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These adapted classroom strategies encourage students to talk through and reflect on learning in meaningful ways.

Visible thinking routines-strategies and frameworks that help students verbalize and demonstrate their thought processes-benefit students and teachers alike, especially when integrated regularly into classroom routines. In fact, using such routines can preserve students' cognitive resources, which are finite, according to research, because they don't need to retain steps and directions for a new activity in order to engage with learning content.

And there is a plethora of resources available regarding visible thinking routines, meaning that teachers of all ages and subjects can utilize the strategy. Some of my favorite resource repositories are Thinking Pathways, Inspiring Inquiry, and Harvard University's Thinking Routines Toolbox. For educators who may be new to the visible thinking routines, I recommend think-pair-share.

I've found that many existing routines can be enhanced and adapted. To that end, I share below several visible thinking routines that I have altered and benefited from in my work with students.

PADLET WITH STEP INSIDE

The Step Inside visible thinking routine can expand students' perspectives. In my English language and literature course, I have used this strategy to help my students take on the role of a character from our novel study. I adapted the activity by integrating technology and creating a Padlet that I shared with all students. I then edited three questions that encouraged students to step inside a character's perspective-in our case, the perspective of Peter Wiggin from the novel Ender's Game: What do I care about most? Do I love Ender? Why am I acting violently? Students justified their perspectives by providing citations from the text.

To enhance this routine, you can ask students to respond to another student's writing by acting in the role of another character, a historical figure, or a scientist, as applicable. On Padlet, I like to use the comment feature for this enhancement. My students used the comments to respond from the perspectives of Colonel Hyrum Graff, another important character in the novel.

IDENTIFYING SIMILAR THINKING

Connect, Extend, Challenge -a thinking routine that asks students to consider how new learning has broadened their thinking-is well-suited for teachers to implement when students learn new concepts or ideas that connect to previously taught content.

I revamped this routine to offer my grade-seven students an opportunity to collaborate. After students individually completed their "Connect, Extend, Challenge," I printed their written responses. Each student then cut out their connections, extensions, and challenges, and I grouped students into pairs or trios, where they pasted their work onto poster board.

They then identified similarities between their and their group mates' responses by drawing lines between ideas. Students explained their identified similarities on their lines, which provided evidence of students' thinking.

Some groups even created their own labeling system. I found that keeping such an option open to students promoted a sense of ownership between the groups. Due to the smaller group setting, my more introverted students were especially engaged by this enhancement to the thinking routine.

COLLABORATION, HEADLINES, AND AI

Headlines summarize and capture new learning in a catchy way. Students can create an interesting title for an online article, newspaper, magazine, or blog that summarizes new learning. I have found that headlines are an excellent springboard for student collaboration and interdisciplinary learning or for an interactive planning meeting between teachers. Educators can show colleagues exemplar headlines from content completed in their classes, and these headlines can kindle discussions on common topics or content being taught across subject groups.

For example, a math teacher might bring a headline from one of her students that reads, "Discovering Ratios: The Power of Comparisons." A music teacher might share, "Catchy Tunes that Make Music MUSIC." From the headlines above, the math and music teachers can discuss how ratios and melodies relate.

Students can also exchange original headlines and write a 500-word response that fits their peer's headline. And they might make further enhancements with AI-if your students are of age and meet your country's requirements. Students can prompt AI to generate alternatives to their own headlines, and they can compare human versus AI-generated headlines to analyze the similarities, differences, and efficacies.

You can try a subject-based approach to prompting AI-for example, "Hi ChatGPT, we have read/learned _____ in _____ (subject). Our teacher asked us to generate a headline to show our understanding of _____. Here is my headline: _____. Could you generate another headline for me?"

BONUS: 3,2,1 REFLECTION FROM THINKING PATHWAYS

The visible thinking routine 3, 2, 1 Bridge was adapted by Alice Vigors, creator of Thinking Pathways. Vigors's adaptation, 3, 2, 1 Reflection, gives educators a quick method for reflecting with their students. In my practice, I have found that reflection can become worksheet-heavy. But an adapted 3, 2, 1 Reflection gives me a tool for diversifying engagement.

Begin by printing the 3, 2, 1 reflection image on large paper, preferably in color. Post it on the bulletin board. After completing an activity (or a visible thinking routine), give each student a Post-it note. Ask students to write three things that they have learned from the activity on this note.

Then, hand out another Post-it. Ask students to write two questions that surfaced from the activity. Give them one more note on which to pen a challenge that stemmed from the activity. Next, invite students to walk to the poster and attach their notes to the corresponding locations. This makes for excellent bulletin board material, and it gives students an opportunity to move during lessons.

EDUCATORS IMPACT POSTERITY

We educate because it is our calling. Every cohort of students is different; this is one of the many reasons why educating is an art and science. At the time of my writing this, there are 83 different visible thinking routines from which educators can select to best serve their students and educational contexts. This array preserves teachers' professional autonomy, and each of these routines can be adapted or enhanced-as demonstrated above-to further suit learners' needs.

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How to Adapt Visible Thinking Routines to Maximize Student Engagement

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These adapted classroom strategies encourage students to talk through and reflect on learning in meaningful ways.

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How Asset-Based Teaching Can Improve Classroom Behavior Victoria Raish Search Results | HMH

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HMH is a learning technology company and leading provider of K-12 core curriculum, supplemental and intervention solutions, and professional learning…

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Differentiated Instruction

Through this approach, which focuses on students' strengths, teachers can plan instruction that promotes a growth mindset.

Alan Ingram / Alamy Stock Photo

As educators welcomed students to the 2020-21 school year, they did so with great care and attention to their social and emotional needs. Now, as school routines become habits and students dive deeper into their learning, this message of hope and support must continue to be conveyed during instruction.

If students only hear of the gaps in their learning or that they have fallen behind, they will begin to act according to the low benchmark that has been set for their achievement. An asset-based approach to teaching is one that is grounded in what students can do rather than what they cannot do or areas of weakness. It is an embodiment of growth mindset in instruction.

3 Steps to Using an Asset-Based Approach to Teaching

1. Begin with a diagnostic learning activity that provides information about what students know and can do. A simple way to design a diagnostic learning activity that focuses on what students can do is to align the task to the skills or concepts from the previous grade level. Most standards are scaffolded from one grade level or course to the next. For example, in mathematics, this is known as coherence. In science, it can be seen through progressions of the Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCI). By looking at standards or intentionally identifying foundational skills or concepts in a curriculum document, teachers can quickly access this information.

For example, the following learning targets are based on English language arts standards:

Fifth grade: I can use the supporting details to determine the central idea.

Sixth grade: I can explain how supporting details are used to develop the central idea.

As a simple diagnostic, students read and annotate an article using text tags to identify key details and then use the tagged details to write the central idea. A sixth-grade teacher would review student work focused on the details that the students selected and how they were used to write the central idea, or the fifth-grade expectation.

With this information, the teacher can plan instruction to provide strategies for moving students from identifying the central idea to explaining how it is developed. Additional pathways are created for students who have this skill and need more practice or are ready to apply it in different ways.

2. Provide different learning pathways so that all students have the opportunity to meet high expectations. Time has always been precious in the classroom, and it feels even more so as learning this year takes place in remote or blended environments. A learning plan that can be used in these various settings may be strategically constructed so that all students are able to work toward high expectations from their starting point.

The learning plan begins with the diagnostic activity. The student can then choose or the teacher may select different pathways through the plan, with students completing a core set of learning activities aligned to the plan's learning target to ensure that they are all working toward high expectations.

Pathway A embeds instruction and review so that students build background knowledge and skills. For example, students create criteria for identifying important details. They use the criteria to identify details to tag that reveal the central idea.

Pathway B includes additional activities for student practice and application. For example, students use SEE (statement, evidence, explanation) as a cognitive routine for explaining the connection between the central idea statement and the evidence from text.

Pathway C provides activities for deepening understanding or applying learning in new ways. For example, students use SEE to evaluate a text that presents a different point of view.

Creating pathways will help eliminate endless review, repetitive tasks, and/or disengagement that can come from the one-size-fits-all approach to instruction. It communicates to the students that the teacher believes each of them is a unique but ready and able learner.

(Click here for a full example of a learning plan for a sixth grader with an asset-based approach to instruction.)

3. Provide feedback to students identifying what they can do and strategies for using their strengths to address areas of need. Embedded in each learning activity is a formative-assessment moment. These are tangible or observable evidence of student learning. In an asset-based approach to learning, they are used to provide students with feedback that includes three important pieces of information.

Strength: The evidence you selected clearly identifies the important information about the impact of the transcontinental railroad on different groups of people.

Need: The central idea is a summary statement of what is most important about the text. How can you say what is most important without rewriting all of the details?

Next step: Write the central idea for two or three paragraphs in your own words before writing the central idea for the entire text.

It is important to note that not all students need to receive the same feedback at the same time. The formative-assessment moment exists as an opportunity for students to receive the feedback they need when they need it. However, all students deserve specific and tailored feedback at some time during their learning.

When teachers begin to look at what students understand, know, and can do, it changes the way the teacher and their students approach learning. The teacher begins to leverage what students know as a means for moving learning forward. For students, small successes lead to larger ones and help develop belief in their own capability as well as the willingness to engage when learning becomes difficult. When students are made aware of how they can learn, they take another step toward being independent, self-regulated learners.

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3 Steps to Developing an Asset-Based Approach to Teaching

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Differentiated Instruction Through this approach, which focuses on students' strengths, teachers can plan instruction that promotes a growth mindset. Alan Ingram / Alamy Stock Photo As educators welcomed students to the 2020-21 school year, they did so with great care and attention to their social and emotional needs.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Good differentiation is one of the hardest bars to meet as a classroom teacher. Students have a wide range of skills and abilities, and they also come preloaded with different experiences, dispositions, and prior knowledge, making a one-size-fits-all pedagogical approach a pipe dream.

That's why anytime you're teaching a lesson, you should consider deploying scaffolds-"support that is tailored to students' needs," as defined by a 2015 study -to ensure that every student can keep pace. The benefits are hard to ignore: Advanced learners, who may easily grasp the material, will have more durable memories, while struggling students will receive the support they need to make learning more achievable.

Here are six essential scaffolding activities, all drawn from research, that can be used alongside your lessons to help all students succeed.

1. First, Clarity

Before jumping into a lesson, review your materials for brevity and clarity. All too often, students are stuck, not because the lesson is too difficult but because the instructions aren't clear or handouts are haphazardly designed.

Audit your instructional materials year to year, with the aim of gradually simplifying and improving them. Another effective way to provide greater clarity is to use headings and annotations to direct student attention to key ideas. For example, the thoughtful use of underlining, highlighting, and arrows to call attention to crucial ideas can boost student retention by 36 percent, a 2020 study suggests. Don't overdo it, though. Consider what is absolutely necessary and useful, and avoid extraneous details and eye-catching adornments, which can occupy valuable attentional resources and reduce comprehension.

Pro tip: After a lesson, check in with students to see how well they understood the directions and objectives. You may think that your lessons are the perfect balance of being brilliant and easy to grasp, but not every student will see things clearly. Highly effective teachers often check in with their students, asking questions such as "Are my lessons and assignments clear?" to unearth pain points, bottlenecks, and other obstacles, a 2019 study found.

2. Build Background Knowledge

Tackling a new topic without sufficient background knowledge is like exploring a cave without a flashlight: Without a foundation of familiar terms lighting up the path ahead, students will struggle to grasp the lesson. That's because the brain always seeks connections to previously stored material, which ties ideas together and reinforces the conceptual scaffolding.

How important is background knowledge? According to a 2019 study of over 3,500 high school students learning about ecology, being unfamiliar with roughly 59 percent of terms in the topic resulted in "compromised" comprehension. If students didn't know key terms like habitat or biodiversity, they had a harder time following a lesson, falling behind their peers who were also new to the lesson but had a stronger vocabulary to draw from.

Before exploring a new topic-or after having students read an introductory text-have students identify words that confuse them, or draw up your own list of academic terms that all students should know beforehand, which you can share on a word wall or play vocabulary games with. During a lesson, pause for a moment and explore those terms, so that all students can keep pace and not be tripped up by gaps in background knowledge. To get students to begin connecting new material to already-learned material, you can read an introductory text and have them engage in small group K-W-L activities, or you can sequence lessons so that overarching connections are made explicit, helping to reactivate prior knowledge on a regular basis.

Provide multiple ways for students to learn the material by pairing a written or verbal lesson with pictures, diagrams, or video, or by asking them to physically act out concepts, write songs, or reenact historical events. Relying on multiple sensory pathways encodes learning material more effectively-leading to more durable memories.

The research is clear, and the effect sizes are considerable. In a 2015 study, for example, researchers discovered that handing illustrated diagrams to students who listened to a physics lecture boosted performance on a follow-up test by 70 percent, compared with their peers who listened to the lecture with no visual aids. And a 2020 study found that 8-year-old students learning a new language were 73 percent more likely to remember vocabulary words if they acted them out-spreading their arms and pretending to fly when learning how to say "airplane" in German, for example.

4. Use Graphic Organizers and Anchor Charts

Visual scaffolds can serve as a road map for students, helping them navigate unfamiliar conceptual terrain by providing a bird's-eye view of the lesson. Distilling a complex topic into a handful of key ideas not only promotes comprehension but also can greatly enhance long-term recall of the material.

When middle school students used graphic organizers while learning about the seasons, factual recall increased by 45 percent and comprehension by 64 percent, compared with their peers who weren't given the scaffolding aids, a 2021 study found. Novice learners are often overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information presented in a lesson, the researchers observed, and have difficulty telling the difference between key ideas and supporting details. Graphic organizers and anchor charts, however, can guide "students' selective attention" to what's important, giving them a leg up compared with their peers.

In the early stages of learning-as students are grappling with unfamiliar information-it's helpful to supply prompts, hints, or even partially completed anchor charts and graphic organizers to make learning more effective. Asking students to start from scratch can overload their working memory, but pre-filling core concepts in a graphic organizer can "scaffold and guide the learner's cognitive processing," resulting in a 155 percent boost to comprehension, according to the 2021 study referenced above.

5. Use Pre-lesson Activities

In a 2021 study, researchers concluded that giving students ungraded pre-lesson practice quizzes boosted follow-up tests of retention and transfer by 49 percent, compared with simply jumping into a lesson without any warm-up activities. Surprisingly, the researchers found that pre-testing also outperformed post-lesson practice quizzes as well, improving scores by 27 percent over the tried-and-true strategy.

While embedding practice tests during-and after-a lesson is an effective way to strengthen student memory for the material, pre-lesson quizzes provide a different benefit: They scaffold the to-be-learned material, helping students to organize their thoughts, sparking curiosity as they venture guesses, and encouraging them to "search for the correct answers" during the actual lesson, the researchers point out.

Periodically, you might start a new lesson by asking students to solve challenging questions-ones that are just beyond their ability to solve. Used strategically, in small doses and for high-value concepts, the approach helps students learn how to deal with frustration in a supportive, productive environment. While many will struggle, that's the point, says learning scientist Manu Kapur. "These problems should be just beyond students' reach-they're designed in ways that will activate prior knowledge and motivate students, clarifying what they know and what they don't know," Kapur told Edutopia in 2022. "If the challenge hits that sweet spot, that's where deep learning happens." Let students explore different avenues, and then step in, building off their ideas and solutions as you elucidate and clarify, he suggests.

When students encounter new material, it can feel like a flood, overloading their ability to process the information. While external scaffolds-outlines and anchor charts, for example-provide valuable support, it's also beneficial to encourage students to develop their own portable strategies for managing novel information.

Metacognitive questions provide students with a template for interrogating new material, putting them on the path to becoming independent learners. Students can ask questions like these:

What stands out to me about this new material? What makes me wonder?

Which parts or terms are unfamiliar to me, and which parts do I recognize?

How does this connect with what I already know?

What follow-up questions do I have?

Why is this idea important?

You can pair these metacognitive questions with new assignments, suggests Kimberly Tanner, a professor of biology at San Francisco State University, in a 2017 study. "The instructor's decision to make these kinds of questions part of an assignment-and part of the grading scheme for the assignment-can prompt students to bring a more metacognitive stance to their everyday coursework," she writes.

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6 Foundational Ways to Scaffold Student Learning

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A collection of evidence-backed tips to help students cross the bridge from confusion to clarity.

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An Unprecedented Opportunity for Educational Equity

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How to Go Beyond Finding the Main Idea in ELA Classrooms

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Focusing on activities such as summarizing, analyzing textual features, and paraphrasing drives deeper reading comprehension.

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How to Move From the ‘Main Idea’ to ‘Background Knowledge’

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This article provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and offers classroom-based examples from different grade and subject levels.

This article written for Colorín Colorado provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and includes:

what a language objective is

steps that teachers can take to create language objectives

how to implement language objectives in a general education classroom

how to align objectives to content and language standards

ideas and resources on how to support teachers as they become familiar with this practice

how to use language objectives in distance learning environments.

Language Objectives: An Overview
Mrs. Shell has been teaching eighth grade math for twelve years. She has deep content area knowledge and wants to provide all of her students with authentic activities and tasks to relate the significance of the mathematical concepts that she teaches to their lives. Mrs. Shell has always felt successful at teaching her classes but this year has been different. Her sections include students with more diverse backgrounds than previous years, particularly more English learners. As Mrs. Shell was beginning to feel frustrated with her inability to reach all her students because of their needs, she learned about one way to make her content more comprehensible to all her students - creating and posting objectives that tell the students not just what content concepts they will learn in each lesson, but also the academic language they will need to learn and use to meet the state's math standards. With this knowledge, Mrs. Shell is now confident that she not only knows what to teach, but also how to teach it so that all her students can be successful.

Generally speaking, academic English is the language of schooling and the language that helps students acquire and use the content area knowledge taught in schools (Anstrom, DiCerbo, Butler, Katz, Millet, & Rivera, 2010).

Teaching content to ELs: The challenge

In my work supporting general education and ESL/bilingual teachers who provide sheltered instruction for English learners (ELs), I have met many teachers like Mrs. Shell. While these teachers want to provide effective instruction for their ELs, often they don't see themselves as language teachers and so they aren't sure where to begin with their students.

These teachers aren't alone, however, and they are facing a challenge shared by teachers across the country. We know that for school-age students, academic language is crucial for school success (Francis, Rivera, Lesaux, Kieffer, & Rivera, 2006). In addition, research allows us to state with a fair degree of confidence that English learners best acquire English when language forms are explicitly taught and when they have many opportunities to use the language in meaningful contexts (Goldenberg, 2008).

Yet while the explicit instructional support that ESL and bilingual teachers provide is essential to English learners' academic language development, English learners receive a majority of their instruction from general education and content area teachers who may not have experience teaching academic language development.

The question becomes then: What do general education classroom teachers need to do in order to support the academic English development of language learners in both face-to-face and virtual environments, especially when English learners are one of many types of students they serve?

Teaching content to ELs: The solution

One principle that teachers of English learners can begin to apply immediately is creating and posting language objectives for their lessons (whether in the classroom or online in a virtual space. Many teachers are familiar with using content objectives to identify what students will learn and be able to do in the lesson. However, they are less likely to include language objectives that support the linguistic development of their students.

Implementing language objectives can be a powerful first step in ensuring that English learners have equal access to the curriculum even though they may not be fully proficient in the language. This is because the second language acquisition process requires opportunities for the language learner to be exposed to, practice with, and then be assessed on their language skills (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

To this end, language objectives:

articulate for learners the academic language functions and skills that they need to master to fully participate in the lesson and meet the grade-level content standards (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

are beneficial not only for language learners but for all students in a class, as everyone can benefit from the clarity that comes with a teacher outlining the requisite academic language to be learned and mastered in each lesson.

Now let's take a closer look at some examples and how to write language objectives.

Back to top

Writing Language Objectives

Interview with Dr. Jennifer Himmel

Learn more about language objectives in this podcast interview with Dr. Himmel from Teaching Multilingual Learners, produced by Tan Huynh.

What is a language objective?

Language objectives are lesson objectives that specifically outline the type of language that students will need to learn and use in order to accomplish the goals of the lesson. Quality language objectives complement the content knowledge and skills identified in content area standards and address the aspects of academic language that will be developed or reinforced during the teaching of grade-level content concepts (Echevarria & Short, 2010).

These objectives involve the four language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing), but they can also include:

Below are examples of language objectives for different content areas and grade levels. They come from the Common Core State Standards for Math and English Language Arts (2012) and state standards in New York and California.
Sources:
How do I create effective language objectives?

Dr. Cindy Lundgren discusses the process of writing language objectives in this excerpt from her Meet the Expert interview.

Language objectives are directly correlated to content objectives. Once a teacher determines the lesson topic from the appropriate content standards, the teacher will want to begin thinking about the academic language necessary for English learners to complete the tasks that support the content objectives. This identification of the academic language embedded in the lesson's content will become the basis for the lesson's language objectives.

You can use the following guidelines to start thinking about appropriate language objectives for the lesson:

1. Decide what key vocabulary, concept words, and other academic words students will need to know in order to talk, read, and write about the topic of the lesson. Those words might be taught as a language objective. They should include technical terms, such as ecosystem, and terms like distribution that have different meanings across content areas. Other terms to highlight are those that language learners may know in one context, such as family (as in parents, siblings, etc.), but that have a different use in science (e.g., family of elements in the periodic table).

2. Consider the language functions related to the topic of the lesson (e.g, will the students describe, explain, compare, or chart information). See your state English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards for examples of these functions for English language arts, math, science, and social studies for all English proficiency levels and grade-level clusters.

3. Think about the language skills necessary for students to accomplish the lesson's activities. Will the students be reading a textbook passage to identify the stages of mitosis? Are they able to read a text passage to find specific information? Will they be reporting what they observe during a scientific demonstration to a peer? Do they know how to report observations orally? Acquiring the skills needed to carry out these tasks might be the focus of a language objective.

4. Identify grammar or language structures common to the content area. For example, many science textbooks use the passive voice to describe processes. Additionally, students may have to use comparative language to analyze two related concepts. Writing with the passive voice or using comparative phrases might be a language objective.

5. Consider the tasks that the students will complete and the language that will be embedded in those assignments. If students are working on a scientific investigation together, will they need to explain the steps of the procedure to one another? The language objective might focus on how to explain procedures aloud.

6. Explore language learning strategies that lend themselves to the topic of the lesson. For example, if students are starting a new chapter in the textbook, the strategy of previewing the text might be an appropriate language objective.

(Adapted from Short, Himmel, Gutierrez, & Hudec, 2012. Used with permission.)

Aligning Language Objectives and Standards

English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards

Developing appropriate language objectives for lessons involves becoming familiar with a state's content area and ELP standards. Whereas the content standards will provide the topic of the lesson and what exactly the students should be doing with that topic (e.g., solving problems, creating models, ranking ideas), the English language proficiency or development standards help to identify language skills and functions that students should be working on to achieve academic language fluency. These ELP standards can help to identify:

English Language Arts (ELA) standards

Other resources in addition to the ELP standards are a state's English Language Arts standards or the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History, Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (CCSS). The English Language Arts and Literacy CCSS might be especially useful to teachers of English learners due to its attention to literacy across the content areas.

