This
action research study was to explore possibilities for scaffolding academic
language and
historical thinking for non-native English speaking students in two middle
school
classrooms. The
teaching approach focused on six dimensions of historical thinking: background
knowledge, cause,
effect, bias, empathy, and application.
1.
Introduction
The goal of this research was to better
understand how to integrate and scaffold the development of academic language,
thinking, and content (history) in classes for non-native English speakers in
the middle grade years.
Academic
language is used to describe thinking processes, complex ideas, and abstract
concepts (Bailey & Butler, 2002; Cummins, 1989;
Scarcella, 2003; Solomon & Rhodes,1995) in the
content areas. ‘‘brick’’ terms is the highly visible and discipline specific
terms such as photosynthesis, hegemony, imagery, formula, words and phrases. ‘‘mortar’’ terms, refers to more
universal words and phrases that occur across disciplines, often involving
textual (first, second, third) and interpersonal (as you can see) metadiscourse.
3.
Assessment and historical thinking
In an effective essay, a
historian usually includes comments about the basic facts and events, considers
the potential bias of an account, and makes inferences about the thoughts,
feelings, intentions, causes, and effects of the topic in question—all of which
need to be supported by evidence (Marius & Page, 2005).
4.
Language and thinking: instructional scaffolds
Teacher modeling and
scaffolding plays an important role in achieving these ends. Because historical
thinking as opposed to historical memorization was new to almost all of the
student. Thinking about history needed to be visible, and historians think
about history students often listened to me think aloud about historical events
and issues.
5.
Mini-lessons
leading to the essay
The purpose of the mini-lessons was to
build the dimensions of
historical thinking and academic language
that eventually would help students with the
assessment, the persuasive essay.
6.
Scaffolding the writing of the persuasive essay
In writing, this is the first time the students write the text more than
one paragraph. so they needed considerable modeling and
scaffolding in writing the persuasive essay.
7.
Conducting action research
Any systematic inquiry conducted by
teacher researchers to gather information
about the ways that their particular school
operates, how they teach, and how well
their students learn. The information is
gathered with the goals of gaining insight,
developing reflective practice, effecting
positive changes in the school environment
and on educational practices in general, and improving student
outcomes.
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