High-Leverage Teaching Practices for Math and Foreign Language

From the Marshall Memo #444

In this article in Foreign Language Annals, Anne Cummings Hlas and Christopher Hlas (University of Wisconsin/Eau Claire) describe four high-leverage teaching practices, with a special focus on whether novice teachers can adopt them and be successful from their first weeks in the classroom. These practices come from research in mathematics, but Hlas and Hlas apply them to foreign language classrooms.

• Anticipating student errors and misconceptions during planning – The authors recommend a four-column lesson-planning format borrowed from Japanese Lesson Study:

• A specific objective within the lesson – for example, learning when to use the formal and informal you when conversing in Spanish;
• Expected student responses, questions, and misconceptions – In this example, there’s possible confusion around formal and informal greetings;
• Teacher’s follow-up questions or actions – Giving concrete examples, showing pictures of people and situations (children, well-known politicians, job interview, coffee shop);
• Goals and method of evaluation – Asking for an all-class response (finger signals for choice 1 or choice 2) of which you to use in different formal and informal situations.

• Making connections between multiple representations – The fable of the six blind men touching different parts of an elephant (It’s a tree! It’s a snake!) captures this approach. In a foreign language classroom, students might be asked to give correct and incorrect examples of how to ask for information, identify patterns, use manipulatives (photographs of different situations), practice speaking the greetings, and visualize by creating a concept map.

• Leading a class discussion – Hlas and Hlas present this list of steps for conducting a discussion (in math or foreign language classes) for maximum impact on student learning:

• Setting the purpose and launching the discussion;
• Using students’ ideas to advance the discussion;
• Eliciting, scaffolding, and following up on students’ contributions;
• Managing multiple ideas and engaging different students equitably;
• Making public records of selected ideas as the discussion unfolds and saying them out loud as they’re written up;
• Using language that is accurate yet accessible to students;
• Identifying and highlighting the core of an idea or explanation;
• Working with students’ errors and misconceptions;
• Clarifying terms;
• Asking students to ground discussion in shared knowledge and terms;
• Deploying and connecting representations of content.

• Teaching through problem solving – This involves presenting students with a problem to be solved rather than a lecture on solutions. Students are often asked to work on the problem in groups and then share problem-solving strategies. In foreign-language classes, problems might include crossword puzzles and word games, real-world dilemmas (losing a passport while abroad), communication conflicts, writing issues (Who is my audience? What is the genre?), and interpreting a text (exploring the motivation of characters in a story). The key issue for teachers is choosing an appropriate problem, establishing the right amount of background knowledge, facilitating/coaching/guiding students as they wrestle with it, and sharing out solutions and strategies. Students might also be taught Polya’s four-step problem-solving model: 

• Understand the problem;
• Devise a plan;
• Carry out the plan;
• Look back and revisit the plan.

“A Review of High-Leverage Teaching Practices: Making Connections Between Mathematics and Foreign Languages” by Anne Cummings Hlas and Christopher Hlas in Foreign Language Annals, Summer 2012 (Vol. 45, #S1, p. S76-S97),

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2012.01180.x...