Indicator Description
This indicator addresses the teacher's ability to draw appropriate academic language from students. Academic language used in textbooks and classrooms differs in structure and vocabulary from everyday spoken English. Students' use of academic language promotes precision of thinking and deeper understanding of content. It helps them learn from reading because it facilitates comprehension, and speeds up information processing. Teachers can teach academic language and model its use in their own teaching. To score high on this indicator, teachers must also draw correct use of academic language from students. This can be done in spoken language (e.g., classroom discussion) or in writing assignments (e.g., lab reports, essays). Students typically need repeated exposure, in context, to understand academic vocabulary. ELL students who may be adequately fluent in "everyday language" may still need extra support for academic language.
Note that academic language includes both content-general and content-specific language. Content-general academic language (e.g., corollary, conclusion, argument, evidence) might be found in any classroom in the building, whereas content-specific would be limited to only some classrooms (e.g., "hypotenuse" in math, or "scapula" in an anatomy class).
The standard requires that the teacher demonstrates excellent depth and breadth of key content knowledge and uses academic language. The teacher is able to facilitate students’ use of academic and disciplinary language in context correctly. The academic language used in textbooks and classrooms differs in structure and vocabulary from everyday spoken English. Using academic language in the classroom enhances learning. Academic language captures the complex ideas and abstract concepts of a domain, helping students comprehend and access the concepts. It helps transform domain knowledge from fuzzy understanding to precise, clear, and explicit understanding. The Common Core Standards and Next Generation Science Standards have renewed attention to teaching academic language.
In the classroom, this might look like:
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Teacher provides clear lesson objectives in student friendly language
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Teacher is able to promote the content by discussing and having students use content in real-world everyday applications
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Teacher uses curriculum and aligns standards to deepen content knowledge of students
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Teacher designs assessment and instruction to meet the content needs of students
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Teacher draws academic language from students
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Students articulate their learning in academic language
Activity
Click on the icon below to see the classroom video example.
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8th Grade Science |