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Create a bridge between language and content.

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Create a bridge between language and content.

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One of my most viewed posts is on the three main types of scaffolding: sensory, interactive, and graphics . Galina (Halla) Jmourko commented on the post saying that I actually left out two other important forms of scaffolding: language and emotional scaffolding.

Jmourko was right!

These two additional forms of scaffolding further help ELs access content, communicate their understanding, and feel safe being a part of our schools. I'll describe language scaffolding in more detail today and will explore emotional scaffolding next week.

Jmourko's detailed list of these two scaffolds is included below. What she calls "Verbal and Textual Supports" can be grouped under what I call "Language Scaffolding". Though our terminology is different, the concept is the same: make the language more accessible to empower ELs to communicate.

I adapted her list and organized the scaffolds into two categories:

language scaffolds for Beginning ELs and

language scaffolds for Developing ELs.

Because Beginning ELs are learning language at the vocabulary and phrase level, there are particular scaffolds used for them. Developing ELs are learning language at the sentence level, so they also get specific scaffolds that are not appropriate for Beginning ELs.

Language Scaffolding: Beginning MLs

Oftentimes, the language we speak or the texts we give students are significantly beyond some ELs' current ability to comprehend. Therefore, to scaffold challenging language for Beginning ELs, we can:

Use labeling: connect key words with visuals

Use repetition: develop familiarity with the words by having ELs repeat them

Provide word banks: take the guesswork out for students by identifying key words

Incorporate a student's home language: let ELs process content in their native language

Because the first three strategies are widely used, I will zoom in on one of the most shunned yet most effective practices for ELs at any stage - incorporating their home languages.

Home Language: A valuable tool

When working with students who are brand new to English, I reach for the asset they already bring with them from their home countries: their home languages . There's no English-only policy in my classroom! All languages are welcomed at anytime.

I like to think of allowing ELs to use their home languages as being like swimming with both our arms and legs. Conversely, English-only policies are like trying to swim with your just arms. It's possible to swim with just your arms... but it's tiring, less effective, and frustrating.

Don't assume that your content teachers will automatically be opposed to this strategy either. Using students' home languages is appealing to content teachers because it helps ELs quickly access content without a language barrier. ELs can process content in any language!

For example, Mr. James (a 7th grade Individuals and Society teacher - IB language for social studies teacher) wanted students to watch a video about the that was, understandably, narrated in English. However, we have several Beginning ELs who would not be able to understand the complex language used in it. So we allowed them to watch the video using subtitles from their own language to scaffold their understanding and make sure they were getting a fair shot at comprehending what was actually going on.

Doing this allowed our Beginning EL students to:

1. learn the same content as other students and

2. feel that they are like other students - capable of understanding complex information.

Teachers who use this asset-based approach to supporting ELs believe that ELs can learn grade-level content and that home languages are a powerful tool that facilitates learning.

Language Scaffolding: Developing MLs

Once our ELs have progressed further in English, we should still continue to offer language scaffolds that foster their academic language skills . While scaffolds for Beginning ELs mainly focus on building vocabulary, Developing ELs need more guidance on communicating in sentences and extended texts.

The following five types of scaffolding help Developings ELs:

Understand complex ideas in written and spoken texts, and

Communicate complex ideas in writing and in speech

1. Modified Texts

Some texts have more information than is really needed, while others don't provide enough context. When modifying a text, teachers can add in the missing context or omit details that aren't essential to the main idea.

I sometimes like to modify the language of the text to be more EL-friendly. This includes restructuring overly complex sentences filled with dependent clauses that overwhelm an ELs reading skills. If ELs have developed academic language skills in their home languages, then I leave sentences with complex structures intact to give them a chance to read in academic English.

Additionally, when there is a challenging vocabulary word, I might add a short definition or provide a synonym beside it. This keeps the academic register of the text at a high level, while also making it easy for new academic language to be incorporated into an EL's lexicon.

For example, the image below is taken from a text by NPR called " This scientist aims high to save the world's coral reefs ". I copied the entire article into a Google Doc and added "waste from companies, factories" behind the term "industrial waste" to make the concept more understandable.

We provide modified texts so that ELs can have greater access to the content. Texts in content classes should not be reading assessments for ELs. Instead, they should be sources of information. In short, if ELs don't understand the text, they won't gain any information so it is more important in content classes to make the language accessible to them so they can understand the highest level content possible.

2. Guiding Questions

ELs with developing academic language skills also benefit from having guiding questions as they watch a video, read an article, or engage in a discussion. Guiding questions help narrow in on the details that the ELs have to focus on. For example, when the ELs were reading the above article about coral reefs, I asked the students to look for the consequences of a highly acidic ocean.

3. Leveled Questions

Jmourko also suggests using probing and clarifying questions. I have housed these two types together under the category "Leveled Questions".

After students watch a video or read a text and are about to engage in a discussion, we can ask identifying and describing questions, such as those that begin with , , , , and . After students correctly answer these questions, we can move to more higher-order questions, such as those that begin with .

If I notice that my ELs are struggling to answer the identifying questions, I stop to clarify their understanding by re-watching or re-reading a selected section. The magic of Leveled Questions is that it has this built-in formative assessment feature that can double as differentiation.

4. Sentence Starters

Academic language has a particular way of structuring sentences which is quite different than social language. The example below illustrates the difference:

When we use sentence starters with ELs, we model the language of academic writing. Sentence starters provide just the first part of the response; ELs are expected to pick up where it leaves off.

Without sentence starters, ELs might know the answer but not know how to start it off or become stuck on how to form the sentence. If your ELs say they don't know how to communicate an idea, that's a sign to use a sentence starter.

5. Sentence Frames

The ability to logically string ideas together like pearls on a necklace is an indicator of deep understanding and critical thinking. ELs are highly critical thinkers but often need some support. And one such form of support is Sentence Framing. A sentence frame provides the beginning of an idea and also contains a transition to another related idea. The transition is what ELs often omit in their writings or discussions and is what distinguishes this scaffold from sentence starters.

The example below is from Mr. Arno's science lab report template . We designed sentence frames so that students could use science-specific language correctly. Additionally, these sentence frames steered students' thinking as they designed their experiments.

Takeaways

When we scaffold language for ELs, we create a bridge between language and content. Teachers who expect ELs to learn grade-level content and master content-specific skills scaffold language to make this possible. Contrary to popular perception, scaffolding language is not about lowering the rigor of a task. Instead, it's about providing lots of support to maintain high academic standards.

How do you scaffold language in your class? Leave a comment below.

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#91. Language Scaffolds: Lowering the Barriers to Comprehension - ELL Strategies | TanKHuynh

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Maintain high academic expectations by reducing the language barrier by providing specific language scaffolding for Beginning to Developing ELs.

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Collaborative Learning for English Language Learners

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Collaborative Learning for English Language Learners

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How to support content and language acquisition simultaneously

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How to support content and language acquisition simultaneously

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Scaffolding Techniques for English Language Learners: Part 1

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When supporting English Language Learners during instruction we must consider that the instruction is two-fold. Teachers are supporting content and language acquisition simultaneously. This is not an easy task! Scaffolding has been praised for its ability to engage most learners. When the learning is scaffolded students are constantly building on prior knowledge and forming associations [...]

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First Grade Teacher Scaffolding lesson (Video)

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First Grade Teacher Scaffolding lesson (Video)

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Using Pair and Group Work to Develop ELLs’ Oral Language Skills

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Using Pair and Group Work to Develop ELLs’ Oral Language Skills

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In our last post, we shared information about the new Teaching Channel ELL series based on Academic Conversations (2011) by Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford featuring related classroom videos developed in partnership with the Oakland Unified School District. This week we'd like to delve deeper into these resources and provide strategies for building the oral language skills of ELLs across content areas that are framed around four practices.

Most teachers understand that pair and group work provide excellent opportunities for ELLs' oral language development because each student has more time to talk than in a large group discussion, and students often feel more comfortable sharing their ideas in a small group environment. However, in order to build on the skills described in the CCSS, it may be necessary to re-envision pair and group work and provide additional supports for ELLs. ELLs may find group work challenging if they do not understand their expected role in the task they are working on, or if they do not feel confident in using the language required for the task.

In this blog post we will first examine two speaking and listening standards that can be used to help frame group work. Next, we will highlight four student practices based on recommendations from Zwiers & Crawford (2011) and the practices demonstrated in the Teaching Channel classroom video clips. These four student practices will foster oral language development and support ELLs in meeting the standards. For each of the practices, we will provide an explanation and share some Teaching Channel video clips that show the practices in action.

Four Practices for Fostering ELLs' Oral Language Development

These four practices are:

1. Coming to the discussion prepared

2. Using appropriate body language for discussions

3. Participating by taking turns

4. Making connections to what others have said

Guiding Common Core State Standards

First, let's take a look at two standards that are part of the Speaking and Listening Anchor Standards for K-12 that are most relevant for our purpose.

Comprehension and Collaboration

Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.1 CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.CCRA.SL.4
Present information, findings, and supporting evidence such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.

Prepare for and participate effectively in a range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly and persuasively.

According to the standards listed above, all students (including ELLs) will need practice in holding discussions with varied partners, learning to effectively express their ideas with supporting evidence, and learning to build on the ideas of other students. Teachers can help ELLs meet those standards with the following practices.

