We have developed six criteria for designing classroom activities to promote the language acquisition, content-knowledge development, literacy skills, and critical thinking skills of limited formally schooled ELLs. We demonstrate how to use these criteria and provide a checklist for teachers to use in preparing their own materials.

1. Andrea DeCapua
The College of New Rochelle
Helaine W. Marshall
Long Island University

2. Students with Limited or
Interrupted Formal Education
How do we refer to them?
LFS (Freeman & Freeman, 2002)
SIFE (NY State Department of Education)
SLIFE (DeCapua, Smathers, & Tang, 2008)

3. Needs of SLIFE
• Learn basic and grade-level subject area concepts
• Develop basic literacy skills
• Develop academic ways of thinking
• Adapt to cultural differences in learning and
teaching

4. MALP Teacher Planning Checklist
A. Accept Conditions for Learning
A1. I am making this lesson/project immediately relevant to my students.
A2. I am helping students develop and maintain interconnectedness.
B. Combine Processes for Learning
B1. I am incorporating both shared responsibility and individual accountability.
B2. I am scaffolding the written word through oral interaction.
C. Focus on New Activities for Learning
C1. I am focusing on tasks requiring academic ways of thinking.
C2. I am making these tasks accessible to my students with familiar language and
content.
© University of Michigan Press, 2010. DeCapua & Marshall. Breaking New Ground:
Teaching Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education in Secondary Schools

5. The most frequently asked question in
secondary school classrooms is…..
WHAT IS ___________________?
To define is to know

6. What is a tree?
What do dogs and rabbits have in common?

7. Sample Task
(Luria, 1976)

8. Two Different Learning Paradigms
(DeCapua & Marshall, 2009, in press; Marshall, 1994,1998)
Aspects of
SLIFE U.S. Classrooms
Learning
Immediate Future
CONDITIONS Relevance Relevance
Interconnectedness Independence
Shared Individual
PROCESSES Responsibility Accountability
Oral Transmission Written Word
ACTIVITIES Pragmatic Tasks Academic Tasks

9. Mutually Adaptive Learning
Paradigm - MALP
• Instructional Model
• Elements from students’ learning paradigm
• Elements from U.S. learning paradigm
• Transitional approach to close achievement gap
(DeCapua & Marshall, 2010; Marshall, 1998)

10. Mutually Adaptive Learning Paradigm - MALP
Instructional Model
SLIFE U.S. Classrooms
Immediate Future
ACCEPT SLIFE Relevance Relevance
CONDITIONS
Interconnectedness
Independence
COMBINE
SLIFE & U.S. Shared Individual
Responsibility Accountability
PROCESSES with
Oral
Transmission Written Word
FOCUS on U.S.
ACTIVITIES with
familiar Pragmatic Academic
language Tasks Tasks
& content
(DeCapua & Marshall, 2009 in press; Marshall 1994, 1998)

12. MYSTERY BAG ACTIVITY
Choose a bag.
Look inside.
What is it?
Think about your answer.

13. Questions to ask about the
Mystery Bag
Do you know what it is?
Do you know what it is called in your language?
Do you like it?
Give 4 words to describe it.

14. CHECKING ANSWERS
One by one, check all the answers
Have all students participate in some aspect of the
checking
› Give answers - tabulate them
› Write answers up as others give them
› Copy down all descriptive words
And now………

15. Apple Collection

16. CATEGORIZATION
A/An _______________________
is
a/an _______________________
Important: small before big!
Important

17. CHARACTERISTICS
with _______________________
Or
that has ____________________

18. SPECIFIC DESCRIPTIONS
ORDER of Noun Phrase Modifiers
Opinion Origin
Size (Where from)
Shape Material
Condition (Made of)
Age Function
Color (Used for)

19. More Tasks . . .
Talk/write about the items in the collections
using sentence frames
Make semantic feature charts
based on the characteristics of each item
Create new collections
based on student interests and/or curriculum topics

20. Six Evaluation Criteria
We provide a checklist for teachers to use in
preparing their own materials.
To see if you are incorporating MALP into your
teaching, ask yourself these six questions as you
design lessons, projects, and classroom activities.

21. How am I making this lesson immediately
relevant to my students?
The category each object
represents is something
familiar to them
The activity begins as a
game
The activity is making the
abstract—classification—
concrete, by using real-
world objects

22. How am I helping students develop and maintain
interconnectedness?
Students share their
collections or ideas
about collections
Students and teacher
learn more about each
others’ interests
Students create
collections together as a
class

23. How am I incorporating both shared
responsibility and individual accountability?
Class collectively
creates sentences
Pairs work together to
come up with additional
sentences
Each member of pair
adds information related
to the particular object
s/he has

24. How am I scaffolding the written word through
oral interaction?
Students share their
answers to the questions
orally.
The teacher writes their
descriptive words on the
board.
The teacher elicits
sentences about their
objects, which she writes
on the board.
The students read these
sentences back orally and
later write them in their
notebooks.

25. What new academic tasks am I introducing?
Classifying
Comparing &
Contrasting
Defining
Representational
definitions vs.
functional definitions

26. What am I doing to make the new tasks
accessible to my students?
Teacher allows for
nonverbal
communication
Language scaffolded by
use of L1 among
students
Content scaffolded by
relevant personal
information
Content scaffolded by
sentence frames

27. BENEFITS OF COLLECTIONS
Building definitions
Learning ways to categorize objects
Developing vocabulary
academic terms
descriptive adjectives
Collaborating on a class project

28. Our website: http://malp.pbworks.com/
Contact us:
Andrea DeCapua adecapua@cnr.edu
Helaine W. Marshall helaine.marshall@liu.edu