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Classrooms where language is used for learning are fundamentally different from classrooms you may be familiar with. For many years, teachers and researchers have known that students learn better and that their learning lasts longer in language-intensive classrooms.
No matter what the subject, the people who read it, write it, and talk it are the ones who learn it best.
To give students a better learning environment, dramatic changes are needed in how language is used to learn and in what classrooms look and sound like.
Students learning new concepts and processes try to teach them to others, write a letter or journal entry explaining them, or make a list of what they do and do not understand.
Students work together on a unit of study, talk with their peers, listen for areas of agreement and mutual understanding, negotiate joint goals and plans, read resource materials, prepare written notes for personal use and for sharing with others, jointly draft a group paper, and prepare oral presentations to share their learning with their class or other audiences.
Students sit in circles or other clusters, sometimes with their teacher as one member of the group. The students set questions to guide future discussion and study. Questions for investigation are as likely to be asked by the students as by the teacher.
Students play an active role in choosing topics for study. Students may be reading different materials and pursuing their own questions and topics. They will also decide how to share what they are learning with their peers.
Students maintain learning logs, ongoing journals in which they record frequent observations about their learning. In secondary schools, these observations may focus on learning of a particular subject area. Periodically, students use these logs to look back at their learning over time, to discover what helped and hindered, and to develop more effective learning strategies and goals for the future.
Students develop portfolios of their work, including essays, notes, completed homework, projects, drawings, lab reports, field notes, word problems, research data, proofs, graphs, tests, or selections from their learning logs. Periodically, students review and update the contents of their portfolios, and write about how these materials show what they have learned and what they want to pursue in the future.
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Teachers need to reassess their teaching and re-examine their students' learning. If students are not working and learning, investigate and try out ways to structure more active, language-centered teaching and learning.
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Teachers can examine language uses in their classrooms. Who is talking? Who is asking the questions? How many modes of language (talking, listening, writing, reading) are students actively using? What activities and assignments can be introduced to increase the range and extent of student language?
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Teachers can restructure their teaching and their classrooms, sharing some of the control over the course of study with students, and can learn alongside their students.
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Teachers should ground their thinking and teaching in current language research and theory.
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Administrators need to support innovative teachers through professional development opportunities and evaluation criteria which recognize and celebrate innovation.
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Parents should expect to see different classrooms from those they remember. They will see classrooms where talk prevails, students often work in groups, and students actively participate in many projects.
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Parents can evaluate an assignment for the degree to which it genuinely engages interest, guides students through the learning process, incorporates feedback from teachers and peers, and requires many different ways of using language.
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Students can join in exploring new ways of learning with their teachers and share their enthusiasm for active exploration, talking, writing, and reading with others in their school community.
American education is at a critical crossroad. Pressure for accountability and reform is intense. Rather than responding by trying to re-create classrooms of the past or by simply intensifying current practices, teachers, administrators, students, parents, and politicians must remain focused on what we have discovered about learning in the best classrooms.
We reiterate, classrooms where language is used for learning are fundamentally different classrooms. They are places where students talk, read, and write frequently, places where they learn better and their learning lasts longer.
To improve schools for all learners, we need to have a different destination in mind and we need to walk a different path. How students learn cannot be separated from what they learn.
Students are most likely to become engaged, independent, critical thinkers when their learning is viewed as an opportunity for significant investigation, individual application, and personal reflection. Now is the time for action.
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Barr, Mary, et al. What's Going On? Language-Learning Episodes in English and American Classrooms, 4-13. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books, 1982.
Britton, James. Language and Learning. Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1970.
Clark, Robert. "Team Projects in Technology and Society," in Programs That Work. T. Fulwiler and A. Young (Eds.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books, 1990.
Driscoll, Marc, and Jere Confrey (Eds.). Teaching Mathematics: Strategies That Work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books, 1988.
Fulwiler, Toby (Ed.). The Journal Book. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books, 1987.
Griffen, C.W. (Ed.). Teaching Writing in All Disciplines. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1982.
Hynds, Susan, and Donald L. Rubin. Perspectives on Talk and Learning. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1990.
Lester, Nancy, and Cynthia Onore. Learning Changes: One School District Meets Language Across the Curriculum. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books, 1990.
Mayher, John S., Nancy Lester, and Gordon Pradl. Learning to Write/Writing to Learn. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1983.
Mayher, John S. Uncommon Sense: Theoretical Practice in Language Education. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1990.
Moffett, James, and Betty Jane Wagner. Student-Centered Language Arts, Fourth Edition. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books, 1992.
Osbourne, Roger, and Peter Freyberg. Learning in Science. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books, 1985.
Self, Judy (Ed.). Plain Talk about Learning and Writing Across the Curriculum. Radford, VA: Virginia Department of Education, 1987.
Thaiss, Christopher. Language Across the Curriculum in the Elementary Grades. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1986.
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