Additional resources to consult, especially if a state is a member of the WIDA consortium, are the Model Proficiency Indicators (MPIs) outlined in their ELP standards. The MPIs outline what an English learner at a specific level of English language proficiency can do in a language domain (e.g., listening) by addressing the language functions embedded in an example topic for that content area with appropriate scaffolds or support (Gottlieb, Cranley, & Cammileri, 2007). Classroom texts and other materials (e.g., science investigations, primary source documents) are other good sources to consult when preparing a lesson.

Getting Started

How can I get started?

Careful lesson planning

In creating measureable and student-friendly language objectives that support the content objectives, it is important that learner tasks in the lesson are aligned with the objectives. It is not enough to have well-written objectives that promote language acquisition if the lesson is lacking in tasks that support the objectives. If the language objective for a middle school social studies lesson is for the students to orally retell the key characteristics in a historical event using sequential language, it is important that the teacher previews sequential language with the students, such as providing sentence stems or frames, and builds into the lesson some structured pair work so the students have an opportunity to retell the event to a peer. Therefore, careful lesson planning is another essential step in preparing effective language objectives.

Collaboration

It is also useful for content area and ESL/bilingual teachers to plan lessons together, as we saw with the 7th grade science lesson scenario involving Mr. Zhang and Mr. Lewis. In this co-planning scenario, each teacher used his expertise to better integrate content and language instruction for the language learners. This type of collaboration can help a teacher like Mr. Zhang learn more about the second language acquisition process of his students and can help a teacher like Mr. Lewis become more familiar with the grade-level content expectations that his English learners encounter in content area classes.

How do I know which language objectives are best for my students?

The language objective that the teacher selects will depend on what the English learners in the class need most at that point in the year and what language is most important to understanding the content concepts. If the students have already spent a good deal of time working with new vocabulary, then the teacher might consider having students use that vocabulary to develop their writing skill by writing a summary of the process they followed.

Conversely, the teacher might want to help students become more proficient with a particular type of graphic organizer in order to develop more strategic language learning. As all teachers know, teaching is a dynamic and complex process that requires a multitude of decisions to be made. However, the advance planning required in creating language objectives allows teachers to better anticipate the academic English needs of all students thus increasing the comprehensibility of the lessons.

It is important for teachers to realize that even though their lesson may include all four language skills (it is good if they do, since the language skills reinforce one another), they do not need to post a language objective for every language-related item addressed in the lesson. Teachers address many instructional needs in a 50- or 60-minute class period. Rather than highlighting all language uses in a particular lesson, it is important for the teacher to think about what is non-negotiable in that lesson.

In other words, the teacher should keep the perspective of the English learner in mind and ask, "Of all of the skills and functions addressed in my lesson, which is most important for helping students meet the grade-level standard and develop their language proficiency?" These objectives then must be measureable (i.e., can you see or assess the student's mastery of that objective?) and written in language that accounts for the linguistic and cognitive development of the students.

How can I make language objectives "student-friendly"?

Both of the above objectives are measurable, but both also take into account appropriate developmental stages of the students. Teachers of young students (e.g., PK or K) may even want to consider further adapting the objectives. For example, we have seen kindergarten teachers use symbols such as a pencil to symbolize "write" and a mouth to symbolize "talk" when they post their objectives for the children to see. We have also seen teachers of young learners rely on pictures to show the key terms they want the students to use or to convey the topic of the lesson (e.g., a picture of a ruler and of hands to discuss standard and non-standard measurement).

One way that teachers can ensure that their language objectives are measureable and student-friendly is by using appropriate verbs. Because language objectives should provide students with practice in the four language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, verbs related to those skills might include, but are not limited to, the following:

List

Retell

Summarize in writing

Record

Read

It is also important to not equate low language proficiency with limited cognitive ability. Therefore, teachers will want to make sure that the language objectives they create also reflect tasks that fall on the higher end of Bloom's Taxonomy and use verbs (e.g., orally justify) accordingly.

As noted above in the guidelines to creating language objectives, language functions are also a potential source for language objectives. Verbs related to language functions might include:

When should I share language objectives with students?

To help students take ownership of their learning and provide explicit direction to students, especially the English learners who are processing content in a new language, it is important that objectives be stated at the beginning of the lesson and reviewed with the students at the end of the lesson to allow them to assess if they have met the objectives (Echevarria, Vogt & Short, 2008).

How this happens may differ according to the grade level and content area of the class. Some teachers like to have the students choral read the objectives, while teachers of older students sometimes have them record the language objectives in their journal in addition to asking an individual student to read them aloud. Some teachers, such as those who teach science, like to reveal the objectives later in the lesson, perhaps after the warm up or exploratory activity, so that they can maintain an inquiry-based approach (Echevarria & Colburn, 2006).

Should I differentiate language objectives based on my students' language proficiency?

Although all teachers have students of varying language proficiency and skill levels in their classes, it is not necessary to differentiate language objectives by creating and posting multiple language objectives that reflect these proficiency levels. Rather, teachers should have one language objective that is appropriate for all students to meet. To provide the appropriate differentiation, the teacher would provide different scaffolds (e.g., adapted text, visuals, sentence frames) for students to use in order to reach the objectives.

For example, an appropriate language objective for an upper elementary language arts class might be for the students to be able to orally list text features found in a non-fiction book. For lower proficiency language learners, the teacher may give them a word bank from which to choose the text features; therefore, the students are meeting the same objective but with the appropriate amount of linguistic support from the teacher.

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Using language objectives in a distance learning environment

While teachers like Ms. Shell understand that the characteristics of good teaching for English learners does not change in a virtual environment, they do understand that instruction will necessarily need to look different in order to account for the challenges that distance learning presents for many learners.

Accordingly, teachers will need to think through how to:

Presenting language objectives

Many different ways exist for teachers to present language objectives in remote learning. For example, teachers might:

begin every virtual class by orally reading and presenting the content and language objectives in their Google slides and then asking students to briefly summarize in the chat box the activities they will be doing in that lesson to meet those objectives.

post the objectives at the top of a shared digital document that serves as a capture sheet for the lesson. A teacher might then ask learners to self-assess their progress towards meeting those objectives at the end of the document.

use live or recorded videos, especially when working with English learners with lower English proficiency. These videos can include props, for example ears to signify a listening objective.

use realia, such as rocks, if one of the lesson's language aims is for students to orally describe different types of sedimentary rocks.

Monitoring student understanding and engagement

Teachers in distance learning environments must also carefully consider how they will assess learner understanding and engagement throughout the lesson. Given the challenges virtual learning platforms present towards capturing data on learner comprehension (e.g., paralinguistic cues such as facial expressions, gestures, posture) teachers working in virtual environments know that it is more important than ever to ensure that students clearly understand the content and linguistic aims for each lesson.

Using comprehension checks and assessing progress

It is also essential that students understand how teachers will measure their progress towards meeting each objective. Towards this aim, teachers must build in multiple comprehension checks throughout the lesson that align to the lesson's objectives. Teachers can:

At the conclusion of a lesson, teachers can assess student progress towards meeting objectives via:

tickets out that are submitted digitally

the recording of a Flipgrid or use of another video platform where learners respond to a prompt that requires learners to use the academic language highlighted in the lesson's objectives.

Teachers can respond to the submitted tickets out or video with feedback that explicitly targets the students use of the language. When appropriate, teacher can provide learners with additional resources and/or support towards mastering that particular language skill or function. Teachers might also use that linguistic data to inform mini-lessons conducted to small groups of English learners during office hours or intervention time.

Next Steps

How can I learn more?

For more information on the SIOP Model, see Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

Although language objectives can be implemented in any lesson design approach, they are especially congruent with sheltered instruction and the SIOP Model. Since language objectives ensure that teachers meet the unique linguistic needs of English learners, they are sometimes easier to implement in the context of instructional practices espoused by the SIOP Model.

Practices that focus on explicit academic language teaching include:

Below are other resources that can help you learn more about creating language objectives and about integrating academic language into content area classes.

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Final Thoughts

We realize that it takes teachers some time to become very comfortable with creating language objectives, but our experience has shown that the implementation of language objectives can bring immediate benefits to instruction. Some immediate benefits include teachers understanding more concretely that they are both a content area and language teacher - as one teacher said in a CAL SIOP Model workshop, "I now see myself as a math teacher AND a language teacher".

We have also observed that when teachers consciously plan to meet the academic English needs of their learners, they end up with better planned learner tasks, and students begin to have more ownership of their content area and language learning. When it comes to building proficiency in academic English, as many teachers in our workshops remind us, "If you want to see it, you have to teach it." Therefore, if teachers want to see language development, language objectives are a great first step in helping teachers explicitly teach it.

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Recommended Resources

Further reading

Short, D., Himmel, J., Gutierrez, S., & Hudec, J. (2012). Using the SIOP Model: Professional development for sheltered instruction. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M.E., & Short, D. (2010). The SIOP Model for teaching mathematics to English learners. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Echevarria, J., & Short, D. (2011). The SIOP Model: A professional development framework for a comprehensive school-wide intervention. Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) Brief. http://www.cal.org/create/resources/pubs/professional-development-framework.html

Himmel, J., Short, D., Richards, C., & Echevarria, J. (2009). Using the SIOP Model to improve middle school science instruction. Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) Brief. http://www.cal.org/create/resources/pubs/siopscience.html

Short, D., Vogt, M., & Echevarria, J. (2010a). The SIOP Model for teaching history-social studies to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Short, D., Vogt, M., & Echevarria, J. (2010b). The SIOP Model for teaching science to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Vogt, M.E., Echevarria, J., & Short, D. (2010). The SIOP Model for teaching English language arts to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Jennifer Himmel is the Project Director for the National Center for English Language Acquisition at the Manhattan Strategy Group. She previously served as the SIOP Manager at the Center for Applied Linguistics, a non-profit organization for language education research, policy, and practice in Washington, DC. She has served as a curriculum developer and research associate for the U.S. Department of Education funded project, Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) that is investigating academic achievement of ELLs in grades 4th-8th, and as a language testing specialist for the WIDA ACCESS for ELLs® language proficiency test. She currently manages the SIOP Model professional development service line and provides technical assistance and professional development in sheltered instruction to districts and schools.

Video Clips: Language Objectives

How to Write Language Objectives: Tips for ELL Educators

In this video from Syracuse, NY, Jesus Ortiz, a bilingual teacher, learns how to write a language objective from Areli Schermerhorn, a peer evaluator with expertise in ELL and bilingual education.

Dr. Cynthia Lundgren explains language objectives

In this excerpt from her Meet the Expert interview, Dr. Cynthia Lundgren explains the value of writing language objectives when teaching English learners.

Anstrom, K., DiCerbo, P., Butler, F., Katz, A., Millet, J., & Rivera, C. (2010). A review of the literature on academic English: Implications for K-12 English language learners. Arlington, VA: The George Washington University Center for Equity and Excellence. Education.www.ceee.gwu.edu.

Echevarria, J., & Colburn, A. (2006). Designing lessons: Inquiry approach to science using the SIOP Model. In A. Lathman & D. Crowther (Eds.), Science for English language learners (pp.95-108). Arlington, VA: National Science Teachers Association Press.

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2008). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP Model. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Echevarria, J., & Short, D. ( 2010). Programs and practices for effective sheltered content instruction. In California Department of Education (Ed), Improving education for English learners: Research-based approaches. Sacramento, CA: CDE Press.

Francis, D., Rivera, M., Lesaux, N., Kieffer, M., & Rivera, H. (2006). Practical guidelines for the education of English language learners: Research-based recommendations for instruction and academic interventions. Portsmouth, NH: RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction. www.centeroninstruction.org/files/ELL1-Interventions.pdf

Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English language learners: What the research does-and does not-say. American Educator, Summer 2008, pp. 13-44.

Gottlieb, M., Cranley, E., & Cammilleri, A. (2007). Understanding the WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards: A resource guide. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium.

Short, D., Himmel, J., Gutierrez, S., & Hudec, J. (2012). Using the SIOP Model: Professional development for sheltered instruction. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (2007). WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium http://www.wida.us/standards/elp.asp

You are welcome to print copies or republish materials for non-commercial use as long as credit is given to Colorín Colorado and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact [email protected] .

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Language Objectives: The Key to Effective Content Area Instruction for English Learners

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This article provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and offers classroom-based examples from different grade and subject levels.

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English Language Learners

Teachers of any subject can use these tips to help English language learners be more engaged and at ease in class.

While we bring the mental health needs of our students into laser focus this year, it's still crucial that we keep the social and emotional world of our English language learners (ELLs) front and center. Just like their peers, ELL students come to our classrooms with the burning need to be seen and acknowledged for their unique personalities, life experiences, and talents. But language challenges can obstruct all these amazing facets of their personalities. Additionally, the social pressures of suddenly being in person again and needing to communicate may make them feel anxious, isolated, and embarrassed.

Because of the often-obvious communication difficulties, grade-level and subject-area teachers understandably often rely on ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers to step in and help these students. However, even if you aren't an ESL teacher, there's a plethora of strategies you can use to help these incredible students feel comfortable sharing their strengths and unique perspectives on the world.

Helping ELL Students Across All Subjects

1. Closed captioning isn't just for the hearing impaired. If you're showing video content, turning on closed captioning supports ELL students' comprehension as well as everyone's literacy skills. According to a 2017 study, the simple act of using closed captioning improves learning, even for students without learning challenges.

2. Voice typing in Google Docs (under the Tools menu) provides students with a voice-to-text option that can help learners who have some oral language but struggle with spelling and writing. By clicking the arrow next to the language, students can even dictate a text in their native language, if need be, and then use Google Translate to translate it.

For older students, or for those who are somewhat more advanced in English but need material translated immediately, the Google Translate app also lets you hold your camera (on a smartphone/iPad, etc.) up to a document and instantly see it in another language, no typing required.

3. Offer choices of what students can say if they're called on and aren't sure how to respond. This helpful anchor chart, for example, offers students options other than the ubiquitous "I don't know."

4. Add gestures to reinforce communication.Remember that in order to communicate, we need to ensure that the sounds coming out of our mouth create a mental image or concept in our listener's mind. You can increase comprehensible input (the amount of language that's understood) by using good, old-fashioned gestures. If you want to take it a step further, TPR (Total Physical Response) is a method of teaching vocabulary that uses physical movements to react to verbal input, similar to how young children naturally learn language at home.

5. Draw or write key words frequently as they come up during instruction to help students further decode what you're saying. You can also use Google Image search to help students visualize what your words refer to and share the images.

6. Utilize a chart: A PECS (Pictorial Exchange Communication System) chart can help individuals with communication challenges to express themselves. By pointing to an image on a classroom-themed PECS chart, students can let you know, for example, that they need to go to the bathroom by pointing to an image of a lavatory or that they are thirsty, sad, or confused, need a pencil, and so on. You can give them a laminated copy to tuck into their desk or hang one up on the wall for little learners. You may want to encourage students to say the words aloud as they point to the images to decrease their dependence on the chart. Try searching Google for "PECS chart for classroom" to find a chart that fits your needs.

7. Add images: A picture is truly worth a thousand words, but for ELLs, images are worth exponentially more. Document cameras provide ELL students with much-needed visual input of texts, worksheets, books, and other printed materials or realia. Project pages from a novel or picture book as the students follow along, display handouts and student writing samples, or use math manipulatives to solve a problem together. Document cameras make a world of difference in showing ELL students exactly what you're talking about rather than trying to explain it.

8. Pair up: If you want to pair an ELL newcomer with a bilingual student to help them, ask the ELL student to choose a student or two whom they'd prefer to work with, if possible. This prevents you from inadvertently pairing them up with someone they don't feel comfortable asking for help or with whom they really don't get along.

9. Give students a "language toolbox," a notebook full of pages of illustrated vocabulary words organized by theme that students can use as a reference. This is like a simplified version of an illustrated dictionary that younger ELLs can look through by theme to see vocabulary related to the colors, days of the week, classroom items, family members, and so on. In my classroom, I put these pages in plastic page protectors inside a binder for each student to flip through quickly. They can pull it out to help them fill in missing vocabulary when they write or as an easy reference whenever they need it.

10. Use a microphone or voice amplification system, which can help ELL students hear the nuances of your voice more clearly and understand you better. Record the lesson (if permitted), and digitally share the resulting video or audio with ELL students who might benefit from hearing/watching a replay. Similarly, ELLs have a hard time producing sounds correctly when the speaker's mouth is covered by a mask. Consider sharing posters of mouth formations or videos of you unmasked, creating some of these sounds.

Think about trying these strategies to help alleviate the communication difficulties that can prevent ELL students from becoming fully engaged in their learning and sharing who they are and what they can bring to the classroom.

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10 Strategies That Support English Language Learners Across All Subjects

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Teachers of any subject can use these tips to help English language learners be more engaged and at ease in class.

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Are You Using this Protocol to Engage Multilingual Learners in Math?

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Learn how to use this math protocol strategy for educators and english language learner specialists to help engage Multilingual Learners.

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Transcript

Studio

Delia Pompa: How do we recognize learning disabilities in English language learners? How can we help them become strong readers? I'm Delia Pompa. Please join me for our next Colorín Colorado webcast, "English Language Learners with LD."

Voice Over: Funding for this webcast is provided by the United States Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs. Additional support comes from the National Council of La Raza.

Delia: Hello. I'm Delia Pompa. Welcome to the Colorín Colorado and Reading Rockets webcast series. You know, teaching reading to a child who's just learning to speak English can be a challenging task. When that student also has learning disabilities, the challenge is magnified. Dr. Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan is here to help. Dr. Hagan is a bilingual speech-language pathologist and director of the Valley Speech Language and Learning Institute in Brownsville, Texas. She also works with the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation and Statistics at the University of Houston. Thanks for being here, Doctor.

Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan: Thank you for inviting me.

Delia: Let's start with something very basic.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: All right.

Delia: What are learning disabilities? I know that there are legal definitions and other controversies about it, but in practice, what do we mean by learning disabilities?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, a learning disability would mean, a child or a student who came to school and the teacher would notice that they're having difficulty and not progressing in the areas, possibly, of: reading, writing, spelling. It may be that they're having trouble understanding, or difficulty in math or reasoning, problem solving. Those kinds of difficulties.

Delia: To what degree are learning disabilities a phenomena of the English language?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, what we know at this point in time and, what's very difficult to tease out, are what are the differences between a child typically developing English and whether that child is having great difficulty in learning. Often, it's very hard to tease out between language and language difficulties and a learning disability.

Delia: So we're talking about a bilingual child here. How does a learning disability manifest itself in the child's native language, say Spanish?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: All right. So what we see - no matter what the language, and within languages, and across languages - what we will find are similar patterns of difficulty. For example, if the student were dyslexic, they would show very clearly in their native language, say Spanish, the same kinds of difficulties - having trouble with processing of sounds and playing with sounds, having trouble reading single words. That trouble then leads to difficulty in reading fluency and comprehension, etc.

Delia: So how would a teacher tell the difference between a learning disability and just difficulty in learning the English language? I know that's a pretty basic question, and that's a big question. So give us the basics on that.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Actually, it's quite a complex question that you have asked and one that researchers have - we've been trying to really tease out what this means. But, indeed, what we will see is, and what we need to be careful [of], are all the variables. Students who come to school, one of the first things you must do is really evaluate. Provide some type of screening and use that as your anchor. And then the teacher must try and incorporate all the effective strategies that we know work for monolingual speakers, [they] can also work for English language learners. But here has to be adjustments and adaptations. And as you adjust and provide those adaptations, what you're looking for is some progress. And you have to monitor that progress very carefully. And only then, when the student doesn't appear to be responding, then should you go further and make a step into having them evaluated by experts.

Delia: That is a lot. And so let's take-let's go through the first steps here. What does a teacher do when an ELL student who she suspects has an LD problem arrives?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: What the teacher must do is first gather information. That teacher needs to be the detective. Find out from the families, from previous teachers what has been - what have been the opportunities for this student. What was the language of instruction, because was this child exposed to English before, or is this first time the student's being instructed in English? Or is this instruction in Spanish? How many years of opportunity have they had? Have they been responding to that opportunity? And if not, then decide, you know, what do I need to do. Or maybe the teacher needs to continue to collect information.

Delia: Well, should a school assess in both languages?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: You asked me just the perfect question that I would love to answer. A gold standard, a gold standard would be to test in the two languages. And the reason you would test in those two languages is to give yourself a complete picture of what the student really understands and knows. So giving, for example, a test only in one language gives you an incomplete picture. You must understand their skills in their native language and the second language. Make sure that it's not an issue of acquiring that second language but, indeed, an issue of having difficulties in learning despite the language.

Delia: What if the school doesn't, as is usually the case, have a bilingual staff member to perform the assessments?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: What you can do, and often what teachers and school districts do, is look out in the community. Look for regional centers that have experts, or actually try and find these persons to help in the assessment process. You can also actually train people that, maybe these are people who understand the language. But maybe they can be trained along side a diagnostician, the diagnostician can be there for the testing. But just making sure that native language was clearly evaluated and used in determining whether, indeed, the student, in fact, exhibited a learning disability.

Delia: Well, what does a comprehensive dual language assessment include?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: If you were looking for a dual language assessment, you must include all the areas. I'm a speech language pathologist so I would want to make sure that there would be a very nice look at language: how well children understand concepts; how well they understand words; how well they're able to use words in their first language and also in the second language. But aside from that, you must very clearly look at those reading skills, the basic reading skills which include looking at their ability to process sounds, their ability to read words and then their ability to comprehend what they've read. Of course, you have to look at the highest level of language, and that would be written language, and an area that's not my expertise, math, which very clearly we can also see it manifests itself in the area of math.

Delia: That is thorough and that's a lot. We have tests for kids who are native English speakers who do everything you describe. The tests do. What is the availability for second language learners? Can you use the same tests?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, that's another question and one that really, you know, researchers might not agree upon at this time. But what we do know is that it is important that these tests are culturally sensitive, that they're not culturally biased, that they really are assessing what they are assessing, that when they get tested for reliability and validity to make sure that those tests included English as a second language learners in their studies.

Delia: Well, say a school now to this point's done everything right - they've had valid and bilingual assessments, they have a skilled bilingual professional assessing the student and they evaluate the results. I'm guessing even with everything in place this is still a very complicated situation. So let's tap into what you just described yourself as, which is a bilingual speech pathologist. What issues are going to pop up still that could be confused with LD? What language issues? I mean, you've still got the child who's learning a second language. What are some issues a teacher might see that would cause some confusion for her?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Right. Some of the areas of inclusion do, indeed, exactly what you said. You're looking at two languages often developing either simultaneously or sequentially. And what often gets confused, and what muddles the water, there is what we see is that the students are often assessed in the second language and they may just be acquiring that second language. So second language acquisition, children go through a period of time where it's a non-verbal period where they're taking in all the information. We call it the "silent period". And sometimes that might be confused for a language disability or a learning disability when, in fact, they don't present with that difficulty in their native language and it's just a part of that second language acquisition process.

Delia: So those testing them in two languages becomes even more important there. There are a lot of challenges in this situation. What's your recommendation to well-meaning professionals who are doing the best they can with the resources they have?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, what we want to make sure that they do is actually - and I've been a proponent of Colorín Colorado and really LD On-Line - there are resources on-line. We want to make sure that they are incorporating effective practices for English language learners making sure that they really are understanding the information, scaffolding that information, being very descriptive and explicit in the instruction.

