EVERY TEACHER’S TOOLKIT BY K. KAWAGUCHI
Kawaguchi, K. (2010). Every Teacher’s Toolkit: Closing the Achievement Gap for English Learners. White Plains, N.Y.: Pearson Education, Inc. List price: $56.00.
Reviewed by
Deirdre Bird Kramer
Mainstream and ESL teachers will find this grade 6–12 resource useful which is chock-full of lists and lessons and advice and pictures and addresses language arts, math, science and social studies teaching. Designed to be used alongside regular classroom materials, there are mini-lessons throughout the book that address the key content areas. Lists of learning strategies, 33 of them, and a list of academic vocabulary according to Averil Coxhead are provided. English learner language proficiencies are described. Six pages of the book address teaching English language learners (ELLs) in class.
It is clear that a teacher designed this book, too. The spiral binding makes it easy to use and the back cover is a stiff as a board, so the book that is 8 inches by 11 inches will stay open at the page you want to refer to, and it will stay on your lap. Amazingly, every master that is in the book is on the CD-ROM! And, a section of the book describes challenges an ELL may have with any of the ten content areas addressed and possible solutions that a teacher can implement.
The organization of the resource is in seven sections beginning with newcomers followed by linguistic elements, vocabulary, and grammar/spelling. The next two sections are organized by modality: listening/speaking, reading and writing. The last section is labeled critical thinking skills with subheadings that include interpret, summarize, opinions, implicit information, reasoning, conclusions, hypotheses, analyzing, and evaluating. Finally, there is a reference section that includes a grammar handbook, writing process, writing a research report and a technology handbook.
Mini-lessons are written for the seven sections of the book and each lesson contains a language objective, a content objective, a learning strategy, an explanation of the lesson, suggestions for differentiation, and a means to check for understanding. In addition, the lessons are sprinkled with ELL insights in the form of quick thoughts on a graphic post-it note. Each lesson, presented on 2 pages, includes the lesson plan on the left and a black line master on the right.
The marketing material for the text states that the mini-lessons include a clear explanation of English language proficiency goals. An example of this is a critical thinking skill lesson on ‘reason deductively’ which includes the language objective ‘reason inductively and deductively’. The graphic organizer, three boxes, includes text that demonstrates deductions: ‘Bright orange vegetables are a good source of Vitamin A.’ ‘Both carrots and sweet potatoes are bright orange.’ The conclusion box is blank, but we can conclude that it is, carrots and sweet potatoes are a good source of vitamin A. This is typical of the lessons in this Toolkit. All the key elements of effective instruction are included. The suggestions for differentiation are helpful, and the activities offered under the heading of mini-lesson are fine. But this Toolkit does not address the most important goal when working with English language learners of intentional language development. The language objectives are not ones that an ESL teacher would recognize as contributing to the language proficiency of their students. Some of the language objectives include: ‘interpret what something means’, ‘communicate effectively through writing’, ‘speak English clearly and effectively’, ‘analyze words to figure out what they mean’, and ‘learn English words to survive in school’. This book does a significant disservice to our field by suggesting that these are language objectives for ELLs.
The ELL insights offered throughout the text range from nicely stated plums to supremely unhelpful statements such as ‘spelling challenges ELLs’. The BICS and CALP insight lacks the simple addition that all teachers in the U.S. know what BICS looks like. At some time they have all had the student with an L1 that is not English who sounds like a native speaker but cannot read the text or write a paragraph. And, some of the insights seem to be a carryover from a mainstream version of this Toolkit, create a positive learning environment.
A useful section of the Toolkit is titled, ‘Help by Content Area’. This section identifies challenges and solutions that will benefit ELLs in ten different content areas. Challenges in social studies include understanding that some words used in everyday English also have specialized meanings in social studies, such as belief, bill, conflict, exercise and right; in language arts, avoiding overdependence on bilingual dictionaries and using a monolingual dictionary; and in mathematics, realizing that mathematical operations in word problems may be suggested by many words, such as add, and combine, plus, sum, total. Some of the solutions are also helpful: Preteach the instructional and specific vocabulary needed for each task, bearing in mind that there may be a confusing crossover between words used in the social studies classroom and everyday English; allow students to use their native language to try to figure out new and complex concepts; and use think alouds to describe the process students need to go through to solve a problem as you model examples on the board.
The Toolkit is a good resource for the knowledgeable and experienced teacher. It will serve both ESL and mainstream teachers well by providing reminders about best practice in the other domain, ESL or mainstream. But, like many published materials, dare I say it, the language objectives are innocuous and in bad form. In addition, the advice about working with ELLs is trite and superficial. So, those of us who collect resources for the few good sections they contain should have this book on our shelves, but if your novice mainstream teacher picks this book up, you will be backpedalling and clarifying, modifying and explaining until the cows come home.
Reviewer
Deirdre Bird Kramer is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at Hamline University. She teaches ESL Methods and Assessment in the ESL Licensure program and works in the K-12 schools by providing professional development to mainstream teachers working with ELLs. She received an M.A. in ESL from the University of Minnesota.
