What to keep in mind when teaching students of other cultures. From Judy Lombardi's class.

1. Social Studies Approach to
ELL Students
by Jayne Dyan Hoffman

2. Learning Styles
 Different cultures learn
different ways.
 In the Native American
tradition, a child is taught
through observation of crafts,
cooking, and rituals.
 The children are expected to
learn from their elders in
Native American tradition and
listening is valued more than
contributing until the child
reaches a certain age of
wisdom and receives a vision
for their life.
 The teacher must keep in
mind the origin or cultural
mores of the student.

3. Additive vs. Subtractive Acculturation
 Additive Acculturation
 Members of society acquire
culture through transmission
from other members of
culture. Children in school
setting ages 5-18 are more
apt to receive as much
acculturalization on the
playground and in informal
social settings as they are in
the classroom.
 Subtractive Acculturation
 Assimilation causes the
individual to replace old
culture with the new.
Assimilation may not be a
choice. In a country like
America, where students
compete for popularity,
children may have the
tendency to pick on newly
transplanted students that
don’t have similar dress
styles, views of gender roles,
or even how they assert
themselves as individuals.

4. DUAL IMMERSION INSTRUCTION
Students who arrive to
the United States with
no training in English
can be taught through a
dual immersion
program if the school
allows it and the
demographics are
proportional to program.
 A dual immersion
program can be
implemented if the class
is about 50/50 in two
languages. Half of the
instruction can be
taught in one language
and half in another.
 Spanish/English
 English/Japanese
 English/Armenian

5. Structure of Language
 Students learn
language through
identifying sounds,
construction, decoding,
listening, attaching
images to actions and
morphology – relating
similar words into one
group.

6. Language Analysis
 Morphology is the
identification, analysis
and description of the
structure of words.
Through syntax and
lexicology, students
relate similar words
together by phonetics
and association.
 Pragmatics is a more
subtle blend of
language and meaning
It studies the ways in
which context
contributes to meaning.
What is the person
implying and in what
context are they uttering
the words? What is
their intent?

7. Cultural dilemma of understanding
 Because a new resident of the U.S. has to incorporate academic
language into their schema of thinking and interpret social
implications of actions and cultural meaning, they need a teacher
with proper tools to help them comprehend the nature of complex,
abstract concepts in social studies.
 Students may come from places where there is no individiual
freedom of the citizen, or religious subscription is more profound
that national identity. Therefore, the teacher must be sensitive in
the way he/she projects American ideals and ideologies.
 If the teacher is trying to explain the Social Contract where the
individual citizen exchanges some freedom in exchange for the
protection of a government, the teacher must be successful in
implementing the historical evolution of how this concept
developed through Roseau, was promoted by pre-Constitution
Americans and increased social awareness.

8. My definition of Academic Language
 Academic language for history includes constructing facts and
events within a time line and defining events within a social,
political, cultural and historical context. Defining events are done
within a local, regional, national and international basis through
cross national and cultural lines. Historians and social scientists
often discuss nation's progress through a term called waves.
Waves means the level of progress a nation has obtained in
human rights awareness, technology, world view and industry.
Events can be constructed beyond a government mandate and
civic perspective to a broad based humanisitic perspective such
as animal rights development or a new age religion that has
caught on worldwide. In other words, chronology must be applied
to the social scientific evolution ideas such as the development of
the civil society, the development of the nation state, states vs.
federal rights, the role of United Nations, the purpose of ngos like
Oxfam, etc

9. Academic Language continued
 The evolution of nations, a social contract between government
and the people, excesses of government authority, rogue regimes
and many other concepts such as border less terrorist
organizations can only be understand in terms of historical
development. The student must have evaluation and conceptual
skills to understand academic language which may define
historical events within the context of the time and historical
implication; multiple occurrences that feed off each other in
different geographic locations simultaneously. For example in the
early 1960s, Africa had many independent movements to free
their nations from colonial powers. This revolution coincided with
the American Civil Rights movement. The student must not only
understand the definable event but the social, economical and
historical impetus that created cause and effect.

10. Final Summary of Academic language
 Patterns of human behavior over time are categorized into
conceptions such as racism, civil rights, social contract, macro
and micro economic behavior within and outside a system, the
development of the civil society within a democratic society, neo-
institutions and ideologies that spring up and surround
institutional structure and conditions. A student must learn how
to evaluate events within a time period framework related to past
and present events including predictable outcomes. Bloom's
taxonomy can be scaffolded into historical teaching which include
evaluation, reflection, comparing and contrasting, analyzing and
discernment to name a few.

11. Construction of Knowledge
 Humans must construct
knowledge they acquire
and begin to possess.
The brain activates
cognitive structure of
optimal pruning.
Cognitive structures
undergo continual
development through
learner’s purposeful
activities. – Mary Riggs

12. Schema Theory
 What a child learns at
home and at school
becomes a context of
learning for a
systematic development
of a mental framework*
in how they integrate
values, words, symbols
into their knowledge.
 *Mary Riggs class lecture.

13. Bringing it together
 In summary, the teacher must
comprehend a child’s cultural
tradition when receiving a new
student.
 If possible, the teacher can add
visual instruction, integrate
common language and symbols,
highlight the child’s new culture
and find ways to teach abstract
social studies and be aware of
innuendos a new student may not
understand.
 The other students can provide
real life social acclamation by
making the child feel welcome
and taking the new resident
under their wing.
 Learning is cooperative and
individual. The child will blend the
knowledge in their own self
involved process while seeking a
need for belongingness and
acceptance.