Week 4: Assignment 3

According to Cummins thoery, there should be contextual support and cognitive demands in communicative tasks for bilinguals. Cummins believes students need to show improvement in their language skills as a whole in order to show learning has occured. An example of this could be being able to express and support their opinions, asking questions to clarify their confusions, and analyzing and critiquing a story.

The WIPA can do descriptors show us that students dont necessarily need academic language as a prerequisute very clearly. The grade 2-3 descriptor goes through various levels of profeciency in reading, writing, etc. There are different levels, however they describe the students having at least a proficiency of tasks like acting a story out, retelling their past experiences to relate to something else, or pointing out key words to help them understand something better. The students may start at level one and will be up to level 6 by the end of their program.

I would incorporate both Cummins ideas and the WIPA ideas into a writing lesson plan by placing a picture on the smartboard. I would then ask the students obvious questions about the picture such as "what is happening in this picture?" Then I would ask the students how the picture makes them feel and have them verbalize that to me. I would then have the students write about the picture and what they think is happening and have them write down their feelings about it. Finally, I would ask the students to wrap up their writing by relating it to something that has happened in their life or something they feel passionate about.