Recently I signed up for a professional development project focused on infusing rigor into ESL instruction. Knowing the 21st century challenges that my beginning adult English language learners (ELLs) face and their language proficiency level, I was quite skeptical about the idea. However, I was delighted to discover that adding rigor doesn’t have to be difficult for the student or for the teacher. It also doesn’t require a lot of extra work, and the payoffs are spectacular.
What is rigor?
Rigor is all about ensuring that learners are prepared to succeed in academic and workplace settings. Said students are able to handle text complexity, academic language, and demonstrate critical thinking. Higher level thinking skills are essential to their success. In our classrooms, we spend a lot of time at the lower end of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Remember and Understand) asking students to recall information. But, for them to be prepared, we need to provide students with opportunities to participate at higher levels of cognitive complexity. That’s where rigor comes in.