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https://www.continentalpress.com/blog/scaffolding-strategies-for-ell-students/

This scaffolding strategy helps students, specifically ELL students, with the ability to scaffold in regard to their speaking abilities. They all have tremendous potential benefits in growing students love and passion for speaking English as opposed to shaming them and potentially making them feel lesser! I think this is a key and important component to teaching, growing the student's love for the material as opposed to shaming them!

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Imagine that you and your family recently moved to a new country. You're trying to learn a difficult language that everyone around you already knows and adjust to a school culture that's much different than what you're used to.

You're already feeling overwhelmed, but to top it off, your teacher asks you to read a three-page article that's written in gibberish and complete five short-answer response questions all by yourself. Nervously, you get to work, but you aren't feeling very confident in yourself.

Unfortunately, the lack of support in this scenario is a harsh reality for many English learners.

English language learners (ELLs), like all students, certainly don't benefit from this type of "sink or swim" teaching. Rather, to be able to acquire new content knowledge and cultural understanding, English learners (ELs) require intentional and strategic instructional scaffolding. In this blog, we'll explore what scaffolding instruction means and provide five scaffolding strategies for ELL students that you should use in your classroom.

What is Instructional Scaffolding?

Before we answer this question, let's first consider what scaffolding is used for in construction. Scaffolds are temporary structures that construction workers use to support themselves and heavy materials as they complete a project, such as constructing a building or repairing a bridge. It helps crews access heights that they wouldn't be able to reach on their own and serves as somewhat of a safety net.

Educational scaffolds provide a much different type of support, but similarly to construction, they help students reach new heights that they can't do alone (metaphorically speaking).

In education, scaffolding is a teaching method where the educator helps support students to complete tasks just beyond the level that they could achieve by themselves. This technique stems from Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who developed a theory that children learn best when an adult helps them expand upon what they already know and can do.

His theory birthed the concept of a Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)-the area between what is known and unknown where students can achieve a task with guidance from a knowledgeable teacher. Over time, the teacher can gradually reduce their support until the students master the task themselves (like how the scaffolding around a building is torn down once a project is completed). Then, they're ready to move on to the next concept.

Rather than teaching concepts that are well beyond your students' understanding and simply pulling them along, your instruction should take place within their ZPD with appropriate scaffolds.

How Does Scaffolding Help English Language Learners (ELLs)?

Scaffolding instruction is beneficial for all students, but it's particularly essential for English language learners.

By breaking up new concepts into smaller chunks and using scaffolding strategies for ELLs, you'll make learning the English language less intimidating and help increase their understanding by gradually building upon what they already know. It also reduces frustration and helps ELs become more confident, motivated, and independent learners.

Let's look at some simple scaffolding strategies for ELL students that you can use to support your students' language proficiency.

5 Scaffolding Strategies for ELL Students

There are many techniques that you can use to support the English language learners in your classroom. Here are five of our favorite scaffolding strategies for ELLs.

1. Modeling

Most people learn best when they see or experience something rather than just hear about it.

Think about when you learned how to change a tire. Someone likely walked you through how to do it step by step while getting their hands dirty. Well, imagine instead that they just wrote out the steps on a piece of paper, or worse, just rattled off what to do and set you off on your own.

Learning words and concepts in a new language is a lot like changing a tire for your ELs. Therefore, whenever possible, you should explicitly show your students what they're expected to do rather than just telling them.

Think Aloud

A think-aloud session is a great technique to demonstrate how good readers make sense of a text and monitor their understanding as they read. Before having students read a passage themselves, the teacher should first read the passage aloud, stopping along the way to model their thoughts at points that may be difficult or confusing.

Some questions that you can encourage students to ask themselves during a think-aloud include:

What do I already know about the topic?

What do I think I'm going to learn?

Do I understand what I just read?

What more can I do to better understand?

What new information did I learn?

What were the most important points?