Delia: Thanks. Now we've covered the first step. Now we know they're identified as ELL with an LD. What's the next step?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, once you've really teased out, you need to make a plan. And based on the information that plan needs to be what will be the language of instruction. What often happens in schools is there's a plan possibly developed, but we don't stick to the plan. And students get moved from one model possibly trying to learn English, maybe back into Spanish. So we have to be consistent with the language of instruction and give that program model an opportunity for the students to respond. And then make the decisions along the way of how they're responding to the intervention.

Delia: I assume you're talking about an IEP, and the next question I have actually relates to that, I'm guessing most schools don't have a person who's an expert both in ELL and in developing an IEP. What do you do in that case? how do you do this without somebody that has that expertise?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: What you need to make sure of when you develop that Individualized Education Plan, you need to make sure that that plan - you know that there are certain goals and objectives that you need to meet. For an English language learner what that means is that you are looking at what other adaptations can we make. How can we make the information more comprehensible? Maybe we need to take smaller steps in getting to the goal. Maybe we need the native language as a support to reaching those goals. And so you want to keep the goals in mind. You have the same goal objectives, and the goals are in mind and in place, but you need to take into consideration that language and provide that native language support for the students so that they will understand the information that they are trying to learn.

Delia: So then what would the IEP look like? Let's take an example. Let's take a third grader newcomer who's dyslexic. What would his IEP look like?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, the IEP would certainly include the same types of effective practices for a dyslexic child in English. Those effective practices can be conducted, for example, in the native language. And what we often must keep in mind is, say the intervention. One point I do want to make is that intervention should match the language of instruction in the regular and general education classroom. So whatever you're trying to improve should match the language of instruction in that classroom. And so even in the IEP of a dyslexic student you're still going to want to work on the areas of phonological awareness and the phonics and the reading, but where you might find some differences are in the new sounds. The sounds that are not prevalent in the native language. You want to explicitly teach those in the second language. Words and word meanings that they may not have in that second language, possibly they have it in the first language. You have to look carefully at that also. They also need to learn there's much cross-linguistic relationships. And so, for example, much of the Spanish language can be adapted to English. And so learning what's similar and what's unsimilar is very important. And that needs to be pointed out to the student and included in an Individualized Education Plan.

Delia: Well, it sounds like there's a lot of overlap. What is the main difference between an IEP for a native English speaker and a student who's bilingual or just learning English?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: So the main differences, again, are teaching the similarities and the differences within the language and across languages, and making sure that that student clearly understood those new concepts and there was clearly some native language support in that instruction.

Delia: There are a lot of factors to consider here. Can a regular classroom teacher handle an ELL LD student in her classroom? Can she handle the teaching?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, what we see across America is the likelihood of our teachers being placed in a classroom where they have English language learners is increasing. And definitely they can help these students. What they know as effective practices in the classroom can work with our English language learners. But what we need to make sure of, again, is that these English language learners have that native language support, that teachers are able to help them make the connections from that first language to the second language and that they are explicitly taught the similarities and differences. In our research studies we are starting to get some nice results in actually explicitly teaching these students who struggle those similarities and those differences.

Delia: Well, as you know, most teachers in this country are monolingual in English. So even if a teacher doesn't speak the native language, are you saying that that teacher can use the native language to help the child learn English?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: What I'm saying, and I'm so glad that you brought up the point, what I'm saying is that you don't have to know the language to know the cross-linguistic relationships.

Delia: I see.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: And so looking at what's similar you can analyze languages without having to speak it. And you can do this in the English language teaching them about the structure of English and how it's similar or different to their native language.

Delia: Give us an example of that. Here's a teacher who speaks no Spanish and she's got a Spanish-speaking student in her classroom. How is she going to use that to help them learn English?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, Spanish is the easiest language actually.

Delia: Okay, let's do Russian.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Actually, Russian also. These languages are alphabetic languages. And so when the languages are alphabetic, that makes it easier for the teacher to see those shared and unshared components. For example, if you're teaching sounds and letters - and sounds, for example, in the Spanish language - many of the consonants from Spanish directly transfer to English. What would be problematic are the vowel sounds of English. Those short vowel sounds are very difficult for our English language learners, and how vowel sounds change in the context of words. And so having them understand how they change, the patterns of why they change and actually having them being able to pronounce those sounds and work with those sounds is very important, not only for reading, but also for spelling and writing.

Delia: What about day to day, more functional interactions? A lot of classroom instruction is given orally. How can you make sure a struggling ELL student is getting all the information they need from what's going on in the classroom orally?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: And you're right, there's lots of language occurring in the classroom. And what a teacher can make sure that he or she keeps in mind is making sure that: for every new concept that there's been some way to check that student's background knowledge. Often the students that are English language learners need even basic vocabulary words that they might not understand, or even the academic vocabulary words. Having visuals, and actually having them engage and do hands-on activities, total physical response, all of that helps our students. Plus, having lots of repetition, rehearsal and practice. That helps our English language learners very much.

Delia: Is instruction for these kids different or is it just plain old good teaching? Are there specific effective methods that a teacher should be using that are different than she would use for other students?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Actually, there are effective practices for monolingual English speakers and our English language learners. So, indeed, you want to explicitly go through each of the steps of what they are learning. You need to recheck to make sure that it was understandable, that they comprehended.

And then you want to have them have lots of practice. But our English language learners need much modeling and our teachers need to be expert models for these students and help them along the way. They must also make sure that the students feel comfortable in trying and in attempting this new language. What happens to our English language learners is, they are working on learning the new language while also trying to learn new content. So it's twice the cognitive work - learning the language and learning the content and the language of that content area.

Delia: So it's good teaching, plus. How can technology help in that?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, technology... For example, you can get books on tape. It's very important also for our students to be able to pronounce the words and the sounds correctly. So you can have books on tape exist for these students. And those kinds of materials can be resources. Again, you have resources in Colorín Colorado, which, I use those resources. For example, the cognates. And, you know, 60% of the English language comes from Spanish. And, you know, having the children be aware that can help their vocabulary and for them to increase that vocabulary in their second language.

Delia: In our staffing patterns today we often have specialists for ELL students and specialists who provide support for the LD student, and then you've got the regular classroom teacher. How can you coordinate the functions of those three? What's the best thing, or how can a classroom teacher today coordinate with both the LD specialist and the ELL specialist to make sure that struggling reader with LD is getting all the good instruction they need in the classroom?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: It is extremely important for these key specialists to work together, to make that plan together. It doesn't make sense for our teacher that's in the regular education classroom to be doing something totally different than the specialist (maybe the reading specialist or the, you know, resource teacher, what have you). What we need to make sure is that plan is working very nicely and when the students are getting these extra services, that those services compliment the instruction that's happening in that general education classroom. So getting together, having those meetings, keeping in constant communication regarding this process - for the student to achieve language, to achieve literacy, to achieve that academic language - is crucial and a must for our teachers and specialists in schools.

Delia: Well, as you know, our classrooms are fairly large. We have 25 to 30 kids in classrooms all across this country, and teachers have to respond to all 30 of those kids. How does that teacher make sure that the ELL LD student in her classroom is getting all the support he or she needs, at the same time she's not slighting the other students or she's giving everybody their full instruction? How does that happen for one teacher?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: And it can happen. And what needs to happen is: we know that even young children, as early even as kindergarten, are very good at what we call the "peer-assisted learning." And what can be done is differentiating that instruction. What that means for the teacher - and how this looks in the classroom - is the teacher could have small groups or the students could be paired together. And what that does is it, when you pair someone that has more English language skills than someone who has less, when they're interacting they're serving as models for each other. And it helps not only the monolingual English speaker but certainly our English language learner as they hear excellent models. And so here when you pair students together ,or get these small groups working together, you have more children on-task, using the language, addressing the content of what they're supposed to be learning. And the teacher can move around the room from small group to small group, or from small partner to small partner, checking and making sure that each understands their roles and that everyone is getting an opportunity to engage and to learn.

Delia: Well, does this happen spontaneously as you go through your day or do teachers have to do a lot of up-front work to get to the point that you describe?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, actually, in classrooms that we've been working in, what you see is: early on those routines are established and the roles are established. And even these little children are able to take those roles very seriously. What you see is they start to help one another. And what's very nice is, yes, the teacher has to up front give them clear directions. But then this becomes very routine, so as part of the lesson the children expect it. And when the teacher doesn't put them into partners or small groups, they're like, "Hey, it's partner time." "What happened today, teacher?" And you actually see the students saying, "We want our partner time. We want our opportunity to work in a small group".

Delia: So the teacher's built that into her lesson plan. She's thought about this ahead of time.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Yes. And what we know about that small group work is it is extremely effective. Students are more apt to respond and engage in language and conversation when it's a small group rather than doing it in a large group, say of a classroom of 22 students. That can be quite intimidating. So this gives all the children those opportunities. And those students, those ELL students, are more apt to respond in that small group instruction.

Delia: You know, Dr. Hagan, when you were describing assessment earlier, you talked about taking into account the cultural and social and educational background of a student when you were doing this assessment. How do you take that information and use it on a day-to-day basis?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, very important in the classroom. We continually need to check to make sure that the students really understand even basic words. We've been quite amazed that there are some common words that students don't understand while also challenging them with the higher level vocabulary.

So it's making sure-giving them the opportunity to practice these new words. We know children need many practices, like maybe 12 exposures to a word before they actually know that word. So we want them to use that word. What's also important is for them to check for the understanding.

Go back and check. Give em that rehearsal, that repetition and make sure that the student clearly understood. And if they didn't, then you scaffold and you go back and put it into smaller steps.

Delia: I think our teachers probably have more experience taking into account language differences but when it comes to culture and social background, can you give us an example of how those differences might play out in the classroom?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: I can remember a few examples. I can even remember in a classroom where the teacher was talking about a dishwasher and the students... You know, that would have been something you thought that they understood but they had not had that experience of a dishwasher.

And so the teacher very quickly related it. She knew that across the street from the school there was a washateria (ph.) and she said, "That dishwasher is just like that washing machine except it washes dishes automatically". I'm an English language learner myself and I remember, for example, an egg, you know, simple uses of an egg.

You know, you can make scrambled eggs. But for me that egg has a different meaning. As a young girl, I knew my grandmother would get an egg and make sure that that egg - it was kind of folklore - she would rub it against us and say that that would cure us of all evils and ailments, what have you.

Delia: Las curitas.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Exactamente. And so, you know, egg, to me, has a different connotation than it would to a typical probably monolingual English speaker. And so we need to become aware of the different cultures, the different routines and bring in that culture and those routines into the classrooms.

And then students will get so engaged and be willing to share their culture and some of the ways that they celebrate their special days or special celebrations.

Delia: Well, say a teacher is doing all of this. She's using the native language, following the IEP, providing intensive instruction, incorporating culture. How can she be sure that the student is improving?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: It's a must to ensure that. And what we want teachers to do very clearly is to have progress monitoring tools that are related to the content of what they're teaching, and do this very often (every week or every two weeks) to make sure that the students are understanding.

We want our teachers to be diagnostic and prescriptive in their teaching. So everyday whatever a child gives you, that informs the teacher how can I adjust that instruction to ensure that the student has learned. So those progress monitoring tools are important not because they're required by school districts but because they help you and inform your instruction.

Delia: What are some resources or are resources available that would help a teacher who has an ELL LD student in their classroom?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: We've been doing lots of research in this area and there are websites in which you can look at some of these new tools. The Department of Education, the Institute of Education Sciences and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development actually sponsored much research, especially for our English language learners.

And you can get some of that information from the Center for Applied Linguistics right here in Washington, D.C. And that website is www.cal.org.

Delia: Good memory. I'm sorry.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: That is a good memory because I often go back to make sure, okay, here are some tools that teachers can use and it tells you what's available to this point in time. So we're lucky that these tools are now being developed. We need more of these tools, but there are some that exist at this point in time that they can use quite effectively with English language learners.

Delia: Thank you, Dr. Hagan. And I stepped on that last piece that Dr. Hagan gave us, which is the website. It's www.cal.org. Thank you. One resource we haven't discussed is parents. We've got a video clip from a school in Chicago, Rachel Carson Elementary. What they're doing is some innovative things to get parents involved with the kids.

Now the kids you'll see here don't have learning disabilities but we think the strategies you'll see can apply very broadly. Let's take a look.

Video

Narrator: Principal Kathy Maher learned early on that one key to teaching young readers successfully is getting parents involved.

Kathy Mayer: To get parents into a school one of the first things you have to think about is what would appeal to the family. What would you want to see for your own child?

Dr. Claude Goldenberg: Parents who come from other countries obviously aren't quite sure what the rules of the road are with respect to U.S. schools. So they might be reluctant to be assertive or aggressive as far as finding out information. But they care very much about their children's education.

Narrator: Angelica Torres is the parent of three kids at Rachel Carson Elementary School in Chicago. At first she was skeptical about getting involved.

Angelica Torres: I said, "Well, I wanna get into it to see what happens. If I don't like it, I just get out and that's it".

Narrator: She liked it. Now she's a dedicated parent volunteer and she's part of a concerted effort to make parents partners in their child's education.

Dr. Claude Goldenberg: Not only are the parents very motivated but they're also, in most cases, competent, at least at the beginning levels, to help their children acquire beginning literacy skills.

Narrator: Rachel Carson Elementary has partnered with a family literacy project at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The program trains Latino parents with limited English to become literacy models for their children at home.

Dr. Emma Violand-Sánchez: Unfortunately, many immigrant parents who do not speak English feel that they cannot help their children because they don't speak English. When I talk to parents, I always say, "The language that your child speak and the language that you speak is a resource". I think that talking to the child continuing to develop their oral language in their native language, it is important.

Narrator: Today's session is about vowels. The group learns fun, engaging ways to teach their kids letters and sounds.

Angelica Torres: The literacy classes are real good. You know, they teach you how to teach your kids the alphabet, how to read to them. Once you go one time and you learn things to help out your kids, you know that you're doing something good.

Narrator: Now Angelica gets to put into action what she learned.

Narrator: At first Angelica's son didn't like reading but she found out how to change that.

Angelica Torres: Instead of telling him, "You have to read. You have to read", they told me, you know, "You read to him so he get, you know, excited about it". You read one page, he reads one page. And I used to tell him, "Don't read those Clifford books because they're for kindergarten kids." And those are the ones he likes to read. So they told me, "It's a good idea if you let him read those. It doesn't matter what he's reading. He's reading something."

Studio

Delia: That was an interesting clip. In the clip Dr. Violand-Sánchez talked about language as a barrier for some parents. How can parents who don't speak English themselves help their children become strong readers?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, it's absolutely necessary. We know so much about reading depends on language and language is cheap and doesn't cost money. So what we want to make sure is that parents are telling the stories of their lives, they're working with words.

Some parents will say, "I'm not literate so how can I help my own child?" But, indeed, you can even get a book and look at the pictures and tell the student the story, having them retell the story to you. Some schools are actually having adult literacy classes for our parents which has been very, very helpful.

But just incorporating language. Going to the library. There are lots of community libraries. Some of the school libraries are staying open. Getting that book, taking that book home, going through the book, having the student try - their own child try to read the book and then to talk about what they think it's about would be excellent.

And a lot of families and different cultures are known for their storytelling abilities. Those storytelling abilities are very rich in language and you must have language and rich words and rich vocabulary to end up having high levels of reading comprehension. So I always tell families, "Talk to your children".

If you can, read to them. Have them read to you. Go to library. There's lots of story times there. Lots of schools also provide after-school classes, not only for families but also for the students themselves.

Delia: Well, you described so many resources a parent has and many parents have. But in the clip (Unint.) seemed reluctant at first to go to the school. You know, what are some of the reasons that a parent of an ELL student might be hesitant or reluctant to come to the school?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: It's very intimidating to go to a school if you do not speak the language of the school. In many cultures the teacher and the school personnel are held in the highest esteem and it's very intimidating when you don't know the language. So teachers and school leaders need to engage our families.

For our families it was always, okay, they're gonna have what we call "pondosa" (ph.), the little sweet bread, or they're gonna have a coffee, and maybe even doing it in some small session, small group sessions. What you also find is usually one of those brave parents that have come to the school and have them be the leader in getting their other parents from the neighborhood into the school.

Some schools have parent resource centers where they can feel free to come throughout the day and they can learn, as you saw in this video clip, about how to help their children. And those are less intimidating. The other thing is making sure that we're communicating in their language.

A lot of times families don't come to the school because they weren't aware that there was even a meeting because the information was not communicated to them via their own language that they can understand.

Delia: You've made a clear case for why it's so important for parents of an LD student to be involved in their child's schooling. But even English-speaking parents of LD kids face a lot of challenges when they talk about developing an IEP, making sure their kids are being supported appropriately.

What about the parent of an LD child who's also ELL? What can schools do to help them get more involved and help them get the services and to come to school?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Right. You can imagine how intimidating it is to come to a special education meeting whereby all these professionals are there to tell you about your own child and all the work that needs to be done and all the objectives that need to be met.

But actually including the family in that process, letting them know, "This is gonna be okay. We're gonna take it step by step and here are some of the things you can do in your home that will also help", and also leaving that open-door policy of them being able to come to ask questions and frequent meetings with these families on how they can better help their student in the home and also some additional community sources that may be available, especially during the summertime because we wanna make sure our English language learners are not having a dip in the summertime, because we often see that between May and the fall students also take a dip in their learning and so we want to keep them active.

And that would be a perfect time for the parents of our English language learners, especially those who have learning disabilities, to keep those students engaged and providing them with learning opportunities in their home and in their community, as well as possibly in the school.

Delia: Now we seem to be doing a better job in our schools of recognizing and honoring the cultural and linguistic differences of kids, but we sometimes forget that their parents also have these linguistic and cultural differences. How do we honor that for parents in working with them?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: We also need to learn more about the interactions with parents, what they feel comfortable doing, how verbal they feel and how you talk to them. For many parents sometimes as English speakers we're very direct in our communication styles, where in other cultures the communication style is not as direct.

And so learning about those communication styles, learning about how parents can best feel comfortable in engaging, and then providing the families also with some resources. There's many community resources on helping these families identify and learn also that second language.

These students have a better chance if their family member and if English is spoken in the home so that they have some models in the home. And if they don't, then you find other community members that can provide those models for the students.

Delia: How do you take into account the literacy levels of parents?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: What happens with our parents is quite interesting. In one of the studies we looked and saw, you know, for some of them, they did have literacy skills and for others they had limited literacy skills.

And so, again, what we were encouraging them was to engage in some adult literacy courses, to actually come to the schools as you saw in the clip working with families that even though you're not literate there's some activities that you can do that have minimal literacy requirements that you can engage your children that will help them in their literacy.

But I think it would be most helpful for the parents of our students to have those opportunities themselves to become literate so that they can, in turn, help their students and their children, their loved ones in their home.

Delia: And you mentioned this for kids, but what about for parents? Are we talking about native language literacy and native language activities for them?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Actually, we've been looking at that very closely and, yes, indeed. Actually, when you look at adult literacy models, we don't see that we've been as successful, and part of not being successful is probably because there hasn't been enough native language support in those adult literacy programs.

And, actually, we would like to start looking at that, making sure that the same kinds of effective strategies that we're learning about for our English language learners as students, that we should be applying and looking at how that applies to our adults, our parents.

And so looking at that native language support certainly seems a direction that we must take so we'll have more success in those adult literacy programs.

Delia: Okay, that's a lot. So let's step back so we can look at the big picture. What sort of academic success are we going to expect from ELL LD kids and how does that compare with the success of native English speakers with LD?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: You know, what we want is we want to look at every child as an individual. And what we expect from that child is that they are responding to the intervention. And so, as we mentioned before, that close monitoring is extremely important because that's gonna tell us how we need to adapt our instruction to give to these students.

And so for our English language learners we have to closely monitor it, and I would recommend that if that monitoring fits the intervention, the language that you're intervening in, but also looking at that native language and seeing how that's progressing and how we might be able to use that to continue that trajectory.

And what we are finding is we haven't done a very good job of following our English language learners who are referred to special education services. That we need to do a better job of looking at those that stayed within the general education model and those that received special education services, but also looking at what service delivery models were implemented and what was the language of instruction.

That, to me, seems like a future direction to really know what are we doing, what works best for what child and for how long to better inform our practitioners. So a lot of work still needs to be done in that area.

Delia: You know, you work in this field everyday and probably have lots of ideas about what the next steps might be. You talked about some future work. What about for the rest of us that don't work in the field everyday. What are some future steps in this field?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Some future steps surely include designing even better assessment tools to make sure that we've covered every aspect of language and literacy and learning that we possibly can. What also needs to be done is to look at the accommodations that we give our English language learners to see, well, how effective are those really, and especially the accommodations that we give not only for instruction but for assessment.

What we also need to look at and what we have been looking at is we know that our English language learners can respond to effective interventions. There have been studies that clearly demonstrate that our English language learners can make progress with interventions.

And looking at them, whether those interventions we've looked at in their native language and in their second language. But if we have good programs and good intervention models, the students respond. What we need more of and need to figure out how to do even more effectively is academic language skills - higher level critical thinking, having the language and the vocabulary and content area literacy.

Understanding and helping our teachers who teach in the content area such as science and social studies and math that there is language and literacy opportunities in every one of those subjects, and that we can help our English language learners develop an academic language, an academic vocabulary, and that we are all instructors of language and literacy.

Delia: You know, in light of the difficulties in assessing these kids and in light of the challenges that you just described in teaching these children, it seems to me that it's gonna be very easy to overlook their needs, their ELL and their LD. And it seems sometimes like a huge challenge so it's easier to overlook them.

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Uh huh.

Delia: Why is it so important that we not overlook them in our schools?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: What I tell folks is we know that our future is gonna depend on our English language learners when we look at what the demographics of the United States are looking like. It'll be very common for most teachers to be exposed to English language learners.

We wanna make sure that all our students are successful because they are our future. They are the future of, you know, the doctors and the lawyers and the ambulance drivers. They are our future teachers. And so we need to make sure that we have provided them with the best education so that they will achieve their academic goals and then turn around and contribute back to their communities and make a difference in their communities.

They are our future and the success of our United States.

Delia: That's a lofty goal and a good one. Any final thoughts on how we carry it out or what else we have to do to make sure we get there?

Dr. Cárdenas-Hagan: Well, again, I think it's very important to follow these children carefully, to look at the language of instruction, to make sure that when we're making decisions those decisions are based upon the data that you collected, the data-good, sound data to say, "This is how this student should be instructed. This is the language of instruction", and not switching the plan in the middle, maybe doing some adaptations to that plan.

But what happens to our English language learners, again, is that they are switched from one language to the next and there's not consistency across those languages. And making sure that we are providing them with the opportunities for learning, you know, not only the social language skills but those academic language skills, and learning those higher level comprehensive skills, higher level vocabulary.

That's where our future will be, in looking at comprehension, vocabulary, academic language.

Delia: Dr. Hagan, thank you so much for talking with us today and for giving us all that good information, and for the passion you seem to have for your work. It's a model for all of us, I believe. And thank you for watching. For more information about teaching English language learners to read and how to reach out to their families, please visit our website, colorincolorado.org

On the main page for this webcast you'll find recommended readings, discussion questions and more. I'm Delia Pompa. Thank you for joining us.

