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Continue reading →: Too Many Language Functions and Features? Fear No More!
The WIDA 2020 ELD Standards are powerful—and can feel overwhelming. As a co-author, I know: it took us more than three years to write it with an incredible team of consultants and experts! So, over the years, I’ve been tinkering with the Language Functions and Features (LFFs) and was mapping…
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Continue reading →: Writing Narratives Beyond And Then, And Then, And Then… THE END!!!!!!!!!😊
Do your students’ stories sound like this? “And then we went into the woods. And then we heard a noise. And then we ran. And then we found a cave. We went in and then we went home and then it was time for supper and my friend my came…
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Continue reading →: Step Out of the Water: An Invitation to Content TeachersBy Dr. Ruslana Westerlund Dear content teachers,you who love the laws of physics —how gravity pulls planets into orbit,how light bends,how energy changes form; you who love chemistry—the sudden color change,the crystal forming from solution,the invisible bonds holding matter together; you who love mathematics—the elegance of a proof,the symmetry of…
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Continue reading →: Let the Sentence Run: Teaching Accumulation, Pacing, and VoiceWhy this matters for multilingual writers This instruction is especially important for multilingual writers, who are often encouraged to produce short, “safe” sentences as evidence of control. Although short sentences may reduce grammatical errors, relying on them can limit students’ ability to express relationships among events and develop a distinctive…
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Continue reading →: Teaching Narrative Structure Through Place
In one of my recent trainings on the structure of simple narratives in elementary school, I used one of my favorite children’s classics, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. I used it to illustrate how an author uses the language of place to…
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Continue reading →: Understanding Mentor Texts: Guiding Students in Literary Analysis
I love when teachers ask questions during my training. Yesterday, a high school teacher asked, “What do you mean by a mentor text?” ELA teachers will be the first to say that there are many ways to use that term. In genre pedagogy, I use mentor text to mean a…
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Continue reading →: What Does It Mean to Make Language Visible? Part 2.
By Dr. Ruslana Westerlund *I use this reading to introduce teachers and instructional leaders to a different way of seeing language. If you want to use this reading in your professional learning, I can share my processing activities. Please request permission by contacting me at westerlundconsulting.com Earlier, I posted a…
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Continue reading →: Is SFL Concerned with Automaticity?
This blog is in response to the comment I received on my LinkedIn post from Arkady Z. He commented, “In language education, two powerful but fundamentally different paradigms often get discussed side by side: Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and implicit fluency training. Although both aim to improve learners’ communicative ability,…
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Continue reading →: What Does It Mean to Make Language Visible?
by Dr. Ruslana Westerlund I get these 3 questions a lot: (Since then I wrote a more elaborated Part 2 of What Does It Mean to Make Language Visible?) Q: Why do you promote SFL and Genre Pedagogy? A: I promote equity. I chose SFL and Genre Pedagogy because they…
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Continue reading →: All Blogs Are *NOW* FREEEE!Dear subscribers who are mostly teachers! We know you work really hard and you are underpaid. Westerlund Consulting LLC is providing all the blogs moving forward for FREEEEEEE! That means – RETROACTIVELY too! Now you can access the following blogs, previously available only by subscription: Cheering you on, About the…
Hello,
I’m Ruslana
Proud immigrant woman business owner of Making Language Visible @Westerlund Consulting. I consult internationally on all things related to equipping all teachers with a pedagogically useful model of language. Book me at westerlundconsulting.com
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