Come to the discussion prepared

As we discussed in our Socratic Circles blog post, it is important for students to have sufficient preparation in the content they will be discussing. To view a model of ways teachers can help students prepare and engage in academic discussions through small group work, take a look at the video of Ms. Groves' class discussion of Siddhartha's Journey. In the video, Ms. Groves described having students do several close reading of the Siddhartha's text and answer text-dependent questions that are open-ended, are not only limited to questions with one right response, and require students to answer using evidence from the text. Students then shared their responses to the text-dependent questions in small groups.

In making recommendations for the types of questions and prompts teachers can develop to help students plan for think-pair-share activities, Zwiers (2010) makes some suggestions in the table below. Teachers can provide these types of prompts in a graphic organizer or a journal prompt prior to classroom discussions. It is important to note that these types of questions and prompts can be used across content areas and academic conversations should not be limited only English language arts.

Types of Questions and Examples

Create Questions That...;

Examples

Focus students on key content concepts.

What was the Magna Carta and why was it important?

Explain how the author uses metaphor to enhance the story.

Draw a picture of the water cycle and explain how it works.

Allow for divergent and personalized responses, as long as they connect back to evidence in the text.

If you were a colonist at this time, would you have chosen to fight against the British? Why or why not?

How does our school community deal with waste?

Describe how acids and bases are used at your house.

Emphasize one or more thinking skills being developed in the lesson and unit. Thinking skills that come from standards include: questioning, interpreting, classifying, persuading, evaluating, analyzing, comparing, and synthesizing.

What were the results of the Industrial Revolution?

Come up with two questions about electronic motors.

What can you infer about the character's feelings from her actions?

Deepen understandings and focus students back to the essential standards of the text, lesson, and unit.

What does this have to do with our goal of learning the many ways in which different people helped in the war?

Adapted from: ALDNetwork.org (2013). Think pair share tips. Retrieved from http://www.jeffzwiers.org
In structuring group and pair discussions, it is helpful for ELLs to have their written ideas or notes for reference. However, it is also important to help students transition to being able to speak without the use of notes. As you saw in the video of Ms. Groves' class, she suggested that her students not always read from their notes. Similarly, this video clip of Ms. Brewer's class shows how sticky notes can be used to support student discussion. Sticky notes will help students hold on to their ideas without allowing them to rely too heavily on written notes in a discussion.

Use appropriate body language for discussions

It is important that students learn the body language associated with academic discussions. Zwiers and Crawford (2011) identify behaviors that are valued in school:

Appropriate eye contact (which can mean not constantly staring at the other person but also not always looking down, away, or past the other person)

Facing each other with the entire body

Leaning toward the partner

Showing understanding through head nodding

Appropriate gesturing (not rolling eyes, sighing, or folding arms)

ELLs may need some direct instruction in what is considered culturally appropriate body language for discussions in U.S. classrooms. All the while, teachers of ELLs should recognize and respect how ELLs might show respect and engage in discussions in their cultures. This video of Ms. Nguyen's 6th grade less provides an example of a participation protocol that demonstrates one way to teach students how to appropriately use body language to engage in a discussion. She includes the following criteria in her class' participation protocol: look at your partner, lean towards your partner, lower your voice, listen attentively, and use evidence and examples. As students are having discussions, she uses a checklist to monitor how well they are meeting these criteria.

Participate by taking turns

It is important for students to take turns speaking. In pairs, it is likely that turn taking will occur naturally. However, in a small or large group, a tool such as a talking rock or talking stick (a rock or a stick that students hold to "give them the floor" to talk) can encourage all members of the group to take part in the discussion. Students can pass the talking rock or talking stick around in a circle, and the student who has the rock or stick can take the opportunity to say something or pass. The rock or stick can also be placed in the center of the group and students can take it as they have something to say. In the video of Ms. Groves' class, we saw students pass around a talking rock as a way to support students taking turns and to encourage all members of the group to participate.

An additional way to encourage turn taking is to teach and model strategies for inviting someone into the conversation (e.g., Manuel, what do you predict the girl in the story will do next?)

Make connections to what others have said

Not only do students need to be able to share their own opinions by using evidence from texts or content material being studied, they also need to interact with the ideas of others. Modeling and providing ELs with key phrases can support them in their efforts to build on the ideas of others.

More specifically, Talk moves are the discourse behaviors that students need to practice in order to effectively engage in a discussion. Such behaviors include: restating what was said, agreeing and disagreeing, asking clarifying questions, adding to or piggybacking on what someone has said, and making connections between ideas.

In this video clip, the students in Ms. Simpson's class practice using talk moves in a whole group discussion during a math lesson. Students will need practice with talk moves before they are able to use them on their own in small groups or pairs.

In the video of Ms. Groves classroom, we saw that she had sentence stems that were easily accessible to support students' use of talk moves, and when monitoring the small groups she referred students back to these stems. Another idea for using talk moves would be for each student to have a handout or index card with sentence stems that can be used that students could have in front of them during discussions. The table below provides some possible sentence stems for specific types of talk moves.

Talk Moves Sentence Stems

Restating

So you are saying...;

Put another way, you are saying ...;

What I understood you to say is ...;...;

Asking a clarifying question

Is it your position that...;?

Could you give an example of...;?

I'm confused when you say...;

Could you elaborate?

Zwiers and Crawford (2011) also propose conversation mini-lessons that provide teachers opportunities to introduce a conversation skill to students and then have them practice it in a relatively short time period. Examples of possible mini lessons could include asking each other for supporting examples, building on a partner's idea, and paraphrasing conversations themes. Mini lessons should include opportunities to analyze strong conversation skills, teacher or student modeling, some type of scaffolded support (e.g., graphic organizers, sentence stems), and opportunities to practice and build independent skills.

Summary

We have shared a lot of information with you in this blog post! To help you keep it all straight, the following table provides a summary of the four student practices that support ELLs' participation in pair and small group work. We also define each practice and share the accompanying Teaching Channel videos that show you what the practice looks like in action. Most of the videos are the same as were mentioned above. However, there are also a couple of additional videos added that model the student practices.

Student Oral Language Practice, Definition of Practice, and Video Examples of Practice

More Resources on Building ELLs' Oral Language

For additional resources and videos on this topic, take a look at the following:

We hope these suggestions and supporting video clips give you some new ideas for group work in your classroom. Let us know what works well for your class!

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Using Pair and Group Work to Develop ELLs' Oral Language Skills

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In our last post, we shared information about the new Teaching Channel ELL video series based on Academic Conversations (2011) by Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford. This week we'd like to delve deeper into these resources and provide strategies for building the oral language skills of ELLs across content areas that are framed around four practices.

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Pauline Gibbons: Suggestions for Group & Pair Activities Across the Curriculum

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Pauline Gibbons: Suggestions for Group & Pair Activities Across the Curriculum

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SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR GROUP AND PAIR (Gibbons book)

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Small Group Instruction for Beginning English Language Learners

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Small Group Instruction for Beginning English Language Learners

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WIDA focus on Group Work for Content learning

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WIDA focus on Group Work for Content learning

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Integrating Language and Content Instruction for Language Minority Students

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Integrating Language and Content Instruction for Language Minority Students

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for Language Minority Students

by
JoAnn Crandall
George Spanos
Donna Christian
Carmen Simich-Dudgeon
Karen Willetts

Center for Applied Linguistics
Preface

Teacher Resource Guides have been submitted to NCBE by practitioners involved in teacher education, research, and the education of language minority students. These Guides are intended to be practical resource guides on current or innovative teaching practices in bilingual education and in the education of limited-English-proficient students. Every effort has been made to cull the most practical aspects of each curriculum guide and to incorporate these into a concise classroom resource with sample lesson plans or activities.

This year's NCBE Teacher Resource Guide Series revolves around literacy instruction and the integration of language and content-area instruction, areas of particularly high interest to practitioners in the field. Specifically, the four 1987 Guides address: (1) developing materials and activities for promoting English language and literacy skills among young children from nonliterate backgrounds; (2) integrating native language, ESL, and content-area instruction in science and math at the elementary level; (3) developing literacy materials and integrating language and content instruction for secondary students with limited formal schooling experience; and (4) approaches to integrating language and content instruction for language minority students.

Lorraine Valdez Pierce
Teacher Resource Guides
Series Editor
Introduction

The purpose of this guide is to:

1. introduce teachers and administrators to approaches for combining language and content instruction (in ESL, bilingual, foreign language, mainstream, and content classes); and

2. to provide suggestions and resources for implementing these approaches.

This guide is an outgrowth of a number of projects undertaken by the Center for Applied Linguistics in collaboration with elementary, secondary, and college teachers in both language and content areas. That work has included research into the language skills required for mathematics and science learning, development of math-language and science problem-solving materials, and the designing of a content-based ESL curriculum for grades K-6. Some of this work has been supported by the Center for Language Education and Research (CLEAR) funded by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) of the U.S. Department of Education; by the Secretary's (of Education) Discretionary Fund for Mathematics, Science, and Critical Foreign Languages; and by the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE).
A Language-Sensitive Content Class

Thirty Chinese students with limited English proficiency (LEP students) are engaged in lively conversation as they await their teacher. This is a ninth-grade science class in an intermediate school located in the Chinatown of a major metropolitan city. Students are seated in groups of four or five at round wooden tables, conversing in a mixture of Mandarin and Cantonese, with a sprinkling of English. The instructor enters and begins to distribute the contents of a large brown bag. The students continue to chatter in Chinese, their interest piqued by the paper towels, soup-sized plastic bowls, rolls of masking tape and pennies that she lays out in the middle of the wooden tables.

