know. Okay. Let's see if we can circle back to you in a little bit. And we'll hear from another pal. Right. So it's this whole notion that starting from a moment that, you know, that your kids know. Trying for you. You're sort of nudging or ushering an extent, an extension of their response. The most masterful teachers are able to put the facilitator role onto the students where the teacher asks one central prompt, and the kids are able to flow through an academic conversation amongst themselves. With some scaffolds, like a vocabulary list or some conversation starters around it where for five minutes you've heard the teacher only sort of ask nudging types of questions, but they're not the main star of that conversation. Wow. Love this. Oh, man. This is powerful. So that's called putting a Press on student output. If you do find your way to my website, I have a lot of resources around this. I also do a full workshop on linguistic scaffolds, where we go into depth. We look at teacher transcripts, masterful teacher transcripts, where they're showing how they. In their Talk, moves. Do those scaffolds. And at that point, a lot of teachers, when they see examples of what that looks like, and they put it right into their classroom, they come back to me. They're like, lily. And I had no idea. Students knew so much and that their language is so expansive. I'm like because you gave them a chance. Right. And it wasn't just the you show up there. You gave it over to them. And they're always like, they showed up, blown away. They shared with the parents. It can start to really change the culture and climate of a classroom from a poisito deficit, mentality. Yes. That is beautiful. And I think too, the power behind just your students knowing the expectation that you're not going to just move on or like, oh, you don't know. It okay. Well, I'll ask somebody else and really kind of just say no. Okay. The teacher is going to push me. They have high expectations, and that's what our students want. And that's where they rise up to them. I mean, you'll see that over and over again if we. Create that space in that environment where they know that. What could be more empowerment than that? That's what I'm looking for. I love that. Well, we are running out of time, but why don't you share? Where can people find more about the work you're doing? If they're interested in the linguistic course, all those types of things please share. Yeah. So the website, it's really easy. Languagematters.org. My Instagram. Handle at Language matters. I'm pretty hip on LinkedIn as well. I know teachers aren't really much in LinkedIn, but I put a lot of stuff out there. What else can I think of? Yeah, I guess. And also lillian Ardell@languagematters.org is the email. A lot of the stuff is on the website so you can poke around and see the offerings. Another thing that I wanted to promote. Is. I have a workshop on reading comprehension that's growing in a lot of popularity. I'm getting a lot of more bookings for that one. And that is that metal linguistic moments I was talking about. I bring that to bear on a close reading set of strategies and tools. We dig into figurative language. We dig into paraphrasing which believe it or not, is one of the hardest linguistics tool. One of the hardest linguistic tasks we can ask of a student is to summarize a passage in their own words. So I have. A protocol that I walk teachers through can offer in English and in Spanish, so the close reading with juicy sentences. Is one that's really exciting. And then check out the stuff I'm writing about the monolingual bias and disrupting the modelingual bias. I think that's a conversation we might have for a different episode. I've got a book coming out with that title. Very awesome. Wow. So exciting. Super busy. I love it. I love it. You're doing good work. So I'm glad you're getting out there in the world. So we'll put those links in the show notes as well, so people could just click down and find out more of what you're doing. And thank you so much.