The Six Principles

Let’s discuss
• Kiran Patel is a high school teacher in Gujarat, India. She has
dedicated ten years to the teaching profession and finds immense joy
in her work. One of her students, Rahul Sharma, is facing challenges
in adjusting to the classroom routines. Rajat hails from a migrant
family and is in the process of learning English.
• To address his behaviour, Kiran decides to have a meeting with Rahul's
father. During the discussion, Kiran proposes the idea of writing daily
notes to inform the parents about Rahul's behaviour. She suggests
that on days when Rahul misbehaves, the father could implement a
small consequence.
Let’s discuss
“What should I do?” the father asks.
“Oh, maybe you can keep him from watching television,” says Kiran.
“We don’t own a television,” the father replies.
“Well then, don’t let him ride his bicycle,” answers Kim.
“Rahul doesn’t have a bicycle, Madam.”
“Well then, keep him indoors. Don’t let him go outside to play.”
“Madam, Rahul doesn’t have any friends. He never goes outside to
play.”
Principle 1
• P1 – Know Your Learners
• P - 1A: Teachers gain information about their learners
• Survey
• Needs analysis/assessment
• Organising and sharing information about learners
• P – 1B: Teachers embrace and leverage the resources that learners bring to
the classroom to enhance learning
• Collecting resources about students’ home cultures and languages
• Engaging with parents or guardians to gain knowledge about students’ experiences
• Guiding students in an autobiography project
• Acting as cultural mediators for students
Principle 1
 Let’s discuss
• Ms. Ritu Shah, in Gujarat, teaches undergraduate students in a dual language
classroom. This academic year, her class also includes five students from different
regions of India, each with their unique linguistic and cultural heritage. These
children face challenges in reading and writing skills and have varying levels of
language proficiency. To address these challenges, Ms. Ritu Shah decides to focus
the social studies unit on global landmarks and famous historical events to
enhance their reading and writing skills.
• In Gujarat, Ms. Priya Patel teaches undergraduate students in a dual language
classroom. This academic year, her class includes five students whose families
have migrated from different regions of India. These children exhibit varying
levels of language proficiency, with all of them facing challenges in reading and
writing skills as they are below the expected grade level. To address this, Ms.
Priya Patel decides to structure a social studies unit centered on the diverse
culture, climate, agriculture, food, and traditions of regions of those students to
enhance their reading and writing skills.
Principle 2
• P2 - Create Conditions for Language Learning
• P – 2A: Teachers promote an emotionally positive and organised classroom, with
attention to reducing students’ anxiety and developing trust.
• Ensuring that new students receive a warm welcome from classmates
• Designing appropriate work spaces
• Organising the physical environment of the classroom to help students learn and use the new
language
• Identifying a mentor for each student
• Using clear, patterned, and routine language to communicate with new learners
• P – 2B: Teachers demonstrate expectations of success for all learners.
• Demonstrating the belief that all students in the classroom will learn language and academic
content to a high level
• Praising students for effort and persistence in order to communicate how success is achieved
• Using a wide variety of instructional approaches to appeal to diverse learners
• Teaching learners strategies to increase their abilities to participate in the instructional
conversation
Principle 2
• P2 - Create Conditions for Language Learning
• P – 2C: Teachers plan instruction to enhance and support students’
motivation for language learning
• Prompting students to make connections from their learning to their own lives
• Building a repertoire of learning tasks that students enjoy and experience as inherently
motivating
• Helping students focus on a well-defined project with a future outcome to motivate and
structure their behaviour
• Expecting student ownership and support students in engagement with learning
Let’s discuss
• In Gujarat, India, Mrs. Meera Desai teaches English language in a bilingual high
school in a bustling city. In her class, she has thirty students who are in the process
of learning English. Deviating from traditional written reports, Mrs. Desai decides
to enhance the learning experience by having her students create video
presentations accompanied by posters. She carefully outlines the unit objectives,
making it clear to the students that they can conduct their research using English
or Gujarati sources.
• To provide a model for proficiency expectations, Mrs. Desai shows videos created
by students from her previous English language class. These videos serve as
examples to illustrate the level of proficiency she anticipates from her bilingual
students. Recognizing the importance of individualized support, Mrs. Desai
engages in one-on-one meetings with her language learners. During these
sessions, she encourages students to articulate their understanding of the
project's objectives and what they are expected to know or be able to do by the
project's completion.
Principle 3
• P3 – Design High-Quality Lessons for Language Development
• P – 3A: Teachers prepare lessons with clear outcomes and convey them to
their students.