Speaking in English, the instructor tells each group to choose a student as recorder. Once the students have done this, she asks the recorder to jot down the following instructions:

1. Tape the penny to the middle of a plastic bowl.

2. Fill another bowl with water.

3. Place the bowl with the penny in the middle of the table.

4. Look at the penny and move back until you can no longer see the penny. Stay still.

5. Choose one student to fill the penny bowl with water from the other bowl.

6. The rest of you stay where you are. Observe what happens. Discuss this with your group.

7. Tell your recorder to write down what you have observed.

When the teacher says "Begin," the resulting scene is tumultuous, as students start to order one another to carry out the directions in a combination of English and Chinese. Naturally, there are a few hitches-for example, spilled water and students falling off their chairs as they attempt to position their bodies to make the pennies disappear. The teacher calmly moves from group to group to ask questions like "What step are you on?" or "What happens to the pennies when you put water in the bowl?"

Once all the groups have completed the seven steps, the instructor reconvenes the class. When she asks for volunteers to report on what happened, eager students vie with each other for the opportunity to speak. It is interesting to note that the students' conversations have now shifted to English and that the reports are surprisingly fluent.

With about fifteen minutes left, the teacher asks the students to explain in writing why they think the pennies seemed to move as water was added to the bowls. Several students begin referring to their science textbooks, specifically to the section which deals with refraction, or the bending of light. At this point, it becomes clear that the goal of the lesson is to present a scientific principle, namely, that light bends when it moves from one medium to another medium at an angle; but the class has been conducted according to well-established language teaching principles as well. The result is that students were actively communicating in small groups using oral and listening skills to discover the scientific principles.
A Content-Enriched ESL Class

In our first example, a science teacher used language learning methods and techniques in what we are calling language-sensitive content instruction, enabling the instructor to facilitate both content learning and language acquisition for LEP students.

In our second example, we have a chance to look in on a second-grade ESL classroom. Large sheets of paper are taped around the room with the following headings: "My name is ________," "I live in __________," "I eat __________," "I wear ___________," and "I am _____." Small groups of students are huddled around pictures and books of various animals-lions, panda bears, whales, jaguars, buffalos, kangaroos. Each group is engaged in research, finding the answers to the questions: "Where does a (lion) live?" "What kinds of food does a panda bear eat?" "What kind of covering does a (whale) have?" "What word best describes a (kangaroo)?" One student in each group is leading the discussion; another is recording the group's decisions. In one group a student suggests that the panda lives in the zoo. Another agrees, but wants to know in what country? They look through the books and magazines until they find a map which shows where the panda lives. The recorder writes "China" on their sheet. They come across a picture of a panda eating bamboo. They decide to write bamboo in the "I eat ________" column. But the real discussion begins when they try to find one word to describe the panda. They know pandas look "cuddly," but they also know that pandas can be "fierce." Another group chose the jaguar. They are filling in the chart on the bulletin board, listing the jaguar's home as "South America" and the animal's covering as "fur."

After the groups complete their work and present their findings to the class, the teacher initiates a discussion on the similarities and differences among these animals. She asks questions such as "How are these animals the same?" Finally, she asks them: "How many pandas are living?" "How many jaguars?" The students conclude that these animals are all in danger of extinction. She tells the students that they will have a chance in future classes to identify other animals (not only mammals, but also birds, reptiles, and fish) that are nearly extinct.

It is easy to see how this content-enriched ESL class differs from the traditional ESL class. Although the students are learning English language skills-listening, speaking, reading, and writing-and getting practice in using particular grammatical patterns ( wh-questions) and new vocabulary, the class also does much more: it utilizes academic content as its base (i.e., characteristics of animals) and emphasizes the kinds of academic language skills (such. as classification and comparison-contrast) which are critical for students to be able to function effectively in a mainstream academic classroom.
A Rationale for Integrating Language and Content Instruction

The focus of many language classrooms today is on the development of oral communication skills in order to help students talk about themselves, relate to their peers and teachers, and function appropriately in the language. This development of interpersonal communicative skills is important, but it is not enough. We also need to provide students with meaningful, relevant content-area instruction and contexts upon which to base their language skills. What Cummins ( 1981) refers to as Basic Interpersonal Communicative Skills (BICS) is one component of communicative competence, but for students who will be doing academic work in English, more is needed for them to be able to use the language to read science books, do math word problems, or reflect upon and evaluate history lessons. These latter skills, referred to as Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) by Cummins, take longer to develop (5 to 7 years) than interpersonal communicative skills and need to be taught in conjunction with them. By using academic content areas as a basis for the language lesson, the teacher focuses attention on higher-order thinking skills such as analyzing, synthesizing, or predicting and provides students with the appropriate language labels and conventions necessary to facilitate class work in that language.

If the ESL teacher can begin using content areas as a basis for the ESL lesson, with attention focused on the higher-order thinking skills such as analyzing, synthesizing, and predicting, then the language minority child will gain a head start on the mainstreaming process. If a student can learn these skills in the first language, the task of transferring them to English will not be as difficult, but the student will still need some directed instruction in the ESL class, using academic subject matter as both the basis for reading and writing and for classroom discussions.

Besides language teachers, regular classroom teachers can also make content instruction more meaningful by using hands-on approaches which relate math and science, for example, to real-life activities. Our first example presented a language-sensitive content classroom where a science teacher used language learning methods and techniques to facilitate both content learning and language acquisition for LEP students. Students get needed support after transition if the mainstream or content teacher uses a language-sensitive approach in the classroom. Further, research evidence suggests that second language learning is facilitated when the learner is taught using meaningful input, when new information is presented and linked to already known information, and when the learning environment is relaxed and motivating ( Krashen and Terrell, 1983).
Integrating Language and Content in Bilingual Education
Content-based instruction is a "natural" for bilingual education. In bilingual education programs, content-area instruction may be delivered in two languages. Theoretically, students are taught content areas in their first language while gaining proficiency in English. However, bilingual students need to study the same curriculum and acquire the same knowledge as their English-speaking counterparts. Using academic content as the basis for ESL instruction can help to fill that need. Although we may expect skills and knowledge to transfer from the native language to English, there are inevitably alternative vocabulary, structures, and conventions that LEP students need to learn to become "academically bilingual." Content-based ESL instruction can provide the context for such language development.

ESL instruction in bilingual programs is often pull-out instruction, which creates a fragmented educational program for the LEP student. However, if the ESL teacher reinforces material taught in the first language and provides the English skills related to that content, the student's program becomes more cohesive. When the LEP student leaves the bilingual classroom, he does not leave without content knowledge; this knowledge is simply transferred to the ESL class. This approach calls for generous cooperation among all teachers involved.

Foreign Language Programs
Students learning languages other than English, either in foreign language classrooms or in two-way bilingual programs, can also benefit from the combination of language and content instruction. In foreign language immersion classrooms, for example, two educational goals exist side by side: the learning of another language and the acquisition of content knowledge and basic skills. Students receive all instruction in a language that is not native to them. By integrating language and content. we can work toward both educational goals at the same time. In fact, it is important that this be done so that academic language skills are developed during the process. When a social studies unit in French is presented to native English speakers, relevant vocabulary, grammatical structures and language functions can be systematically treated so that both the content and the language are taught.

We can use this approach in traditional foreign language classes as well. In a German class that meets twice a week, for example, lessons can revolve around topics taught in content classes. A unit from the music class on great composers could be adapted for the German class or a geography unit on topographical features could be reviewed focusing on the topography of Europe. New content can also be introduced, especially when relevant to the language and culture under study.

In two-way bilingual programs, where language minority students and English-speaking students come together for instruction in both languages, the needs of both groups are served by integrating language and content. In a program using Spanish and English as languages of instruction, for example, lessons which incorporate English and math instruction for the Spanish speaker and science and Spanish for the English speaker provide both language and concept development.
Integrating Language and Content: How To

Language and content-area instruction can be integrated in one lesson or unit, or the approach can form the basis for an entire curriculum. Even though the extent of implementation may vary widely, the underlying principles and procedures remain the same. In fact, teachers may start with one lesson or unit at a time and later pool resources with other teachers to develop a whole curriculum from this approach. Moving from a single lesson to an entire curriculum, here are some ideas on how to get started.

1. Develop one lesson. Take an objective from a content area curriculum, such as science, and think about the kind of language students need in order to be able to accomplish that objective. You should look for specific vocabulary items as well as grammatical structures and language functions (such as requesting information or defining) that are important for the lesson. Naturally, the level of proficiency of students will need to be considered. Once you have identified both the content and language objectives of the lesson, you can plan activities to accomplish both.The sample math and science lessons in this guide provide a model for developing integrated lessons. The plans include the following kinds of information, which should be taken into consideration when planning a lesson:

Grade level

Language level

Subject

Topic

Key content competencies

Core vocabulary

Thinking skills

Language skills

School skills

Interpersonal skills

Literacy skills

Materials needed

Activities

Assessment

Support activities
(reading, writing, listening, speaking)

Follow-up activities

Homework assignments

If you are working together with another teacher, you may want to observe each other's class to allow for immediate feedback on lessons. Once you have tried out a lesson, you may need to modify it accordingly. Collect your plans in a file, particularly if there is interest in developing complete units or an entire curriculum.

