Sheltered Instruction

In the absence of the original mentor video to view and analyze for the teacher's use of sheltered instruction (sometimes referred to as SIOP) components, I went on a hunt to find a different video clip that might give me a good example of a sheltered lesson.  I did not find one with an English speaking teacher providing a sheltered lesson to ELLs, but what I did find championed the use of SIOP like no other experience I have had. 

The video, found at http://www.helpprogram.net/Ped.htm, was of a Spanish-speaking teacher administering a mathematics lesson.  The first two minutes, the teacher, speaking only Spanish, gave the lesson orally, using only one picture to illustrate her point.  The real power of the video existed in the second part; she administered the exact same lesson, in Spanish, but used many sheltered techniques to effectively communicate the lesson objective.  When I watched the second portion, I actually found myself understanding the mathematics material she was providing....no small feat, as my Spanish vocabulary is limited only to foods and foul words! 

When the teacher gave the lesson using only her voice and one picture, I found myself stuggling to hear her--not that it would have helped--and trying to pick up even one familiar word.  I did manage to figure out a few words:  mathematics, dimension, and the numbers two and three.  The rest was completely incomprehensible.  The effort it took to decipher those very few words I could somewhat recognize caused the rest of the words to be lost.  I was working so hard to comprehend the language, I completely missed the math content she was trying to put across through her use of the picture (which I thought was of a robot).  Immediately, I was placed in the position of an ELL; confused, stressed, and totally frustrated.  And this was only two minutes of my life...imagine how they feel all day in a classroom they can't comprehend!

During the next two minutes of the video, the teacher demonstrated the use of an important SIOP strategy: making content comprehensible.  Her words were exactly the same, spoken in a language foreign to me, but the accompaniments she provided with the words made the content open up to me, almost as if by magic.  She began with the same picture of a robot she had used before, but this time she changed the inflection of her voice as she energetically pointed and gestured to each part of the robot...through this behavior, I realized this was actually a picture of a building!  I still didn't know what she was trying to teach, but I did know it must be a geometry lesson because she seemed to focus on the shapes in the picture, and I even picked up a word that sounded like "quadrilateral"!

Even the manner of her speech and gestures made the Spanish words comprehensible.  She was careful to speak with extreme enunciation and appropriate inflection to aid in my comprehension of the words.  She repeated key phrases multiple times, and used gestures when necessary to teach me what the phrases meant.  This is one way SIOP teachers make content understandable, by paying attention to their delivery (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2002).  By combining her delivery strategies with the following strategies, she effectively conveyed her meaning.

Combined with her effective deliver, the teacher employed another important sheltering stragegy: she brought in realia to help illustrate her point more clearly (Hill & Flynn, 2006).  She began by showing a paper square (quadrilateral!!  I was right!), and turned it around as she spoke, showing all the sides.  I heard her repeat mulitple times the phrase "dos dimensiones".  Then, she clapped her hands together, with the paper square in between and said, with extra emphasis, "Plano! Es plano!!"  I immediately understood:  she is telling me that paper is two-dimensional because it is flat!  The word "plano" must mean "flat" or at least it must mean something closely related to the word "flat", right?  When she brought out the large cube, I began to listen to see if she was going to tell me that a cube is three-dimensional.  She did!  She repeated "tres dimensiones" while modeling the cube; she even picked up the paper square again, repeating "two dimensiones" to compare it to the cube.  I felt so smart!  I was listening to a lesson in a foreign language, and actually understanding it....and learning new Spanish words in the meantime. 

How powerful this is for our ELLs...to feel that they are learning the content while also learning English.  This is the way we all must teach these students.  In one of the first chapters I read for this class, I found a quote that seemed profound:  "We should see ESL learners as full members of the school community....rather than as a separate group who must prove themselves linguistically before they can claim their full academic entitlement (Gibbons, 2002).  To me, this means ELLs should be taught the academic content (such as Mathematics) in the context of learning English.  In this manner, they will be able to develop both effectively.  To wait for them to learn English before we begin to teach them academic content is to severely impact their learning.

With the effectiveness of the teacher in this video clip in conveying her Mathematics content while teaching Spanish words, I can only imagine how much more I would have learned had I been in her classroom.  In a classroom, I would have had the opportunity to converse with competent Spanish speakers to further develop my skills.  This cooperative learning strategy is another component of an effective sheltered lesson (Hill, 2006).  Undoubtedly, I would have learned much more Spanish language and also been able to develop my knowledge of geometric shapes with the help of more competent peers.  Also, in her classroom, I assume she would have incorporated many more nonlinguistic representations (Hill, 2006) to scaffold my learning.  The realia helped so much even as seen only through the screen of a computer, I am certain that the opportunity to be immersed in pictures, graphic organizers, and other nonlinguistic learning tools in a classroom environment would have been even more powerful.

When I taught my sheltered reading lesson last week, after seeing this video and experiencing both the unsheltered learning experiences and the sheltered, I was much more aware of how much realia I should incorporate, how much my voice and gestures would assist in comprehension of my content, and how cooperative learning would impact my ELLs.  I was careful to plan my sheltered lesson with these important components in mind.  I believe the result was a positive learning experience for all students, even those native speakers whose language might be impacted by other factors.  Sheltered instruction works!  I'm living proof, and am proud to say I now know some new geometric words to add to my Spanish repertoire!