SIOP Saturday 7: Practice/Application

Oh man, another week flies by!  Still feel like I'm trying to get a handle on everything.  Most days I don't even know where my planning times disappear to, as I'm still bringing things home to plan and create and grade.  But I'm happy, SO much happier in this environment, than I was last year (even though I still think Angi needs to move out here so we can teach together again!) that it's a good busy.  Hence my lack of posts... but I will try to work on that!

Anyway, we are up to our next installment of my SIOP Saturdays series!  Today's topic on the menu is the sixth component of the SIOP model, which is practice/application.

Here's where we stand with the whole thing again:

Lesson Preparation
Building Background
Comprehensible Input
Strategies
Interaction
Practice/Application
Lesson Delivery
Review/Assessment

The section on practice and application discusses ways to make learning hands-on and relevant to students.  Learning activities need to support and scaffold students' progress toward mastering content, while allowing students a context to practice the academic language skills they are acquiring.  This component contains the next three features:

20. Hands-on materials and/or manipulatives provided for students to practice using new content knowledge
Research has shown that students have a greater chance of mastering skills and concepts when they have multiple opportunities to practice in ways that are relevant and meaningful.  New material should be introduced in short amounts, with opportunities for students to practice their new knowledge right away.  Using manipulatives or other hands-on materials also allows students with lower language skills to still be able to demonstrate and practice the content concepts being addressed.

21. Activities provided for students to apply content and language knowledge
Opportunities for applying content concepts are great for helping students to make abstract knowledge concrete.  The activities should be related to the learning and should be meaningful, and allow students the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge through a variety of ways.  Especially through interactions and group discussions or projects, students are able to integrate their language skills with the task(s) at hand.

22. Activities integrate all language skills
Teachers should try to allow students to express their learning through reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  Because all of these practices are so intertwined, skills that may be further developed in one area may lend themselves to help strengthen another area.

SOME ACTIVITIES TEACHERS CAN USE TO SUPPORT PRACTICE AND APPLICATION:
*Using manipulatives to make a math lesson more concrete
*Incorporating kinesthetic activities (for example, instead of doing a worksheet about ordering numbers, give each student a number and have them order themselves in a line)
*Using a scaffolded listening cloze dictation: the teacher provides a copy of a text with words or phrases omitted; the teacher then reads the text and the students record the words that they hear that are missing from their page
*Students could engage in discussion circles after reading a text to practice listening and speaking about the concepts, and then write a response to questions posed by the teacher after discussing the questions in their groups

What other ways do you have students practice and apply new concepts and language skills in your classroom?

Next Saturday's topic: Lesson Delivery