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ELL and Group Work: Scaffolding in a Small Group Context Jeanne Zeller ENGL 481, Nardi During my time observing Ms. Johnsons sixth grade classroom at Un-named Middle School, it was clear that she strives to structure a majority of class-time to accommodate collaboration and group work. The scaffolding in her classroom, therefore, is inevitably multilayered and rich, with students helping one another and experiencing a high amount of interaction with both the material and each other. Though it served to be an extremely effective method of providing students opportunities for hands on learning and critical thinking, I did notice several and frequent problems of students not being on task for a large part of time, or one or two students in a group of 4-5 doing all of the work for the group. Many times, there were certain groups in particular consistently not doing the work hardly at allin particular, a group (to be referred to as Group A in this paper) of four Hispanic, male students, two of which were ELLs. Based on my observations and research, the most powerful impediment to this groups access to the literacy activities was a lack of specialized scaffolding for their unique needs and interests. Despite having an ELL tutor, doubtlessly placed with them to assist with this specialized scaffolding, the inadequacy of scaffolding to challenge and empower the students was clear in through students lack focus, disruptive behavior, and poor performance during both full-group and small-group class-time. The students seemed to thrive most working with one other student and an instructor who challenged ideas. Most of all, they thrived on affirmation that their ideas were significant, and that they did indeed have the capacity to express themselves through literacy activities. Finally, I witnessed that in order for group work to function as an effective literacy activity, it is essential that students social, collaborative skills are addressed in the scaffolding process.

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Group As resistance to participate with the class became noticeable on the first day that I observed her class. The class period was shortened to 20 minutes that day from the usual 55, and so they were performing skits about health that they had written and rehearsed the day before. Though many of the students clearly enjoyed the opportunity to go in front of the class, I noticed all of the students in Group A but Ryan were hesitant if not flat-out resistant to present; Ryan, on the other hand, had to be told several times (even while not presenting) to stop being disruptive to other performing groups. When it did come time for the group to present, all four went to the front of the class, but Robert required much prompting from his peers, both Robert and Jason mumbled, and all relied on Ryan to dominate the performance. Let us take a moment to introduce these four students in order to understand more deeply the dynamics of the group. Ryan is an identical twin with another boy in the class, and has a rowdy, aggressive, and impulsive personality. I have witnessed him trying to intimidate or bully other students in the class on multiple different occasions. He thrives on the spotlight and will often try to steal it from other performing students. In terms of group work, many of the students look to him for an example to resist cooperation, as he displays a large amount of confidence and very low respect for classroom rules, which seems to be attractive to the students in the class with lower amounts of confidenceincluding the rest of the three in Group A. Jason has grown up in the United States, and seems to have an interest in rapping and music. Often instead of doing his work he hums or raps softly to himself as he tips his chair back. He seems to have a hard time paying attention during large-group structure, though has a quiet, consistent resistance to participating in class, rather than Ryans loud resistance. Robert immigrated to the United States from a Latin American country, and is extremely quiet. He speaks hardly at all, usually to his friends at the table in English or Spanish, but seems

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shy altogether, most of the time simply observing others or looks down at his paper. Multiple times when requested to go in front of the class to present, he simply smiles quietly and shakes his head, or goes up and mumbles. He is also receives a large amount of assistance from the ELL tutor, which, as I will discuss, might be causing some of the engagement issues as well. Finally, Brian is possibly an immigrant and definitely an ELL student. He struggles with English phrases but participates in class and seems to pay attention in large group. He does not like to write, claiming hes bad at spelling, though is polite and fairly compliant when I asked him questions about his work. He is pretty spacey, however, and had difficulty focusing on writing when I sat down with him. Time and again, the students in the group (except Ryan) completely resisted activities that involved presenting information to the class, often times preventing the students from accessing any sort of literacy practice. One week the activity consisted of randomly selected students from the class to go up individually and read an example out loud given by the Smart-board and decide if it was cultural or non-cultural. Most students were engaged during the activity, though I noticed that when it came time for students in Group A to participate (again, except for the overly-enthusiastic Ryan), there was a high amount of resistance, in particular by Robert, who seems to struggle with English the most. Refusing even to walk up to the board, he only complied when the ELL tutor offered to read the sentence out loud for him, so he would only have to pick if the example was cultural or non-cultural. While reading the example for Robert helped give him the courage to participate at all, two things were made clear by the incident: reading out-loud to the class was incredibly intimidating to Robert, and the ELL tutors desperate act of assistance to get Robert to participate prevented Robert from accessing any reading literacy practice at all. What would have been better scaffolding, instead, would have been using

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time during class for individual work to increase Roberts confidence in reading through support from the ELL tutor, so that Robert would feel empowered to volunteer his own participation during whole-group, thereby enforcing his confidence. According to Vygotskys theory of the Zone of Proximal Development, it is key for an instructor to find the level of capability at which each student starts the lesson, and provide assistance, or scaffolding, for the student to achieve a higher level through a variety of methods designed to empower the student (Beliavsky 3). By doing the literacy activity (reading aloud) for Robert, the ELL tutor failed to improve his confidence or ability in reading independently or with assistance, and so failed to scaffold the activity at all. I saw the ELL tutor do this with more than just reading skills, but collaborative, as well. On an activity one day in which groups had to choose from a variety of poems, and then design how to perform it, most groups had slight struggling in cooperation, but performed the poems nonetheless; Group A, however, was by far the most immediately disengaged group overall. Ryan ended up picking a poem for the group (with no explicit consent from the rest of the group), and the ELL tutor attempting to get them to get the work done by devying up the lines for the group, assigning performance ideas, and generally taking over the leadership. Each group member, then, became extremely passive for the majority of the period, even when I would come over and ask about their progress or try and get each member to brainstorm their own ideas of how they could perform it. Even when they performed, Ryan, again, stole most of the show, precluding the rest of the groups potential for growth in that activity as well; again, Jason, Robert, and Brian all mumbled shyly when saying their lines, and I had to interrupt their performance at one point to remind Jason to face the audience while performing, as he had his back completely facing the class. Their discomfort during the presentation was clear, and