While you read, be sure to model how you're working with and thinking about the text to answer the above questions, such as rereading a tricky sentence or using context clues to make predictions. From there, you can have your students read the passage with a partner and practice the think-aloud strategy. Then, once they understand the process, ask the students to read the passage once more individually so they can process it internally.

Modeling for your students how to approach their thinking before, during, and after reading a text will not only help them become better readers but also become self-regulated learners.

2. Activate Prior Knowledge

For new concepts to sink in, they must be built upon prior understanding.

Think back to the tire scenario. To teach someone how to change a tire, you expand upon their previous knowledge of how a tire works. So, before you dive into a new topic or text, ask students to share their ideas and experiences related to it. This helps them connect content to their own lives and increases engagement.

Some commonly used scaffolding strategies for ELLs that activate prior knowledge include:

You may need to drop hints and lead students to make connections at first, but once they see the relevance in what they're learning, it'll start to become easier.

Like all students, English language learners need time to verbally process new information. Therefore, as an ESL teacher, it's important to incorporate frequent opportunities for your students to engage in structured peer discussions during your lessons.

Turn & Talk

Turn and Talk is a simple and effective scaffolding strategy for ELL students that promotes classroom interaction. Simply ask your students a question or provide them a prompt, then have them discuss with a partner. Give them enough time for both partners to contribute to the conversation and be sure to roam around the room, assisting as needed. Here's a short video that further explains how the Turn in Talk technique works.

The Turn and Talk is a total participation technique, where instead of calling on a few students to share their thoughts with the whole class, you're encouraging all students to think and share their thoughts. This technique also helps ELs feel more comfortable and confident sharing, as it's less intimidating than speaking in front of a large class.

There are several other total participation techniques that you can use, such as

By providing ample opportunities for students to interact and use the language they're learning, you're helping your students boost their language proficiency and their confidence.

4. Pre-Teach Vocabulary

Pre-teaching vocabulary, or frontloading vocabulary, is an incredibly effective scaffolding strategy for ELLs to help them tackle difficult texts.

Before your students read something new, you should always dedicate time for explicit vocabulary instruction of important terms within the text. By that, though, we don't mean simply asking students to pull out a dictionary, copy the definitions of ten words, and begin reading. This happens way too often in classrooms and, unfortunately, doesn't have a lasting impact on language acquisition.

Vocabulary Gallery Walk

Instead of relying on memorization, introduce vocabulary terms in a way that captures your students' interest and allows them to make connections. Print out photographs for each word and place them around the room, then have students do a gallery walk and use context clues to determine what they think each one means. After they're done, give them time to share their thoughts before providing the actual definitions.

To help them better understand each definition, you can also have students create drawings, make a short skit in groups, or simply get with a partner and take turns using each word in a sentence. Not only does pre-teaching vocabulary support your ELs' reading comprehension, but it also helps them learn how to use new words naturally.

5. Use Visual Aids

As we mentioned above, people often learn better by seeing rather than just hearing. This is especially true for English language learners, as visual aids help them contextualize information and build upon their prior knowledge. For that reason, you should use visual representations of new concepts as much as possible in your classroom, including:

It's important to note that visual aids should serve as a tool for learning rather than a product of learning. For example, a graphic organizer is often used as a scaffold to help students gather their thoughts (tool) to then write an essay (product). Over time, they won't need the visual aid to understand a concept or complete a task-sort of like training wheels for riding a bike.

Learning a new language is hard enough without having to do it alone. To ensure that your students achieve language proficiency and become well-adjusted to their new school culture, you must use scaffolding strategies for ELLs within your classroom.

Looking for more teaching tips and resources for your English language learners (ELLs)? Check out our ESL Resource Center!
Thank you to Melissa Miller, an ESOL teacher in Howard County, Maryland for consulting on this blog post. This blog was originally published on March 8, 2022. It was updated on March 10, 2023.

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5 Scaffolding Strategies for ELL Students

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Looking for better ways to support the English learners in your class? Check out these proven scaffolding strategies for ELL students!