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English Language Learners with Learning Disabilities

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Bilingual speech-language pathologist Elsa Cárdenas-Hagan discusses effective assessment and instruction strategies for English language learners with learning disabilities, as well as ways to help encourage the active involvement of parents of ELLs with LD in their children's schools.

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Colorín Colorado is a national multimedia project that offers a wealth of bilingual, research-based information, activities, and advice for educators and families of English language learners (ELLs). Colorín Colorado is an educational service of WETA, the flagship public broadcasting station in the nation's capital, and receives major funding from the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association.

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Good differentiation is one of the hardest bars to meet as a classroom teacher. Students have a wide range of skills and abilities, and they also come preloaded with different experiences, dispositions, and prior knowledge, making a one-size-fits-all pedagogical approach a pipe dream.

That's why anytime you're teaching a lesson, you should consider deploying scaffolds-"support that is tailored to students' needs," as defined by a 2015 study -to ensure that every student can keep pace. The benefits are hard to ignore: Advanced learners, who may easily grasp the material, will have more durable memories, while struggling students will receive the support they need to make learning more achievable.

Here are six essential scaffolding activities, all drawn from research, that can be used alongside your lessons to help all students succeed.

1. First, Clarity

Before jumping into a lesson, review your materials for brevity and clarity. All too often, students are stuck, not because the lesson is too difficult but because the instructions aren't clear or handouts are haphazardly designed.

Audit your instructional materials year to year, with the aim of gradually simplifying and improving them. Another effective way to provide greater clarity is to use headings and annotations to direct student attention to key ideas. For example, the thoughtful use of underlining, highlighting, and arrows to call attention to crucial ideas can boost student retention by 36 percent, a 2020 study suggests. Don't overdo it, though. Consider what is absolutely necessary and useful, and avoid extraneous details and eye-catching adornments, which can occupy valuable attentional resources and reduce comprehension.

Pro tip: After a lesson, check in with students to see how well they understood the directions and objectives. You may think that your lessons are the perfect balance of being brilliant and easy to grasp, but not every student will see things clearly. Highly effective teachers often check in with their students, asking questions such as "Are my lessons and assignments clear?" to unearth pain points, bottlenecks, and other obstacles, a 2019 study found.

2. Build Background Knowledge

Tackling a new topic without sufficient background knowledge is like exploring a cave without a flashlight: Without a foundation of familiar terms lighting up the path ahead, students will struggle to grasp the lesson. That's because the brain always seeks connections to previously stored material, which ties ideas together and reinforces the conceptual scaffolding.

How important is background knowledge? According to a 2019 study of over 3,500 high school students learning about ecology, being unfamiliar with roughly 59 percent of terms in the topic resulted in "compromised" comprehension. If students didn't know key terms like habitat or biodiversity, they had a harder time following a lesson, falling behind their peers who were also new to the lesson but had a stronger vocabulary to draw from.

Before exploring a new topic-or after having students read an introductory text-have students identify words that confuse them, or draw up your own list of academic terms that all students should know beforehand, which you can share on a word wall or play vocabulary games with. During a lesson, pause for a moment and explore those terms, so that all students can keep pace and not be tripped up by gaps in background knowledge. To get students to begin connecting new material to already-learned material, you can read an introductory text and have them engage in small group K-W-L activities, or you can sequence lessons so that overarching connections are made explicit, helping to reactivate prior knowledge on a regular basis.

Provide multiple ways for students to learn the material by pairing a written or verbal lesson with pictures, diagrams, or video, or by asking them to physically act out concepts, write songs, or reenact historical events. Relying on multiple sensory pathways encodes learning material more effectively-leading to more durable memories.

The research is clear, and the effect sizes are considerable. In a 2015 study, for example, researchers discovered that handing illustrated diagrams to students who listened to a physics lecture boosted performance on a follow-up test by 70 percent, compared with their peers who listened to the lecture with no visual aids. And a 2020 study found that 8-year-old students learning a new language were 73 percent more likely to remember vocabulary words if they acted them out-spreading their arms and pretending to fly when learning how to say "airplane" in German, for example.

4. Use Graphic Organizers and Anchor Charts

Visual scaffolds can serve as a road map for students, helping them navigate unfamiliar conceptual terrain by providing a bird's-eye view of the lesson. Distilling a complex topic into a handful of key ideas not only promotes comprehension but also can greatly enhance long-term recall of the material.

When middle school students used graphic organizers while learning about the seasons, factual recall increased by 45 percent and comprehension by 64 percent, compared with their peers who weren't given the scaffolding aids, a 2021 study found. Novice learners are often overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information presented in a lesson, the researchers observed, and have difficulty telling the difference between key ideas and supporting details. Graphic organizers and anchor charts, however, can guide "students' selective attention" to what's important, giving them a leg up compared with their peers.

In the early stages of learning-as students are grappling with unfamiliar information-it's helpful to supply prompts, hints, or even partially completed anchor charts and graphic organizers to make learning more effective. Asking students to start from scratch can overload their working memory, but pre-filling core concepts in a graphic organizer can "scaffold and guide the learner's cognitive processing," resulting in a 155 percent boost to comprehension, according to the 2021 study referenced above.

5. Use Pre-lesson Activities

In a 2021 study, researchers concluded that giving students ungraded pre-lesson practice quizzes boosted follow-up tests of retention and transfer by 49 percent, compared with simply jumping into a lesson without any warm-up activities. Surprisingly, the researchers found that pre-testing also outperformed post-lesson practice quizzes as well, improving scores by 27 percent over the tried-and-true strategy.

While embedding practice tests during-and after-a lesson is an effective way to strengthen student memory for the material, pre-lesson quizzes provide a different benefit: They scaffold the to-be-learned material, helping students to organize their thoughts, sparking curiosity as they venture guesses, and encouraging them to "search for the correct answers" during the actual lesson, the researchers point out.

Periodically, you might start a new lesson by asking students to solve challenging questions-ones that are just beyond their ability to solve. Used strategically, in small doses and for high-value concepts, the approach helps students learn how to deal with frustration in a supportive, productive environment. While many will struggle, that's the point, says learning scientist Manu Kapur. "These problems should be just beyond students' reach-they're designed in ways that will activate prior knowledge and motivate students, clarifying what they know and what they don't know," Kapur told Edutopia in 2022. "If the challenge hits that sweet spot, that's where deep learning happens." Let students explore different avenues, and then step in, building off their ideas and solutions as you elucidate and clarify, he suggests.

When students encounter new material, it can feel like a flood, overloading their ability to process the information. While external scaffolds-outlines and anchor charts, for example-provide valuable support, it's also beneficial to encourage students to develop their own portable strategies for managing novel information.

Metacognitive questions provide students with a template for interrogating new material, putting them on the path to becoming independent learners. Students can ask questions like these:

What stands out to me about this new material? What makes me wonder?

Which parts or terms are unfamiliar to me, and which parts do I recognize?

How does this connect with what I already know?

What follow-up questions do I have?

Why is this idea important?

You can pair these metacognitive questions with new assignments, suggests Kimberly Tanner, a professor of biology at San Francisco State University, in a 2017 study. "The instructor's decision to make these kinds of questions part of an assignment-and part of the grading scheme for the assignment-can prompt students to bring a more metacognitive stance to their everyday coursework," she writes.

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6 Foundational Ways to Scaffold Student Learning

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A collection of evidence-backed tips to help students cross the bridge from confusion to clarity.

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Creating a Middle School Editing Community

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Editing communities link students together, bringing out the best in each other and their writing.

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Compared with reading digitally, reading in print may give students an edge when it comes to comprehension and understanding, according to linguist and reading expert Naomi Baron. After all, reading on our laptops or phones introduces layers of distraction-messaging apps, video players, advertisements, and comment sections, for example-and much of what we see online is designed to be read quickly, as opposed to absorbed deeply like a book. (If you find yourself fighting the urge to skip directly to the tips below, you're not alone.)

But that's not quite the whole story. Digital books can be powerful literacy tools as well, likewise backed by research, especially when they come with embedded tools that aid comprehension, like dictionaries and text-to-speech features, or when they use motion and sound to enhance the story in ways that increase engagement and deepen understanding.

Technology can also facilitate social learning activities like shared annotation; peer-to-peer discussion; and communal, video-based book reviews. Sometimes, of course, the best lessons feature both paper and digital formats, as students shift back and forth to play to the strengths of each medium. In short, when used correctly, tech can help create readers with strong comprehension and analysis skills.

We collected a handful of the best classroom strategies to boost literacy skills, differentiate your instruction, and promote a love of the printed word.

1. Use blended learning to drive motivation. To help her class digest and better enjoy the novels they read for class, high school English teacher Shelby Scoffield has students separate into small groups and choose a book together. In class, she uses a blended station rotation model where students rotate group activities, annotating text to identify main ideas, creating character profiles, developing plot timelines, and uploading their own video reviews using Flipgrid. Not all activities make use of technology, but they're a regular option: "Allowing my students to pick from a variety of task options creates student buy-in and valuable opportunities for academic growth," she writes.

Library specialist Flordeliza L. Cadiz Marks directs middle school students to the podcast Book Club for Kids with episodes centered around what other kids think of particular titles. Marks and other teachers also use video tools to create book trailers and add student book reviews to class social media pages, where parents can see them too. The goal is to create the right kind of peer pressure that comes when multiple students get excited by the same titles. "Listening to what other students are saying about a particular chapter book prompts them to borrow the book and read it as best they can," she says.

2. Try ear reading to prod reluctant readers. According to elementary school librarian Kimberly Rues, "a quality audiobook is one of the most effective tools in my librarian toolbox." Students who struggle with reading, or who don't enjoy it at first, can more easily follow along with the printed book while building both comprehension and reading fluency.

That practice, called ear reading, has proven benefits for students learning or struggling to read. Research has shown that listening to an audiobook offers similar comprehension as print reading-stimulating the same cognitive parts of the brain. A separate study showed that a group of students with dyslexia who listened to audiobooks showed improved reading accuracy, among other academic benefits, compared with peers who read print books.

Reading isn't just decoding symbols with our eyes, Rues writes. It also involves "visualizing, inferring, predicting, and connecting with the text in some way. When a child struggles to decode, the rest of the process erodes very quickly." Audiobooks bridge that gap, helping students to decode while they listen and to build reading skills they'll use the next time they pick up a printed book to read independently.

3. Level reading passages using artificial intelligence. Students in high schoolteacherKristen Starnes's social studies classes read at many different levels-and her class includes some students with specialized IEPs. But they're all responsible for learning the same concepts.

To make it easier for all students to keep pace, she swears by AI text levelers, such as Diffit and MagicSchool AI. In less than a minute, the tools can transform a challenging passage into language tailored to any grade level from two through 11 and attach handy vocabulary lists and multiple choice questions to gauge comprehension. "I see it very much as a way to free up time and energy that used to just be sucked up trying to find readings and sources," Starnes says.
Created with Diffit
These tools, and others like them, can also be used to translate materials from one language to another-ideal for multilingual learners, writes educator Tan Huynh, who often uses AI to generate mentor texts, a task that previously took him hours to fine-tune. "Fortunately with AI, that time is reduced to mere seconds," he explains. There is a downside: Passages run through AI are often shortened and truncated, as essential details are left out in favor of brevity.

4. Increase comprehension with (collaborative) annotation tools. One of the best ways to engage with text is by marking it up, reading specialist Mark Pennington tells MindShift. By interacting directly with the text, students are engaging in a kind of conversation, learning "to create an internal dialogue with the text." To set students up for the activity, model the behavior, reading passages while asking questions, rereading areas that cause confusion, and identifying important concepts, says English teacher Mackensi Crenshaw.

Middle school language arts teacher Frank Ward uses Chrome extension Scrible to annotate with his class. The tool saves files and webpages to a cloud-based library and allows students to annotate them either individually or collaboratively. Likewise, the free, open-source tool Hypothesis lets users mark up texts publicly, with edits viewable by anyone, or privately (e.g., just a class).
Created with Scrible
Before asking students to annotate a text, high school English teacher Lauren Gehr hands out guided analysis prompts-e.g., write two extended comments and pose one question. After students finish annotating on Google Docs, they might analyze a different class's responses to the same prompt "to find inspiration, discover similarities, or ask questions," writes Gehr. "At the end, students had a collection of annotations that showed several different processes of reading a text."

5. Help students deconstruct reading habits. When reading digitally, our eyes may not always move in the same ways, explains educator Jennifer Wood. Eye-tracking research on digital reading habits shows that we sometimes scan from left to right before scanning vertically for points of interest, making what's known as an " F-pattern." Websites with less text can draw eyes in a Z-pattern. Both approaches may indicate skimming, leaping ahead in the text, or taking in less information.

Wood suggests introducing these patterns to students and asking them to read a webpage to see where their eyes are drawn and "to discuss how the text on the page impacts what they notice." Write a word or concept on the board, and ask students to keep it in mind while they reread the text independently. Afterward, you can reflect as a class on what students have learned about their digital reading habits.

Eye movements aside, good digital literacy is just good literacy in general. Former educator Devin Hess tells MindShift that his students still need to break down complicated texts, identify key ideas, and formulate arguments regardless of whether they're reading in print or digital.

Many of his lessons are adaptations of standard reading comprehension lessons modified to take advantage of collaborative tools like Google Docs. He describes to MindShift a "Headings and Highlight" lesson where students read a text on their own and highlight unfamiliar concepts and vocabulary. Then they pair up to discuss key ideas. Later, students summarize a portion of the text into a four-word header on their own and compare it with their partner's effort.

One final tip: Not every student needs their own computer, explains an educator who has worked with Hess. Instead, ask pairs to share a computer when discussing a digital text to encourage more robust interaction and less isolated reading.

6. Scaffold reading with assistive learning tools. Some students may need a broader range of accessibility tools. Research into assistive technology, particularly text-to-speech tools, shows that these supports can improve the way students with disabilities feel about reading and school, along with their perceptions as independent learners.

Students of any level may also benefit from the use of visual timers, which count down how much time they have to complete a task and may particularly help those with executive functioning challenges. Teachers can place a physical clock or project one on a whiteboard. "Students may become anxious when a teacher says, 'You have 10 minutes left to work on this test,'" Sullivan says. By contrast, using a timer can "help students prepare for transitions and ease test anxiety, as they are able to see at a glance how much time is left."

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6 Tech Strategies to Create Stronger Readers

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Tools and strategies to motivate reluctant readers, facilitate deeper comprehension, and level the playing field among students of differing abilities.

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Creating a Middle School Editing Community

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Editing communities link students together, bringing out the best in each other and their writing.

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How to Provide Effective Scaffolding Instruction to Support Multilingual Learners

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How to provide Effective Scaffolding Instruction to Support Multilingual Learners. Question & answer from ML expert Diane Staehr Fenner, PhD.

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4 Ways to Plan for the Success of Newcomer ELLs

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To help newly arrived English language learners feel welcome, teachers can represent their cultures and languages in the classroom.

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Using Station Rotation in PD for Supporting English Language Learners

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Professional development built around learning stations can give teachers an idea of what school is like for these students.

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At Abraham Lincoln Middle School, in Selma, California, English language development teacher Efraín Tovar creates a vibrant classroom community for newcomers, immigrant students who have limited English proficiency. In Tovar's class, students come from a wide range of countries-Mexico, Yemen, India, Egypt, Guatemala, and beyond-and he uses this diversity not only to create a safe and welcoming space for learning, but also to further develop and personalize each student's English language learning curriculum. Tovar is an advocate for translanguaging, the practice of encouraging students to use all their linguistic resources to learn academic content and ultimately to be able to move fluently between two or more languages.

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Making Space for Native Languages in Newcomer Classrooms

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When English language learners are given consistent opportunities to practice their home languages in class, their English proficiency flourishes-along with their sense of belonging and identity.

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English Language Learners

Teachers can take steps to make sure that tests only measure students' content knowledge rather than their reading comprehension.

Two assessments used widely by educators are final exams and reports. When these assessment types are scaffolded so that they are accessible, they become equitable tools for evaluation of learning. However, when the appropriate scaffolds are missing, these assessments can become confusing reading comprehension tests and frustrating writing tests, particularly for multilingual learners. Through engineering assessments, teachers can design exams and reports to assess only content by incorporating various linguistic scaffolds.

Engineering Exams

Scaffolding an exam does not reduce the academic standards. It simply makes the instructions more comprehensible and helps students produce more accurate responses. For example, teachers can write synonyms behind academic words that might be unfamiliar to students to make the question more accessible.

A hypothetical engineered sentence could be "Identify (list) all the adaptations of the walrus (see image) to survive (live) in an aquatic (water) habitat." Adding a picture of a walrus below the exam question helps support comprehension. Providing synonyms for the words that might be unfamiliar also provides an important scaffold.

Adaptations and habitat do not need a synonym behind them because they were taught in the unit, so students had multiple opportunities to learn them. Without adding synonyms to the unfamiliar words, the question could be incomprehensible to multilingual students who fully understand the concept of adaptations and habitat.

When asking for a short response on an exam, teachers can provide a sentence starter or a sentence frame. The sentence starter simply supports students with starting their response, while the sentence frame prompts students to provide specific information at specific points in the sentence. Sentence starters and sentence frames help multilingual students produce more content-based responses without providing students with the answers.

For example, this sentence starter can prompt students to think of an appropriate answer: The most important symbol in this piece of art is... A sentence frame might sound like this: The artist, [name of the artist], chose to symbolize [a concept] with the [the object from the painting] because... Engineering an exam this way helps multilingual students communicate as mathematicians, architects, biologists, historians, etc.

Engineering Reports

Reports can also be engineered to be more equitable for multilingual learners without watering down the academic expectations.

If a report asks students to analyze a revolution, the instructions can be engineered to be comprehensible and to structure the output. The first step to engineering a report is to create a template that provides instructions and a place for students to write their ideas. In the template, teachers can clearly identify all of the required parts (e.g., introduction of revolution, power of the main leader, demands by the people, fight for power, effect).

After identifying all the required elements for the report, the teacher can sequence the parts logically, as the order of ideas makes students' communication clearer.

How did the leader make decisions?

What did the leader not allow citizens to do?

What systems did the leader use to control people?

What did the leader do when he faced criticism by others?

For example, students have to write an introduction first because it provides the date that the revolution started, the place it occurred, and the groups involved. Then, they end with a thesis statement that explains what governments can learn from this revolution. This introduction is required before writing about the systems and policies that the leader put in place to maintain complete control.

For each part of the report, teachers can write guiding questions and prompts to help multilingual students know what content they have to communicate. In the section about the power of the leader, for example, the guiding questions and prompt might appear like these:

These prompts help make communicating ideas about the leader's power more concrete and specific. With these prompts, multilingual students will more likely provide the appropriate details and stay focused on a specific topic instead of writing just to fit the word count.

Multilingual students who are developing their proficiency in English can first produce the answers in another language that they are more academically fluent in. They can then move these ideas into English once they have them established in another language.

To support multilingual students with developing English proficiency, teachers can also mirror the sentence starter and sentence frame strategy and apply it to engineering reports. Teachers can offer a template with sentence starters and frames to respond to each prompt. For example, they can engineer the report to have this sentence frame embedded in the instructions: The [#] ways that the leader maintained (kept) absolute (complete) power were to...

Creating Equity

Assessments do not need to be less rigorous for multilingual students. Actually, doing so would make learning inequitable. Being held to significantly lower standards would not develop grade-level skills or build content-based knowledge.

Instead, let's continue to keep the standards high but change the appearance and formatting of exams and the instructions in reports. Assessments should not privilege those who understand more English. Assessments should be engineered to preemptively support multilingual students in successfully engaging with them. When this happens, assessment becomes an equitable, more reliable tool for learning and evaluation.

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Making Assessments More Equitable for Multilingual Learners

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Teachers can take steps to make sure that tests only measure students' content knowledge rather than their reading comprehension.

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When English language arts teacher Cathleen Beachboard was trying to come up with new ways of encouraging her students at Fauquier High School in Warrenton, Virginia, to be solution-oriented, she noticed that while kids often get stuck on their own problems, they are quick to find solutions to other people's. Her husband jokingly said, "Wouldn't it be cool if you could just speed-date problems?" And the problem speed-dating activity was born. Beachboard has used this quick and simple strategy in her classes ever since.

"Today we were working on argumentative writing. But you could use this in any scenario, in any classroom, for any stuck point that the kids are having with any piece of content," she says.

In addition to hearing multiple ideas for solutions to their problems, kids get to know each other-and learn to see each other as experts in the room.

"Problem speed dating ultimately teaches them that as a society or as a person, you're not alone," Beachboard says. "And reaching out to others is important because that's where the magic happens. It happens when we use each other and we use the strength that every person has."

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Building Problem-Solving Skills Through 'Speed Dating'

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When students solve each other's problems, they gain confidence in their own skills and witness the power of collaboration in real time.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Consider this interaction between a teacher and his students, most of them English language learners, in a ninth-grade English language arts class:

Teacher: Who wrote The Pearl, Carmen?

Carmen: Steinbeck wrote The Pearl.

Teacher: Very good. And Rosa, who is the main character in this novella?

Rosa: I guess the main character is Kino, although his wife, Juana, is also important.

Teacher: That's right. And why do we say The Pearl is a novella? Jim?

Now contrast it with the interaction other ninth-graders had in their English language arts/English language development class:

Teacher: As we begin to explore this short story, "The Necklace," written by a French author from the 19th century, Guy de Maupassant, I am inviting you to read the first four paragraphs with your partner using types of "Question-Answer Relationships."* We have practiced this process several times, so unless we require some explanation-[students signal they do not]-then, please get started. As you engage in reading and discussing, I would like you to focus on the character Mathilde and think about what kind of person she is. We will then focus on the problem she faces.

Rodrigo (after reading the first paragraph of "The Necklace" aloud to his partner, Martha): OK, I am going to ask you a "think and search" question. Did Mathilde grow up in a rich family?

Martha: I am not sure. I think no, because the paragraph says she could not marry a "rich and distinguished man" and had to marry a little clerk. Is that an employee? [Rodrigo nods his assent.] I guess it is because she is not rich. But she was very pretty and charming, right?

So now I am going to read the second paragraph. [She proceeds to read aloud to Rodrigo, then pauses and thinks.] I am confused, so I guess I will ask you a think and search question. The text says "with women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth." Is the author saying that for women, money does not matter? Why did she marry a clerk then?

Rodrigo: Yeah, I agree. I don't fully understand. You said she was pretty but not rich. Now the second paragraph says that's in place of family and birth, so does that mean richness? Does it not matter if women are pretty? Does it matter or doesn't it matter? [Both students decide to raise these questions later during the whole-class discussion. Then Rodrigo proceeds to read the third paragraph to Martha.]

We have all observed classes resembling the first example, where the teacher already knows the answers to the questions being asked, as do most students. The exchange is just an exercise in reiterating the known using complete sentences. In contrast, students in the second example must actively consider the possibilities related to the text, by asking and responding to questions that reveal their understanding.

How do we ensure that all English language learners have opportunities to productively use oral language in academic settings? And how do we ensure that teachers leverage the power of classroom interactions to simultaneously foster language development, content knowledge, and analytical practices? In this article, we offer answers to these questions-and clarify common misconceptions-by presenting guidelines supported by both research and classroom practice.

