One of the barriers to our at-risk students is their exposure to academic language. Teaching content vocabulary is pivotal to their success.
This article from Edutopia outlines 8 Strategies for Teaching Academic Language.
Understanding Academic Language
Academic language is a meta-language that helps learners acquire the 50,000 words that they are expected to have internalized by the end of high school and includes everything from illustration and chart literacy to speaking, grammar and genres within fields.
Think of academic language as the verbal clothing that we don in classrooms and other formal contexts to demonstrate cognition within cultures and to signal college readiness. There are two major kinds: instructional language (“What textual clues support your analysis?”) and language of the discipline(examples include alliteration in language arts, axioms in math, class struggle in social studies and atoms in science). No student comes to school adept in academic discourse — thus, thoughtful instruction is required.
8 Specific Strategies
1. Encourage Students to Read Diverse Texts
Reading and then thinking and talking about different genres is a robust sequence for learning academic language.
2. Introduce Summary Frames
Summarizing is the AK-47 of academic language activities — simple and fail-safe. Students read a section of text to themselves before verbally summarizing the passage to a partner. Alternatively, learners can complete sentence frames– guides for summarization. Here are some examples among many others created by Miss Hultenius:
- If the main idea of the paragraph is problem/solution, use the frame: “_____ wanted _____ but ______ so ______.”
- If the main idea of the paragraph is cause/effect, use the frame: “_____ happens because ______.”
3. Help Students Translate from Academic to Social Language (and Back)
Model how to say something in a more academic way or how to paraphrase academic texts into more conversational language. Provide students with a difficult expository passage, like the inventor’s paradox, and have teams reinterpret the text using everyday language.
4. Have Students Complete Scripts of Academic Routines
Some discourse routines seem obvious to adults, but are more complex than NASA for young learners unless you provide scaffolding, like these speechexamples:
- “The topic of my presentation is ______.”
- “In the first part, I give a few basic definitions. In the next section, I will explain ______. In part three, I am going to show ______.”
5. Dynamically Introduce Academic Vocabulary
Repeated encounters with a word in various authentic contexts can help students internalize the definition. They also benefit when teachers make their first encounters with vocabulary sticky. Use the word in a funny or personal story. Show a short video from VocabAhead that features 300 SAT words and categorizes vocabulary by grade level.
6. Help Students Diagram Similarities and Differences
When students generate a list of similarities and differences between words and complete a Venn diagram, like this one comparing and contrasting moths and butterflies, they are working with one of Robert Marzano’s high-yield instructional strategies.
7. Have Students Write with a Transition Handout
Formal academic writing challenges students of all ages. Before students write, give them a handout of transitions. Model where transitions fit, and describe how they help the reader.
8. Teach Key Words for Understanding Standardized Test Prompts
Kechia Williams teaches 10 Terms that help students understand prompts and ace standardized tests.
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