Every teacher depends on language skills to teach their classes. When students do not have the language skills, they cannot follow teachers' instructions. When they cannot do the work, they will talk, play or find something else to do to amuse themselves. These activities are usually at the expense of the teacher and other students. When they think they can achieve on a presented task, they will try.
Teachers need to think about the concepts, objects, procedures or events in the content area that they can use to improve students oral and written language which will then translate into improved content learning. When teachers can use their content areas to implement oral/written language lessons, dual instruction happens. First, teaching or reinforcing language development takes a long time to develop skills mastery. Second, students can demonstrate content mastery with a minimum of stress, so they are more amenable to follow rules (behavior) so the entire class functions well.
When a teacher analyzes skills required for tasks in all content areas, there are commonalities to all areas of study:
· part v. whole
· cause and effect (sequences of actions)
· similarities and differences (compare and contrast)
· classification and hierarchical organizations
· multiple meanings of words
· language expansion
Part v. Whole
These types of tasks use both hemispheres of the brain: the parts and language are in the domain of the left hemisphere, whereas the "whole-ness" lies within the domain of the right hemisphere. When students become facile at mentally shifting from the object to its component parts and then reassembling known information into new units, they build association pathways throughout the brain. Those pathways allow the child to access more information, more quickly, and developmentally in increasingly complex ways.
Cause and Effect (Sequential Ordering)
Spatial concepts and experiences have a sequential or linear aspect to them. Many people do not link individual components into an action series; consequently, they may not be aware of the consequences of actions or choices they have made. When a child can break down actions into component parts, (s)he becomes aware of what actions must precede others or what actions happen as a result of conditions set up prior.
Similarities and Differences (Compare and Contrast)
Similar to the part v. whole activity, the similarities and differences approach works with greater details and attributes. The thought process required to complete these types of tasks forces the child to develop more abstract reasoning skills. This type of thought process also helps develop the organizational and hierarchical thought processes.
Classification and Hierarchical Organizations
The ability to group information is indicative of a child's cognitive development. When children can match objects, they are functioning at the same/not same level of awareness. When they can group objects by attributes (i.e., color, shape, size, function), they are beginning to be able to manipulate information. It is only when children can put objects or information into hierarchical formats (i.e., biological classification, outlining content for main idea and details) that children can manage abstract reasoning. Typically this type of reasoning is required for most classes beginning in middle school.
Multiple Meanings of Words
Our vocabulary has many words with more than one meaning. The same word can be used as a different part of speech, and each usage has a unique meaning. For an extreme example: "A rocky rocker rocked next to a rock," means that there is a rocking chair that doesn't move smoothly swayed or shifted positions next to a boulder. Children who have one meaning for the word "rock" will gain no information from that sentence.
Language Expansion
A simple sentence has a subject, an action and possibly bits of other information. Children who function only with simple sentences leave out details and nuances of meaning that affect the final outcome or content. Sentences that contain descriptions of objects (adjectives), actions (adverbs and/or prepositional phrases indicating quality of action or spatial or temporal relationships), conjunctions (indicating sequence of action) and subordinate clauses (indicating levels of importance of information) expand available information. The more information that is available, the more likely it will be that the child makes decisions and applies known information in different contexts.
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