A Framework for Oral Language

If English language learners (ELLs) are going to productively engage in classroom discourse and express their thinking related to content learning goals, teachers must create a trusting classroom culture in which students feel that whatever level of language they can produce, their contributions will be valued by their teacher and peers and will never be subject to ridicule, sanctions, or negative comparisons. ² Establishing classroom norms such as close listening to understand the ideas ELLs are conveying and showing respect to each other during their interactions (learning, of course, from the models their teachers provide) is essential for successful oral language use. Students need to know that interrupting their peers as they are formulating ideas and finishing their sentences for them are not desirable classroom norms.

As teachers plan to engage students in oral interactions, the framework shown in Figure 1 below can help guide their support for their students' work and language development. The framework comprises six interconnected levels.
(click image for larger view)
First, teachers need to ensure that students clearly understand the purpose of the interaction they are being asked to undertake. For example, are they supposed to read a text and elaborate their thinking, highlighting what they understand and what they don't? Are they engaged in describing a scene to somebody who has not seen it? Are they being asked to make a prediction after observing phenomena they will later investigate?

Second, teachers need to make sure students have ideas upon which they will elaborate. For example, have they noticed the most important aspects of the scene (the background, main character(s) presented, what they are doing, other relevant details) on which they will center their description?

Third, teachers need to help students organize their thoughts and ensure their language follows specific patterns. For example, descriptions of a scene from a text cannot begin with sentences such as, "He kicks it, it breaks." Students need to first indicate the setting of the scene, then introduce the characters, describe them, and explain what they are doing. This sequence is essential to help participants engaged in a conversation paint pictures in their minds. Organization is marked by phrases that can be provided to students as formulaic expressions (which we discuss later in this article) to use: ³ "The picture we have shows a..." "We can see a..." "Our scene takes place in a..." "Based on my observation..." "The two historical contexts are..."

Fourth, teachers need to consider the types of sentences students produce and judiciously highlight how they may be combined and expanded to produce more complex language. Increasing complexity can be accomplished with the use of connectors and conjunctions, such as "besides," "furthermore," "additionally," "however," etc.

Fifth, teachers must pay attention to the words students use. Is one word repeated several times in an interaction? If so, teachers can take the opportunity to introduce a synonym. Do students incorrectly or imprecisely use a term? Teachers can take a moment to clarify usage and meaning.

Finally, when students are ready to present their work to others, teachers can focus on the pronunciation of carefully selected elements-only those that interrupt understanding.
Traditionally, many educators have been taught to focus on correcting student utterances by zeroing in on form and not on meaning. As a result, our framework may initially feel counterintuitive, but the more educators rely on it, the more it will assist them in supporting students' language growth.

Productive Talk

As a general pattern, we educators often talk too much, no doubt influenced by our "apprenticeship of observation" that began when we were students ourselves. ⁴ However, given the centrality of talk in learning, this pattern needs to change. By some estimates, ELLs spend less than 2 percent of their school day in oral interaction. ⁵ Teachers must find ways to provide students learning opportunities that engage them in productive talk and then listen carefully to the language they use in order to support their continued growth.

By productive talk, we mean speech that has the following characteristics:

Has depth: the specific idea being discussed is central to the theme of the lesson, is presented in interconnected ways, and engages students' analytical thinking.

Is sustained: one student's statement is followed by another student's response, which extends, refutes, or questions what was first said.

Is student controlled: students control what they say, not the teacher. But teachers set up parameters for the interactions, sometimes framing questions that start the conversation. These questions are intended to communicate new related ideas, propose counter ideas or examples, and in general enhance the theme at work.⁶

Now consider these characteristics in an English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) class, which comprises students with varied levels of English competence. ⁷ "Language" is the theme of the students' exploration, and this was the third class on the topic. Table 1 below shows the deliberate moves of the teacher, Mr. DeFazio, during the lesson and the students' interactions. The text in the table indicates the multiple instances of productive talk that he promotes with his directions and actions.
(click image for larger view)
Let us look more closely at a specific interaction that occurred in the lesson after a student, Lavinia, reads the beginning of a letter she wrote about animal communication, and another student, Julio, reacts to one of her statements that animals do not have language.

Julio: Animal communication is not a language? It is a language-that's what I think-because they are communicating with each other.

Lavinia: But they don't speak.

Class: [Many students agree with Julio, saying "Yes, they do," or nodding.]

Julio: You said a language can have words, sounds, gestures, and everything.

Class: [Many students are in agreement with Julio's ideas once again.]

Lavinia: But they don't have words. They don't say "mama."

Julio: They don't need to. They have other characteristics. In animal language, some of the characteristics that you said are present-sound, pitch, gestures-so it is a language.

Mr. DeFazio: Julio is arguing very strongly that animal communication is language. Lavinia is saying that it's not. What do you think would be a way to help them resolve that argument in their writing?

Class: [The discussion continues and a resolution emerges. Then Julio reads a section of his letter.]

Mr. DeFazio: A lot is going to depend on how you define language, OK? You can define it in such a way as to exclude what animals do; you can define it in a very broad way, as a system of communication that includes everything. You are going to find linguists and zoologists who disagree, and if you are interested, I can give you some readings that were in the journal Science last year, people arguing back and forth.

Julio (reading his letter): First of all, I think that language is a way to inform others around you, your feelings, or just a simple thing that you want to let people know what is the deal. And it can be expressed by saying it, looking at a picture, or hearing it, you know what I'm saying? I don't know if you have heard about the kangaroo rat that stamps its feet to communicate with other rats. It's really funny 'cause we humans have more characteristics to communicate to each other, but we still have problems to understand other people. Characteristics like sound, grammar, pictures, and body language are some of them, while the rat only uses the foot. [Julio stamps the ground.]

Mr. DeFazio: Excellent! [The class applauds.] I never even heard about the kangaroo rat. Nice job, nice job. [Mr. DeFazio shakes Julio's hand.]

Applying the framework illustrated in Figure 1 to this interaction, we notice that students are clearly aware that the purpose of this exercise is to compare diverse positions on communication and to debate whether animals have language or not, providing evidence for their positions. They have ideas, and they choose which ones to debate based on a diversity of opinions. Mr. DeFazio's opportunity to correct student work, suggest changes, ask for elaboration, and so forth comes in the letters he is asking his students to construct. This written product is intimately tied to oral production. Oral activity feeds into writing, and writing produces oral activity.

In terms of productive talk, in Mr. DeFazio's class, students' analytic thinking is engaged, their interaction is sustained, and they control what they say. Mr. DeFazio has chosen a theme for the lesson that appeals to the students, and he has deliberately planned their active engagement throughout. As a result, the interaction engages students in deep thinking as they compare views on language.

Now that we have seen the characteristics of quality interactions for ELLs in practice, in the next section, we provide guidelines for promoting quality interactions during content lessons.

Six Guidelines for Promoting Quality Interactions

1. Design lessons that involve ELLs' participation in subject-specific and substantive oral practice to accomplish clearly defined lesson goals: Planning a lesson always begins with establishing the destination: Where do teachers need to lead students? Teachers should ask: Are my goals closely related to content standards? What is the knowledge that will be constructed? Which analytic practice will be promoted? What is the language (beyond isolated words or sentences) that will need to be developed? Unless teachers themselves are clear about the goals of a lesson, they will not be able to plan the tasks and activities that support students' language and conceptual development.

2. Construct tasks that appropriately scaffold student participation and growth: Tasks need to be deliberately constructed to engage students in working beyond their current competence. Such tasks should promote worthwhile interactions for students to acquire new conceptual understandings and analytical skills and language. They should also have appropriate scaffolds, which entail teachers closely observing students to ascertain whether the support is working, whether it is still needed, or whether it needs to be modified or replaced.

3. Make sure the task is designed to meet its purposes and the materials used are appropriate to support students working at the edge of their competence successfully: Learning is most effective when tasks are designed to match students' current competencies and also challenge them to move forward, with support.

4. Make sure that activities or tasks follow and precede others logically to build coherent lessons: Leading students to increasingly more complex demands is essential if teachers want their lessons to flow smoothly and to incrementally build ELLs' understanding.

5. Integrate reading and writing into oral development activities: Oral interaction while reading texts not only allows ELLs to understand the text more deeply but also helps them develop awareness of what they understand as they read and what they can do to solve problems in reading.

6. Be selective in addressing errors and intentional in providing feedback: When ELLs use English to develop their understanding of content and their use of analytical practices, often their language will be neither accurate nor fully formed, although the intent of their communication will be apparent. Imagine, for a moment, the impact on ELLs' motivation and self-esteem if teacher responses to inaccuracies constituted a constant flow of error correction. Instead, consider formative feedback to students as invitations to understand how they are progressing in language development and to provide a resource for how they can advance. When feedback is given to students about language while they are learning discipline-specific content, the feedback should focus on language so that students can make sense of the academic content, rather than on correcting errors of language production. As such, feedback can increase the students' awareness and help them troubleshoot their own performance and eventually correct their own language.⁸

There is no hard and fast rule about how much feedback students should receive or how often it should be provided; this is a decision teachers will need to make for themselves, given their knowledge of their students, their language and content goals, and the students' current language use. However, because of the powerful impact that feedback can have on learning, ⁹ we advise teachers to make providing feedback a regular and routine part of their classroom practice.

Common Misconceptions

Designing and facilitating meaningful classroom talk is essential for ELLs-indeed for all students-to develop more extended and sophisticated language use while simultaneously learning subject matter. Yet in too many U.S. classrooms, we find ELLs sitting silently, watching their teachers do all the work, and waiting for opportunities to fully engage cognitively and linguistically.

By way of concluding thoughts, we outline five pitfalls to avoid in thinking about language learning, and we provide suggestions for how teachers can engage students in sustained, high-quality classroom talk.

Misconception 1: Sentence frames that provide students with a way of expressing their ideas about specific situations are helpful to them.

A sentence frame is basically a fill-in-the-blank type of activity that invites only one correct answer. Sometimes it can be open and provide starters for students (also called sentence starters for this reason) to be filled in any way. However, these starters may not provide students with phrases they can use time and time again in academic situations. ¹⁰ For example: "The main character in The Pearl is a modest and loving man, furthermore..." "His wife, Juana, loves Kino and Coyotito, their baby, and because of that..."

In addition to using sentence frames, we suggest teachers use formulaic expressions, which are phrases that help start or link ideas and can be used in many situations. Initially, students learn them as unanalyzed chunks, almost as if they were one word. Later on, as students learn more English, they begin to realize the formulaic expressions are formed by several words. Formulaic expressions are extremely useful in students' development of English and in making their interaction with peers possible and more effective. Examples of formulaic expressions are: "I agree with you, and I can add that..." "May I suggest a couple of other ideas? One example I can offer..."

Misconception 2: Correct mistakes students make as they talk or they will "fossilize."

Historically, correctness has been regarded as paramount in second language learners' use of English. More recently, however, researchers' attention has shifted to the larger components of communication, as discussed before: purpose, ideas, organization, types of sentences, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Fossilization, a concept popular in the 1980s, refers to the inability of second language learners to learn the correct forms of language if they continually misuse them. Our perspective, consistent with that of multiple applied linguists, is that language keeps evolving as a result of continuous practice. It may fossilize if it is no longer used productively or receptively. However, in their schooling, students will be invited to engage in uses of language continuously, and thus, they will have ample opportunities to correct themselves or be corrected by others.

Misconception 3: Rather than correcting students' ungrammatical oral language, it is better to provide them with recasts, which model correct English in response to students' mistakes.

It is common for teachers to believe that rather than correcting a student's mistakes-and putting him or her on the spot-it is better to repeat what a student has said, this time changing the student's utterance into grammatical English. They think that recasting saves a student's face and that it is a less authoritarian approach.

Research, however, shows that these implicit corrections may not be productive. ¹¹ Students do not take teachers' recasts as corrections, but rather as reiterations of the idea and as acceptance of students' comments as being right. When the time is appropriate to focus on selected language forms to study and correct, the correction and expansion activity needs to be made explicit.

Misconception 4: Sustained, focused interactions are possible starting in fourth or fifth grade, but lower elementary students are not mature enough to carry them out because they get too impatient with the task and with each other.

Recently, during an open house at an elementary school in Portland, Oregon, one of us (Aída) had the opportunity to visit three classes. The first one was a kindergarten class. The teacher, Mr. Andanen, was preparing students to read and discuss Julius, the Baby of the World, a book by Kevin Henkes, an author the students were already familiar with because they had enjoyed reading three of his other books in class.

To introduce the book, Mr. Andanen set up nine stations around the room and invited students to walk through them. At each station, a picture illustrating a scene from the book was prominently displayed. Students were asked to rotate around the stations every three minutes. At each station, students needed to stop, look at the picture, and explain what they noticed. The teacher had asked students to use a "talking stick" so that the turns to speak were democratically divided within the group at each station. Peers had to listen attentively to the speaker and agree with, disagree with, or expand on what the student said. Formulaic expressions such as "In this picture, I notice..." and "I noticed that, too, and I want to add..." were familiar to the group. At one station, Aída heard the following exchange:

Student 1: I notice a woman holding a big baby. Her mouth is open. I think she is crying.

Student 2: I also noticed she had her mouth open, but I don't think she is crying. I think she is singing.

Student 3: I also noticed the woman with the big baby, and I want to add that he is very heavy. Perhaps that is why she is screaming.

The exchange shows that Mr. Andanen has created an environment that enables young children to notice and use language in purposeful ways. Although the students were only in kindergarten, they clearly articulated their ideas and listened to others. They showed they will soon be ready to start exploring the book more deeply so that they can eventually write an opinion piece based on evidence from the text about which Henkes book was their favorite.

Misconception 5: All students in a class need to master the same levels of oral development as a result of participating in lessons.

Because not all students in a class will be at the same starting point, a robust activity provides multiple entry points for all students to engage as they learn. The important idea is that they should all be gaining-not that all of them will arrive at the same point, in exactly the same way, developing at exactly the same level. This would only be possible if what is learned is limited, and if the learning demands recall. This is not necessarily what we want in education. Rather, we want to produce individuals who are thoughtful, engaged, and conscious of their own development.

English language learners bring valuable assets and immense potential to school. The role of educators is to realize that potential in deep and accelerated ways. Each classroom teacher must ensure the path to that development is paved with meaningful interactions to help students develop language skills, gain conceptual understanding, and learn academic content. Our students deserve no less.
Aída Walqui is the director of the teacher professional development program at WestEd. Previously, she taught in the Division of Education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Margaret Heritage is a senior advisor at WestEd and was previously an assistant director at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing at the University of California, Los Angeles.
*Taffy Raphael's Question-Answer Relationships framework ¹ is intended to call students' attention to the kinds of questions that may be asked about a text. In this class, students work in pairs, announcing first the type of question he or she will ask to increase the other student's awareness of the types of meaningful connections the question seeks. ( back to the article)

Endnotes

1. Taffy E. Raphael, "Teaching Question Answer Relationships, Revisited," The Reading Teacher 39 (1986): 516-522.

2. Alison L. Bailey and Margaret Heritage, Progressing Students' Language Day by Day (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2018).

3. See Rod Ellis, Instructed Second Language Acquisition: A Literature Review (Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education, 2005).

4. Dan C. Lortie, Schoolteacher: A Sociological Study (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975).

5. Diane August, referenced in Ivannia Soto-Hinman, "Increasing Academic Oral Language Development: Using English Language Learner Shadowing in Classrooms," Multicultural Education 18, no. 2 (Winter 2011): 21-23.

6. Aída Walqui and Leo van Lier, Scaffolding the Academic Success of Adolescent English Language Learners: A Pedagogy of Promise (San Francisco: WestEd, 2010).

7. Anthony DeFazio and Aída Walqui, Where Do You Want to Go Next? (San Francisco: WestEd, 2001), DVD.

8. David J. Nicol and Debra Macfarlane‐Dick, "Formative Assessment and Self‐Regulated Learning: A Model and Seven Principles of Good Feedback Practice," Studies in Higher Education 31 (2006): 199-218.

9. See, for example, John Hattie and Helen Timperley, "The Power of Feedback," Review of Educational Research 77 (2007): 81-112.

10. For more on sentence frames, see Ellis, Instructed Second Language Acquisition.

11. Ahlem Ammar and Nina Spada, "One Size Fits All? Recasts, Prompts, and L2 Learning," Studies in Second Language Acquisition 28 (2006): 543-574; Ellis, Instructed Second Language Acquisition; and Roy Lyster, "Differential Effects of Prompts and Recasts in Form-Focused Instruction," Studies in Second Language Acquisition 26 (2004): 399-432.

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Consider this interaction between a teacher and his students, most of them English language learners, in a ninth-grade English language arts class: Teacher: Who wrote The Pearl, Carmen? Carmen: Steinbeck wrote The Pearl. Teacher: Very good. And Rosa, who is the main character in this novella?

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#11. Teaching MLs to Deconstruct Writing - ELL Strategies | TanKHuynh

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ELL writing deconstruction with mentor texts. Why collaborative construction and metacognitive reflection are better than a “Write by Number” approach.

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English Language Learners

In higher grades, multilingual students need to develop a grasp of academic English. Here's how to help them acquire the skills they need.

Min Woo walks into his favorite class, math, sits down next to his partner, and reaches into his backpack for the folder with the papers for their current project. They are learning to think like city planners by using angles and lines to plan out the roads and buildings for a new city. Mr. Nguyen, the seventh-grade math teacher, greets each student by name at the door. When the bell rings, he gestures to the board where the next step for the project is posted.

To get the class started with the next step in their city planning project, he tells them to read the prompt with their partners, making sure to restate the directions in their own words or ask each other questions about the prompt. Min Woo reads aloud, " Draw at least two parallel streets and two transversal streets to form acute and obtuse angles." Puzzled, he asks his partner, "What does transversal mean?" His partner points up to the poster on the wall with labeled angles and lines. They study the poster and then start talking about how they want to draw the parallel and transversal lines for their city streets. When Mr. Nguyen calls the class back from their discussion, Min Woo and his partner are ready for the next step.

Mr. Nguyen knows that several of the students in his math class are still classified as English learners, even though they have been in the school district for many years. Because he wants all students to experience success in his math classes, he thoughtfully provides content instruction with scaffolds for academic language development.

Labeled visuals

Time for partner discussions

Step-by-step instructions for solving problems

Chunking the final performance assessment project into shorter daily tasks

In the lesson described in the previous paragraph, Mr. Nguyen used the following scaffolds:

None of these scaffolds "water down" the grade-level expectations of the lesson but rather provide the necessary support so that experienced multilinguals can meet these high expectations. In fact, providing the right scaffolds at the right time exemplifies equitable learning. In the hands of a skillful teacher, scaffolds stretch students' skills, proficiency, and confidence.

Since most of the experienced multilinguals in his class no longer receive any direct, specialized English instruction, Mr. Nguyen knows he not only has to teach the math curriculum but also the academic English skills required to process and communicate the math-specific ideas.

If teachers provide appropriate scaffolds, experienced multilinguals like Min Woo are capable of learning new content in English in grade-level content classes. As experienced multilinguals reach higher levels of English proficiency, their English development needs become less obvious, but the academic language demands continue to increase.

For many learners, these increasingly challenging academic language demands make them feel like they have finally reached an apparent summit on the mountain only to discover another higher peak ahead. Scaffolds give them support to reach the highest peak, even as the trail gets more difficult.

Some experienced multilingual students like Min Woo have greater proficiency in spoken English than in reading and writing in English. Therefore, when they answer questions and participate in class discussions, teachers may assume they will also be successful on the written exam. However, when these students do not perform as expected, some teachers may be tempted to label them as "lazy," "unmotivated," or "unfocused." We offer a different way of thinking about these responses and provide a framework that will address the academic language needs of these students in every content class.

We introduce the concept of academic language and advocate for teaching this type of language meaningfully within the context of the content classroom. Experienced multilinguals need high grade-level expectations coupled with high support to engage in content classes. In addition to teaching complex content and the academic language of each discipline, we suggest that experienced multilinguals benefit from explicit instruction in effective learning strategies. These strategies help students learn, transfer skills to other content areas, and become more independent learners. We share several of these learning strategies, which are anything a student does to boost their understanding of new content and use of academic language. Finally, we provide an overview of our framework for designing equitable content instruction that supports and stretches experienced multilinguals as they develop academic language proficiency across the curriculum. This framework serves as the outline for the rest of the book.

Academic language is more than just vocabulary words. It includes complex sentence structures, transition phrases, and organizational patterns used for different purposes like writing lab reports, arguing a claim, or analyzing a poem. Each of these purposes requires students to use academic language differently (WIDA, 2020). When students learn the language to justify their choices of lines and angles in math class, they can transfer that language to justify choices in science or language arts class. Teaching this cross-disciplinary academic language helps students succeed in the long-term.

Honigsfeld (2019) explains that academic language is "not something students have or do not have; it is something all students use daily to learn" (p. 49). While experienced multilinguals have generally acquired the ability to communicate clearly in most social situations, they are still developing the ability to use academic English. Developing this "academic language proficiency helps students achieve long-term success at school" (Dutro & Moran, 2002, p. 231).

Experienced multilinguals may also have different linguistic abilities in different fields and content areas (Walqui & van Lier, 2010). One experienced multilingual student may find the most success in a math class, while others triumph in social studies, sciences, or the arts.

The various dimensions of academic language are often described through an architectural metaphor (Dutro & Moran, 2002; Zwiers, 2008). The first dimension-vocabulary words and phrases-is like the bricks that form the foundation of the structure or text. Next, the sentence structures are like the mortar that connects the bricks to form the walls of that building or academic work. In the next dimension, the organizational features such as transition phrases and paragraphing conventions are like the roof, windows, doors, and interior design. As economics teacher David Carney says, "If students don't write with academic phrases and organization, their essays read like a pile of bricks; there is no cohesion" (D. Carney, personal communication, February 2022).
From Long-Term Success for Experienced Multilinguals (pp. 36-42) by Tan K. Huynh and Beth Skelton, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Copyright © 2023. All rights reserved. (Readers in the U.S. and Canada can save 20 percent when buying the book by using that link and the code SAVE20.)
Finally, the context for the written or spoken project is like the neighborhood or community, in which the structure is located. Students need explicit instruction in each dimension of discipline-specific language in order to succeed on classroom assignments and assessments.The bricks in Min Woo's math lesson are the words and phrases used to describe the angles and lines. The walls of this lesson are formed with the sentences that explain the relationships between the lines and angles. Finally, the entire house structure will be completed when he organizes his presentation. The purpose of the presentation will be to explain the location of each line. He will have to justify the layout of his street map to the audience. The context or audience for this project is the presentation to the town council. As apprentice city planners in the math class, Min Woo and his classmates will develop mathematical reasoning as well as the mathematical-specific language needed to share their developing understanding.

When Mr. Nguyen asks students to justify their choices for placing the lines and angles on the city map, the sentence structures and organization they use must justify their decisions, not just describe the lines and angles. As math teacher and author Molina (2012) writes, "the phrase 'the problem with math is English' applies to all students, not just those whose native language is not English" (p. 1). Therefore, all students in the class will benefit from explicit instruction in using math-specific academic language to be successful engaging with this project.