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between Ryan dominating the performance and the tutor dominating the group work, the scaffolding and challenge needed for growth in written and reading, collaboration, and presentation literacy, as prescribed by Vygotskys theory, was nearly non-existent. The fifth week of observing, however, brought the most valuable examples in terms of how removal of negative peer influences and affirmation of their individual ideas could increase engagement and participation immensely. In the second half of the period, the students were to partner together and write their own short story. Ryan left the group (which helped remove a lot of negative influence), the ELL tutor worked with Robert and a boy from another group, and I came to work with Brian and Jason. It took several minutes to get the two students to focus, but I took an open-ended question and response approach in order to empower their own ideas and model thinking to complete the assignment. I asked questions like, "What do you want to write about?" "Did you understand what we're doing here?" Several times their responses were simply, "I don't know," until finally Brian suggested they write about monster trucks, to which Jason heartily agreed. It was when I encouraged their idea and asked them what they wanted to happen with the monster trucks that they were instantly engaged. Below is attached the progress they made during the class period on their story. Though their stories were not finished by the end of the hour, they remained engaged for most of the period, with me simply asking questions linking their ideas back to the assignment, like, "Who are our two main characters?" or "What could be the rumor in the story? Since our job is to link the theme we have to incorporate the conflict we decided on during class, that there is a rumor that is spread." Once they were both excited about the monster truck plot-line, the ideas to link the conflict and theme concepts during class came completely without resistance; in fact, the ideas they came up with came almost instantaneously. Engaging them through responding to

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their ideas, I encouraged what Aida Walqui outlines as Flow in the scaffolding process, in which all participants are focused on the process, with balanced skills and challenges, by meeting the students where they are, and pushing them forward (165). The one other thing I noticed that seemed to help both Jason and Brian to start writing was assuring them that it was their ideas that were the most important part of this activity, rather than spelling. Brian came up with several ideas in the beginning, but would not write them. When I asked him why not, he would look at me and say he did not know how to spell it, implying that he was too afraid of failure to take the risk necessary to communicate his ideas. It is clear from the artifacts attached, however, that once they were able to forgive their own spelling errors, the ideas were free to flow from them and onto the paper. By making the activity more low-stakes for Brian and Jason and isolating them from disapproval and overpowering personalities of other members in their group (mainly the aggressive and dominant Ryan), the opportunity was opened to use their strengths (creativity) to access the writing part of the activity. This goes along with another feature of scaffolding, called Intersubjectivity, as outlined in Walquis article which describes a mutual engagement and supportive, safe environment for students to practice (in this case, creative composition). What I considered most important for scaffolding their writing in this activity was for them to allow themselves to try, and therefore think and grow, rather than hold back and disengage, as I had seen them do so many times before during the class.

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(Exhibit A: Brians Monster Truck Short Story)

(Exhibit B: Jasons Monster Truck Story)

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Even once I assured Brian that spelling did not count for this activity, however, I noticed that Jason would occasionally notice that Brian was spelling something wrong, and tell him in a way that was condescendingsuggesting a need for modeling constructive collaboration behavior, as well. When Jason said such condescending comments Brian would respond by changing the word, but it was clear that Jason did not have the vocabulary or skills to help scaffold Brian's spelling without damaging his already debilitating confidence. Therefore, I found that it is necessary to scaffold and model healthy and productive collaboration skills in addition to reading and writing in order to ensure both instructor-student and student-student scaffolding of learning. I attempted to model constructive collaboration throughout the lesson, especially after noticing the lack of modeling and scaffolding of these skills by the ELL tutor: I would ask for more information or prompt Brian or Jason to add onto what they had for the story, and when one gave me an idea, I would ask him to ask the other what they thought (instead of what the ELL tutor was doing before in doing the collaborating work for the students, in simply assigning roles or accepting ideas without modeling petitioning consent of the group). By promoting and modeling this dialogue for them, Jason and Brian were able to practice skills necessary to help them engage in group work in the future when I am not there. Though I was not with the class long enough to have observed if this modeling was effective, I do know that they at least had guided practicepractice they would not have had without me thereobservant of Vygotskys Zone of Proximal Development. Though for a majority of the class, group-work seemed to be an excellent way to ensure that students participate in a hands-on, scaffolded, and social activity. Even when Group A struggled more than the rest of the class to become engaged in the activities, it was clear that

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through positive peer influence, empowerment and affirmation of ideas, and modeling constructive collaboration skills, each student was able to access the literacy activity much more than without it, utilizing and celebrating their strengths. Perhaps the idea for group-work is inherently effective because it frees the instructor to facilitate this critical individualized scaffolding.

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Works Cited Beliavsky, Ninah. "Revisiting Vygotsky and Gardner: Realizing Human Potential." Journal of Aesthetic Education 40.2 (Summer, 2006): 1-11. Web. 02 Feb. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4140226>. Walqui, Aida. "Scaffolding Instruction for English Language Learners." International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 9.2 (2006): 159-80. Illinois Compass. Web. 5 May 2012.

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