FSGPT

everybody. This is Bonnie.

The amount with the deal I department today.

I want to talk to you about a strategy that

can help keep your kids engaged during direct instruction.

It's called F s G P T, which stands for

frequent small group purposeful talk.

So this strategy comes from the front of mental five

book that many of our admin and leaders read over

the summer.

So I'm gonna talk with you today about what is

it? What is the strategy?

What's the research and works?

Accommodations we could make for our language learners.

So let's get started with What is it, um, so

F S G p T.

Stands for frequent small group purposeful talk.

Frequent means about after every 10 minutes of direct instruction.

Change it up a little bit.

Have them do have them turn and talk with a

partner or small group, and or it could be after

the completion of a major instructional concept.

So when we say small groups were talking about 2

to 4 students, obviously you want more than two because

you don't want someone talking to themselves, um, no more

than four.

Because once you get more than for a lot of

times the kids get off track, start talking about other

things, or you might recognize that there's too many students

and not everyone gets to participate.

And then purposeful talk.

Uh, you might.

He would.

It's always good to have a seat question, which directs

their conversation and leads them into deeper thinking over the

the important concepts of your instruction.

It should be structured.

There should be clear expectations.

I'm set at the beginning of the year of how

to talk with a partner, how to share talking in

a group, and the time should be very short, uh,

from 30 seconds and no to no more than three

minutes. So let's take a look at the research.

The research says that there is a phenomenon where our

students are actually bi lingual, not bilingual, learning English and

Spanish, but bilingual and knowing adult talk and student or

track Children talk.

Um, so they need this time to be able to

translate what you are saying in your instruction into their

own language into student language.

So this is why having these breaks and allowing them

talk to talk?

Um, you're gonna find that there's a lot more comprehension,

especially particularly for students, that my doze off in your

instruction or might need that repetition and hearing it from

their peers and then retention.

Ah, there's been several studies that show that stopping something

and then coming back to it again, actually, how helps

with retaining long term memory so and students but remember

what mostly what is said of the beginning of the

lesson and at the end.

So why not have those positive disruptions during your whole

instruction? Direct instruction so that they're retaining more so pausing,

changing it up a little bit, continuing with direct instruction

and having that pattern of continually taking those breaks and

then the attention stand of our students.

We know that more more.

In this world of technology, our attention span is getting

shorter and shorter, especially with our kids.

This is a table that could help you direct how

many minutes you should be spending.

But I would say a rule of thumb is, take

the age of the student, and that's how many minutes

they should be listening to direct instructions.

So if you're working with fourth graders, um, who are

nine and 10 years old, that's the longest your direct

instruction should be, Uh, and you should definitely, after 10

minutes put a it pause, but in time for them

to talk to each other before starting up direct instruction

again. So let's talk about accommodations for language learners.

One idea is to use sentence stems.

This could be a sentence starter, or it could be

a close that they have to fill out.

And they could either use this for writing or for

their language production.

And when they're talking with each other, we when they

are talking with their partners of their small groups, refer

them to the content wells or the idea bakes that

they can use to share their ideas, drawing if if

the students doesn't feel.

If you feel that you the language level of your

students is very low, it's hard there.

In the silent period of language acquisition, you might ask

them to draw something together and even possibly labeled parts

of their drawing toe.

Help them with that vocabulary production.

And of course, in these small group talks makes strongly

encourage second language use or the target language, but allow

the first language.

So it's important to have clear expectations that you want

them to practice being in the target.

Language, of course, have gentle reminders to try Teoh Converse

in the target language.

And, um, if you ask them to share out what

was shared in their group Jews students who are going

to model that that target language, for example, Spanish to

students that are gonna be confident and been sharing out

in Spanish.

And don't forget the importance of the effective filter.

Um, when asking them to talk with partners under a

small group, it's important that the content that they're using

is is compelling and comprehensible.

Um, it's important that even before they start working in

conversing with small groups that they know they understand that

the stages is that of second language learning at what

stage they're in.

I would give frequent pep talks in the first language

to encourage them to take take risk, let them know.

Hey, I know this is hard.

I'm I've learnt the language to, and it's, but we

can do it, have a warm classroom environment and encourage

and celebrate risks.

So that's it for me.

I hope that you could use the strategy in your

classroom, and, um, give it a try and email me

if you'd like me to come in and observe you

trying this out.

Um, happy teaching.

FSGPT

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