Anna Burnley, Flagler College-Tallahassee, Tallahassee, Florida, USA

Nutta, J. W., Strebel, C., Mihai, F. M., Crevecoeur Bryant, E., & Mokhtari, K. (2018). Show, tell, build: Twenty key instructional tools and techniques for educating English learners. Harvard Education Press.

Nutta, Strebel, Mihai, Crevecoeur Bryant, and Mokhtari’s book focuses on the Academic Subjects Protocol (ASP) and the Language Arts Protocol (LAP), developed by the authors to support K–12 educators-in-training who are preparing to teach in English learner (EL)–integrated classrooms. The book delivers effective instructional practices to support ELs in a manner that is both accessible and targeted, and which is based on the best practices fundamental for acquisition by preservice teachers. The book, Show, Tell, Build: Twenty Key Instructional Tools and Techniques for Educating English Learners (2018), provides teachers-in-training with specific instructional strategies to support language acquisition by ELs using a flexible, dynamic method that is useful at different proficiency levels and for many different purposes. The impetus for writing this textbook was to provide specialized, detailed, and deliverable techniques and tools that complement the extremely effective theory and practice described in the authors’ first book, Educating English Learners: What Every Classroom Teacher Needs to Know (Nutta et al., 2015). The authors are U.S. based, so the educational context for the ASP and LAP research and subsequent applications are highly effective for use in mainstream U.S. K–12 classrooms composed of native speakers of the commonly shared language, while also inclusive of ELs.

Because the book helps to prepare teacher candidates to learn specific strategies and techniques to use in adapting curriculum and differentiating content during instruction, this book is unique from other strategy or technique texts in that it includes adjustment of what the authors term “the Four Ps of targeted instruction – pitch, pace, portion, and perspective” (Nutta et al., 2018, p. 4), while simultaneously addressing language and literacy instruction through the WIDA framework (WIDA Consortium, 2014). The book is useful for both elementary and secondary education courses that focus on teaching ESOL methods and/or exploring curriculum.

The text is divided into two main sections. In Part I, 10 “show” and “tell” tools and techniques are aligned to the ASP as verbal and nonverbal communicative skills supports. In Part II, alignment with the LAP is achieved through “build,” specifically promoting ELs’ oral proficiency and literacy acquisition.

Following a descriptive overview of the ASP, first explored in the companion textbook, Educating English Learners (Nutta et al., 2015), the four “show” and the six “tell” tools and techniques are presented in discrete chapters. Perhaps one of the most helpful aspects to the university educator of preservice teachers is the extensive listing of additional resources included at the end of each chapter, designed to extend and support the chapter’s information.

As an example of the textbook’s thoroughly approachable material, the “show” technique in Chapter 1, “Graphic Organizers for Academic Subjects,” provides the teacher candidate with substantial understanding of the value of using visual tools through a series of concrete steps. For preservice teachers, the ability to know exactly how to lighten the language load for beginner ELs, while still providing higher proficiency ELs with visually based tools they can use for expression of their ideas, is both practical and easy to apply.

In Chapter 5, the “tell” technique of “teacher talk” capably ensures that teachers-in-training are aware of how, and why, to model language use in varying contexts, and through content areas. Through a practical application sequence that builds upon Krashen’s work on comprehensible input (1981, pp. 119-137), this chapter deftly shifts the preservice teacher’s knowledge subset regarding teacher talk from theory to classroom practice.

Chapter 11, “Building Comprehension at Word, Sentence, and Discourse Levels,” is the first of the “build” tools and guides the reader into Part II of the text. As a series of activities designed to construct and support listening skills, these techniques move the preservice educator through a systematic explanation of what the authors term “The Four Ps of Targeted Language and Literacy Instruction” (Nutta et al., 2018, pp. 111–115), previously noted. Clear, easy-to-use tables provide teacher candidates with applicable examples of the Four Ps at both the elementary and secondary levels.

The text remains sensitive to the varying educational experiences of both the preservice educator and the ELs they will teach in their future classrooms, while also combining rigor with the solid foundation necessary for the acquisition of tools and techniques that work. Whether used in conjunction with a different methods textbook or in tandem with the authors’ earlier work, this textbook deserves a close look when selecting books for use in undergraduate ESOL methods classes.

Reference

Krashen, S. D. (1981). Second language acquisition and second language learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press Inc.

Nutta, J. W., Strebel, C., Mihai, F. M., Crevecoeur Bryant, E., & Mokhtari, K. (2018). Show, tell, build: Twenty key instructional tools and techniques for educating English learners. Harvard Education Press.

Nutta, J. W., Strebel, C., Mokhtari, K., Mihai, F. M., & Crevecoeur Bryant, E. (2015).

Educating English learners: What every classroom teacher needs to know. Harvard Education Press.

WIDA Consortium. The WIDA Standards Framework and its Theoretical Foundations (2014). Available: https://wida.wisc.edu/resources/standards-framework-and-its-theoretical-foundations [July 2020].