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There are so many different scaffolds for writing assignments and each teacher probably has one or two favorites. But if you want to simplify your writing instruction, and make it as effective as possible, you're going to want to use the most impactful scaffolds for your instruction. After spending nineteen years in classes with more than 75% of my students English Language Learners, (ELL), I've settled on the scaffolds for learning that I found to be the most helpful.

In the next few paragraphs I'll show you some scaffolds in writing that you can do right away and incorporate into your teaching every day. At first you may need to choose one or two to use, but before long, these will become second nature to you. Personally, I can't imagine teaching without these scaffolds.

Mentor Sentences

The first and very powerful scaffold for writing is using exemplars of mentor texts and mentor sentences. We've all heard the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words." If you think about it, a mentor sentence is actually a picture of the apex to reach for in writing.

Artists learn at first by imitating the masters. It's no different in writing. Students who analyze mentor sentences and mentor texts understand what makes them exemplary. Then they have solid strategies to incorporate in their writing.

Focusing on one skill at a time is critical to make strong gains in an area. Again, in the analogy of an artist, if they want to learn how to create light and shadow in a painting, they'll be focusing on that one thing. Keep the one thing front and center as you scaffold for writing assignments.

For more information on this topic, check out my two blog posts on using mentor texts and using mentor sentences. You can also pick up a free, year-long template for a mentor sentence routine in the TeacherWriter Member Vault.

Sentence Frames

Sentence frames are a spectacular way to help early learners or English Language Learners in your class. A sentence frame could be something like these:

In the text the author states ______ because________.

I have three reasons why I believe _______. One is _____. Another is _____. Finally, _____.

The book titled ______ by ______ tells about ______. (This is a good one for using in book reports.)

One thing to remember about sentence frames scaffolds in writing is that you want to use them temporarily.

A scaffold for construction workers is only used during the building process. Then it's taken away so the beauty of the building can be seen.

Sentence Stems and Sentence Expanders

These are similar to sentence frames, but are less restrictive. Sentence stems and sentence expanders can be very fun and engaging for students. When you use a sentence stem, you give the students an open ended sentence to complete.

I love using sentence expanders as an interactive activity in a mini lesson. Once the students understand the gist of expanding sentences, they can do them independently. Here's a quick example:

The frog hopped.

The fat, green frog hopped. (The students add one or two adjectives.)

The fat, green frog hopped quickly. (Students add an adverb.)

The fat, green frog hopped quickly across the field of clover. (Students add a prepositional phrase.)

The fat, green frog hopped quickly across the field of clover to get to the pond.

Sentence expanding can be simple or complex. You can continue expanding and adding clauses or more descriptors. You can also stop with a simple sentence. This is especially useful in the early grades. One example of this is in this blog post, Using Sentence Starters for Writing Practice.

My Sentence Structure Worksheets pack gives you over 100 pages with many simple sentences for students to use as they practice. It includes lists of adjectives and adverbs and grammar tips.

Editing Checklists for Scaffolding Assignments

Have you ever had a student give you a blank stare when you asked them if they had edited their paper? Me too.

It took me a bit of time, but I finally realized that my students didn't know where to begin or how to edit. That was when I developed a system for editing for my students. It can be done in under 5 minutes. I shared it with you in this blog post about CUPS: Capitalization, Usage, Punctuation, and Spelling.

When the students have a quick and easy checklist, and they know what editing marks to use, or if they're doing it digitally, which highlighter bars to use, it becomes an automatic step in the writing process.

I consider this a scaffold for writing because it's a reminder of all the things they should be attentive to while they're composing a narrative or essay or any other genre of writing. Basically, it works like this:

1. Students use about 1 minute to read/scan their writing, and all they're checking for is capitalization. Nothing else. Anything that needs capitalization they should mark with the triple underline editing mark or with a colored highlight. They don't fix it at this point.

2. Next, for about one minute, students read the article for usage and grammar. If anything seems incorrect, they highlight it. They don't change or correct anything at this point.

