Even though communication hasn't been emphasized much in content areas other than ELA and ELD, learning in all other classes actually benefits a lot from the three features of authentic communication​Language actually develops more when you are not focusing on directly teaching it. When fostering language growth, it is tempting to focus on the easier-to-see little trees (vocabulary and grammar) and test for these things, but it is essential to stay focused on the forests of meaning and building up of ideas. Therefore, in many cases, students actually learn more rich and robust language in math, science, history, social studies, arts, and electives--especially in settings where they are building up ideas with engaging tasks.

The challenge for content teachers is to continue to improve in their teaching of content while also improving their abilities to (a) create and weave in language-rich activities, and (b) scaffold language that students want and need to use to build up ideas and communicate them to others. 

Information Gap Activities
These activities provide different information to students in a pair or group who need to share it and listen to others in order to accomplish a task (a bit like jigsaws). In every activity, though, students should fill gaps to build up important concepts/ideas. Here are some examples.


RESOURCES FOR INTEGRATING LANGUAGE & CONTENT DEVELOPMENT

This basic visual organizer represents how students build up ideas and evaluate the importance of the "blocks" used to build them.

Causes & Effects Visual Organizer
This visual helps students to engage in cause and effect thinking and assign values to their ideas.


Communicativeness Design and Observation Tool 
This tool helps teachers to use three features of communicativeness to improve language development activities across disciplines.​





Integrated Language & Content Learning