2. Develop a unit in one academic area. This level provides a more sustained effort than a single lesson, but the approach is the same. A unit in math, social studies, science or any other content area can be adapted in this way. For example, a unit on word problems in math is ideal for integration with language objectives (think of the practice on English comparatives that could be incorporated, based on phrases like "greater than," "faster than," and so on). Again, content objectives need to be examined to determine what language structures and functions can be taught or reinforced at the same time.The advantage to developing a series of lessons rather than just one is that it then becomes possible to spiral the language being taught, building from one lesson to the next. In other words, a particular structure can be introduced in one lesson, then reinforced and expanded in later lessons in the unit.

3. Develop a content-based ESL or sheltered English curriculum. This is, of course, the most ambitious project to undertake. Although it is possible to develop and implement a curriculum on an individual basis, it is probably more effective to work with others in such an endeavor. In most school systems, teams of teachers regularly collaborate on curriculum development, either informally or at the request of the school district; You might work with a group of teachers who have tried combining language and content instruction in their classes and pool their resources to produce a curriculum. The collaboration of content area and ESL teachers is particularly effective.

Naturally, a curriculum should reflect local needs. Requirements for content-area topics to be covered need to be considered, as well as the choice of a format best suited to the local population. A totally integrated curriculum for LEP students would combine language instruction with all content areas. Alternatives include content-enriched English language instruction and language-sensitive content classes, such as sheltered English classes for LEP students. For example, an ESL curriculum might be developed in conjunction with the social studies strand. In a bilingual program. the content-enriched ESL class might reinforce concepts taught in the native language. In an ESL pull-out situation, the curriculum would reinforce concepts presented in English in a mainstream classroom. where LEP students might number only a few among a class of native speakers of English. In a self-contained classroom. the ESL curriculum could provide the social studies component for a group of LEP students.

Whether a single lesson or a whole curriculum. teachers can integrate language and content-area instruction in ways that make learning both more effective. Although some careful preparation is needed in advance to plan the lessons, it is well worth the effort.
Implementing Integration of Language and Content-Area Instruction

If teachers in a school want to implement an integrated language md content program for LEP students, there are several factors they need to consider. Perhaps the most important is to identify content or mainstream teachers who are interested in modifying their instruction for LEP students and ESL teachers who are interested in incorporating subject matter into their language classes. It is crucial for members of these two groups to meet and work together for the program to be successfull. The meetings should begin as early as possible in the school year to allow sufficient time for curriculum development, discussion of methods, and identification of materials for use in the program. Some staff development which focuses on methods and materials for both groups of teachers will also be necessary. As in other types of educational innovation, the principal's support, especially in the early stages, is critical.

Teachers may want to begin with a few pilot classes to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach and to build support for it within the school. For example, classes such as art, music, or physical education are ideal starting points because they combine high interest with relatively low language requirements. Later, the program may be expanded to include math, social studies, and science.

After a school has decided which courses to include in this approach, a curriculum will need to be developed. The first step is a thorough review of subject-matter competencies by grade level. The next step is to identify language objectives which complement each competency. Specific vocabulary should be identified together with relevant grammatical structures, functions, and literacy skills. Because this development phase will take some time, it probably would be best to set aside part of a summer for a curriculum team to meet. That team should also begin identifying appropriate materials to implement the curriculum; these may be commercially available or available from cooperating school districts.

Unfortunately, there are currently few materials specifically designed for the content-enriched language class or for the language-sensitive content class, so teachers will need to work in teams to develop these. The language teacher can focus on language demands while the content teacher covers content objectives. The language teacher will probably feel more qualified developing vocabulary and other preview or follow-up activities. The content teacher, Ion the other hand, will be better qualified to develop activities related to the basic concepts and principles of each subject area. It is vital, nevertheless, for both kinds of teachers to pay attention to both language and content to ensure that the materials provide for solid academic language and skill development.

Activities which use interactive language practice are very effective, role plays, situational dialogues, problem solving for students working pairs (such as those based on an information gap), and other meaningful exchanges. Methods which require students to respond with actions, rather than words, are excellent for beginning language students. Students with very limited language proficiency may need to focus on survival language and skills before a heavy emphasis on content-based instruction is initiated. As students gain proficiency, reading and writing activities incorporating more sophisticated content and academic skills can be introduced and expanded.
Potential Problems

Facilitating cooperation between language and content-area teachers may be difficult. Schools are becoming increasingly compartmentalized, especially at the secondary level, and opportunities for communication or collaboration may be limited. Some teachers may be reluctant to participate in cross-disciplinary programs of this type. However, the following guidelines may be of assistance.

1. Not all teachers need to participate. A core group of interested and willing teachers can develop their own integrated program which meets the school's curriculum objectives.

2. Support from the administration is crucial at all stages of the process (release time, allocation of resources, public statements by the principal).

3. After a program has been established, other teachers should be invited to join the effort by teachers who have participated successfully.

Language teachers may be resistant to participate without additional in-service training in the content areas. This is particularly true in the case of math and science. They may feel more comfortable starting with language arts/literature and social studies/culture as their content areas. Likewise, content/mainstream teachers may not know how to adapt their subject matter to make it accessible to students with limited language proficiency and may not be comfortable focusing on language instruction or using small group approaches.

Another potential problem emerges from the normally wide range of educational backgrounds and language proficiencies existing within a given class. Although language teachers are accustomed to dealing with students at various levels of language proficiency in a classroom, content teachers may not be. These teachers need to be provided with in-service training focusing on classroom management and small group or peer instruction as a way of accommodating these differences.

Finally, school and community attitudes may present a problem. Students, teachers, and parents all need to understand that this approach does not constitute a "watered-down" curriculum. Instead, it emphasizes the most important objectives of the mainstream curriculum while addressing language development goals. Programs for LEP students should not be equated with services for learning disabled or other special education students. Content-enriched language or language-sensitive content programs help students to realize their full potential in a manner which is sensitive to their linguistic needs.
Resources

The Center for Language Education and Research (CLEAR) at the Center for Applied Linguistics ( CAL) is presently collecting curriculum materials for use in programs which integrate content-area and language instruction. Many are also available through ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center). The list of references included in this guide provide both theoretical and practical information. For further information, interested persons may contact one of the authors at the address below:

Center for Applied Linguistics
1118 22nd Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20037
Tel.: (202)429-9292
http://www.cal.org/

(NOTE: CLEAR is no longer with the Center for Applied Linguistics. Information correct as of publication date)

SAMPLE LESSON 1

Activity - (15 minutes)

Bring in a house plant. Show it to the students while talking about it. Example: "Look at this pretty plant. It's in a pot. See its green leaves. Here's a flower. It's on the stem." Continue pointing to the different parts of the plant that can be seen: stem, leaves, flower, dirt (soil). Do TPR activity with the core vocabulary words, e.g. "Point to the leaves."

Draw a picture on the board of a plant with roots. Explain that roots are in the dirt in the pot. Review the names of the parts of the plant using the picture on the board.

Let students touch the plant. Ask questions about the plant: "What color are the leaves/the stem?" How does the leaf/stem feel?" "Is it smooth/rough?" "What's above/below the dirt?"

Cut up a real plant and put the various parts inside a box. Have students pick out plant parts and identify them.

Reading/Writing Support Activity - (10 minutes)

Put a drawing of a simple plant on the blackboard and label the different parts with flashcards. Read aloud the words while labeling the different parts. Then, take off the flashcards and put them on the table. Have students come and put the labels on the different parts of the plant picture.

(15 minutes) Take students outside and have them collect different parts of plants. Have them come back to the classroom and sort by part (e.g., all stems together). Save some parts for future lessons.

(5 minutes) Pass out magazines and have students cut out pictures of plants or flowers and paste them on pieces of paper. Have students label the parts of the plants in the pictures. Move around the room and ask students, e.g., "Show me a leaf"; "What color is the flower?"

(5 minutes) Song: "Little Flowers"

From: PREP (Preparing Refugees for Elementary Programs) Curriculum, U.S. Department of State, Overseas Refugee Training Program (Draft).

SAMPLE LESSON 2

Activity - (30 minutes)

Divide the class into ten groups. Divide bottle caps into ten piles (use at least 125 caps per group). Have each group place one pile of bottle caps in a plastic bag. Say, "Count out piles of ten." Give time for each group to divide their caps into sets of ten. Observe whether the students understand the instructions.

Pointing to one group, say, "How many groups of ten do you have?" Say, "Let's count by tens to see." Count, "Ten, twenty..." etc. "How many bottle caps do you have?" Give different colored/labeled tickets for piles of hundreds and remaining tens and ones.

Give each group an appropriate number of tickets for the total number of bottle caps they hold.

Continue until piles of bottle caps and tickets show the same number.

Ask,

"How many hundreds do we have?"
"How many tens do we have?"
"How many ones do we have?"

Have students place tickets representing the total number of their bottle caps in a place value pocket.

Do Total Physical Response (TPR) activity with individual students using the core vocabulary.