3. Now the students spend about a minute reading their writing again. This time they're checking for punctuation. Do sentences have periods, question marks, or exclamation points? Are quotation marks and ellipses used when appropriate? Again, the students don't fix anything yet.

4. Finally, students take one more minute to read their writing again. By this time, they should practically have it memorized! All they're looking for now is spelling. If they are unsure if a word is spelled correctly they should circle it or highlight it, but not fix it. They should do the same for homonyms, such as their, they're, and there, or to, too, and two.

After finishing this 4-5 minute review of their work with a CUPS checklist, they're ready to make corrections. They can consult with their peers or a teacher about usage or spelling. They can consider how to add clarity to a sentence with their writing groups or alone. The students should spend whatever amount of time is reasonable to edit, revise, and finalize their document.

Scaffolding Writing with Technology (in apps)

Voice to text is a wonderful tool in Chrome and other apps and programs. The benefit of this is that students who struggle with keyboarding can speak what they want to write.

Have you ever had a student who struggled to write, but didn't have any trouble at all speaking his or her mind? Voice to text is for that student!

I remember the first time I sat down with a student to show him how to use voice to text technology. The classroom was busy with my worker bees, so when we went back to check his writing, it was full of random words that he hadn't said. He was upset and frustrated, but it turned into a perfect teaching moment.

We talked about how the microphone would pick up background noise as well as what he said, so now editing became a critical step in his writing process. He needed to go through and edit the writing with his CUPS checklist and read the text aloud to ensure it said what he really wanted to say.

This sounds simple, but let me tell you that it was monumental to him. After he learned how to use voice to text, he was no longer afraid of writing. He turned in stellar papers after that, and began to love writing. He had found a way to express himself without hurdles or boundaries.

I love this writing scaffold because it opens up a world of expression for students who previously may have felt muted.

Language Experience Approach

The language experience approach isn't new, but it's something that's still used because it's so effective. Reading some works by Stephen Krashen, a well known researcher in language development and acquisition, was the first time I heard about this approach.

Some of the pieces to this process include having a student created language experience. Word walls, personal dictionaries, small group discussions, and clear systems and processes are things to integrate in this approach. The Daily Writing Journal that I mention in Tip 7 integrates the language experience approach into daily quick writes.

You can find many scholarly articles on the subject in the ERIC database. Stephen Krashen also has written and made many videos about the subject. This article from a teacher professional development website d escribes five steps to follow when using this approach to scaffolding writing assignments. First, share an experience or develop background knowledge around an experience. Next, create the text together on chart paper or another method. Third, have the students read it aloud. They can decide on any edits or revisions it needs. After revising, have the students read it again aloud. Perhaps there will be more discussion about revising. Read it one more time. (I always say that three is the magic number in reading.)

Finally, an extension activity or exploration will top off this practice.

These are all strategies that are integrated and folded into all of my writing and editing assignments. Even my Hooray It's Your Birthday cards incorporate the language experience approach to writing. It's definitely something you'll want to consider and embed into your daily teaching practice. After you've incorporated it a few times, perhaps during read aloud time or morning meetings, you'll find yourself using this reading and writing scaffold effortlessly.

Daily Writing with Quick Writes

I post about my daily writing prompts several times each month on my Instagram account.

I use a calendar of days to find celebrations and observances that are interesting for students. Morning meeting or during a writing mini lesson is a good time to use these calendars. You can talk about the day, what students know about it, why it's important or interesting, and share other thoughts and opinions.

After the class discussion, everyone should have something to write about the topic. As a quick write it's perfect. In the beginning of the year, you might practice more collaborative writing, but as time goes on, the students will become more independent and eager to write on their own.

I've incorporated this daily quick write system into my Daily Writing Journals. I try to find age appropriate videos to share and those are included in the journals. Teachers have the option to preview the videos and choose how or if they want to use them. They can share them with the class, allow the students to view them independently, or they can delete the video from the journal if they want to do that. This part becomes a shared language experience.