• Determining language and content objectives
• To determine content objectives, ask these questions:
• What specifically do I want my students to be able to know or do with the informational
content by the end of the lesson?
• Is my objective grade-appropriate?
• Is my objective cognitively challenging?
• How can I communicate the objective to my students?
• Is my objective measurable?
• What contextual supports can I provide for learning?
 Principle 3
• P3 – Design High-Quality Lessons for Language Development
• P – 3A: Teachers prepare lessons with clear outcomes and convey them to their
students.
• Determining language and content objectives
• To determine language objectives, ask these questions:
• What specifically do I want my students to understand, say, read, or write by the end of the
lesson?
• What specific language structures and vocabulary are necessary to convey the content?
• What grammatical forms do I want my students to use and understand?
• What language functions do my students need to use to accomplish success in this lesson?
• How can I communicate the objective to my students?
• Can my objective be measured? What contextual supports can I provide for learning?
Principle 3
Principle 3
• P3 – Design High-Quality Lessons for Language Development
• P – 3B: Teachers provide and enhance input through varied approaches,
techniques, and modalities.
• How will the new information be conveyed to my students?
• Will they listen to it, read it, or engage in research or an inquiry task to discover it?
• How can I support the input with context and scaffolding?
• How can I be sure that my students understand my input?
 Principle 3
P3 – Design High-Quality
Lessons for Language
Development
P – 3B: Teachers provide and
enhance input through varied
approaches, techniques, and
modalities.
Using comprehensible input to
convey information to students
Principle 3
• P3 – Design High-Quality Lessons for Language Development
• P – 3B: Teachers provide and enhance input through varied approaches,
techniques, and modalities.
• Adjusting language to enhance input to students
• Speak clearly
• Speak at a slower rate for beginners and at a normal rate for advanced learners
• Use varied repeptition
• Use gesture as clues to meanings
• Use word stress, intonation, and/or pauses purposefully
• Avoid idioms, jargon, and slang
• Elicit oral production or elaboration from learners
Principle 3
• P3 – Design High-Quality Lessons for Language Development
• P – 3B: Teachers provide and enhance input through varied approaches,
techniques, and modalities.
• Using multiple sources of input to students
• Movies and video
• Internet sites and other technology
• Paired talk or paired reading
• Peer tutoring
• Small-group discussion
• Communicating clear instructions to carry out the learning task
Principle 3
• P3 – Design High-Quality Lessons for Language Development
• P – 3C: Teachers engage learners in the use and practice of authentic language.
• Eliciting output from students
• Creating opportunities for learners to be active participants
• Language is best thought of as a verb rather than a noun (Levine & McCloskey, 2013)
• It is best learned while doing something with it – by being engaged with it as a listener, speaker,
reader, or writer
• “Say more on that.”
• “So, you are saying…”
• “Do you agree or disagree with that?”
• “Why do you think that?”
• “What have we discovered?”
• “What do you think?”
Principle 3
• P3 – Design High-Quality Lessons for Language Development
• P – 3C: Teachers engage learners in the use and practice of authentic
language.
• Using techniques to promote active language practice at every stage of the lesson
• Integrating language learning into content lessons and content into language lessons
• The language of history and social studies
• The language of mathematics
• The language of science
• Encouraging language learning beyond the classroom
Principle 3
• P3 – Design High-Quality Lessons for Language Development
• P – 3D: Teachers design lessons so that learners engage with relevant and
meaningful content.
• Planning task that are culturally relevant and interesting to students
• Selecting materials that reflect students’ specific interest
• P – 3E: Teachers plan differentiated instruction according to their learners’
English language proficiency levels, needs, and goals.
• Building scaffolding into lessons for different purposes
• Employing grouping patterns designed to promote peer support, engagement, and
comprehensibility
• Providing supplemental materials
• Planning for appropriate challenge, depending on learner language proficiency levels
Principle 3
• P3 – Design High-Quality Lessons for Language Development
• P – 3F: Teachers promote the use of learning strategies and critical thinking
among students.
• Teaching a variety of learning strategies for specific purposes
• Metacognitive strategies
• Cognitive strategies
• Social/affective strategies
• Language learning strategies
• Designing tasks for students to practice using critical thinking and learning strategies
Principle 3
• P3 – Design High-Quality Lessons for Language Development
• P – 3G: Teachers promote students’ self-regulated learning.