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Scaffolding for Experienced English Language Learners

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In higher grades, multilingual students need to develop a grasp of academic English. Here's how to help them acquire the skills they need.

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Trauma-Informed Practices (TIP) have been a topic of interest and need for the past several years. Researchers have defined TIP as a set of practices that address the impact of trauma by creating a safe and caring environment. Trauma-informed practices focus on creating a safe school culture, building relationships, and supporting students' self-efficacy. Despite the plethora of research on trauma-informed practices, sometimes research-based practices are disconnected from the daily needs of educators in the field.

Below is a list of common Trauma-Informed practices that educators can implement across all educational settings. This list has been reviewed by a group of educators representing education support professionals, teachers, and specialized instructional support personnel.

Support students from the bus stop to the classroom (and beyond!)
Using trauma-informed practices across all educational spaces can help educators collaborate to support student mental and physical health.Supporting students across settings helps to foster a positive school climate where students feel safe and confident. Be intentional in supporting families and community members in understanding and using trauma-informed practices for long-term student success.

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No matter where you work in our school communities, you can use these practices to create safe and supportive learning environments for all students.

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How to Get Students Talking About Their Learning

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These simple strategies can help motivate middle and high school students to have engaging and productive classroom discussions.

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Math Lesson Planning -Think Aloud - Word Problems

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Culturally Responsive Teaching

A fun and meaningful activity can help early elementary students appreciate the different languages in their backgrounds.

Language diversity has never been more real in classrooms around the world. With globalization comes increased mobility, and the language of instruction may not be the one our students choose when they think; speak to their parents, grandparents, and friends; watch TV; read; and listen to music. Acknowledging our students' language backgrounds and experiences can be powerful: Not only does it contribute to fostering a sense of belonging, but also it supports learners in building their self-identity and celebrating each other's differences. The question is: How can we do it in a meaningful and engaging way?

Language portraits support language-diverse classrooms
Courtesy of Bianca Starck
I've found that students can use language as a way to create a portrait of themselves. In my class, I have students make language portraits. Language portraits can come in different shapes and sizes, such as posters, collages, questionnaires, journals, and even poetry. The more creativity involved, the more likely students are to be engaged and share their narratives!

The language(s) I think in

The language(s) I use with my family and friends

The language(s) I am learning now

The language(s) I have picked up along the way

The language(s) I would love to learn

Their format is flexible and can be adapted to different contexts, school essential agreements, grade levels, and students' needs, to name a few. Through them, students are encouraged to inquire into how, when, and why they use certain languages. The language portraits all depend on the prompts, which can even be cocreated with students. They might include the following:

With my grade one students this year, the prompts included "Songs I sing," "Books I read," "The language I use with my family and friends," "Languages I know," "Movies I watch," and "My family photo." The students' colorful drawings and writings were a delight to look at, but, most important, their reflections resulted in many insights to support their learning and their sense of belonging.

1. To set the scene, we read Victor D. O. Santos's story, Little Polyglot Adventures: Dylan's Birthday Present as a group.

2. I modeled the making of my own language portrait while explaining how my language of preference varies according to what I'm doing and to whom I'm speaking.

3. In small groups, I sat together with my students to brainstorm and discuss the languages they're exposed to and use.

4. Ready, set, go: Students developed their language portraits.

5. My students proudly presented their productions by explaining each section of their language portraits. This was an essential part of the process; without it, a language portrait might be just one more task to be completed and forgotten forever.

6. Language portraits were displayed on the outside board as a celebration of their reflection and learning.

Language Portraits Have a 6-Step Process

Receiving a task to complete without any context or purpose is uninspiring, to say the least. Therefore, I planned a six-step process for the learning experience in my grade one class.

The process above worked very well for my context and age group and is not a fixed recipe or formula for success. I encourage teachers to think of their students when setting the mood and supporting students to reflect on their language backgrounds.

Language Portraits Help Guide Instruction

Through these presentations, I found out that my Indonesian student communicates in Indonesian with his Indonesian mother and French with his Madagascan father. Another student speaks Mandarin to their grandparents and is learning Korean by watching Korean dramas. English is the main language of instruction at school, but there could be other languages in my students' backgrounds.

Knowing this information guides me when choosing books for our reading corner, tales to read, and facts that will speak to them. It also helps me to connect with my students: One smiled from ear to ear one morning when I surprised him with a "Bonjour." Now, when we sing "Happy Birthday," we do so in all the languages represented in our class. Chaotic? Yes. Inclusive? Always!

Apart from the helpful data for planning, goal setting, and developing learning experiences that reflect my students' realities, language portraits have been equally valuable for my students. Most of them had never really thought about how the languages they speak make them multilingual or wondered where their communication preferences come from. Creating a language portrait is a powerful, reflective exercise of self-identity.

Language Portraits Have Lasting Benefits

My school saves students' language portraits in their digital portfolios, enabling teachers, families, and students to easily refer to them in the future and make comparisons. In the past, I placed them in students' pass-on files and physical portfolios, which they carried to other grades. The examples I've shared reflect my experience with grade one, but language portraits can be developed across a continuum, from early grades to high school, with different levels of support and guidance according to grade-level needs.

Language portraits have developed my first-grade students' understanding of their own language experiences and raised their awareness and appreciation of differences. My students support each other to communicate and are curious about how to say words in other languages. Those who are developing their fluency in English understand that they aren't alone and that most in our class come from diverse backgrounds.

Acknowledging and celebrating diversity fosters communication skills, confidence, and well-being. Above all, it helps students to be proud of themselves and their languages and to feel seen and valued-all of which are so important when building a culturally responsive learning community and preparing students for a multicultural world.

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Celebrating Linguistic Diversity in Your Classroom

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A fun and meaningful activity can help young learners embrace their own identities and develop an appreciation for their classmates' identities.

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Welcome to the Unbounded ELA Guide series! These guides are designed to explain what the new, high standards for ELA say about what students should learn in each grade, what they mean for curriculum and instruction, and how we can implement teaching practices that support them. This guide, which focuses on fluency in Grades 6-12, demonstrates how fluency practice can be integrated into ELA and instruction across content areas. It includes four parts. The first part defines reading fluency and why it is important for overall reading proficiency. The second part provides insight into how fluency can be fostered within thoughtfully structured ELA instruction. The third part provides proven and practical activities, framed by the expectations of the standards, that can be integrated into the ELA block. And the fourth part provides guidance on how many of these activities can be used to support fluency beyond the ELA Block.

Why do we focus on fluency? Nearly two-thirds of U.S. students in grades 4, 8 and 12 cannot read proficiently. This isn't a new problem, either: Only a small increase in the percentage of proficient readers has occurred in the last 25 years. http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#reading http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#reading http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_2015/#reading The stakes have never been higher, though, as it's increasingly difficult to meet the demands of college coursework and a range of careers without sophisticated reading and writing skills. The specificity and rigor of the new standards provide us with an opportunity to turn this tide, though-improving reading proficiency and life prospects for all students.

What is fluency?

It's likely that you have worked with students who stumble over words, sound them out very slowly, or read them too quickly in a robotic, monotone voice. These are examples of disfluent reading, and often indicate that these students are struggling with one or more of the characteristics of fluency. Fluency refers to how smoothly an individual reads and is defined by three characteristics:

1. Accurate decoding and word recognition.

2. Reading at a conversational pace.

3. Reading with appropriate prosody, or expression.

Why is Fluency Important?

Fluency is a critical link between decoding and comprehension. Although fluent reading doesn't guarantee comprehension, we know that disfluent reading hinders comprehension, especially with complex texts. Disfluent readers, instead of being able to make meaning as they read, spend a disproportionate amount of cognitive capacity sounding out words or wrestling with sentence structure, leaving little time and energy to actually comprehend what they're reading.

The good news is that fluency is an element of reading that can be improved relatively quickly with some attention and practice.

The good news is that fluency is an element of reading that can be improved relatively quickly with some attention and practice. We can work on building fluency during existing lessons, with few additional resources. The heaviest lift lies in planning to make time for a routine in which fluency instruction and practice is intentional and frequent.

Before we explore how to build fluency, let's consider elements of fluency in a bit more detail. As fluent readers ourselves, we have developed automatic and accurate recognition of a great many words, and the ability to quickly sound out (or attack) those that we don't automatically recognize. This automaticity allows us to maintain a conversational pace as we read. As fluent readers, we also understand intrinsically how to use intonation, pauses, stops, phrasing and inflection so our reading sounds as though we are speaking naturally to a friend. Our foundation of vocabulary and background knowledge provides support to help us make meaning of the text. These components that we rarely think about when reading are the foundations on which students' reading fluency rests. To grow and improve students' reading fluency, our goals must include:

Reading fluency can change with text content, genre or complexity, so we must continue to provide fluency practice for our students-beyond the elementary grades.

Reading fluency can change with text content, genre or complexity, so we must continue to provide fluency practice for our students-beyond the elementary grades. We can achieve the goals above by integrating activities and teaching practices that target fluency into the context of the work we do within complex, grade-level texts. For struggling readers, it may feel counterintuitive to use grade-level texts, but this is the most effective approach to building fluency for students at all levels. Using grade-level (versus reading-level) texts will require us to move more slowly, but the support that accompanies fluency work-rereading, modeling and feedback-will help all students access the rigor of these grade-level texts. We will approach our fluency work through modeled readings, shared readings and repeated readings, which will allow us to support students' productive struggle with the text. This shared struggle is designed to culminate in shared comprehension and success. Using complex, grade-level texts allows us to maximize gains within the short time we share with our students each day.

Let's begin by looking at fluency expectations. Then we'll look at some activities we can use to support fluency using complex, grade-level texts. We'll provide examples of where these activities can be included in lessons conducted with a variety of open educational resources (OER). Appendix A includes steps for how to conduct each activity or practice.

Standards Expectations

We don't find any standards for Grades 6-12 that explicitly address fluency, as the expectation is that students arrive to these grades having already developed it. However, as previously mentioned, fluency can change with text content, genre or complexity. So it's important that we continue to provide models of what fluent reading sounds like and practices that allow our students to improve their own fluency. It is also important to recognize that the standards that we do address in these grades are inextricably intertwined with fluency. In order to read the range, quality and complexity of texts demanded by the standards, our students will need to develop insight into knowledge of language (ELA.RA.L.3) and structure of texts, (ELA.RA.R.5) which will also assist their understanding of the expression with which the texts are to be read. They'll have to develop background knowledge to fully understand the ideas expressed through text. With this background knowledge comes vocabulary (ELA.RA.L.4) - the development of which contributes to our students' ability to automatically and accurately recognize words, another key element of fluency. Finally, exposure to the range of genres exemplified by the standards (ELA.RA.R.10) will foster in our students greater understanding of how each has its own appropriate pace and cadence of reading. While we address the standards, we provide conditions for improving fluency. By explicitly targeting fluency in our instruction, we support students' comprehension of the texts they read.

Strategic word attack to build fluency

Before we look at strategies that practice incorporating all of the elements of fluency, let's first take a look at how we can strengthen our students' word attack skills. Remember, fluency requires automatic word recognition, and the ability to quickly "attack," or figure out, words that are not immediately recognized.

We can teach our students to analyze syllables and word parts by explicitly teaching them the six syllable types (see "The Glorious Whitewasher" example below) and providing them with practice blending and segmenting known syllables to form and read words, phrases and sentences created from those syllables. We need to teach our students to look for meaningful chunks in unknown words. Understanding how to break words into syllables will aid them in pronunciation of words that they do not recognize.

Our students who struggle in reading often have trouble with multisyllabic words. For struggling students, these word attack skills are critical if we want them to make progress. For some students, this may require systematic, intentional intervention beyond the ELA classroom. During ELA, however, our struggling readers can benefit from instruction and practice in recognizing the spelling patterns that comprise syllables and morphemes (meaningful word parts, like prefixes and suffixes), improvement of which can improve the automaticity with which words are decoded and recognized.

Analyzing Syllables

Syllable instruction and practice as part of a routine, will allow us to strengthen students' ability to quickly figure out unknown words. The grade-level text you are currently using in class can be used as a resource to reinforce how to divide words into syllables, analyze them and blend them again to read them. This blending and segmenting practice with known words will support students' ability to apply the analysis to unknown words.

When to use syllabic analysis:

Explicitly teach students the six syllable types and rules for segmenting words based on the syllable, providing additional practice opportunities for struggling readers as often as possible.

Texts to use:

Understanding the meaningful parts of words (morphemes) helps both strong and struggling readers to determine or infer word meanings. When they learn about prefixes and suffixes, they begin to understand that there are word parts that have common meaning across words. Knowledge of these word parts will support both decoding and comprehension and, with enough practice, recognition of words. Targeting these word parts can be quite efficient: The seven most common prefixes account for 70 percent of prefixed words in printed English texts for Grades 3 through 9:

The meanings of suffixes are often less concrete, but are more frequently used in students' oral language, so learning to recognize them, with instruction and practice, can also be a powerful step toward fluency (and for proficient students, support additional vocabulary acquisition). Again, when we teach a small number of these suffixes, we build students' ability to apply meaning to many words. The five most frequent suffixes account for 75 percent of suffixed words in printed English texts for Grades 3 through 9:

When we provide students skills that help them to recognize, decode and understand the most common syllable patterns and affixes, we provide them with word-attack skills that will help them to read words comprised of those parts. By strategically focusing our work on the affixes that appear most often, we can maximize results in the limited time that we have with students.

When to use morphological analysis:

Explicitly teach students common root, base and compound words, along with common prefixes and suffixes during ELA class, providing additional practice opportunities for struggling readers as often as possible.

Subsequently, choose words from the text that will enhance the meaning of what students are reading.

Multiple exposures to these target words will support memory and retrieval, expanding the student's repertoire of recognized words.

Texts to use:

Choose g rade-level texts and passages from grade-level texts that you are using in your classroom instruction.

CCSS Exemplar Text: From Tom Sawyer, "The Glorious Whitewasher"

Launching To Kill a Mockingbird: Establishing Reading Routines (Chapter 1)

Rereading passages and repeated reading of previously read grade-level texts will help students to recognize words and spellings. The more repetitions, the more recognition. Rereading is also an excellent strategy for helping students to comprehend increasingly complex grade-level texts, particularly when we pair rereading with discussion and scaffolding.

Sharing the text to support fluency

As ELA teachers, most of us would agree that great and rich texts deserve to be read more than once: Every time we go back to our favorite work, we have the opportunity to get something new from it. Several strategies for increasing fluency involve rereading:

Masterful Reading (Modeling)

When we read aloud-masterfully-to students, we can both model pronunciation and emphasize appropriate expression and pace. We can use read-alouds to draw our students' attention to changes in the way a text is read. Some of our students may not really know how elements in the the text cue fluency. This is one of the reasons why a masterful read-aloud to explicitly model (and discuss) what fluent reading sounds like is helpful. As we read, we can also draw our students' attention to and discuss the relationship between text structures, word choice, syntax and meaning. This allows us to foster in our students a habit of paying attention to language and not just the individual words in the text. This modeling will help our students imagine what their own reading is supposed to sound like. It is important that we give our students multiple opportunities to reread the passages that we model.

When to use masterful read-alouds:

Texts to use:

Developing Core Proficiencies English Language Arts / Literacy Unit"The wolf you feed"

© 2015 Odell Education

To facilitate meaningful discussion, we need to assess which parts of the text will challenge our students. These are the clauses, phrases and vocabulary that we must highlight, model and discuss.

Text-Based Discussions

Much of our work in Grades 6-12 will involve text-based discussions. We'll use these discussions to dissect complex texts with our students, to ensure understanding of both the text and the meaning. To facilitate meaningful discussion, we need to assess which parts of the text will challenge our students. These are the clauses, phrases and vocabulary that we must highlight, model and discuss. For instance, by making sure that our discussion includes talking about text features that cue changes in expression and pace, we help our students build fluency and understanding at the same time. Don't forget conversations about vocabulary-identifying morphological origins of words will support students' word recognition and understanding. Point out how words are grouped to form meaningful phrases that change the pace and expression with which they are read.

For our struggling readers, select words from the text to practice syllable and affix word attack skills. We can help our students to better understand by having them practice parsing and chunking complex (juicy) sentences into their meaningful parts. Make sure these sentences and passages are read more than once, to strengthen both meaning-making and development of fluency. Having students shift their intonation and expression each time they read the sentence or passage can help them to understand how expression, called prosody, can change the interpretation of the sentence or passage. With practice, a reader with good prosody can use his or her skill to experiment or problem solve in order to find the intonation and expression that applies the correct meaning to an otherwise confusing phrase.

When to use text-based discussions:

Texts to use:

To learn more about facilitating discussions and sentence deconstruction, see What Does Text Complexity Mean For English Learners And Language Minority Students? by Lily Wong Fillmore & Charles J. Fillmore.

United States. Preamble to the United States Constitution.

U.S. Constitution, pmbl.

Oral Reading

One of the easiest ways we can provide our students with practice and assess their progress in fluency is to listen to them read orally and to make sure that they have opportunities to listen to good examples of fluent oral reading. The oral reading activities described below provide models of what fluent reading sounds like, engaging all students in the task, and protecting weak readers from the embarrassment that comes from round-robin and popcorn reading. The activities below can be used individually, or in combination with one another to provide students with multiple opportunities to orally reread the same text.

Choral Reading

Model pronunciation, pace and expression while reading a passage to the class or group, then read the same passage in unison, with the students. Choral reading provides students with a model of fluent reading and a gradual release from group reading to independent reading of the passage. Repeat the choral reading over several days to increase students' fluent reading. As the week progresses, gradually release responsibility to transfer reading to our class.

When to use choral reading:

Use this activity to introduce an introductory excerpt from the first text about a new topic (for topically related text sets) or to introduce new genres.

Use this activity to introduce and practice pace and expression for poetry.

Assign choral reading passages as homework (repeated oral reading) after choral reading takes place.

Texts to use:

Choose p assages from texts used for instruction 2-3 minutes long (approximately 150-300 words), including:

Complex texts at or slightly above grade-level for shared/supported reading.

New or previously read texts or passages.

Reader's Theater

For reader's theater, students rehearse reading of a text containing parts for multiple readers in preparation for oral presentation. Be sure that presentations are expressive oral readings and not memorizations of the text. It can be tempting to have students memorize scripts and poems, but for the purposes of fluency practice, it is the reading that is important.

When to use Reader's Theater:

Texts to use:

Choose g rade-level texts that provide an authentic purpose for presentation such as poems, plays, personal letters, speeches and narrative texts that include dialogue.

A Choral and Dramatic Reading of Macbeth

© 2014 Public Consulting Group

Repeated Oral Reading

Repeated reading of previously read grade-level texts helps students recognize words and spellings. The repetition from rereading provides great practice and new learning. It is also an excellent strategy for helping students to comprehend increasingly complex grade-level texts. Repeated reading provides our students with increasing familiarity with the text-its words and its literary and syntactical features.

When to use repeated oral reading:

Texts to use:

Choose c omplex grade-level texts for shared / supported reading.

Use selections from texts are being used for instruction, or use the topic related texts.

Partner Reading

Partner reading is a strategy that allows your students to provide support to one another. Pair students to practice reading orally to one another, alternating sentences, paragraphs or pages. Provide guidance for students regarding how and when to correct one another. In doing so, more proficient readers will model for their peers important elements of fluent reading including pace, expression and self-correction. In turn, the more proficient readers will gain reading exposure that continues to strengthen and grow their own fluency. We can also conduct a "whisper" partner reading, where students read to one another in pairs or small groups at a whisper level. Whisper reading will create a less distracting background if small group work is being conducted at the same time as partner reading. In either case, circulate through the groups or partnerships, to assess students' fluency.

When to conduct partner reading:

Allow students to read to one another during small group work with other student or while rotating to monitor progress.

Texts to use:

Choose g rade-level texts that are the focus of instruction.

"St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves" by Karen Russell

© 2014 Public Consulting Group

Sets of Texts on Related Topics

Reading sets of texts on a related topic across subsequent days supports fluency by reinforcing vocabulary and content. Two or more authors writing about the same topic will use many of the same words, and this repeated exposure builds vocabulary and content knowledge, which supports the development of fluency and comprehension.

It is important for us to make the distinction between topically related and theme-based texts. Although themes, like struggle, friendship and heroism, can connect texts, these texts won't likely include much overlap in vocabulary. The theme itself may have some vocabulary associated with it (e.g., hero, villain, courage), but the texts likely will be about different situations or characters representing the theme. Topics, or domains of knowledge, on the other hand, bring with them the vocabulary of the topic (e.g., the topic plants has a common vocabulary of root, leaf, stem, photosynthesis, nutrient, etc).

Occasionally reading aloud from sets of related texts will support our students' development of language, vocabulary and content. This repetition supports word recognition for shared and independent reading. These text sets provide benefits similar to repeated reading-increased exposure to and repetition of a set of common words, but also offer the benefit of allowing our students to read a different text rather than rereading the same text.

When to use related texts:

Texts to use:

Intervention and support for struggling readers must include opportunities to read and must not come at the expense of interaction with grade-level texts or knowledge- and vocabulary-building content.

A Note about Struggling Readers

Students who are reading behind grade level need many opportunities to engage in a volume of reading that includes a wide variety of genre and topics. Remember, it takes a repeated exposure to a large amount of text to acquire a deep inventory of words that are instantly recognized. This additional reading also deepens the reader's knowledge of the world, which increases comprehension. Unfortunately, struggling students-as a result of their poor reading-often lack the motivation to engage in the amount of reading that will, in turn, improve their reading. It is incumbent upon us, across all content areas, to find ways to support and encourage reading throughout the day. This additional reading (i.e., reading beyond the texts we are teaching) can be guided or not, it can include reading-level texts as well as those above the students' reading levels, and it can be fueled by interest to the reader. Intervention and support for struggling readers must include opportunities to read and must not come at the expense of interaction with grade-level texts or knowledge and vocabulary building content.

The standards call for an increasing balance of fiction and nonfiction, and not just in the ELA block, but other parts of the school day as well. Some of the nonfiction reading can take place in the social studies and science blocks. We can use reading of content area texts as opportunities to include additional lessons and activities build students' reading fluency. Many of the same activities and practices can be used to support fluency in the content areas, with minimal shifts and nuance.

Modeling Fluent Reading of Text

Use read-alouds of content area texts to emphasize expression and pace while reading aloud during social studies and science. Through read-alouds you can introduce new topics and model pronunciation of related content area vocabulary before students have to read these words on their own. This gives students a solid footing for their independent and scaffolded reading about the content.

Sets of Text on Related Topics

Use a variety of books, articles, digital sources, etc. about content area topics of study to provide exposure that reinforces common vocabulary and concepts through different texts. Reading across texts about the same topic will support development or word recognition along with content knowledge.

Text-based Discussions

Engage students in discussions about complex sentences, text structure and new vocabulary found in content area texts. Parse complex sentences into their component parts, having students describe the meaning in of each part in their own words. Be sure to bring closure to the conversation by allowing students to put the component parts back together, discussing meaning based on their new understanding of the component parts of the sentence.

Also have students reread complex sentences and passages as part of text-based discussions aimed at eliciting meaning from the text.

Repeated Oral Reading

Assign a passage from the text as homework to be read aloud nightly, at home-or provide such text, related to subject area content, to ELA teachers for their use.