Vocabulary
count out
total
hundreds
tens
ones
class Skills

Thinking:

Sensory/auditory/visual learning, spatial relations

Language:

Answering questions, giving information, counting

School:

Participating in groups, working individually

Materials Needed
10 plastic bags
Collected bottle caps
Place value pocket chart
10 tickets marked 100 (may need more)
30 bundles of 10's
30 single tickets

From: PREP (Preparing Refugees for Elementary Programs) Curriculum, U.S. Department of State Overseas Refugee Training Program (Draft).

SAMPLE LESSON 3

Activity - (30 minutes) Role play:

Set up a store in the classroom. Give each student a "dollar" to spend. Tell the students, "You have one dollar to spend in the store today. I will be the first storekeeper."

Go to the store area and say, "The store is open. ________ will be the first customer. Come in, ______. What would you like to buy today?" Allow student to make choices. Student must say, "I would like to buy _______." Respond by saying, "Here are your things. That will be __ cents. One dollar minus ___ cents is ___ cents. Here is your change. Thank you for coming to my store."

"Customer" becomes "storekeeper" (clerk).

Rotate until all have had the opportunity to participate in the role-play.

Provide subtraction equations until the students are able to verbalize the math problems themselves.

Allow time for the students to communicate what they would like to "buy."

Give students "dollar" bills and cards marked 1¢ to 25¢ (or play money). Give several word problems which include subtracting amounts from $1.00. " Show and tell me how much money you would have left."

Math Literacy Support Activity

Each student writes his/her own math problems for classmates to solve using "dollar" and "cents."

Vocabulary

Structures
Wh- questions and modal would. What would you like to buy? How much change would you have?

Language:

Answering/asking questions, following directions

Interpersonal:

Participating in class activity, listening

Thinking:

Designing problems to be solved

Materials Needed
1 "dollar" per student, change cards or play money, various items marked with prices for store.

Follow-up Activity
Teach the children to estimate change by rounding to nearest ten and adding, e.g.: It cost 79¢. Round to 80¢. Change is approximately 20¢.

Homework
Students copy and solve subtraction word problems, e.g.,

This lesson can be adapted to suit the level of competency, e.g., use $5 or $10 instead of one dollar.

From: Content-Based ESL Curriculum, Hartford Public Schools (Draft).

References

Cantoni-Harvey, G. (1987). Content-area language instruction: Approaches and strategies. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Chamot, A.U. (1985). English language development through a content-based approach. In Issues in English language development. Rosslyn, VA: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education/ InterAmerica Research Associates, Inc., 49-55.
( ERIC Abstract)

Chamot, A.U. (1985, December). Guidelines for implementing a content-based English language development program. NCBE Forum, 8:6.

Chamot, A.U., & O'Malley, J.M. (1986). A cognitive academic language learning approach: An ESL content-based curriculum. Rosslyn, VA: National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education/ InterAmerica Research Associates, Inc.
( ERIC Abstract) or ( NCBE Abstract)

Chamot, A.U. & O'Malley, J.M. (1987). The cognitive academic language learning approach: A bridge to the mainstream. TESOL Quarterly, 21:2,227-249.
( ERIC Abstract) or ( NCBE Abstract)

Crandall, J.A., & Willetts, K. (1986, March). Content-based language instruction. ERIC/CLL News Bulletin, pp.1,7,8.

Crandall, J.A., (Ed.). (1987). ESL through content-area instruction. West Englewood Cliffs, NJ: CAL/Prentice-Hall Regents.
( NCBE Abstract)

Crandall, J.A., Dale, T.C., Rhodes, N.C., & Spanos, G. (in press). English skills for algebra. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: CAL/Prentice-Hall Regents.

Cummins, J. (1981). The role of primary language development in promoting educational success for language minority students. In Schooling and language minority students: A theoretical framework. Sacramento: California State Department of Education.
( NCBE Abstract)

Curtain, H.A. (1986, March). Integrating language and content instruction. ERIC/CLL News Bulletin, pp. 1, 10, 11.
( ERIC Abstract)

Krashen, S. & Terrell, T. (1983). The natural approach. San Francisco: Pergamon/Alemany Press.
( ERIC Abstract) or ( NCBE Abstract)

Mohan, B.A. (1986). Language and content. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Mohan, B.A. (1986, March). Language and content learning: Finding common ground. ERIC/CLL News Bulletin, pp. 1, 8, 9.

Spanos, G., Rhodes, N.C., Dale, T.C., & Crandall, J.A. (1987). Linguistic features of mathematical problem solving: Insights and applications. In Mestre & R. Cocking (Eds.), The influences of language and culture on learning mathematics. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
( NCBE Abstract)

Willetts, K. (Ed.) (1986). Integrating language and content instruction (Educational Report No. 5). Los Angeles: University of California, Center for Language Education and Research.
( ERIC Abstract) or ( NCBE Abstract)

About the Authors

Jo Ann (Jodi) Crandall is a Division Director at the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, D.C. She is the current President of TESOL and coauthor of English Skills for Algebra (in press), an interactive student textbook which integrates English language and algebra instruction. Dr. Crandall is the editor of ESL Through Content-Area Instruction: Mathematics, Science, Social Studies (CAL/Prentice-Hall Regents, 1987).

George Spanos is a Research Associate in the Division of International and Corporate Education at the Center for Applied Linguistics. He is co-author of English Skills for Algebra (in press) and is currently the Director of a project for developing materials for the integration of science and language instruction for the Center for Language Education and Research (CLEAR).

Donna Christian is the Associate Director of the Research Division at the Center for Applied Linguistics. She coordinates the Center's projects with the Center for Language Education and Research (based at UCLA) and has written various publications on language in education. She is presently involved in the collection and annotation of curriculum guides and other materials to content-based instruction.

Carmen Simich-Dudgeon is a Research Associate in the Research Division of the Center for Applied Linguistics. She is presently the principal investigator of a project dealing with significant features of academic language used in first and second language classrooms. She was most recently the Director of a project for Hartford Public Schools, where she was responsible for developing a content-based ESL curriculum for Grades K-6.

Karen Willetts is a Research Assistant in the Research Division of the Center for Applied Linguistics. She is presently involved in the collection and annotation of curriculum guides and other materials related to content-based language instruction. She is the editor of a Center for Language Education and Research (CLEAR) monograph on integrating language and content instruction.

These publications were prepared under Contract No. 300860069 for the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA), U.S. Department of Education. The contents of these publications do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Department of Education, nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

This digital version was prepared by ERIC Clearinghouse on Urban Education,
Teachers College, Columbia University as part of its subcontract activities with NCBE.

NCBE Home Page
http://www.ncbe.gwu.edu

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Integrating Language and Content Instruction for Language Minority Students

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by JoAnn Crandall George Spanos Donna Christian Carmen Simich-Dudgeon Karen Willetts Center for Applied Linguistics Preface Teacher Resource Guides have been submitted to NCBE by practitioners involved in teacher education, research, and the education of language minority students.

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Integrated Curriculum: Definition, Benefits & Examples (Video)

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Integrated Curriculum: Definition, Benefits & Examples (Video)

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How to Develop a Lesson Plan that Includes ELLs

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How to Develop a Lesson Plan that Includes ELLs

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In content-area classes, English language learners (ELLs) face a double challenge: they must learn language and content at the same time. In order to succeed in these classes, ELLs need the literacy, language skills, and background knowledge necessary to master that new content knowledge.

One way to address that challenge is through effective lesson planning. Depending on their different stages of English proficiency and literacy, ELLs will benefit from the skills that a well-designed lesson can address. For additional tips on language instruction, see our tips for mainstream teachers.

This video showcases a 5 th-grade team planning a science lesson. ESOL specialist Katy Padilla plays a key role in advocating for ELLs throughout the lesson planning process.

Lesson planning for the ELLs: Step by step

Effective lesson planning requires a number of steps from initial preparation to the final review of material. This blog post on lesson planning with sheltered instruction offers a general roadmap for that process.

Identify standards and objectives

First, identify your goals for the lesson. What are your target standards? It is helpful to post these clearly so that students know what they will be focused on learning and eliminate unnecessary information that does not meet your objective.

Next, identify your content objectives and language objectives:

The content objectives focus on the content you will be teaching, such as a math, Science, Social Studies, or language arts objective.

The language objectives focus on the academic language functions that students need to master in order to access grade-level content.

It is critical to teach language objectives explicitly so that ELLs (and their peers) can learn the content and language they need.

For example, Jennifer Himmel shares the following examples in her popular article about how to write language objectives for content-area lessons:

3rd grade Science, States of Matter

Content Area Standard

Content Objective

Language Objective

California: Students know that matter has three forms: solid, liquid, and gas.

Students will be able to distinguish between liquids, solids, and gases and provide an example of each.

Students will be able to orally describe characteristics of liquids, solids, and gases to a partner.

Build background knowledge

Background knowledge is the hook that students hang new information on. When planning lessons for ELLs, it is important to both:

access students' existing background knowledge

build background knowledge that students.

To start this process, you need to:

1. Identify key background knowledge needed for the lesson

2. Identify students' existing background knowledge

3. Build background knowledge students need

Teach key vocabulary

Selecting words to teach

Select key vocabulary that students need to understand the content. Dr. Diane August notes that there are different kinds of vocabulary words that may need to be taught across different content areas:

words that are critical to the meaning of the lesson or text

words with multiple meanings ("plot," "table," "key," and "yard")

homonyms ("son"/"sun")

general academic words

academic vocabulary in a particular content area.

