Using an Input-Output Loop to Help Newcomer Students Learn Class Content

Newcomers are students who have recently arrived from other countries and speak a language other than English. While their experiences with education can vary, one commonality is that they have a beginning level of English proficiency. Newcomers also share a common need for explicit instruction that facilitates their ability to learn English while learning content. This is realized when all teachers make content accessible and intentionally provide processing opportunities to internalize the content.

Teachers have experience teaching their grade-level content but may not know where to start or what to focus on when instructing newcomers. In this article, we offer a strategy that can be implemented in any class at any grade level to increase content comprehensibility and enhance language acquisition.  

This strategy, the Input-Output Loop, can be used by every teacher who works with newcomers to develop all four language domains (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) alongside learning grade-level content. The loop works by segmenting content-specific information into manageable details and having students engage with each detail before proceeding to the next detail.

Principles of Language Acquisition in the Input-Output Loop

The Input-Output Loop embodies several key principles of teaching multilinguals established by the SIOP model, WIDA, and Understanding by Design:

• Planning backward for academic language development. When teachers plan the unit’s summative assessment first, they can examine the summative for the required content and for the language that newcomers need in order to communicate using content-specific knowledge.
• Designing learning for the practical application of language skills. Instead of teaching language separate from content, teachers can design lessons that require students to speak, listen, read, and write about content.
• Integrating all of the language domains. Speaking, listening, reading, and writing should be used frequently to process content and to practice expressing content-specific ideas.
• Scaffolding instruction for comprehension and output. Explicit instruction is required to teach the specialized language related to a discipline in order to accurately and precisely communicate discipline-specific ideas.
• Teaching content as a means to develop language skills. As students learn content meaningfully, their engagement with it can develop their academic literacy.
• Explicitly teaching the features of language at an academic register. Content-specific ideas are expressed at the vocabulary, sentence, and organization level, so they have to be taught explicitly.

Chunking with the Input-Output Loop

Chunking makes content more accessible by teaching content in manageable units or “chunks.” After teachers provide a small chunk of information or input, they create the opportunity for students to process the new language and information through some form of output, such as taking notes, talking to a partner, or answering comprehension questions. After students demonstrate comprehension of one chunk of new information and language, the teacher provides the next piece of information to process. This Input-Output Loop combines the effectiveness of chunking with the principles of language acquisition.

The three specific parts of the Input-Output Loop are as follows:

• Input: Teach one essential detail about the content.
• Output: Design a brief opportunity for students to process that specific detail.
• Loop: Repeat this for the next detail.

An Example of the Input-Output Loop from Science

When planning for comprehensible input of content, we encourage educators to identify the most essential details related to content-specific knowledge. For example, if a science standard requires students to describe the three types of weathering, the most essential details are weathering from water, wind, and ice.

For this lesson example, we chose a video that starts with weathering through water. Once students have watched the specific segment of the video about water weathering, we pause the video to integrate the output part of the loop. There are many forms of output that students can use to process and demonstrate their understanding, including gestures, spoken words, and written phrases.

Gestures. For example, they can demonstrate water weathering with hand gestures using the left hand as a stone being carried by water currents, hitting a rock with the right hand, and breaking off into smaller fragments, shown by the fingers of the right hand separating.

Spoken words. As they show each gesture, we ask students to verbally describe the process using words like stone, water current, hits a rock, and breaks apart. When students can complete this series of gestures, we ask them to say the phrase water weathering.

Written phrases. Finally, students can draw and label the process of water weathering on a sketchnote. These various forms of output (gestures, saying key phrases, drawing, and labeling their sketches) support students’ comprehension of the key concepts as well as build their grade-level, content-specific language skills.

After an Input-Output Loop for water weathering, we proceed to input about wind weathering and repeat the process by teaching how it occurs, followed by opportunities for output through different hand gestures connected to specific words associated with wind weathering. Before proceeding to ice weathering, we ask students to demonstrate water weathering again, as it provides retrieval practice to cement the information further.

Why this Works for Newcomers

In this example science lesson, we kept the grade-level expectations the same but intentionally scaffolded the lesson to (1) make content accessible and (2) facilitate content-specific output. When teaching one form of weathering at a time, comprehension becomes the priority. Strategically segmenting all the details this way not only reduces the cognitive load, but also develops language skills and increases retention, as each form of weathering has processing opportunities.

Additionally, all of the carefully planned gestures, choral responses, and labeled sketchnotes provide for the output of the words associated with one form of weathering. As a result, newcomers can understand the words used to describe each form of weathering and can appropriately express their understanding using these exact words. Intentionally planning for the input directly supports the output. 

Efficient Instruction

When we share the Input-Output Loop with teachers, they often express concern that it will slow down the class, especially if they have to follow a pacing guide or prescribed curriculum. However, when students have time to process the content, they are more likely to retain it, which actually saves time over the course of the unit. Since content-specific courses require facts taught in one unit to be used in the subsequent ones, retaining the information is crucial. Because the Input-Output Loop provides numerous opportunities to process content and retrieve information throughout each lesson, students acquire and retain it with ease. Therefore, the Input-Output Loop reduces the need to reteach, thus saving teachers time.

While this example lesson was science-specific, the Input-Output Loop can be applied to any content standard, as every content-specific topic has details that need to be made accessible. To implement the Input-Output Loop, teachers can follow these easy steps:

1. Identify the content.
2. Analyze the content for the various concepts.
3. Segment the lesson to teach one concept at a time, adding images and gestures to make each segment comprehensible.
4. Plan for a mini-comprehension check that requires students to use the content-specific words for that concept.
5. Repeat the process for the next concept.

Newcomers, while developing in their English proficiency, still possess the ability to learn grade-level content. While we are sharing the Input-Output Loop as an effective tool for newcomers, multilinguals who have more English proficiency can also benefit from this kind of instruction. Even non-English-speaking learners are served from the Input-Output Loop because learning academic content-specific knowledge requires carefully planned and implemented instruction.