High-Leverage Teaching Practices

High-Leverage Teaching Practices

1. What is High-Leverage Teaching Practices?

   • High-leverage teaching practices (HLTPs) are the “tasks and activities that are essential for skillful beginning teachers to understand, take responsibility for, and be prepared to carry out in order to enact their core instructional responsibilities” (Ball & Forzani, 2009, p. 504). Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (Kindle Locations p.2).
     • Great teachers aren't born--they are taught. Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (Kindle Locations p.1)
     • .....teaching is unnatural work that requires carefully designed lessons for novices to learn the practices that constitute this work. Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (Kindle Locations 214-215).
     • ...teachers must not only know their content areas but they must be skilled in perceiving how others envision and understand it and how it can be explained. Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (Kindle Locations 229-230).
     • it is intricate and complex work (Ball & Forzani, 2009). That is, each episode of teaching consists of many tasks and moves not always visible to an observer (Lewis, 2007). Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (Kindle Locations 235-237).

2. Building a Classroom Discourse Community

   • Engaging Learners in Oral Classroom Communication
   • Designing and Conducting Oral Interpersonal Pair and Group Tasks

3. Guiding Learners to Interpret and Discuss Authentic Texts

   • Guiding learners to Interpret Authentic Texts
   • Leading a Text-Based Discussion

4. Facilitating Target Language Comprehensibility

   • must provide significant amounts of comprehensible, meaningful, and interesting talk and text in the target language for learners to develop language and cultural proficiency. Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (Kindle Locations 601-602).
   • “Learners improve when they are provided with multiple opportunities to use the target language to communicate in a variety of situations and for multiple purposes. The more they use the language in meaningful situations, the more rapidly they move to higher levels of language performance.” (NSFLEP, 2015, p. 46)
   • Theories
     • Input Hypothesis
       • hypothesis claims that to acquire a new language, learnerInput Hypothesis:(Krashen, 1981, 1982). The s need a large quantity of comprehensible input that is interesting, a little beyond their current level of TL competence, but understandable. However, Swain (1985) challenged Krashen’s position and claimed that input is necessary but insufficient for language learning.
     • Comprehensible input
       • Swain: comprehensible output (using the target language), is equally important because it allows learners to notice where gaps exist in their language knowledge, hypothesize about different ways to express ideas, and focus on how language constructs meaning. Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (Kindle Locations 618-619). Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (Kindle Locations 614-617).
     • Sociocultural theory
       • (Vygotsky, 1986) and the role of language as a mediational tool for language learning. A major tenet of sociocultural theory is that using language as a cultural meaning-making tool is the result of mediation in a social context. Mediation, as the term suggests, refers to the types of support that learners use to make meaning and sense out of the target language they hear. In this way, the use of the target language for instruction becomes a tool to mediate language learning and development and not just a way to provide input to learners’ brains for internal processing. The way we speak to and interact with learners develops a supportive relationship that enables learners to perform with assistance and go beyond what they cannot do on their own. Sociocultural theory claims that the use of language as a mediational tool, or more specifically how we speak to learners, is essential for learning and the quality of this mediation can determine what learners learn and what they do not learn
   • K-16 World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages
     • cite language and communication as being “at the heart of the human experience” (National Standards in Foreign Language Education Project, 2015, p. 7). The foundation on which these standards exist is the belief that learners must be exposed to language and culture study infused within the whole educational experience. In this regard, the standards envision a future “… in which ALL learners will develop and maintain proficiency in English and at least one other language…” (p. 7). Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (Kindle Locations 646-648). .
   • ACTFL 1.1
     • ACTFL “recommends that language educators and their learners use the target language as exclusively as possible (90% plus) at all levels of instruction during instructional time and, when feasible, beyond the classroom.” Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (Kindle Locations 650-652).
       • ACTFL COMMUNICATION STANDARDS AND MODES(NSFLEP, 2015)
         • Interpersonal
           • STANDARD
             • Learners interact and negotiate meaning in spoken, signed, or written conversations to share information, reactions, feelings, and opinions.
         • Interpretive
           • STANDARD
             • Learners understand, interpret, and analyze what is heard, read, or viewed on a variety of topics.
         • Presentational
           • STANDARD
             • Learners present information, concepts, and ideas to inform, explain, persuade, and narrate on a variety of topics using appropriate media and adapting to various audiences of listeners, readers, or viewers.
   • The target language must always occur in meaningful contexts. Effective TL is always used within the context of an overarching communicative goal and purposeful activity. To increase comprehensibility, the TL needs to be connected to learners’ background knowledge and interests, needs to motivate sustained listening and meaning-making interaction, and needs to focus on meaning over form. Using the TL when completing mechanical textbook exercises rarely qualifies as the type of language that is useful for language learning or for developing learners who are willing to take risks to express themselves. Enacting the Work of Language Instruction (Kindle Locations 672-675).

5. Focusing on Form in a Dialogic Context Through PACE