You can see additional recommendations on how to choose which vocabulary words to teach in this overview of the ACCELL project that Dr. August led at the American Institutes for Research.

Strategies for instruction

Write an ELL-friendly definition for each and post them where students can see them throughout the lesson.

Try different strategies to teach each word. If there are five words to be pre-taught, use different ways of engaging the students to hear and produce each word in context.

Give students ample opportunities to practice each new word both in oral and written languages.

Look for cognates, or words from different languages that are related. For example, Spanish and English have many cognates ("information" /"información") and they are particularly common in terms related to academic content. Learning how to use cognates can bolster Spanish-speaking ELLs' comprehension significantly.

Discuss word families and how different forms of words are used. ELLs may need explicit instruction in which form of a word to use. Help students look for spelling and usage patterns, such as past tense verbs ending in "-ed." Since English has so many exceptions, this isn't always a foolproof strategy, but a basic knowledge of these patterns, rules, and spellings will help.

Related resources

Support academic language development

Academic language, or the language of schooling, is the language that students need to succeed in their content-area classes. It is important for educators and students alike to understand the differences between social and academic language and why textbooks, tests, assignments, or class presentations may be more challenging for students than social conversations.

There are a number of ways to support academic language development, such as:

previewing the text

teaching grammatical structures relevant to a particular content area ("greater than" and "less than" in math class)

showing how the targeted academic language is used in reading, writing, speaking, and listening in your content area.

For example, what is the difference between the language students use to write a science report vs. the language used in a class message board? Sharing examples and teaching specific phrases or structures, especially when they related to a specific content area, can be a helpful way to help students feel comfortable in multiple settings.

Dr. August also encourages educators to familiarize themselves with some features of academic language that may present challenges such as the following:

visual presenations of information, such as graphs, charts, diagrams, maps, and equations

figurative language

syntax, such as passive voice and complex sentences

nominalization, which refers to using a word that is not a noun as a noun or noun phrase (i.e., "the rich").

Collaborating with an ESL specialist can be a helpful way to start identifying areas of academic language where additional support would be helpful.

Related resources

Video: Instruction of Key Academic Vocabulary with High School ELLs

Video: Pre-teaching concepts and vocabulary before a lesson

ESOL specialist Katy Padilla shares more in-depth information about her "Super Secret Science Club," an informal lunch activity for 5th-grade ELLs where they see a preview of the afternoon's lesson.

Video: Bricks and mortar in language instruction

Dr. Cindy Lundgren discusses the concept of "bricks and mortar" when thinking about effective vocabulary instruction for ELLs.

Learn some additional strategies for scaffolding and differentiating instruction.

Scaffolding instruction means to put in place some supports that can help students access grade-level content. In addition, your students may be at varying levels of English language proficiency, and some differentiation might be necessary. It's ok to start small -- and remember that this is an area where an ESL teacher can provide some helpful ideas!

Some strategies for scaffolding and differentiating include:

If students are having trouble with an activity, try to identify whether a new concept, set of directions, vocabulary word, or other element is causing the difficulty. Identify some different ways that you can help students move beyond those obstacles. These might include providing a book about the topic in the student's native language or reviewing new vocabulary words together.

Video: Pre-teaching concepts and vocabulary before a lesson

Video: Using "realia" to build background

Use peer review and cooperative learning strategies

Using peer learning can be a powerful way to help students master content. Here are some ways to get students working together:

Use graphic organizers. Have students work in collaborative groups and use a graphic organizer as a scaffold for specific tasks, such as identifying main ideas or relationships between information, etc. It gives a purpose while reading while interacting and using the language.

Assign reading partners. Pair ELLs with friendly fluent readers. Ask partners to read aloud to each other, alternating sentences or pages. After partner reading, ask them to summarize what they read. For variety, use choral reading once in a while. Assign different sections to each team, ask them to rehearse, and then ask teams to read chorally.

Use Think-Pair-Share (TPS). TPS is a collaborative learning strategy in which students work together to solve a problem or answer a question about an assigned reading. This technique requires students to (1) think individually about a topic or answer to a question; and (2) share ideas with classmates. Discussing an answer with a partner serves to maximize participation, focus attention and engage students in comprehending the reading material. Read more in the following articles:

1. Increase Student Interaction with "Think-Pair-Shares" and "Circle Chats"

2. AdLit.org Classroom Strategy: Think-Pair-Share

You may also wish to look for ways to engage students through hands-on learning and project-based learning. Learn about other ways to effectively using cooperative learning strategies in these articles:

Consider how to incorporate different language skills into the lesson

When learning a new language, students need to master four key skills:

(Drs. Andrea Honigsfeld and Maria Dove note that they like the acronym SWIRL, which includes "interaction" in the list.)

You can learn more about these skills in What Language Skills Do ELLs Need?, as well as ideas for teaching these skills both in person and online in Teaching ELLs Online: How to Develop Students' Language Skills.

For example, you can support ELLs' writing skills by modeling the kinds of writing used frequently in your particular content area, such as lab reports in chemistry class, or a persuasive essay in social studies. Help students understand what the purpose of different kinds of writing are, and review vocabulary that would be typically used in these kinds of assignments. Be sure to provide examples of the different kinds of writing to your students so they can learn and compare models.

Review and assess what students have learned

There are many ways to review and assess content following instruction. For example, graphic organizers are a helpful way for students to demonstrate that they understood the concepts and content, even if they only use a symbol or write one or two words for each category. Graphic organizers can also be used as a pre-teaching or post-teaching strategy for introducing or reinforcing key concepts and how they are related. The more connections ELLs make to the overall content and organization of the content before reading, the easier it will be to focus on and understand what is important. When teachers and/or students use graphic organizers at the end of a lesson, this helps to reinforce and synthesize lesson content.

For example:

Related resources

Video: Using informal assessment with ELLs

In this video, Ms. Samantha Kirch demonstrates the ways she uses informal assessment to gauge student understanding, as well as the kinds of support offered to ELLs who need some extra practice with the concept of drawing conclusions.

Examples from the Content Areas

For examples of content-related lesson plans and strategies for ELLs, take a look at the following:

Closing Thoughts

Finally, we want to close with some thoughts from expert ELL educator and administrator Kristina Robertson. First, she encourages educators to only introduce one new thing at a time when teaching ELLs. And she reminds educators not to be afraid to go back to the drawing board if it doesn't go well the first time! While your lesson planning process may involve some trial and error, you will start to see positive results when you take ELLs into account in your planning. You will soon be on your way to planning lessons that engage, include, and support the ELLs in your class.

Video: Try one new thing at a time

Video: When new things don't work

Kristina Robertson shares her advice for dealing with strategies that just don't work.

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How to Develop a Lesson Plan that Includes ELLs

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In content-area classes, English language learners (ELLs) face a double challenge: they must learn language and content at the same time. In order to succeed in these classes, ELLs need the literacy, language skills, and background knowledge necessary to master that new content knowledge. One way to address that challenge is through effective lesson planning.

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Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas

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Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas

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by Judie Haynes and Debbie Zacarian

Mrs. Sokolov, a 9th grade social studies teacher, began a unit of study that corresponded with her state's curriculum standards requiring students to understand the role of citizens in a participatory democracy. She introduced the unit by engaging her students in an exploration of the civil rights movement. In planning the first day of the unit, Mrs. Sokolov gathered several articles that she had collected about President Obama, most of which mentioned the fact that he was the first African American to become president. Mrs. Sokolov figured that the best way to begin the unit was to read one of the articles aloud and ask her students to share their opinions about it. She jotted this idea down in her planning notebook. She planned to finish the opening lesson by asking students to identify key words that they would use to describe the significance of President Obama's racial background. This would be followed with a homework assignment to read a chapter from the course text about civil rights and prepare a list of related vocabulary words.

Thinking that her first-day lesson plan was complete, Mrs. Sokolov went to the teacher's lounge for a cup of coffee. While there, she told one of the school's ESL teachers, Ms. Tedesco, how she planned to introduce the civil rights unit. In response, Ms. Tedesco said, "Have you thought about the students who have never experienced what it means to live in a democracy? Many of your ELLs come from countries that are not democracies."

* * *

When creating activities to help ELLs connect to content, teachers should be sensitive to U.S.-specific elements that may seem unfamiliar to students from different cultures. We often take for granted that our students have prior knowledge about various people, places, things, and events. If a teacher has not activated prior knowledge or built background information about content material, teaching the vocabulary that is associated with the new content will not solve the problem. Just because ELLs may be able to read words doesn't mean they will understand their meaning in the context of the content being taught. Indeed, many of the ELLs in Mrs. Sokolov's social studies class were not familiar with the democratic process, let alone the specific language and content associated with it. The essential question that the school faculty had chosen for the year was, "What does it mean to live in a democracy?"

At first, Mrs. Sokolov thought that teaching her students about the uniqueness of having the first African American president was a good plan. However, when she began thinking more deeply about the key purpose of her task, she realized that it involved much more than understanding and being able to use vocabulary associated with fighting for one's civil rights. She thought carefully about what it was that she wanted her students to learn. She developed a guiding question that she would post for her students: "How do civil rights affect your life?" By organizing her unit around this question, Mrs. Sokolov believed that she would be able to create and deliver lessons that would require her students to learn about the historical time period of the civil rights movement, and she felt that her guiding question related well to the school's essential question.