Choral Reading

Use choral reading to introduce an introductory excerpt from the first text about a new topic (for topically related text sets). This passage can also be assigned as homework (repeated oral reading) after choral reading takes place.

Reader's Theater

Use reader's theater for content area texts, like speeches, plays and poetry, allowing rehearsal time in class or at home. Have all students prepare for presentation, even if time doesn't permit individual presentations. Different students can present each time this activity is used.

As we said at the outset of this guide, fluency is an element of reading proficiency that can be improved relatively quickly with little in the way of additional time and resources. A few last things before you embark on targeting reading fluency:

Frequency is important-embed fluency activities into lessons within and beyond the ELA block as often as you can. With attention and practice, fluency can be improved for most readers.

Fluency changes with text complexity, context or genre-that is, students who read one text fluently may not read another type of text with the same level of fluency. Supporting fluency is an ongoing endeavor, rather than a goal that is achieved.

Intervention and support for struggling readers must include opportunities to read and must not come at the expense of interaction with grade-level texts or knowledge and vocabulary building content.

Providing topically related sets of texts

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Building Fluency: Unbound A Guide to 6-12 ELA/Literacy Practices

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These guides are designed to explain what new, high standards for english language say about what students should learn in each grade, and what they mean for curriculum and instruction

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TLAC team members Teneicesia White and Sadie McCleary recently returned from leading a workshop in Raleigh, NC, where the focus was on Checking for Understanding. While there they gathered some fantastic examples of Lesson Preparation from teachers who joined them! Sadie was so inspired she shared this analysis:
This example of Lesson Preparation from Paige, a 6 th/7 th grade math teacher is a great example of the kind of Lesson Preparation work teachers were sharing.

The lesson plan is reflected on the printed page. It involves a sequence of problems and questions. But the lesson preparation consists of the things Paige has hand-written on her plan. It shows what she's thinking about as she gets ready to teach. Fortunately, she's used two colors so we can see some of the steps she takes more clearly.

She's written out her Exemplar in blue pen and pencil. She has Planned for Error with her back pocket questions in green. When Paige implements this lesson, she'll be able to circulate thoughtfully, checking student responses against her exemplars and quickly recognize where to give them feedback. But she's likely to do a very good job of this because she's thought through the mistakes she's likely to see and the questions she might ask in response: "Does 119 1/7 make sense? Why or why not?" and "What is total? Is [the] answer [going to be] greater than what we are starting with?"

In the upper left-hand corner she's written: "EW 3 mins → CC". It means she'll use "Everybody Writes for 3 minutes and then Cold Call... she's thought through not only what questions to ask but how students will answer-her Means of Participation.

And then there's Post-It. She said she was planning to create a different Post-It for each class period, which would allow her to track data efficiently but without cluttering up her Lesson Prep document.

With thoughtful and practical preparation like that, Paige is likely to crush it.

Here's another example! This teacher, MJ, a 9 th grade Biology teacher, decided to create a data tracker that will allow her to quickly and efficiently use tallies as she circulates to identify ideas she needs to review with students.

Note her 'laps' - these indicate when she will 'lap' around the room and what she will be looking for. In lap 1, she's going to remain laser-focused on looking for the 3 components of cell theory, even if a student has moved onto the next part of the task. We think this is supportive in a few ways:

1. It will free her working memory to look just at one piece of every student's work so she's not having to think through multiple exemplar responses at once.

2. She will quickly know if she needs to review cell theory with the entire class or if they have a solid grasp and can move onto the similarities and differences in prokaryotes and eukaryotes.

3. MJ won't get 'stuck' at a student's desk giving feedback. She might say, 'The second component of the cell theory you wrote is incorrect; check your notes," and then move onto the next student.

We think laps are helpful because you can also use them to announce to students what you'll be looking for as you circulate. "In my first lap around the room, I'm looking that you have the 3 components of cell theory. If I put a check, you're correct, and if I circle one of them, I want you to check it against your notes."

Importantly, both Paige's and MJ's Lesson Preparation documents were created over the course of a combined 25 minutes of practice time during our workshop.
More on the Distinction between Lesson Planning and Lesson Preparation.

Lesson Plans, what teachers are often most familiar with, detail content will be taught within a carefully constructed sequence of activities. The sequence is usually aligned to an instructional framework and designed to occur within a defined block of time. Here's an snapshot of a lesson plan from a unit on Number the Stars in our Reading Reconsidered curriculum:

Lesson Preparation, the focus of this post, consists of answering a series of questions about you will teach the content outlined within a lesson plan to ensure all students experience mastery. We think this is where the magic happens. We think there are 3 foundational steps to Lesson Prep:

Plan the Exemplar: Draft the ideal response, including vocab and key ideas, you'd expect your students to produce for core tasks and questions.

Plan for Error (& Challenge): Anticipate and plan responses to gaps or errors that may appear in student responses. Plan questioning for Right is Right and Stretch It.

Plan Means of Participation: Script how you want students to engage with tasks or questions within a lesson. Be sure to plan the entire sequence.

Want to learn more?

Blog Post: Examples of Lesson Preparation and Adaptation from Teachers at Believe Memphis Academy

Blog Post: Lesson Preparation: How Christine Torres Prepares to Teach

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We Loved These Examples of Lesson Preparation from Our Recent Workshop - Teach Like a Champion

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TLAC team members Teneicesia White and Sadie McCleary recently returned from leading a workshop in Raleigh, NC, where the focus was on Checking for Understanding. While there they gathered some fantastic examples of Lesson Preparation from teachers who joined them! Sadie was so inspired she shared this analysis: This example of Lesson Preparation from Paige, a...

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The following resources can support schools' partnerships with the multilingual families of English language learners (ELLs), with a special focus on newcomer families and resources for educators who are new to working with ELLs.

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The following resources can support schools' partnerships with the multilingual families of English language learners (ELLs), with a special focus on newcomer families and resources for educators who are new to working with ELLs.

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This article provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and offers classroom-based examples from different grade and subject levels.

This article written for Colorín Colorado provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and includes:

what a language objective is

steps that teachers can take to create language objectives

how to implement language objectives in a general education classroom

how to align objectives to content and language standards

ideas and resources on how to support teachers as they become familiar with this practice

how to use language objectives in distance learning environments.

Language Objectives: An Overview
Mrs. Shell has been teaching eighth grade math for twelve years. She has deep content area knowledge and wants to provide all of her students with authentic activities and tasks to relate the significance of the mathematical concepts that she teaches to their lives. Mrs. Shell has always felt successful at teaching her classes but this year has been different. Her sections include students with more diverse backgrounds than previous years, particularly more English learners. As Mrs. Shell was beginning to feel frustrated with her inability to reach all her students because of their needs, she learned about one way to make her content more comprehensible to all her students - creating and posting objectives that tell the students not just what content concepts they will learn in each lesson, but also the academic language they will need to learn and use to meet the state's math standards. With this knowledge, Mrs. Shell is now confident that she not only knows what to teach, but also how to teach it so that all her students can be successful.

Generally speaking, academic English is the language of schooling and the language that helps students acquire and use the content area knowledge taught in schools (Anstrom, DiCerbo, Butler, Katz, Millet, & Rivera, 2010).

Teaching content to ELs: The challenge

In my work supporting general education and ESL/bilingual teachers who provide sheltered instruction for English learners (ELs), I have met many teachers like Mrs. Shell. While these teachers want to provide effective instruction for their ELs, often they don't see themselves as language teachers and so they aren't sure where to begin with their students.

These teachers aren't alone, however, and they are facing a challenge shared by teachers across the country. We know that for school-age students, academic language is crucial for school success (Francis, Rivera, Lesaux, Kieffer, & Rivera, 2006). In addition, research allows us to state with a fair degree of confidence that English learners best acquire English when language forms are explicitly taught and when they have many opportunities to use the language in meaningful contexts (Goldenberg, 2008).

Yet while the explicit instructional support that ESL and bilingual teachers provide is essential to English learners' academic language development, English learners receive a majority of their instruction from general education and content area teachers who may not have experience teaching academic language development.

The question becomes then: What do general education classroom teachers need to do in order to support the academic English development of language learners in both face-to-face and virtual environments, especially when English learners are one of many types of students they serve?

Teaching content to ELs: The solution

One principle that teachers of English learners can begin to apply immediately is creating and posting language objectives for their lessons (whether in the classroom or online in a virtual space. Many teachers are familiar with using content objectives to identify what students will learn and be able to do in the lesson. However, they are less likely to include language objectives that support the linguistic development of their students.

Implementing language objectives can be a powerful first step in ensuring that English learners have equal access to the curriculum even though they may not be fully proficient in the language. This is because the second language acquisition process requires opportunities for the language learner to be exposed to, practice with, and then be assessed on their language skills (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

To this end, language objectives:

articulate for learners the academic language functions and skills that they need to master to fully participate in the lesson and meet the grade-level content standards (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

are beneficial not only for language learners but for all students in a class, as everyone can benefit from the clarity that comes with a teacher outlining the requisite academic language to be learned and mastered in each lesson.

Now let's take a closer look at some examples and how to write language objectives.

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Writing Language Objectives

Interview with Dr. Jennifer Himmel

Learn more about language objectives in this podcast interview with Dr. Himmel from Teaching Multilingual Learners, produced by Tan Huynh.

What is a language objective?

Language objectives are lesson objectives that specifically outline the type of language that students will need to learn and use in order to accomplish the goals of the lesson. Quality language objectives complement the content knowledge and skills identified in content area standards and address the aspects of academic language that will be developed or reinforced during the teaching of grade-level content concepts (Echevarria & Short, 2010).

These objectives involve the four language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing), but they can also include:

Below are examples of language objectives for different content areas and grade levels. They come from the Common Core State Standards for Math and English Language Arts (2012) and state standards in New York and California.
Sources:
How do I create effective language objectives?

Dr. Cindy Lundgren discusses the process of writing language objectives in this excerpt from her Meet the Expert interview.

Language objectives are directly correlated to content objectives. Once a teacher determines the lesson topic from the appropriate content standards, the teacher will want to begin thinking about the academic language necessary for English learners to complete the tasks that support the content objectives. This identification of the academic language embedded in the lesson's content will become the basis for the lesson's language objectives.

You can use the following guidelines to start thinking about appropriate language objectives for the lesson:

1. Decide what key vocabulary, concept words, and other academic words students will need to know in order to talk, read, and write about the topic of the lesson. Those words might be taught as a language objective. They should include technical terms, such as ecosystem, and terms like distribution that have different meanings across content areas. Other terms to highlight are those that language learners may know in one context, such as family (as in parents, siblings, etc.), but that have a different use in science (e.g., family of elements in the periodic table).

2. Consider the language functions related to the topic of the lesson (e.g, will the students describe, explain, compare, or chart information). See your state English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards for examples of these functions for English language arts, math, science, and social studies for all English proficiency levels and grade-level clusters.

3. Think about the language skills necessary for students to accomplish the lesson's activities. Will the students be reading a textbook passage to identify the stages of mitosis? Are they able to read a text passage to find specific information? Will they be reporting what they observe during a scientific demonstration to a peer? Do they know how to report observations orally? Acquiring the skills needed to carry out these tasks might be the focus of a language objective.

4. Identify grammar or language structures common to the content area. For example, many science textbooks use the passive voice to describe processes. Additionally, students may have to use comparative language to analyze two related concepts. Writing with the passive voice or using comparative phrases might be a language objective.

5. Consider the tasks that the students will complete and the language that will be embedded in those assignments. If students are working on a scientific investigation together, will they need to explain the steps of the procedure to one another? The language objective might focus on how to explain procedures aloud.

6. Explore language learning strategies that lend themselves to the topic of the lesson. For example, if students are starting a new chapter in the textbook, the strategy of previewing the text might be an appropriate language objective.

(Adapted from Short, Himmel, Gutierrez, & Hudec, 2012. Used with permission.)

Aligning Language Objectives and Standards

English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards

Developing appropriate language objectives for lessons involves becoming familiar with a state's content area and ELP standards. Whereas the content standards will provide the topic of the lesson and what exactly the students should be doing with that topic (e.g., solving problems, creating models, ranking ideas), the English language proficiency or development standards help to identify language skills and functions that students should be working on to achieve academic language fluency. These ELP standards can help to identify:

English Language Arts (ELA) standards

Other resources in addition to the ELP standards are a state's English Language Arts standards or the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History, Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (CCSS). The English Language Arts and Literacy CCSS might be especially useful to teachers of English learners due to its attention to literacy across the content areas.

Additional resources to consult, especially if a state is a member of the WIDA consortium, are the Model Proficiency Indicators (MPIs) outlined in their ELP standards. The MPIs outline what an English learner at a specific level of English language proficiency can do in a language domain (e.g., listening) by addressing the language functions embedded in an example topic for that content area with appropriate scaffolds or support (Gottlieb, Cranley, & Cammileri, 2007). Classroom texts and other materials (e.g., science investigations, primary source documents) are other good sources to consult when preparing a lesson.

Getting Started

How can I get started?

Careful lesson planning

In creating measureable and student-friendly language objectives that support the content objectives, it is important that learner tasks in the lesson are aligned with the objectives. It is not enough to have well-written objectives that promote language acquisition if the lesson is lacking in tasks that support the objectives. If the language objective for a middle school social studies lesson is for the students to orally retell the key characteristics in a historical event using sequential language, it is important that the teacher previews sequential language with the students, such as providing sentence stems or frames, and builds into the lesson some structured pair work so the students have an opportunity to retell the event to a peer. Therefore, careful lesson planning is another essential step in preparing effective language objectives.

Collaboration

It is also useful for content area and ESL/bilingual teachers to plan lessons together, as we saw with the 7th grade science lesson scenario involving Mr. Zhang and Mr. Lewis. In this co-planning scenario, each teacher used his expertise to better integrate content and language instruction for the language learners. This type of collaboration can help a teacher like Mr. Zhang learn more about the second language acquisition process of his students and can help a teacher like Mr. Lewis become more familiar with the grade-level content expectations that his English learners encounter in content area classes.

How do I know which language objectives are best for my students?

The language objective that the teacher selects will depend on what the English learners in the class need most at that point in the year and what language is most important to understanding the content concepts. If the students have already spent a good deal of time working with new vocabulary, then the teacher might consider having students use that vocabulary to develop their writing skill by writing a summary of the process they followed.

Conversely, the teacher might want to help students become more proficient with a particular type of graphic organizer in order to develop more strategic language learning. As all teachers know, teaching is a dynamic and complex process that requires a multitude of decisions to be made. However, the advance planning required in creating language objectives allows teachers to better anticipate the academic English needs of all students thus increasing the comprehensibility of the lessons.

It is important for teachers to realize that even though their lesson may include all four language skills (it is good if they do, since the language skills reinforce one another), they do not need to post a language objective for every language-related item addressed in the lesson. Teachers address many instructional needs in a 50- or 60-minute class period. Rather than highlighting all language uses in a particular lesson, it is important for the teacher to think about what is non-negotiable in that lesson.

In other words, the teacher should keep the perspective of the English learner in mind and ask, "Of all of the skills and functions addressed in my lesson, which is most important for helping students meet the grade-level standard and develop their language proficiency?" These objectives then must be measureable (i.e., can you see or assess the student's mastery of that objective?) and written in language that accounts for the linguistic and cognitive development of the students.

How can I make language objectives "student-friendly"?

Both of the above objectives are measurable, but both also take into account appropriate developmental stages of the students. Teachers of young students (e.g., PK or K) may even want to consider further adapting the objectives. For example, we have seen kindergarten teachers use symbols such as a pencil to symbolize "write" and a mouth to symbolize "talk" when they post their objectives for the children to see. We have also seen teachers of young learners rely on pictures to show the key terms they want the students to use or to convey the topic of the lesson (e.g., a picture of a ruler and of hands to discuss standard and non-standard measurement).

One way that teachers can ensure that their language objectives are measureable and student-friendly is by using appropriate verbs. Because language objectives should provide students with practice in the four language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, verbs related to those skills might include, but are not limited to, the following:

List

Retell

Summarize in writing

Record

Read

It is also important to not equate low language proficiency with limited cognitive ability. Therefore, teachers will want to make sure that the language objectives they create also reflect tasks that fall on the higher end of Bloom's Taxonomy and use verbs (e.g., orally justify) accordingly.

As noted above in the guidelines to creating language objectives, language functions are also a potential source for language objectives. Verbs related to language functions might include:

When should I share language objectives with students?

To help students take ownership of their learning and provide explicit direction to students, especially the English learners who are processing content in a new language, it is important that objectives be stated at the beginning of the lesson and reviewed with the students at the end of the lesson to allow them to assess if they have met the objectives (Echevarria, Vogt & Short, 2008).

How this happens may differ according to the grade level and content area of the class. Some teachers like to have the students choral read the objectives, while teachers of older students sometimes have them record the language objectives in their journal in addition to asking an individual student to read them aloud. Some teachers, such as those who teach science, like to reveal the objectives later in the lesson, perhaps after the warm up or exploratory activity, so that they can maintain an inquiry-based approach (Echevarria & Colburn, 2006).

Should I differentiate language objectives based on my students' language proficiency?

Although all teachers have students of varying language proficiency and skill levels in their classes, it is not necessary to differentiate language objectives by creating and posting multiple language objectives that reflect these proficiency levels. Rather, teachers should have one language objective that is appropriate for all students to meet. To provide the appropriate differentiation, the teacher would provide different scaffolds (e.g., adapted text, visuals, sentence frames) for students to use in order to reach the objectives.

For example, an appropriate language objective for an upper elementary language arts class might be for the students to be able to orally list text features found in a non-fiction book. For lower proficiency language learners, the teacher may give them a word bank from which to choose the text features; therefore, the students are meeting the same objective but with the appropriate amount of linguistic support from the teacher.

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Using language objectives in a distance learning environment

While teachers like Ms. Shell understand that the characteristics of good teaching for English learners does not change in a virtual environment, they do understand that instruction will necessarily need to look different in order to account for the challenges that distance learning presents for many learners.

Accordingly, teachers will need to think through how to:

Presenting language objectives

Many different ways exist for teachers to present language objectives in remote learning. For example, teachers might:

begin every virtual class by orally reading and presenting the content and language objectives in their Google slides and then asking students to briefly summarize in the chat box the activities they will be doing in that lesson to meet those objectives.

post the objectives at the top of a shared digital document that serves as a capture sheet for the lesson. A teacher might then ask learners to self-assess their progress towards meeting those objectives at the end of the document.

use live or recorded videos, especially when working with English learners with lower English proficiency. These videos can include props, for example ears to signify a listening objective.

use realia, such as rocks, if one of the lesson's language aims is for students to orally describe different types of sedimentary rocks.

Monitoring student understanding and engagement

Teachers in distance learning environments must also carefully consider how they will assess learner understanding and engagement throughout the lesson. Given the challenges virtual learning platforms present towards capturing data on learner comprehension (e.g., paralinguistic cues such as facial expressions, gestures, posture) teachers working in virtual environments know that it is more important than ever to ensure that students clearly understand the content and linguistic aims for each lesson.

Using comprehension checks and assessing progress

It is also essential that students understand how teachers will measure their progress towards meeting each objective. Towards this aim, teachers must build in multiple comprehension checks throughout the lesson that align to the lesson's objectives. Teachers can:

At the conclusion of a lesson, teachers can assess student progress towards meeting objectives via:

tickets out that are submitted digitally

the recording of a Flipgrid or use of another video platform where learners respond to a prompt that requires learners to use the academic language highlighted in the lesson's objectives.

Teachers can respond to the submitted tickets out or video with feedback that explicitly targets the students use of the language. When appropriate, teacher can provide learners with additional resources and/or support towards mastering that particular language skill or function. Teachers might also use that linguistic data to inform mini-lessons conducted to small groups of English learners during office hours or intervention time.

Next Steps

How can I learn more?

For more information on the SIOP Model, see Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

Although language objectives can be implemented in any lesson design approach, they are especially congruent with sheltered instruction and the SIOP Model. Since language objectives ensure that teachers meet the unique linguistic needs of English learners, they are sometimes easier to implement in the context of instructional practices espoused by the SIOP Model.

Practices that focus on explicit academic language teaching include:

Below are other resources that can help you learn more about creating language objectives and about integrating academic language into content area classes.

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Final Thoughts

We realize that it takes teachers some time to become very comfortable with creating language objectives, but our experience has shown that the implementation of language objectives can bring immediate benefits to instruction. Some immediate benefits include teachers understanding more concretely that they are both a content area and language teacher - as one teacher said in a CAL SIOP Model workshop, "I now see myself as a math teacher AND a language teacher".

We have also observed that when teachers consciously plan to meet the academic English needs of their learners, they end up with better planned learner tasks, and students begin to have more ownership of their content area and language learning. When it comes to building proficiency in academic English, as many teachers in our workshops remind us, "If you want to see it, you have to teach it." Therefore, if teachers want to see language development, language objectives are a great first step in helping teachers explicitly teach it.

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Recommended Resources

Further reading

Short, D., Himmel, J., Gutierrez, S., & Hudec, J. (2012). Using the SIOP Model: Professional development for sheltered instruction. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M.E., & Short, D. (2010). The SIOP Model for teaching mathematics to English learners. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Echevarria, J., & Short, D. (2011). The SIOP Model: A professional development framework for a comprehensive school-wide intervention. Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) Brief. http://www.cal.org/create/resources/pubs/professional-development-framework.html

Himmel, J., Short, D., Richards, C., & Echevarria, J. (2009). Using the SIOP Model to improve middle school science instruction. Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) Brief. http://www.cal.org/create/resources/pubs/siopscience.html

Short, D., Vogt, M., & Echevarria, J. (2010a). The SIOP Model for teaching history-social studies to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Short, D., Vogt, M., & Echevarria, J. (2010b). The SIOP Model for teaching science to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Vogt, M.E., Echevarria, J., & Short, D. (2010). The SIOP Model for teaching English language arts to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Jennifer Himmel is the Project Director for the National Center for English Language Acquisition at the Manhattan Strategy Group. She previously served as the SIOP Manager at the Center for Applied Linguistics, a non-profit organization for language education research, policy, and practice in Washington, DC. She has served as a curriculum developer and research associate for the U.S. Department of Education funded project, Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) that is investigating academic achievement of ELLs in grades 4th-8th, and as a language testing specialist for the WIDA ACCESS for ELLs® language proficiency test. She currently manages the SIOP Model professional development service line and provides technical assistance and professional development in sheltered instruction to districts and schools.

Video Clips: Language Objectives

How to Write Language Objectives: Tips for ELL Educators

In this video from Syracuse, NY, Jesus Ortiz, a bilingual teacher, learns how to write a language objective from Areli Schermerhorn, a peer evaluator with expertise in ELL and bilingual education.

Dr. Cynthia Lundgren explains language objectives

In this excerpt from her Meet the Expert interview, Dr. Cynthia Lundgren explains the value of writing language objectives when teaching English learners.

Anstrom, K., DiCerbo, P., Butler, F., Katz, A., Millet, J., & Rivera, C. (2010). A review of the literature on academic English: Implications for K-12 English language learners. Arlington, VA: The George Washington University Center for Equity and Excellence. Education.www.ceee.gwu.edu.

