Takeaways from Section 3 of EL Excellence Every Day Teacher Book Club

Here are the takeaways from section 3 of the book:

1. We must meet children where they are, we must understand them well to teach them well, and we must offer the right amount of supports and challenges to grow. (Jennifer Serravallo 2015, p. 19).
2. If we overmodel, overguide, and overscaffold, we hinder student thinking and self-directed learning.
3. We must get specific about our goal and where students are in relation to our goals and then choose, lose, or adapt supports according to each students' assets and needs.
4. To support ELs strategically, in ways that accelerate rather than remediate their learning, it is critical that we choose and lose supports within the context of reflective teaching.
5. Thriving with content learning means excelling with the high expectations we have for all learners to excel with our content learning experiences.
6. Content learning supports for ELs include building background knowledge, modeling, using graphic organizers, and structuring collaborative conversations to deepen thinking.
7. Learning language for success within school means developing and using the academic language essential for listening, speaking, reading, and writing across the curriculum.
8. Language supports are linguistics supports.
9. Example of linguistic supports include teaching vocabulary, teaching how language is used in a text, scaffolding language use with linguistic frames or word banks, ad structuring conversations to develop oral academic language in meaningful ways.  
10. Language is more than vocabulary and grammar.
11. Teaching language in isolation from rigorous academic content literacy won't empower ELs with the language they need to thrive with rigorous academic content literacy. 
12. To learn academic language, ELs need opportunities to actively participate in meaningful, high-level learning and communication in core classrooms.  
13. ELs benefit from language teaching and scaffolds that help them make meaning from complexity and communicate effectively in academic conversations and tasks across the curriculum.  
14. Student use receptive and productive language in every classroom, every day.
15. The ultimate goal of supporting ELs with language is to help ELs thrive across all the domains of speaking, listening, reading, and writing in diverse academic contexts.
16. The best lessons and best language-learning opportunities engage students in using productive and receptive language in synthesis to communicate.
17. The best way to build academic language is within the context of academic learning and academic communication.
18. There is no go-to support that works for every student, every time.
19. The gold standard for using supports strategically is engaging students at the optimal level of challenge.
20. Use scaffolds and supports to help stretch students to learn beyond what they already know and can do.
21. Remove scaffolds and supports any time students will be able to realize their own success via problem solving, productive struggle, and self-directed learning.
22. Too many supports all of the time lead to passive learners dependent on teacher direction.
23. Too few supports can lead to students failing and disengaging from school.
24. Every need we observe within a lesson helps us anticipate the best level of supports in future lessons.
25. Student writing is a great snapshot in language.
26. The ideal linguistic scaffolds are ones we co-create with our students to build on the strong language choices to help them use language in new, more nuanced ways.
27. Humility and inquiry are all part of the process if using scaffolds strategically so ELs thrive.
28. Scheduled small-group instruction is powerful, especially as a go-to routine in literacy to ensure all students get to engage with texts at their optimal reading levels.
29. When we get specific about what each level of support means for individual supports, we start to see that this continuum of supports also is relevant to our non-ELs.
30. Modeling is only one of many supports on our tool kit for EL excellence.
31. The just-right levels for each support will always change, as you goals and tasks change and as your students continue to learn and grow.