behalf and has supported us in securing the digital materials we proudly display that you, the reader, can digitally access. Last but not least, WIDA, our home away from home, has given us the latitude and confidence to take a spark of an idea, explore it in depth with colleagues and experts, grapple with how to represent it, and share its product with educators. With encouragement and collaboration of many wonderful WIDAites in Madison, Wisconsin, across the country, and around the globe, our dreams have become reality. For this and more, we are eternally grateful for WIDA, the many friendships it has personally spurred, and its dedication to equitable education for language learners worldwide.
We dedicate this book to our children—Graham, Amy, Andrés, and Diego—and to all children around the world who have the power to realize the potential of language.
Dedicamos nuestro libro a nuestros hijos y a los niños alrededor del mundo quienes poseen el poder de realizar el potencial del lenguaje.
Preface
The basic purpose of school is achieved through communication.
—Courtney Cazden (2001)
If communication is the vehicle for school achievement, how can we change the educational mindset so that every educator sees language as a tool for attaining this goal? That’s what we have set out to accomplish in this book: to present a conceptual tool that is centered on overarching purposes for academic language use. It may appear simplistic, but we and our colleagues have spent an extraordinary amount of time trying to distill the complexities of language learning into a manageable set of key uses. So read the passage below on nutritional guidelines, from the FYI section of BrainPOP®’s “Nutrition” topic, and try to identify what they might be.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has been giving out nutritional guidelines since the early 1900s. Its first standardized recommendations came in 1956, when it introduced the Basic Four Food Groups: grains; fruits and vegetables; dairy products; and a catchall protein category.
In 1992, the USDA decided to display its nutrition guidelines in the form of a pyramid. The shape of the original pyramid, which had six food groups instead of four, was ideal for showing the proportions of servings needed from each group to create a balanced diet. For instance, grains, which we need most, were at the base, while sweets and fats, which we should only occasionally snack on, were at the top.
Over the years, however, many nutritionists and doctors claimed that the food guide had a number of flaws. Eventually, as part of an overall campaign to get people to make healthier food choices, the USDA decided to revise and update the pyramid—and in 2005, the new and improved “MyPyramid” was unveiled.
The horizontal wedges of the original pyramid were replaced with vertical slices of various colors and thicknesses. Each represented the recommended number of daily servings from six different food groups: grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, meat andbeans, and oils. To remind people about the importance of exercise, a staircase was added to the left side of the pyramid, with a stick figure climbing the steps to good health.
But MyPyramid was also criticized for being too abstract—people didn’t know what group each colored wedge stood for. So the MyPlate logo was introduced in 2011, and officially unveiled by First Lady Michelle Obama.
“We realized we needed something that made sense not just in classrooms or laboratories, but at dinner tables and school cafeterias. We needed something useful, something simple,” Mrs. Obama said. Many nutritionists agreed, noting that people tend to eat off of plates, not pyramids!
Source: BrainPOP®, https://www.brainpop.com/health/nutrition/nutrition/fyi/#tab=0
Source: BrainPOP®, https://www.brainpop.com/health/nutrition/nutrition/fyi
We have come to the conclusion that four key uses of academic language give teachers and students tremendous insight into how oral and written text is organized to express specific intents. And so we share them with you, realizing that authentic text is not neatly organized around one key use or another but, in fact, may be perceived as having multiple purposes. Here is an interpretation of that BrainPOP® passage on nutritional guidelines around four key uses of academic language (DARE), the conceptual tool used in this book:
Discuss the pros and cons of the various images that represent nutritional guidelines.
Argue for the nutritional guidelines that you believe are most effective.
Recount the history of nutritional guidelines in the U.S.
Explain how and why nutritional guidelines are helpful.
Take the DARE
One of the themes woven throughout the book is that students’ exposure to multimodality, especially ELLs, ELLs with disabilities, and other language learners, helps increase their opportunities for meaning making. BrainPOP® included the visual on page 2 with the text on nutritional guidelines. How does it enhance the overall meaning? How might it be beneficial to your students? What can you do to increase students’ comprehension through visualization? Why are visuals important for students who might be challenged by text written in English, by print, or both?
Academic language use provides students access to the content learned in school, and it is the vehicle for their meaningful participation during teaching and learning. Language is also the medium through which students share what they know and demonstrate what they have learned. It is not enough for students, however, to just know the language or know about the language. Students need to understand how language is used in academic contexts and the expectations for its use throughout the school day.
The Inquiry Cycle
In this book, we use the inquiry cycle as an organizing scheme to provide a structure for each chapter. We choose this five-phase inquiry cycle, shown in Figure P.1, as we wish teachers to probe deeply into compelling issues that stimulate conversation by (1) asking about academic language use, (2) exploring it more in depth, (3) applying it to their classrooms, (4) reflecting on its utility, and (5) taking action to ensure that it has meaningful and lasting impact. Additionally, we feel that implementing the inquiry cycle prompts collaboration among teachers who are constantly seeking to improve their practices. The power of collaborative inquiry, especially in a professional learning community, has proven to be transformative, evoking real change in schools and classrooms (Donohoo & Velasco, 2016).
Figure P.1 Applying the Inquiry Cycle as the Organizational Frame for the Book
We also would like to highlight the essential role of inquiry in the generation of new knowledge. As we identify questions or learn new concepts, we need time to explore ideas related to them and time to apply that new knowledge. A critical part of the inquiry cycle is to provide space to reflect on those new ideas and on how we might integrate them into our practice. With that in mind, for each new idea