Echevarria, J., & Colburn, A. (2006). Designing lessons: Inquiry approach to science using the SIOP Model. In A. Lathman & D. Crowther (Eds.), Science for English language learners (pp.95-108). Arlington, VA: National Science Teachers Association Press.

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2008). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP Model. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Echevarria, J., & Short, D. ( 2010). Programs and practices for effective sheltered content instruction. In California Department of Education (Ed), Improving education for English learners: Research-based approaches. Sacramento, CA: CDE Press.

Francis, D., Rivera, M., Lesaux, N., Kieffer, M., & Rivera, H. (2006). Practical guidelines for the education of English language learners: Research-based recommendations for instruction and academic interventions. Portsmouth, NH: RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction. www.centeroninstruction.org/files/ELL1-Interventions.pdf

Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English language learners: What the research does-and does not-say. American Educator, Summer 2008, pp. 13-44.

Gottlieb, M., Cranley, E., & Cammilleri, A. (2007). Understanding the WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards: A resource guide. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium.

Short, D., Himmel, J., Gutierrez, S., & Hudec, J. (2012). Using the SIOP Model: Professional development for sheltered instruction. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (2007). WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium http://www.wida.us/standards/elp.asp

You are welcome to print copies or republish materials for non-commercial use as long as credit is given to Colorín Colorado and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact [email protected] .

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Language Objectives: The Key to Effective Content Area Instruction for English Learners

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This article provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and offers classroom-based examples from different grade and subject levels.

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Consider the following scenario:

A fifth-grade teacher was preparing her class to learn about the American Revolution. She enlisted the students' help in acting out the events that led to the Revolution with elaborate props and exercises. When the class ended, the students were told they would read more about the Revolution the following day. As they left the room, an ESL student stopped and asked urgently, "But who won?"

This situation highlights some of the challenges that teachers face when helping English language learners, or ELLs, master social studies content:

Background knowledge
ELLs may not have the same background knowledge that their peers have or that textbook authors take for granted, as explained in this video clip with ELL teacher Amber Prentice.

Different perspectives
ELLs bring their own valuable and important experiences to the classroom. Often those experiences can be connected to the content in meaningful ways; however, if different points of view or ideas aren't expressed or identified, students may miss key concepts and ideas in the lesson.

Academic language and vocabulary
ELLs must learn the academic language and vocabulary needed to comprehend and produce new content - all while learning the new content and concepts at the same time!

For content-area teachers with limited experience working with ELLs, planning a lesson that engages them and helps them learn new material may seem daunting. The good news is that there are a number of ways to engage ELLs with social studies content and draw on their own unique background knowledge and perspectives. This article will describe some strategies for planning social studies lessons with ELLs in mind.

In addition, I recommend taking a look at the following resources:

Note: Lesson Planning to Ensure Optimal Engagement of ELLs (Chapter 2 of Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas), is available online and provides a number of helpful resources, including a checklist for modifying lesson plans for ELLs. In addition, Appendix Two of the book (not available online) provides a lesson modification worksheet.

Lesson Planning Strategies

Identify key concepts necessary for understanding the lesson

When choosing your key concepts, keep in mind the following:

Background knowledge
ELLs with limited or interrupted schooling may not have that same level of knowledge as their peers, especially when it comes to historical or cultural topics. When starting a new lesson, look for references or concepts that may need to be explicitly explained.

Language proficiency
Students may already possess content knowledge that they cannot yet demonstrate in English. Look for opportunities to make associations between students' experiences and new content.

Perspective
Students may have a different perspective on the content than their peers. These differences provide an important opportunity for class discussion and learning as long as they are handled in a sensitive and respectful ways.

In addition, plan to find out what students know about the topic you are teaching before getting started. This will help you fill in gaps and build on prior knowledge. A great tool for this activity is a Circle Map, in which you place the main topic in a small circle and add student ideas in a bigger circle around the topic. You may wish to allow ELLs to use their native language with peers for a quick brainstorm before presenting their ideas to the whole class.

Identify content and language objectives

These objectives are a great way to focus on the most important information and language structures you want your students to master. Content objectives focus on the material while language objectives focus on vocabulary or language structures that students should be able to use throughout the lesson (Haynes and Zacarian, 28).

Think about how you are going to:

introduce these concepts using simple language,

break the concepts down into the most basic elements,

keep the objectives visible to students during the unit (i.e., post them on the board or provide a simple outline to keep in binders).

Identify key vocabulary and academic vocabulary

Identify key terms, words, idioms and phrases - TWIPS, according to Dr. Zacarian (19). Choose the vocabulary that your students need to know in order to support their reading development and content-area learning, in addition to key content vocabulary. Remember to prepare student-friendly definitions for TWIPS ahead of time. It may be helpful to look at other social studies vocabulary lists as well.

In addition:

Look for problem areas
Clarify potential areas of confusion, such as homonyms or words with more than one meaning.

Include signal and directional words
Remember that students may also need explicit instruction in signal or directional words ("because" and "explain"), especially those words that are likely to appear frequently in the content materials or activities.

Don't overlook the basic words
There may be many words used through a lesson that native English-speaking students will understand but that ELLs don't know. Keep an eye out for these words, no matter how basic, and make a list of words that your students have questions about so that you can refer back to it when teaching the lesson in the future.

Use visuals and manipulatives when possible
Having a visual reference for new words is particularly helpful for ELLs.

Keep words visible and accessible to students
Post words on a word wall, or try using a "portable word wall" chart that students can put in their binder. The chart might include categories such as new words, old words, people, everyday words, words to review, etc. (Haynes and Zacarian, 59-60).

Remember to include lots of student practice
For students to really know a word, they must use it - or they will lose it. Use new words in class discussions or outside of class in other contexts if appropriate, such as on field trips. Give the students as many opportunities to use and master the new vocabulary as possible, both in writing and speaking activities. You may find this six-step process for teaching academic vocabulary from Dr. Robert Marzano helpful.

Prepare to preview the text

One strategy is a "chapter walk", where students predict what the chapter will be about based on pictures and highlighted features of the textbook.

An activity like this may take some time at first because it's time-consuming to teach. If you use it with regularity, however, it will become easier and quicker, and students will be able to do this on their own at the beginning of a new chapter.

You can also use the "BIG FOX" strategy, published by McGraw-Hill. This graphic organizer helps students pick out important terms and pieces of information before reading. I recommend practicing this strategy with some simple readings about familiar topics before jumping in with the textbook. The students will understand the strategy better if they start out with concepts that they understand.

Prepare multimedia, visuals, and related readings

These resources can be used to build background knowledge and provide context for ELLs, especially when students are learning new concepts and words. Ideas include:

Using photos from books, magazines, or the Internet to supplement textbooks.

Showing brief, focused video clips of history or social studies programs.

Listening to a short podcast or radio clip of an interview or speech.

Discussing additional readings such as related articles, poems, letters, and graphic novels.

Enlist native language support when possible

These strategies can help students identify content they already know, or master new concepts before transferring those ideas and learning how to express them in English:

Collaborate with a bilingual paraprofessional and identify areas where bilingual language support will be most helpful.

Look for related content materials in the students' native language from publishers like Scholastic or National Geographic/Cengage.

Plan group work in which students can use their native language with peers to discuss main ideas or vocabulary words.

Plan to include group work throughout the unit

Peer learning activities such as Reciprocal Teaching and Think-Pair-Share can be powerful tools for engaging ELLs with content learning.

Use modeling and clear instructions to ensure students understand:

how the activity works

their role in group work

the objective of the activity

any key vocabulary or phrases they should be using.

Here are some other tips on group work for ELLs from Haynes and Zacarian:

Assign students group roles that match their language ability (37).

Promote students to new roles as their language skills improve (42).

Make sure that mainstream students understand that they will be working in diverse groups, and that everyone's contributions are important (41).

Keep an eye on the balance of student participation; if some students are speaking more than others, ask them to think of some ways to even participation out (42).

Ask students to reflect on their group work after they have finished an activity. Haynes and Zacarian include a chart in their book with some guiding statements for student reflection (48).

Plan plenty of opportunities for students to interact with the content

Give students lots of opportunities to engage with and review the material in different ways:

Graphic organizers
Use graphic organizers to review key concepts and vocabulary words.

Flash cards
Have students make their own flash cards with pictures, definitions, key facts, etc.

Working with the text
Teach students to underline, highlight, and make notes. You may also find that sticky notes, Wikki Stix, and highlighting tape are a big hit with students (68). According to Haynes, some school districts order extra textbooks for their ELL classes so that teachers can keep a highlighted copy on hand as a student reference.

Use acting
Have the students write skits about the material they are learning, or create an activity in which students provide a physical representation of a particular event or vocabulary word.

Be creative and flexible with writing assignments

Writing can be an important way for students to show what they've learned:

Be creative and flexible
When choosing writing activities for students, be creative and open to different ways for students to express their new knowledge. I have seen students successfully convey what they learned by writing letters, poems, news articles and mosaics with vocabulary key points. Writing an essay may be more difficult for ELLs, and although they need to learn how to write a good essay eventually, they should be allowed to demonstrate their learning through a variety of writing activities.

Look for writing exercises that relate to the topic at hand
This may include a biography or autobiography, a letter from the point of view of a historical figure, or a short news article about a famous event.

Provide models
Give ELLs explicit structures and sentence frames to follow. Frames may vary in complexity and specificity, but they will help students to model correct structures and usage from the beginning.

Plan to adapt homework and assessment as needed

While it's important to have high expectations of ELLs, it is also important to have realistic expectations of the amount of work they can do. Haynes and Zacarian note, "The teacher's goal should be to making learning accessible and meaningful for every student without lowering expectations or sacrificing rigor" (104-105).

They continue in Chapter 7 of their book to provide a number of helpful rubrics and step-by-step procedures for evaluating your homework and assessment activities with ELLs in mind. In Twenty-Five Quick Tips for Classroom Teachers, Haynes suggests that teachers "adjust homework assignment to your ELLs' English language proficiency (and) modify assessment so that your ELLs have an opportunity to show what they have learned."

As you look for ways to help your students learn this new content, remember that you aren't just teaching them required social studies standards - you are helping your students adjust to a new life and country. That preparation has a potentially significant ripple effect because your students may be helping their own parents navigate this new country as well, and they may need to prepare for a U.S. Citizenship exam one day in the future.

Through social studies lessons, you also can prepare your students to be engaged and well-informed participants in our society and democracy, an opportunity they might not have had in their own country due to their religion, gender, or ethnicity. When you think about it that way, teaching ELLs to master new social studies content is so much more than adapting a lesson plan - it's a chance to prepare a new generation of young people to lead us into the future.

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Preparing an Engaging Social Studies Lesson for English Language Learners

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Consider the following scenario: A fifth-grade teacher was preparing her class to learn about the American Revolution. She enlisted the students' help in acting out the events that led to the Revolution with elaborate props and exercises. When the class ended, the students were told they would read more about the Revolution the following day.

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Using Science to Develop ELLs' Language Skills

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"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka! I found it!' but 'That's funny...'" - Isaac Asimov "Oh, you mean the life cycle." This was my pre-school daughter's response to my long explanation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly.

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4 Strategies to Help English Learners Master New Math Skills

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Developing new math skills for students learning English means keeping them on grade level and building on their existing speaking, reading, and writing abilities.

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Five Essential Components of Reading

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Explore SupportEd's strategies and tools for fostering multilingual learners' oral language development and promoting language skills.

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Explore SupportEd's articles, courses, and books for scaffolding instruction for multilingual learners and English language learners.

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Discover our educator resources for building a culturally responsive teaching environment for Multilingual Learners and English Learners.

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Multilingual Learner Coach at SupportEd

Mindi Teich, MEd, has been an advocate for English Learner students and their teachers for over 20 years. She began her career as an ESL teacher in DC Public Schools (DCPS). During her time as an ESL teacher, she worked with students in pull out, push in, and co-teaching environments. Mindi is the co-author of Social Emotional Learning for Multilingual Learners: Essential Actions for Success.

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Setting Up Your Classroom to Foster a Language Learning Environment for MLs

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Set up your classroom environment for a language learning. Read Support Ed's expert tips and strategies for teachers.

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Reading Instruction for Multilingual Learners: The Role of Background Knowledge

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Reading Instruction for Multilingual Learners: The Role of Background Knowledge for English Language Learners

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Differentiated instruction is the new educational buzzword. However, there are different ways to do so. Often, administrators and teachers will use the same words but have completely different meanings. Here are four different ways you can differentiate instruction in your math class, and some of the pros and cons associated with each.

1 - Alternative Assessment

A common way to differentiate instruction is to provide students with alternative test-taking methods. Instead of using a paper-based test, teachers are encouraged to provide students with other ways to demonstrate mastery of the content being covered.

For example, students could complete a project, create their own teaching lesson, build a presentation, or solve a real world problem.

From this has also stemmed the idea of project based learning, where students discover the concepts they are supposed to learn through a task (or series of tasks) instead of the teacher just presenting the material and then having students memorize it.

Pro's of Alternative Assessments

The benefits of alternative assessments are noteworthy. For starters, many learners have test taking anxiety or learning differences that make the traditional form of test taking a challenge. Providing a different method to demonstrate comprehension can be a huge benefit to these students.

Besides this, projects lend themselves to higher forms of engagement. Students will enjoy the creative side of these type of assignments, which will increase their comprehension levels and decrease classroom management issues.

The final benefit we will address here is that these type of assignments help tie the mathematical concept being learned to real world applications. This again increases engagement and helps with student comprehension

Con's of Alternative Assessments

Alternative assessments can be a large benefit for your students, however, not using them correctly can have large negatives that outweigh these benefits.

For starters, there is a large time demand that such projects consume. It takes a long time to setup, get the materials, and to teach students how to complete the task. All of this time could be better spent practicing the math concepts your students have not yet mastered.

This is especially true for your students who have not mastered the concept at the time of the alternative assessment. Instead of diagnosing their inability and then being able to provide a reteach, you are losing valuable classroom time on an activity that will have no academic benefit to them.

Also important to note is that your students will take tests the rest of their academic careers and likely, also, into their professional ones. So not being a "good test taker" does not mean we should abandon them, since they will be part of their lives. Instead, invest time in helping them become good test takers.

Finally, as your math level increases, finding real-world projects becomes increasingly difficult since the concepts become less concrete and more complex. It's not realistic to think you will have these types of alternative assessments available and easy to produce in your classroom.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Alternative Assessments are great. They're fun, engaging, and help make real world connections (especially in lower math grades). However, if your students have not already mastered the math concept, they are often not a good use of time.

I would recommend using Alternative Assessments and Projects as extension activities for students who have already demonstrated proficiency. And for those who have not, invest that time in providing them proper reteaches and increased interventions, as opposed to having them participate in an activity that they will not understand, nor benefit from.
For more information on why I Ditched Alternative Assessments, read this article
2 - Station Rotations

AKA Math Centers

Math centers involve students completing different tasks on the same skill in different areas of the room as part of a small group of students. Each group works on one activity for a set period of time, and then usually rotates to the other stations.

Normally, one of these stations involves time with the teacher, who works with the small group of students on a skill. The other stations are normally some type of practice - and hopefully one of these involves technology so the student can get immediate feedback.

Pro's of Station Rotations

Math Centers allow teachers to work more closely with a small group of students. This more intimate setting allows the teacher to recognize student deficiencies and correct them more quickly than in the large group setting. It also is often less intimidating for students to ask questions, so they are often more engaged when working with the teacher.

This type of teaching format also is a great way to integrate technology in the classroom, especially if you don't have a 1 to 1 ratio of devices to students. Using technology for practice problems also is a great way to provide immediate feedback, which is a powerful teaching tool. And since the teacher is working with a small group of students, she too is better able to provide immediate feedback.

Finally, math centers force chunking (another healthy teaching strategy) and it gets students moving around the room!

Con's of Station Rotations

The first issue this type of learning environment can create is classroom management. Since students are often flying solo in a math center, it is easy for them to get off task or not participate. And since the teacher is not there to monitor them, they can easily sabotage others, not do the work, or misbehave without being corrected. Or, if the teacher does see it, and addresses it, the small group she is working with is left with nothing to do.

Also, if the teacher does not have technology, he often resorts to providing worksheets in his centers. If he does, and does not provide answer keys, students will not get the immediate feedback they need while they are doing their work to make sure they are learning the skill correctly.

My larger issue with this type of differentiated instruction is that it does not account for the students who lack the prerequisite skills necessary to do the work in the center. For example, if the centers are all on adding fractions, but one student still doesn't know how to convert fractions to common denominators, he will not be able to do the work in the station.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Math Centers are a good teaching strategy that can spice up a regular lesson plan and allow teachers to work in a smaller setting with their students, provided that they have good classroom management and have taught their students how to do the centers without getting off task. It also makes good use of limited technology in the classroom.

However, it misses the larger issue of why your students are struggling. And that is because some of them are lacking prerequisite skills and need remediation. It also doesn't accommodate students who need more time than their peers to master a concept.

If you are going to use math centers, make sure that you provide immediate feedback for the questions the students are answering when they're not with you (especially if their in a center that doesn't have technology). Also be sure to spend time teaching your students the policies and procedures so that they will behave as expected while participating.

But I would recommend using a different type of differentiation. One that allows you to remediate students and provide increased levels of practice with immediate feedback for your students who take longer to master a math concept than their classmates.
Learn more about why Math Centers Failed my Students, by clicking here
3 - The Flipped Classroom

In the flipped classroom, students participate in the tutorial at home, usually by watching a teaching video online. This allows students to watch at their own pace, pause the video, and replay certain parts so that they can make sure that they have comprehension. Then while students are in the classroom, they participate in their independent practice problems (the ones that are normally assigned as homework). This allows the teacher to be there as they practice to provide help and correct misconceptions as they practice.

Pro's of the Flipped Classroom

The Flipped Classroom is a great teaching concept because it places an emphasis on immediate feedback when students are practicing the skill they are trying to master, and it also makes allowances for students who take longer to grasp a concept than their peers.

Independent practice with immediate feedback is foundational to the learning process. And this teaching style accomplishes this by having students do the practice work in class, with their teacher there to support them.

The flipped classroom also allows the teacher to differentiate on what skill the student is working on - since he can assign different tutorials to different students based on need.

Con's of the Flipped Classroom

There are two glaring issues with the Flipped Classroom.

First, what if your students don't have access to the internet at home? How will they watch the videos?

And second, what if the student doesn't do their homework (watching the videos) or doesn't engage in that process with fidelity, so even though they technically watched the video, the may not have learned from it because they weren't as engaged as they should have been.

In both scenarios, you have the same issue. The student still needs a tutorial. So what do you do?

Conclusion and Recommendation

There are a ton of great strategies that the Flipped Classroom utilizes. However, it falls apart quickly and easily. So I recommend keeping these great strategies, while finding a solution to the issue caused by students not engaging in the at home tutorials.

I accomplish this through Skills Based Learning Stations, which sets apart time in class for the tutorials, and for the in-class practice with the teacher present to help and provide feedback.
Learn more about the benefits and weaknesses of the Flipped Classroom by reading this article
4 - Differentiating Based on Skill Development

Also called Skills Based Learning Stations

This methodology recognizes that students are not all the same. They have different sets of prerequisite knowledge which will either allow them or hinder them from doing the grade level work. It also recognizes that students need carrying amounts of practice to master the skill (some need more than others) and it accommodates them.

Skills based learning stations differentiates by putting students through a series of tutorials and practice problems (with immediate feedback) based on the math concept that each student needs to master.

For example, if the class is working on adding fractions with uncommon denominators, but some students still can't convert fractions to common denominators, and some still can't add fractions with common denominators, the teacher is able to have each student work on the skill that they need to develop without having to remediate the whole class. And those who need no remediation because they've already mastered the concept are allowed to move on independently of their classmates.

Pro's of Skills Based Learning Stations

This methodology lends itself well to many important teaching strategies including targeted remediation, data driven instruction, providing students with immediate feedback, celebrating success, and allowing students to make mistakes without having consequences.

Furthermore it allows the teacher to focus on the growth of each student.

Students make great learning gains using this methodology because they are being reached at their level, with the support that they need and they are given the time that they need to master the concept without being penalized or delaying the other students in the room.

Con's of Skills Based Learning Stations

Setting up the stations has a larger time investment on the front end, however, once they are built the time demands are significantly reduced.

Also, since you are focused on growth and expecting mastery, your students will not pace together. While all of your students will get growth - and many students will have growth that they have never previously obtained, you will not get through all of the curriculum with all of your students. While this is in the best interest of the student, it does take a mindset shift for many teachers (and sometimes administrators as well).

Finally, it is a process. Watching a student remain on a skill for a long period of time can be frustrating. But you must continue to provide interventions, support, and immediate feedback with lots of practice.
To learn more about skills based learning stations, read this article
What Type of Differentiation do I Use?

I love using skills based learning stations in my instructional design. It allows me to reach every student in the classroom regardless of their level or need. Students who are grade levels behind and need to work on prerequisite skills, can easily and effectively be accomodated. Students who take longer to master a concept, can be given that time, without hurting their grade or slowing down the other students.

It also lends itself very well to celebrating student success, which I have found to be a very powerful teaching strategy. Another benefit to this system is that it requires data collection, which we then use to drive instruction.

Finally, this methodology has allowed me to get great gains out of my students. To learn more about Skills-Based Learning Stations, click on one of the articles below.

You can learn more about skills based learning stations in this article. Or you can purchase my book, Reach Them All, where I will not only explain the benefit of this system, but also walk you through the process of creating and implementing Learning Stations in your class so that you can reach all your students.

I also have an online course that teaches teachers how to create and implement their own learning stations (the book is included in the course). You can take the first part of the course for free.

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4 Ways Math Teachers can Differentiate Instruction - RETHINK Math Teacher

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There are different ways to differentiate instruction. Which is the best one for math teachers? Which will have the best impact on your students?

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Gotta love those fancy education buzz words, right?

Collaboration

If you're like me, you can't help but go into your go to Vanilla Ice backup dancer day dream when you hear this word in PD sessions, 'All right stop. Collaborate and listen...'

This word is more than a cheesy line in a fun 90s rap song (how do you stop, collaborate, and listen?!)

Collaboration may be a word that is being thrown around a lot lately (kind of like scaffold and rigor) but to me, it is for good reason. Who doesn't love a little collaboration in their life? I know all you introverts are side eyeing me right now, but hear me out.

Collaboration is proven to deepen understanding. Cornell states (and according to Andy Bernard they are a fancy school so they should know) the benefits of collaboration are:

Promotion of student-faculty interaction.

Increase in student retention, self-esteem, and responsibility.

Exposure to and an increase in understanding of diverse perspectives.

Preparation for real life social and employment situations.

But we are in the trenches everyday, so we already know all of this. I know you have a lot of collaboration strategies you use that are straight up amazing, and I hope I can add to it with my 5 favorite activities that involve and encourage collaboration.

Students combine individual brainstorms to develop a cohesive response to a problem or question.

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Collaboration Strategies for Your Classroom. - Teaching Intentionally

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Collaboration is great, isn't it?! It brings students together and not only enhances their learning, it builds those critical social skills students are in desperate need of. Here are my 5 favorite strategies I use in my middle school classroom to encourage collaboration. They are step by step, ea

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Welcome to the Department of English Learners and Multilingual Education