We believe that adequate lesson planning must include the following steps:

1. Thinking about what we want students to learn,

2. Identifying methods of assessing student learning,

3. Identifying and addressing ELL-specific challenges inherent to the lesson,

4. Deciding how to activate prior knowledge and build background knowledge, and

5. Designing ways to explicitly guide ELLs as they practice using new language and content.

Teachers also need to think about the visual aids that will best aid comprehension, how to simplify the language of instruction, and how to deliver instruction that is targeted to both the English proficiency levels of students and their grade-level content.

Thinking Backward

Researchers Wiggins and McTighe (2005) point to the importance of "thinking backward"-that is, considering what it is that we want students to learn and how to assess it when planning learning experiences. When Mrs. Sokolov began to plan her lessons, she decided to change her guiding question from "How do civil rights affect your life?" to "What is a civil right?" to ensure that her ELLs understood the concept. Each of the activities that she designed was for the purpose of helping students answer this core question. She also began to think more deeply about the term "civil rights" and the ways in which she might modify the language of her lesson for ELLs without diluting the material. The more she planned, the more she realized that her lesson would be stronger for all of her students.

Specific Content Area Challenges for ELLs

Here are some of the distinct challenges in different content areas that ELLs face and that teachers should consider when planning lessons.

Reading

Many ELLs lack content area vocabulary and have limited comprehension skills in English. Although they may be able to sound out words phonetically, they may not be able to ascertain meaning from the context. English contains many idioms and figurative expressions that may be overwhelming to ELLs. Furthermore, the cultural background depicted in the text may be unfamiliar to ELLs.

Writing

Because many ELLs write through the filter of their native language, word order, sentence structure, and paragraph organization in English may be problematic. There are a plethora of exceptions to the rules in English grammar. In addition, students often lack the vocabulary that they need to successfully write in English.

Mathematics

It is important to remember that mathematical concepts are not necessarily universal. Math teachers need to validate the foreign systems of mathematics and prior mathematical knowledge that ELLs bring to their classrooms. Students may not show work in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, or may show such work in a different way. Concepts such as the Fahrenheit temperature scale and U.S. currency units may be unfamiliar to many ELLs. Teachers should also keep in mind that many cultures use commas where we use periods and periods where we use commas; for example, "1,067.32" would be written "1.067,32" in many countries around the world.

Science

English language learners may lack familiarity with the "hands-on" approach to teaching science that is common in the United States. Making predictions and drawing conclusions independently may also be difficult for ELLs. In addition, the vocabulary of science presents a difficulty to students who speak languages where there are no cognates. Directions often involve multiple steps and can consequently be difficult to understand. Science textbooks, which feature complex sentence structures and passive voice, can also prove challenging for ELLs.

Social Studies and U.S. History

Social studies and U.S. history may be the most challenging content areas for ELLs, who may have very limited background knowledge to activate. As with science, textbooks will often contain an overabundance of complex sentences, passive voice, and pronouns. Students may also be unable to tell what is important in the text. Even maps have a nationalistic or cultural focus: In China, for example, the continent of Asia is in the center of the map and China appears larger than it does on U.S. maps.

Language and Content Objectives

Echevarria and colleagues (2008) point to the importance of coming up with both language and content objectives for lessons to let students know what they are expected to learn. Language objectives refer to the specific vocabulary or use of language that teachers want their students to learn and use during a lesson. An activity related to a language objective might be as simple as, "Write two key ideas that your partner shares with you." For ELLs, the act of writing ideas must be taught explicitly. Content objectives refer to the subect matter information that you want students to know by the end of the lesson.

Mrs. Solokov wrote objectives for the entire unit in her planning notebook and shared them with students on a handout. During the unit, she wrote each day's language and content objectives on the board. For example:

Content objective: Today we will understand what a civil right is by listening to Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech.

Language objective: Today we will write down three civil rights that are mentioned in Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech.

Connecting Content to Students' Prior Knowledge and Experience

To help students to meaningfully understand and express their understanding of the content, it is important to connect the lesson's core ideas to students' prior knowledge and experiences. Mrs. Sokolov's revised plan includes asking ELLs to discuss with their parents the kind of government and rights that people have in their home countries. Her plan also includes modeling the interview process. Modeling the tasks that we assign and engaging in think-alouds benefits ELLs greatly, as does guided practice. Many ELLs are not familiar with the step-by-step process of completing a task in a U.S. classroom. When Mrs. Sokolov jots down her think-aloud plan in her planning notebook, she notes the steps that she will model with her students as she prepares for the interview.

Supplementary Materials

Teachers should identify and compile any supplementary materials for their lessons in advance. Although Mrs. Sokolov had many newspaper articles about President Obama, she had not assembled materials about the various types of inequality that her students could discuss. She went to the guidance counselor to learn more about where her students had attended school and lived, then researched and found several Web sites about the types of political ideologies common to these areas. She also selected Web sites that contained news clips from various important events in the fight for civil rights.

It is important to visually display both the language and content goals of the lesson. Goals should be written on the board, on chart paper, or on handouts. If they are written simply, they can greatly assist students. It is also a good idea to include pictures that realistically depict what is to be learned.

Field Trips

Some teachers take their students on field trips to see and experience the content, often as a culminating activity at the end of a lesson. We suggest scheduling field trips for the very beginning of a unit instead, so that students can draw from the experience later. A good example is the teacher who takes students on a trip to a nearby garden, where she helps the students pick weeds. Upon returning to the classroom, the students staple their individual plants onto a piece of cardboard and begin labeling the parts.

Open-Ended Questions

We believe that turning the core ideas that we want students to learn into open-ended questions and posting them on the board is an important aid for learning. Such visual representations are critical, because spoken language is fleeting; once we speak, our words can no longer be retrieved. Posting the core ideas as questions allows students to refocus, revisit, and rethink what is occurring. Mrs. Sokolov posted the following question in her room: "Are civil rights important in a democracy?"

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers offer students an important visual for examining the lesson's core ideas. We suggest that teachers use the same graphic organizer for similar tasks. A flowchart, for example, is used for describing a sequence of events. We also believe that all teachers in a particular grade level should use the same graphic organizers. Using similar graphic organizers throughout the school really helps ELLs comprehend the task at hand.

Planning Assessment

When planning lessons, teachers must think about the formative and summative assessments that they will use to determine that students are learning key ideas. In Mrs. Sokolov's case, she also needs to ensure that the language that she uses in her assessments matches the English proficiency levels of her ELLs. (See Chapter 7 for helpful information on creating effective assessments.) It is essential to know the level of English proficiency of each ELL in the class and create learning activities and assessments to match it. As noted in the previous chapter, these levels range from beginners with little to no proficiency to students who are nearly proficient.

Providing Multiple Practice Opportunities

Margarita Calderon (2007) suggests that students need multiple practice opportunities to truly "own" new vocabulary. It is our experience that students need at least 20 repetitions, if not more. To this end, Mrs. Solokov included paired and group work in her lesson plan, which she believed would help her students to practice the interview skills that they were to use at home. She wrote the group activities that she had come up with for the entire unit in her notebook and provided her students with a handout of the activities. Here is an example of a group activity that Mrs. Solokov designed:

Each group will

Create a short skit about one important event that occurred during the civil rights movement.

Find or draw illustrations depicting this event.

Create a list of the key terms, words, idioms, and phrases (TWIPs) that will be used during the skit.

Prepare to teach the vocabulary before presenting the skit.

Present the skit to the class.

Listen to other groups' skits and provide them with feedback based on whether the event was clearly described and key TWIPs were identified and displayed.

After completing her lesson plan, Mrs. Solokov reviewed it one more time to ensure that it was suitable for the various proficiency levels of her ELLs, ensured that the material would be explicitly taught, and provided a range of direct examples of how she wanted her students to use language to express understanding.

* * *

We suggest that classroom and subject area teachers complete the checklist in Figure 2.1 and the worksheet in Appendix 2 to help them modify lessons for ELLs. These modifications will benefit all of the students in the class.

Figure 2.1. Checklist for Modifying Lesson Plans for ELLs

□ Use graphic organizers.

In this chapter, we reviewed various planning strategies that are essential to teaching ELLs in the content area classroom. We discussed identifying core ideas and posting them in the classroom, tapping background knowledge, preparing visuals to use during the lesson, using think-alouds, and creating small-group configurations. We also discussed the importance of providing students with multiple practice opportunities to think and learn. In the next chapter, we will further discuss how teachers can use small-group configurations to help ELLs learn academic content.

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Lesson Planning to Ensure Optimal Engagement of ELLs

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by Judie Haynes and Debbie Zacarian Mrs. Sokolov, a 9th grade social studies teacher, began a unit of study that corresponded with her state's curriculum standards requiring students to understand the role of citizens in a participatory democracy. She introduced the unit by engaging her students in an exploration of the civil rights movement.

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Creating a Welcoming Classroom Environment

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Creating a Welcoming Classroom Environment

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Easy ways to reach and teach English language learners

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Easy ways to reach and teach English language learners

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Teaching ELL: Classroom Setup Strategies | Scholastic

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By using these suggestions, first-year teachers will be better able to keep ELL and EO students on track.

