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My experience teaching English Language Learners over the years has led me to conclude that when ELLs struggle in reading and writing, the root cause is actually underdeveloped speaking and listening skills.
To me, the strategy called Stronger and Clearer
Each Time, developed by Jeff Zweirs, seemed like a way to build up these
skills and use speaking in support of writing because it gives students
multiple opportunities to discuss their texts or topics taught in class with
the help of their peers. Each time they talk, they are supposed to make their
statement stronger, meaning more examples and details, and clearer, meaning
better organized, beginning with a topic sentence statement and then listing
supporting reasons. So, you are basically trying to get students to speak in
paragraphs, with the paragraph getting better and better as they talk to more
students. If they can speak in paragraphs, then they can write in paragraphs!
I feel as though many of my
students have a lot of anxiety around being correct or right when completing
tasks in class. This anxiety is lowered with the Stronger and Clearer Each Time as an Integrated ELD strategy
since students are reassured that their ideas can be strengthened and improved
with the help of their peers as they use conversation to learn in an authentic
way.
Here are the steps of the
strategy:
- Pose a question about which students have prior knowledge that is aligned with what is currently being taught in class. Make sure the question is not a yes or no question, but one where students are asked to explain their thinking.
- Give students time to answer the same question independently in writing, using complete sentences (depending on the grade).
- Partner students up. In my class, I allowed students to choose their partner.
- Partner 1 shares their response while Partner 2 is actively listening and taking notes of any new ideas they hear to make their own response stronger and clearer.
- Now Partner 2 shares while Partner 1 is listening and taking notes.
- Students synthesize what they heard with their own ideas and get ready for their next partner.
- Repeat steps 4, 5 and 6 as many times as the teacher thinks. I kept it to 3 different partner talks for the sake of time and student engagement.
- Students create a final written response which is stronger and clearer than their first one based on what they have listened and learned from their peers to.
Students used a Stronger and Clearer
Each Time Note Catcher TEMPLATE like the one created by Jeff Zweirs to help them through the strategy.
Planning and Delivering the
Introductory Lesson
While planning for my first
Stronger and Clearer lesson, I wanted to teach the strategy explicitly in
isolation with a familiar concept so students would be focused on how the
strategy works rather than on learning new information. The video you see linked in the blog post shows this introductory lesson during Integrated ELD time. I chose a topic
that all my students could get on board with: “What makes recess important?” My
students’ eyes quickly lit up with ideas they wanted to share with their
partners. Everyone was asked to write a short response to that question to help them
process their thoughts.
Next, I demonstrated how
the strategy of oral language exchange would work. Students were chosen as
volunteers to play “mock” partners with myself and I had my partner student
share her idea first. Once she was done sharing, I was able to orally tell her
the ideas I had heard that could make my original response "stronger" by providing more and better examples. Then, I took notes into my template to include those better examples.
Next, vice versa, I shared my
response and she listened and verbalized the ideas she thought she would
“borrow” in order to make her idea stronger and clearer. Next, we took a minute to synthesize our ideas before talking to my next partner. This whole model with
partners happened one more time but this time with different students By the
end of the demonstration students were able to understand the structure of the
strategy as well as the benefits of talking to more than one peer in order to
strengthening their own ideas.
We then went through the whole process as a class and finished by writing
After the first lesson I
debriefed with my TSA Maria Inglés, our school’s principal Romy Trig-Smith and staff from the
ELL & Multilingual Office, Rita Pope and Mike Ray.
Follow-Up Lesson Related to
Content
The intro lesson done, for
the following day I chose a question that was related to the content we were
learning in class: “Why are sports important.” Before students do the Stronger
and Clearer strategy it is important that they have background knowledge on the
topic so they can draw knowledge and evidence from those sources or
experiences. After presenting the prompt, I reminded the students of the
structure of the Stronger and Clearer strategy.
In addition, I began to
explicitly teach some of the language to connect ideas (ELD Standards Part II - C Connecting and Condensing Ideas) that I saw them trying
to use on the first day, for example, “Another reason I think _______ is
________.” This helped them make their responses clearer.
Nearly all students were
engaged and excited to again use this strategy that lowered the anxiety of
having to speak to their peers about a complex topic. As I was facilitating and
holding expectations of partner work and monitoring behaviors, I was pleasantly
surprised how in-depth students were talking about their responses and the
natural dialogue that was occurring across the room was wonderful. The positive
impact on oral language development as well as teamwork and collaboration was
very strong and evident.
Next Steps
Next time, I plan to use
this strategy to improve not only my students’ oral language skills, but also
their writing abilities. Since I teach the fifth grade I find it acceptable to
require that their responses are formatted and structured in paragraph form
with an expectation of transitional phrases, and I believe that this learning
can move from the supported oral practice (speaking in paragraphs) to writing
(writing in paragraphs). I also realized that this does not all have to be done
in one day, and that their responses can be revisited and revised over multiple
days.
Stronger and Clearer Each
Time also makes for a great starter activity for the large writing projects I
have planned this year. I would also love to see how this strategy unfolds in a
small group setting. Small groups are a great opportunity for teachers to
closely analyze students' mastery of learning targets and if this strategy was
used in a formative way like an exit ticket, I would love to see what data I
can pull from it.
In sum, Stronger and
Clearer Each time has become a valuable tool in my teacher toolbox that equally
supports my ELLs as well as all my students!
