Language Dives in the 6-8 Classroom

Deconstruct

Teachers guide students to deconstruct a sentence by chunking it into essential phrases and by discussing its meaning and purpose in the text. For example, in Grade 7 Module 2, students read Patient Zero by Marilee Peters, featuring true stories about people who contributed to advancements in treatment and medicine. They read about Mary Mallon, who was kept in seclusion on a remote island by the New York Health Department because they thought she was the cause of an outbreak of typhoid fever. Students deconstruct one key sentence from this section of Patient Zero into four main chunks:

Over the next three years

Mary Mallon spent her time writing letters,

protesting that her civil rights had been ignored,

and pleading for help to get her released from quarantine.

In deconstructing this sentence, students might wonder about the third chunk: protesting that her civil rights had been ignored. What is the function of this chunk? (It is to describe Mary’s letters.) Students might then work to figure out why this adjective phrase begins with an -ing word, which is different from many adjective forms. They can pause to consider what Mary may have written in her letters. The teacher can refer students to the Questions We Can Ask during a Language Dive anchor chart, introduced in Module 3, to build student capacity to analyze and ask questions independently about sentence chunks.

Reconstruct
After unpacking the sentence through conversation, students put it back together, chunk by chunk. For example, students could break this one sentence into two, check to see if the meaning remains the same, and then speculate why and how the author made it into one sentence, including discussing commas. They talk about how the Language Dive has brought more significant meaning to their learning—for example, how it added to their understanding of the meaning of the sentence and the guiding question of the unit (“How do people respond to an epidemic?”), and what the sentence tells them about Mary’s habits of character. They can share the cognitive strategies and habits of character they used to grapple with and build ideas.

Practice
Students practice using one or more language structures as they speak about their lives and write sentences. In the preceding example, students can focus on -ing adjective phrases to describe a noun using a frame such as “This year, I spent time writing an essay, _____. (explaining that the Lost Children of Sudan overcame many obstacles).” Students also add this adjective structure to their Language Chunk Wall (introduced in Module 2) for future reference. Later, students can use the Language Chunk Wall as support for applying their discussions of these sentences when speaking or writing.

Thus, students can acquire language through analysis, conversation, and usage, which is almost always more effective than teacher lectures. Helping students understand how the English language works is important in sharing power and establishing equity.

A consistent Language Dive routine is critical in helping all students learn how to decipher compelling sentences and say and write their own. Proficient writers can use the routine to continue growing as lifelong learners in the complex communication task. The routine may hasten overall English language development for ELLs. For this reason, Language Dives have included an average of once or twice every two weeks for all students.

In addition, ELLs have the opportunity to do 5-Minute Mini Language Dives weekly:

At times, Language Dives are required for the whole class. All students benefit: ELLs can listen to and interact with native English speakers. Native speakers gain new insight into their native language. These whole-class Language Dives appear as discrete agenda items in about one to three lessons per unit in a module.
At other times, in the Teacher’s Guide for English Language Learners, 5-Minute Mini Language Dives are suggested for ELLs so teachers can guide smaller groups of ELLs while other students are working on independent tasks, or ESL specialists can pull out ELLs for short periods. These Dives are suggested about two or three lessons per unit.
When helpful, Language Dives can be broken up into shorter sessions, for example, focusing on deconstructing the sentence on the first day and reconstructing and practicing it on the second. Alternatively, students can discuss the first part of a sentence one day and the latter on a second day.

In addition to the Language Dives provided in the curriculum, teachers are encouraged to strategically choose sentences and times for additional Language Dives that they design themselves based on students’ needs. Furthermore, teachers should work with colleagues to go beyond Language Arts to Science, Math, History, and Social Studies texts, offering daily conversation and practice across subjects to meet the language needs of all learners, particularly ELLs. See How to Design a Language Dive for support in writing your Dives.

^{* Language Dives are based on “Juicy Sentences” (Wong Fillmore, L., & Fillmore, C., 2012)}