I Have Who Has: Let's Talk!

I am always looking for ways to intentionally engage with vocabulary. One of my favorite strategies to get students speaking and thinking is an activity called I Have Who Has. Each student gets a card (see the example below). The teacher starts with the start card and reads it aloud. The student who has the answer to that question responds by reading their card and asking the next question. The game continues in this way until the end card. 

Things I love: 

1. Every single student speaks out loud. How often does every student get a chance to speak whole group in your room?
2. Students have to really focus and listen to the definitions as they are being read. Speaking and listening are two language domains that can easily be overshadowed by reading and writing but are equally as important in language development! 
3. Students are somewhat forced to engage because if they check out or stop listening they become the weakest link in the chain.

It is important to acknowledge that ELL students may be super overwhelmed to read out loud whole group but that doesn't mean they shouldn't get the opportunity. A little pre-teaching or scaffolding may be needed. Set them up for success!

As part of my work as a high school learning coach (instructional coach) I was fortunate enough to work with an AP Human Geography teacher who was looking for more ways to purposefully plan and engage with vocabulary. We created a deck of I Have Who Has cards for all of her 7 units for the year and placed visual cues or hints on the back of each one.

In addition to doing the whole group read through of the cards, we also had students work in small groups to race to make a chain of cards (like dominos). The discussions, arguments, and excitement as students worked together to define the words and find the matches was loud and super engaging. 

Another goal of the teacher I worked with was to implement ways for students to think about the connections between the vocabulary words within a unit and between units. To do this, we handed small groups a mixed up set of cards from multiple units. We told students not to worry about the I Have Who Has part, and instead just focus on the I Have term. Students were instructed to write a complete, content related sentence using as many of the cards as possible, with at least 2 terms for different units. 

The time and effort required to make the cards may seem laborious, but once the cards are made there are so many ways to use them in your classroom to purposefully engage with vocabulary!

What's That I Hear?

Holy guacamole. It has been a whirlwind few weeks. In September, I traveled to Philadelphia to present at the national WIDA conference and then last week I was in Santa Fe for the national La Cosecha conference. At both conferences, my friend and colleague Whitney Danner and I had the opportunity to share a a glimpse of what our classrooms look and sound like. Additionally, we presented strategies that we use to purposefully integrate academic language into our mathematics content. Missed our presentation but want the juicy nuggets of information we shared? Just head over to this link: WIDA Conference Slides

We received some INCREDIBLE feedback. There are no words to express how excited it makes me to know that educators all over the nation are working together to provide equitable access to grade level content for all students, but especially English Language Learners. At La Cosecha, one of the attendees at our session made a comment to me that really summarized the mindset shift that I continue to encounter time after time when I work with teachers who are first starting out on their academic language integration journey. She said (and I paraphrase), 

"This is so different than what I do right now. I just can't picture how this would go. A lot of the strategies you are sharing feel like they would be difficult in regards to classroom management. I don't like unstructured time."

She's right. It is different. It's loud. It's some what chaotic. It's exciting. It's never boring. And most of all, it's wildly engaging for students. If many of you are struggling to wrap your brain around how this all works, I recorded a quick video that really encompasses many important things:

1. The sound level
2. The location
3. The grouping of student pairs/groups/individuals
4. My questioning style with students
5. An example of a card sort in action (not an original card sort... but one that can be found here)

The best advice I can give? Try it. Try a strategy, sit back, and watch the learning happen. Because the person doing the work is doing the learning and I like to see the work in action!

Unit Vocab Cards: Part 1

Vocabulary Cards Set Up:

Every unit I make a list of vocabulary cards for that particular unit. This list includes on grade vocabulary for that unit as well as words and concepts that might have been taught in years previous, but still connect to my 8th grade unit. 

The first unit for my 8th grade Pre-Algebra includes the following Common Core State Standards (as directly copied from the CCSS Grade 8 Standards found online here:

Define, evaluate, and compare functions.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.8.F.A.1
Understand that a function is a rule that assigns to each input exactly one output. The graph of a function is the set of ordered pairs consisting of an input and the corresponding output.1

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.8.F.A.2
Compare properties of two functions each represented in a different way (algebraically, graphically, numerically in tables, or by verbal descriptions). For example, given a linear function represented by a table of values and a linear function represented by an algebraic expression, determine which function has the greater rate of change.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.8.F.A.3
Interpret the equation y = mx + b as defining a linear function, whose graph is a straight line; give examples of functions that are not linear. For example, the function A = s2giving the area of a square as a function of its side length is not linear because its graph contains the points (1,1), (2,4) and (3,9), which are not on a straight line.

Use functions to model relationships between quantities.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.8.F.B.4
Construct a function to model a linear relationship between two quantities. Determine the rate of change  and initial value of the function from a description of a relationship or from two (x, y) values, including reading these from a table or from a graph. Interpret the rate of change and initial value of a linear function in terms of the situation it models, and in terms of its graph or a table of values.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.8.F.B.5
Describe qualitatively the functional relationship between two quantities by analyzing a graph (e.g., where the function is increasing or decreasing, linear or nonlinear). Sketch a graph that exhibits the qualitative features of a function that has been described verbally.

Yikes. That's a lot, right? So from that list I created the following collection of vocabulary words in a Google Slide (found here) using some free fun template I found on the internet:

Additionally, I also created matching definition cards that you can find in that same Google Slide . These could be used as a matching activity for students who are still struggling with the definitions or as an extension activity. 

Sentence Creation Class Activity

The first way to use these cards is through an activity that we, as a class, have called Sentence Creation. The name lacks a lot of creativity, but the strategy has big pay offs for both students and teachers. There are two variations of this activity, whole class and in groups. 

Whole Class: Pick 2 cards at random (or planned random) from the stack. Have each group write an academic sentence connecting the two vocabulary words in some way. Collect each group's sentence orally and in writing up on the board. Discuss which sentences you like, which sentences went in a direction that might be unexpected, which sentences were especially challenging, which sentences need some grammar fixes, etc. This is a great way to fill a few minutes at the end of the period instead of doing nothing and letting a 4-6 minute war break out. As a teacher, the misconceptions in both mathematics content and language are HUGE for a quick formative assessment to drive future instruction. 

Groups: Give each group 2 vocabulary words at random (or planned random). Have each group write an academic sentence connecting their two vocabulary words. Share out both orally and in writing up on the board. Then, each group passes just ONE vocab card to the next group. Repeat. If there are some combinations that are especially challenging, trade out a card for a new card and come back to the challenge at the end as a whole group.