Shelbi Burnett

ED 498-Dr. Brooks

April 12, 2013

ATLAS Protocol

Introduction 

Through working with, and observing English language learning (ELL) students during tutoring hours in addition to our class activities in ED 498, we have come to understand that these students have specific needs in the classroom. Often these diverse needs demand activities which are structured differently from those only designed for native English speaking students; however, these needs are not entirely different to students who struggle in content area vocabulary development. In fact some of the activities we can design and implement to aide ELL students, can help all students in content area classrooms with stringent vocabulary demands. 

By using the ATLAS protocol, we can examine specific examples of student work to better understand their current comprehension of material, and furthermore the areas in which students require more focused instruction. This protocol first demands observations of student work which are free of judgement and interpretation. These observations help instructors to examine a piece with “fresh eyes” and describe the actual work of the student instead of what they think or hope the student was doing. The next step is to interpret the student work to understand the student’s perspective. Here, instructors should attempt to use the observations they described in the previous step to infer what the student was thinking and why, what the student might be interested in based on their answer, and how the student interpreted the assignment. In the third step, the instructor tries to determine the implications of these inferences. For example, what steps should the teacher take next with the student to bring them to further understanding. Finally the instructor reflects on the protocol.

In the following text, I have outlined my own ATLAS protocol for an assignment on which I worked with an ELL student named Sun Light. In this particular assignment, Sun had received a packet from the teacher outlining a speech. This was the culminating project of his advanced speech class. I had been informed prior to working with him that he was particularly competent in his command of language, and not many ELL students were allowed to take the speech class he had been enrolled in because of the level of difficulty. In examining the packet, I saw that it was extensive: ranging around 10 pages total and included detail for the formatting of each section of the speech.  However, in an attempt to be impartial during the ATLAS protocol, I tried to put what I knew about Sun Light, and about the assignment out of my mind.

 

Describing the Student Work

In looking at Sun Light’s speech, I first noticed his topic: “Teenager Obesity.” His introduction paragraph was under that with various phrases in bolded front after some sentences indicating the different sections like attention getter, credibility, relevance, and thesis/purpose of the speech. Next was his transition statement into the body of the speech.

The body of his speech was outlined in Harvard style. He had included a section titled “Problem” in which he had written a sentence about the severity of the problem using academic evidence:

“According to Cindy Heller, author of Plantinum, as quoted in Ezine article on Jan 8, 2006, 25% of school children are overweight, and in fact, obese, and nearly a fourth of them are at risk of getting heart disease, diabetes, stroke, as well as possible early death. (Verbal Citation)”

Next in this section was bullet for “Opinion with SMELF” as well as “Opinion with Egos/Pathos/Logos.” Sun had filled these in with between two and three corresponding sentences per header. He ended this section with another verbal citation and transition sentence and went on to the second section which was titled “Problems Direct/Indirect Effect on Society.”

This second section also included a topic sentence, two pieces of academic evidence with verbal citations, more detailed explanations, and a transition sentence. In reading through this information, I noticed some sentences which were highly complete ideas but still not quite correctly phrased, for example Sun wrote:

“When parents are sitting on the couch and watching TV the children think that it is ok to sit on the couch and watching TV for a long time. Parents who obese are more likely to bring home with fast food and the kid think that it is ok to eat fast food. Then this creates the rate of teen’s obesity growing up.”

The next section included information about three possible solutions. Sun had written sentences for the three solutions outlining a detailed explanation, evidence the solution could work, and drawbacks to the solution. This section was a significant amount of writing and included compiled evidence about each of the solutions. Again, the section ended with a transition sentence into the last section before the conclusion.

I noticed this section of his was labeled “Best solution” and it was set up similar to the introduction paragraph with a section for “Opinion with SMELF” and “Opinion with Egos/Pathos/Logos.” For his fact for this section Sun had written:

“In California the cost of overweight and teens obesity were decreasing because of everyone contributing physical activity.”

Finally, Sun closed the speech outline with his conclusion paragraph which included what he labeled as the reiteration of his thesis.

Analyzing/Interpreting the Student Work

From making observations about Sun’s outline, I inferred he was working on lengthy speech. Because he had included various forms of academic evidence, I also concluded he had completed research about his topic, which would have required a certain amount of reading. The outline was highly structured, with each section and key parts bolded. Also, all parts of the outline were completed, therefore it seemed safe to assume Sun had been comfortable enough with what each section required to put something down to fill in the details of the section–he had left nothing blank. Because of his topic choice, I could either assume he was interested in health, or the teacher had assigned him the topic. After examining his speech, it seemed Sun was interested in health through his inclusion of thoughtful solutions to teenage obesity, a student who was not as interested might not have thought out such complete solutions.

