ELL Helps

Here are some teaching strategies taken from all4ed.org. They are great!

Six Key STRATEGIES for Teachers of English Learners

Strategy #1
Vocabulary & Language Development

Content knowledge:
• Introduce new concepts via essential academic vocabulary.
• Connect student-accessible synonyms or concepts to these essential vocabulary.
• Support students to distinguish word meanings, & their uses for subject-specific tasks& prerequisite language skills.

Academic language:
• Engage beginning-level students in using basic social & school vocabulary, phrases, & sentence structures.
• As students progress, continue to contextualize instruction of more complex language forms & uses: subject-specific academic vocabulary, grammatical forms, & sentence structures used in listening, speaking, reading & writing.
• Respectfully distinguish differences between primary language use & standard academic English.

Sample activities/assessments:
􀀹 Word analysis: e.g., dissecting words into their parts (prefix, root, suffix).
􀀹 Vocabulary journals, A-B-C books, word webs, word walls.
􀀹 Interactive editing, Cloze paragraphs, dictations, subject-specific journals.

Strategy #2
Guided Interaction

Content knowledge:
• Structure multiple opportunities for peer-to-peer interactions as they learn content & develop their use of academic language in speaking/listening, reading & writing.
• Clarify expectations, outcomes, & procedures related to tasks for flexible group activities.
• Allow for primary language interactions to clarify concepts.

Academic language:
• Structure multiple opportunities for peer-to-peer interactions to increase speaking, listening, reading comprehension & writing skills.
• Support language interactions with review/preview of language forms, use of graphic organizers or other types of modeling.

Sample activities/assessments:
􀀹 Partner interviews, Class surveys, Tea Party, Think-Pair-Share, Numbered Heads Together, Four Corners.
􀀹 Poster projects, group presentations.
􀀹 Perspective line-ups.
􀀹 Readers’ Theatre.
􀀹 (See Metacognition & Authentic Assessment activities.)

Strategy #3
Metacognition & Authentic Assessment

Content knowledge:
• Teach students processes for metacognition: i.e., pre-reading & pre-writing skills, word analysis, & methods to monitor their reading comprehension.
• Teach & model ways for students to describe their thinking processes verbally& in writing.
• Use a variety of activities & tasks to check for understanding.

Academic language:
• In addition to components listed above, ensure that assessment tasks are appropriate to students’ assessed language development level.
• Provide enough time to complete tasks, appropriate feedback, rubrics, & models to guide students’ self-assessment.

Sample activities/assessments:
􀀹 Guided reading, completing chapter pre-reading guides, reciprocal teaching, Directed Reading Thinking Activity (DRTA), Anticipation Guides, double-entry journals.
􀀹 Think-alouds, K-W-L.
􀀹 Learning logs/journals, quick-writes.
Activities I use for this strategy:
Activities I use for this strategy:
Activities I use for this strategy:
© New Teacher Center @ UC Santa Cruz(2005)

Strategy #4
Explicit Instruction

Content knowledge:
• Teach essential grade-level concepts & build students’ background knowledge as needed.
• Connect overarching ideas (whole), then examine components or processes (part), culminating with students’ own applications or synthesis of ideas (new whole).
• Explicitly teach academic language & cognitive reading skills needed to complete subject-specific tasks, e.g., analyze, interpret, classify, compare, synthesize, persuade, solve.

Academic language:
• Teach essential language forms & uses per students’ assessed language development level: listening/speaking, reading & writing.
• Follow contextualized introduction & explicit modeling of language use with repeated practice.

Sample activities/assessments:
􀀹 Teach/explain prerequisite language applications: reading directions, idioms, sentence starters, essay formats, pattern drills, or completing a story map; check for understanding.
􀀹 Teach specific reading comprehension skills for completing: task procedures, answering questions, word problems, understanding text & graphics.

Strategy #5
Meaning-Based Context & Universal Themes

Content knowledge:
• Introduce new concepts through familiar resources, prompts, visuals, or themes.
• Use associated types of “realia” meaningful or familiar to students to affirm the appropriate context for using new language.
• Sustain motivation to learn challenging concepts by linking ideas to resources or contexts that reflect student interests & sociocultural or linguistic backgrounds.

Academic language:
• Use methods listed above for introducing academic vocabulary, sentence structures, & language uses.
• Link ongoing language practice or tasks to both school-based & community-based uses.
• Respectfully compare & analyze language use, & meanings to other cultures or context, to promote metacognition.

Sample activities/assessments:
􀀹 Quick-write responses or recording student responses to visuals, current event stories, real-life models, video clips, teacher read-alouds, thematic prompts, role-play, comparing language uses for similar contexts.
􀀹 Identifying & analyzing different perspectives & language references re: essential concepts.

Strategy #6
Modeling, Graphic Organizers, & Visuals

Content knowledge:
• Model how to complete tasks.
• Provide graphic organizers & meaningful visuals to support students’ recognition of essential information.
• Use graphic organizers to support understanding of specific tasks, & specific uses of academic language.
• Use advanced organizers to support metacognition, & overall comprehension.

Academic language:
• Use methods listed above with the addition of word banks, word walls, & modeling the use of graphic organizers appropriate to ELD level.
• Appropriately modulate language delivery, i.e., speed & enunciation, when modeling language forms or presenting content; repetition helps.

Sample activities/resources:
􀀹 Venn diagrams, story maps, main idea + supporting detail schematics, double-entry journals, semantic attribute matrices.
􀀹 Jazz chants, read-alouds.