Friday Friends - Meet Nicole

Hello!  I'm Nicole from Teaching With Style!  Thanks for letting me guest post today!  Right now I am working on finishing up my ESOL endorsement.  The school I have been working at for the past 5 years has 70% dual language learners, so I have some tricks up my sleeve for teaching all students!

The textbook for my current course is Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model.  In the SIOP model, teachers develop lessons with specific SIOP Features: Preparation, Scaffolding, Grouping Options, Integration of Processes, Application, and Assessment.

Each lesson begins with the content and language objectives.  In order to reach language learners, as well as multiple intelligences, instead of basically stating these objectives, a teacher needs to write them or post them for students to be able to see and refer back to throughout the lesson.  In my school, we call these Learning Targets.

This year we started out by posting our targets for math and reading only.  As the year went on, we added ELD targets.  Next year, we will be required to post targets for content areas as well: social studies, science, and health.  Even though it is required, I feel that it is good teaching.  When I am sitting in a professional development training, I want to know why I am there and how the information will pertain to me.  Kids are the same.  They want to know why they are learning it and how it can be applied to their lives.  And my stating the objectives, it helps keep everyone focused on the real intent of the lesson, not some side tangent that happens halfway through.  The learning target chart can act as a re-direction tool if necessary.

You can grab my Learning Target freebie from Teachers Pay Teachers, or you can head to my blog and snag a copy from Google Docs.

Thanks for hosting me, Randi!