In looking closely at the assignment, it seemed clear that he knew some about the topic and was fairly comfortable writing about it. He used complex vocabulary in some sections including words like nutritious or epidemic. Additionally, he used complex grammatical structure such as in the verbal citation cited above. From this work, Sun understands English well as a second language learner, but he understands it too literally as demonstrated in the title of his paper (Teenager Obesity), as well as the first and second quote above (“When parents…” and “In California…”). He needs additional help to understand various forms of verbs and what words cannot be said together. While it is clear from the complexity of his speech that Sun knows what he is doing in writing, he still has a few minor grammatical errors which would trip up readers. Nonetheless, all of his ideas behind the work are correct and come across clearly in the speech. It would be fair to assume he is in the fourth stage of intermediate fluency and well on his way to advanced fluency (Hill and Flynn 15).

To further understand where Sun needs assistance, it would have been helpful to see the final-product through his performance of the actual speech to his peers in class. Analyzing this final piece would add additional understanding to his mastery of formal language and comfort level in using it. His use of academic vocabulary and evidence throughout the speech outline is a nod to his development in English as a second language because the majority of academic language is developed in the final stage of fluency (Levine and McCloskey 15, Hill and Flynn 14).

 

Implications for Classroom Practice

Although I did not analyzing the final speech, there are still many important implications from the analysis Sun’s outline which should be considered as he continues learning English. Because of his various simple grammatical errors shown in the sample quotes above, Sun should continue to work with higher level reading and writing assignments. By continuing to push his reading level higher, he will also push his speaking and writing skills higher. Although I am not aware if Sun continues to read in his native language or not, teachers might encourage him to read at higher levels in his native language because this has been demonstrated to help the acquisition of higher levels of learning in the second language (Levine and McCloskey 15).

In addition, it will be helpful to focus instruction on Sun’s interests. If he is interested in health, his health, science, and English teachers could organize assignments which would focus instruction on learning about these topics and being able to communicate his learning through speeches, projects, or reports. They might encourage him to start a club or outreach program through the school so he can continue to use his skills of communication through reading, and speaking to others. Through my interactions with him, he is highly personable, and considerate of his other classmates, often working with them on assignments when they struggle. Therefore, there could be significant potential for this club to also be involved in community centers or churches to help educate the children of families transitioning to the United States in the same way Sun Light did a few years ago.

Another avenue Sun could be encouraged to pursue is a position on the school newspaper staff. This would allow Sun to interact academically and socially with a variety of students who have strong English language skills. It would also allow him an important voice as an advocate of his culture and history which are two important parts of who he is as a student and person.

Either of the options outlined above would provide Sun Light with meaningful interaction in his school, and the community which would allow him to continue to polish his knowledge of English. He does not necessarily need as much help learning vocabulary as might have needed when he was a stage one, two, or three ELL student, so know teachers should focus his classroom time on honing his language skills a little further towards complete mastery.

 

Reflecting 

In reflecting on the ATLAS protocol I am wondering how I can use this for assignments in my science classroom. In some cases science assignments are subjective and I might be able to tie the assessment of an essay or a project to an ATLAS protocol. There is a significant amount of potential for a project based classroom to use ATLAS protocols for assessment and I know I would like to structure my classroom and lesson plans in a PBL fashion. Additionally through working with this protocol, I am concerned because science as a content area, can be challenging for ELL’s because of the high vocabulary and content demands which sometimes have no context. I have learned through my work at Shortridge because many students who attend urban schools, or who had just come to the United States, have not had the same level of diverse experiences in nature. I am left wondering how I can offer these students context when we discuss topics such as biology, ecology, or earth and space science. Context is a powerful tool to language development (Levine and McCloskey, Lightbrown).

From working with Sun and examining his speech using the protocol, I reaffirmed my belief that highly structured assignments can help ELL learners. Seeing his formally structured outline, I could see that it provided substantial help to keep Sun on track. Because the speech assignment was long and involved, by providing a structured outline the teacher had made sure that the focus of the assignment was on the speech itself, and not on the inane details of organizing and structuring the assignment.

I am curious about how I can do this in my classroom because so much of science is inquiry learning and as such is unstructured and messy. I know there can be structure among chaos, and I think this is what I would like my classroom to look like for ELL students (and all students): they will have the contextual support they need in addition to some structure of assignments, but they are free to seek answers to their own questions in science which might be a messy, unstructured process. This hopefully will remove the pressures of disorganization and create a space where language learning can occur the same way science does, through experimentation.

 

References

 

Flynn, Kathleen M., and Jane D. Hill. “The Stages of Second Language Acquisition.” Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners. Alexandria: ASCD, 2006. 14-21. Print.

Levine, Linda N., and Mary L. McCloskey. “Language Acquisition and Language Learning in the Classroom.” Teaching Learners of English in Mainstream Classrooms (K-8): One Class, Many Paths. New York: Pearson, 2008. 1-25. Print.

Lightbrown, P. M., and M. Spada. 2006. How Languages are Learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 96-100. Print

 

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