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Creating a Classroom Where Everyone Feels Welcome

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Creating a Classroom Where Everyone Feels Welcome

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A Classroom Where Everyone Feels Welcome

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Six strategies for building the strong relationships with students that are the heart of a culturally inclusive classroom community.

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What to do first: Creating a welcoming ELL classroom environment (Video)

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What to do first: Creating a welcoming ELL classroom environment (Video)

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What to do first: Creating a welcoming ELL classroom environment

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OKC Public Schools Language and Cultural Services

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OKC Public Schools Language and Cultural Services

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Guided by the Six Goals of Educational Equity, as outlined in the OKCPS Lau Plan, the Department of Language & Cultural Services is committed to student, teacher and parent success. Facets of our role in OKCPS include the creation and implementation of innovative and powerful instructional programs for English Language Learners, the crafting and delivery of robust professional development for educators working with culturally diverse students, interpreting and translation training and services, building school-parent/community bridges, engaging, educating, and empowering parents and families to be advocates for their children and decision-makers in the educational process, as well as providing other ongoing support to all stakeholders.

Why we do what we do:
To be an immigrant means everything is different. In America I have freedom. I came to America because I want a future. My future will have a good education, freedom and success. I am looking for the freedom. Because a long time ago I did not have freedom, I could not do anything I wanted. So, I needed freedom. Now, I live in America.
America is a free country. I love my life because I have freedom. I can do anything if I want. Good education if We are studious. Everyone who is students must have read the book and do homework at home. I want became a good student. I think I can. I will have success. I need to learn every day. I am new to America. Everything feels very hard to me. I want to become a good student. I will talk with everybody in America. I will learn English. I must have an education. My future will be full because I will have a good education, freedom and the success that goes with that. My future will be in America. Now, I am free in America. To be an immigrant means everything is different, thanks be to God.

From the essay Coming To America by Tin Le, Capitol Hill High School ELL Newcomer Program Student

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Language and Cultural Services / LCS Home

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Guided by the Six Goals of Educational Equity, as outlined in the OKCPS Lau Plan, the Department of Language & Cultural Services is committed to student, teacher and parent success.

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As of the 2016-2017 school year, Oklahoma's schools were home to more than 46,000 English language learners. As of the 2014-2015 school year, the most common five languages spoken by ELLs in Oklahoma were Spanish, Vietnamese, Cherokee, Burmese, and Hmong. (U.S. Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics)

Oklahoma is a member of WIDA (World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment), joining in 2006. WIDA is a consortium of states dedicated to the design and implementation of high standards and equitable educational opportunities for English language learners which offers states programming for identifying and annually assessing the English language development of its English learners.

State ELL Resources

State Agency: Oklahoma State Department of Education

ELL Website: Title III Web Site

Migrant Education: Migrant Education Program

ELP Standards & Assessment

ELP Standards: WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards

ELP Assessment: WIDA-ACCESS for ELLs

Statewide Standards-Based Assessment

Assessment: Oklahoma School Testing Program

Additional Information

NCELA: Title III Information

WIDA: Oklahoma Contact Information

Common Core State Standards: Yes
ESSA: Oklahoma ESSA State Plan AFT-Oklahoma
Statewide Organizations
Oklahoma Education Association
AFT Oklahoma is the State Affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers.
Oklahoma Parents Center
Oklahoma Education Association is a National Education Association State Affiliate that regularly lobbies legislators for the resources schools need, campaigns for higher professional standards for the teaching profession, and files legal actions to protect academic freedom and the rights of school employees.
Oklahoma TESOL (OKTESOL)
The Oklahoma Parents Center (OPC) provides services to Oklahoma families of children with disabilities, their teachers and other professionals.
Oklahoma: Seal of Biliteracy
Oklahoma Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Language is a professional association that offers opportunities to develop increased expertise to its members and others working toward the goal of teaching English to speakers of other languages and to nurture effective communication in Oklahoma's multicultural settings while respecting individual language rights.

Oklahoma is in the early stages of the Seal of Biliteracy and pilot programs have been launched in local school districts, such as Oklahoma City. The Seal of Biliteracy is an award given by a school, district, or state in recognition of students who have studied and attained proficiency in two or more languages by high school graduation.

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As of the 2016-2017 school year, Oklahoma's schools were home to more than 46,000 English language learners. As of the 2014-2015 school year, the most common five languages spoken by ELLs in Oklahoma were Spanish, Vietnamese, Cherokee, Burmese, and Hmong. (U.S. Dept.

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Advocating for English Language Learners through Culturally Responsive Approaches

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Advocating for English Language Learners through Culturally Responsive Approaches

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Language Learning

Any educator today will probably agree on these key factors for a successful school environment:

Student engagement and academic achievement.

Strong and proactive leadership.

An invested school community.

Many schools have taken steps to encourage growth in these areas for the general student population. Such initiatives often include family and curriculum nights, field trips, volunteer opportunities, class newsletters and weekly messages from administration.

I began my work as an ESL educator in a public elementary school where these traditional outreach initiatives were in place, with overall positive results for the general school population. However, I still saw many teachers and school leaders who perceived English Language Learners (ELLs) and their families to be "uninvolved' or "disinterested" in school.

Research has long showed that increased family presence and involvement at school leads to academic growth and more positive attitudes toward education for students. Most educators know this, but not all families can become fully engaged in their school community using traditional outreach methods alone.

The growing population of English Language Learners in public schools presents a unique set of needs and strengths that educators must address. ELLs and their families require strong advocacy schools to foster truly inclusive and supportive educational environments for all students. At my school, we began a targeted effort to advocate for ELL students on multiple levels, and saw positive results almost immediately. We advocated for our students in the classroom, with the support of our school leadership and through our community.

At my school, we began a targeted effort to advocate for ELL students on multiple levels, and saw positive results almost immediately.

Advocacy in the classroom

Supporting students from diverse language backgrounds begins in the classroom. On a very basic level, teachers must make use of interpretation and translation services available to ensure that all families have equal access to information. This alone, however, does not amount to advocacy.

To truly advocate for ELL students, educators must incorporate Culturally Responsive Teaching into their daily practice. Students should see themselves and their cultures reflected in classroom lessons and activities. When students feel that their own experiences are valued, their self-confidence and achievements can increase as a result.

As a result, our students felt pride in their backgrounds and languages, encouraging higher participation rates and language growth.

This can be accomplished more simply than many teachers realize. At my school, for example, we prioritized the availability of books and focus texts that included characters who had culture, experiences and backgrounds similar to our ELL students. As a result, our students felt pride in their backgrounds and languages, encouraging higher participation rates and language growth. The general student population received more globally focused instruction that led to greater understanding of their peers.

Advocacy in leadership

All actions taken to promote a culturally responsive environment within classrooms must be supported and promoted by school leadership. With higher-level supports in place, a school environment that truly values all its diverse populations can take shape.

Small steps taken by principals and office staff create positive impact on the school culture. For example, administration should enable teachers to collaborate by designing a school schedule that allows co-planning. With proper planning, instruction can be aligned for ELLs and other students who may participate in small group work outside the grade-level classroom, promoting higher levels of academic achievement. Leadership must also model proper methods of outreach through school-wide communications that are available in multiple languages if needed, stressing the importance of inclusion.

Advocacy in the community

Perhaps the most important component of advocating for English language learners is facilitating community involvement and empowerment. While crucial, this component is often missing from otherwise inclusive school environments.

In my school, difficulties with community engagement and outreach with ELL families was the result of a mutual sense of discomfort. While rooted in language difference, this hesitance to interact and truly engage ran much deeper. Without the ability to communicate with the school in English, many families wondered: how could they contribute? Without understanding the cultures and values of language-learning families, teachers and school leaders wondered, how could they reach out and include them in a meaningful way?The answer for us, it turned out, was quite simple: put the families in charge.

We established a Latino Parent Committee that met regularly to discuss school issues, make suggestions and organize events that would allow them to showcase aspects of their background and cultures. With a more visible presence of Spanish-speaking families, our community of language learners felt emboldened to participate and access the school more fully, motivated by the appreciation of different cultures. English-speaking staff and families also took part in these meetings and events, facilitating open communication and cooperation.

Our students today are increasingly unique, and our duty as educators is to embrace and value the diverse perspectives they bring to our schools.

Our students today are increasingly unique, and our duty as educators is to embrace and value the diverse perspectives they bring to our schools. True advocacy fosters a sense of community that is attainable and necessary, with the proper efforts put in place.

By approaching advocacy from these three perspectives, our school culture shifted noticeably. While the process was by no means immediate, growth was noticeable in the areas most important to our educators and our families:

Advocacy in the classroom using culturally relevant materials increased student engagement and academic achievement.

Advocacy in leadership led to a stronger and more supportive administration.

Advocacy in the community led to a more invested group of families.

I felt proud of the growth we made in these areas. With involvement from many groups on multiple levels, we laid the groundwork for a successful and inclusive school environment that has continued to grow and address the needs of ELL students.
For classroom resources and advocacy tips for ELL students, check out these resources: This collection will help students understand immigration and identity. These resources give you ideas for parent and family engagement.

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Advocating for English Language Learners | Blog | Participate

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Language Learning Any educator today will probably agree on these key factors for a successful school environment: Student engagement and academic achievement. Strong and proactive leadership. An invested school community. Many schools have taken steps to encourage growth in these areas for the general student population.