• Facilitating students’ setting of meaningful goals for themselves and monitoring of their
progress toward those goals
• Providing self-assessment tools that allow students to evaluate their strengths and
weaknesses
• Helping learners develop effective study habits
Let’s discuss
• In Gujarat, India, Mr Raj Patel, a new teacher, teaches English language to 12 th
grade students in a suburban school. In the initial interaction with students he
finds that within his class, there are several students who are currently learning
English at different proficiency levels. Considering it Mr Patel decides to embrace
cooperative learning as a key classroom organization strategy, Mr Patel has
observed that students become more engaged in their learning when they have
the support of their peers to clarify, restate, correct, and model the academic
language relevant to their grade level.
• This morning, Mr Patel employs a jigsaw technique to facilitate collaborative
learning. The students are divided into groups, each assigned to read about one
of the three branches of the Indian government. Mr Patel provides questions for
the students to answer about their respective sections. Later in the lesson, they
will have the opportunity to teach what they have learned to other students who
have read different sections.
Principle 4
• P4 – Adapt Lesson Delivery as Needed
• P – 4A: Teachers check student comprehension frequently and adjust
instruction according to learner responses.
• Using teaching practices that ensure better auditory comprehension
• Checking comprehension with group response techniques
• P – 4B: Teachers adjust their talk, the task, or the materials according to
learner responses.
• Modifying oral language input as necessary
• Simplification, Wait time, Open-ended questioning etc.
• Switching to other forms of input as needed
• Adapting the task to learner proficiency levels
• Scaffolding extensively
Let’s discuss
• In Gujarat, India, Ms. Meena Amin is thrilled to welcome a new student from a
different linguistic background into her 8th std. classroom. The young boy, eager to
communicate, has limited proficiency in English, and Ms. Amin is not familiar with his
native language.
• Rahul: I gob new bab sut.
• Ms Amin: Oh, do you have something new? What is it?
• Rahul: New bab sut.
• Ms Amin: Is it a new baby?
• Rahul: No, bab sut.
• Ms Amin: What do you do with this new thing?
• Rahul: Swim.
• Ms Amin: Oh, you have a new bathing suit. You’re going to swim in your new bathing
suit. Tell me what it looks like.
Principle 5
• P5 – Monitor and Assess Student Language Development
• P – 5A: Teachers monitor student errors.
• Taking note of errors to provide appropriate feedback to students
• Reteaching when errors indicate that students have misunderstood or learnt the material
incorrectly
• P – 5B: Teachers provide ongoing effective feedback strategically.
• Using specific feedback
• Delivering feedback in a timely manner
• Delivering feedback according to the age and proficiency level of the learner
• Using a variety of types of oral corrective feedback
Principle 5
• P5 – Monitor and Assess Student Language Development
• P – 5B: Teachers provide ongoing effective feedback strategically.
• Using a variety of types of oral corrective feedback
• Explicit corrections
• Recast
• Prompts for self-repair
• Repetition
• Elicitation
• Clarification request
• Metalinguistic clues
• Open-ended questions
• Non-verbal cues
• Using written feedback when appropriate
Principle 5
• P5 – Monitor and Assess Student Language Development
• P – 5C: Teachers design varied and valid assessments and supports to assess
student learning.
• Using classroom-based assessment to inform teaching and improve learning
• Using testing procedures based on principles of assessment
• Fairness, Reliability and Validity
• Relying on a variety of assessment types to determine student achievement
• Formative assessment
• Summative assessment
• Performance-based portfolios
• Criterion-based rubrics
Let’s discuss
• In Gujarat, India, Seema and Aisha both teach English in an urban school.
Since they teach the same subject, they often come together to reflect on their
recent teaching experiments. They discuss the strategies they have
implemented and the outcomes observed. These discussions serve to energize
their teaching, fostering an environment of continuous learning and growth.
• Seema: I tried a new vocabulary-building activity today.
• Aisha: That sounds interesting! How did it go?
• Seema: The students were engaged, and some even used the new words in sentences.
• They frequently exchange tips and ideas that they eagerly incorporate into
their own classrooms. Despite having only three years of teaching experience,
both Seema and Aisha have amassed a diverse set of techniques and are
actively engaged in critical reflection on their teaching practices.
Principle 6
• P6 – Engage and Collaborate within a Community of Practice
• P – 6A: Teachers are fully engaged in their profession.
• Engaging in reflective practice to grow professionally
• Participating in continuous learning and ongoing professional development
• P – 6B: Teachers collaborate with one another to co-pan and co-teach.