Daily writing is a key scaffolding strategy. It takes practice with the process to finally gain independence. If you're wondering how to start a daily writing habit in your classroom, I shared some great tips in this blog post about having a cue, routine, and reward with daily writing.

[click_to_tweet tweet="As a teacher, you're building strong writers. So you'll want to gradually reduce the use of the writing scaffolds until students write without them." quote="As a teacher, you're building strong writers. So you'll want to gradually reduce the use of the sentence frames until the point when students have assimilated the skill and can create those sentences independently." theme="style3″]

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there are many more scaffolds for writing. These are seven of my favorite scaffolds. If you have a favorite that I didn't mention, please leave a note about it in the comments. I'd love to hear about it. You can also share it on Instagram and tag me or DM me.

P.S. Do you enjoy reading lists of helpful tips? Are you a teacher blogger? Whether you're a beginner, a not-yet-beginner, or a pro blogger, this post by my mentor Kayse Morris will give you seven actionable tips you can use right away. She says in the post, "Blogging is more than just words on a page." Find out why and see her advice in action!

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7 Best Scaffolds for Writing Assignments You Can Use Every Day - TeacherWriter 2023

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There are so many different scaffolds for writing assignments and each teacher probably has one or two favorites. But if you want to simplify your writing instruction, and make it as effective as possible, you're going to want to use the most impactful scaffolds for your instruction.

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There are many beneficial formative assessments in this article. I really liked the peer-instruction idea and the creative extension projects idea.

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23 Strategies to Scaffold During a Listening Activity

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23 Strategies to Scaffold During a Listening Activity

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This article lists the key steps (23) to take before, during, and after students listen to the teacher, a video, a book, or any activity that requires students to comprehend knowledge through listening. I found it to be very informative and detailed, and I think students would benefit from these tools substantially!

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The ability to listen effectively is dependent on a complex interplay between the listener, features of the text, and the context in which the text is being listened to. While listening comprehension requires a range of abilities on the part of the listener, it is also dependent on features of the text being listened to: pace, clarity, volume, technicality, density and use of visual supports.

Some of these can be controlled by the teacher if the teacher is the speaker. However, even when the teacher is not the speaker, for example, when students are watching a video, listening to a visiting speaker or a lengthy assembly presentation, there are still ways that teachers can support EAL students to be more effective listeners.

We list below 23 strategies which you can use for scaffolding your EAL students' listening and viewing.
Pre-listening/viewing

1. Prepare any visuals and other supports.

2. Build field knowledge needed for the listening task, activating prior knowledge.

3. Establish a context for the text students are to listen to or speak and revise understandings about the structure and the patterns of the text.

4. Explicitly teach the oral discourses that are valued in schooling and the community (eg how to ask questions of a guest speaker).

5. Co-construct with students note-taking frameworks.

6. Inform invited speaker about the students (eg background knowledge, language and age).

7. Ensure students are clear about what they are listening for and how they are going to go about it.

During-listening/viewing

1. Use the co-constructed note-taking frameworks.

2. Provide handouts with written and/or visual supports (eg print-outs of PowerPoint slides).

3. Use objects, demonstrations and other visual supports.

4. Provide relevant and everyday examples and analogies.

5. Stress and/or enumerate significant points.

6. Pause and repeat key phrases, rephrase key information, summarise key points.

7. Ask questions to gauge understanding: 'So can you explain what I have just said?'.

8. Record speaker's presentation so that students can listen to it again and/or view it again.

9. If showing a video, stop and pause at key points.

10. Model note-taking on the board during a video.

11. Use various multimodal resources at various points in the presentation.

Post-listening/viewing

1. Set up and facilitate group discussions.

2. Set up activities where students need to use in new ways the information gained.

3. Replay the presentation with specific focus questions.

4. Use the notes taken during listening to co-construct new frameworks for organising the information presented.

5. Model and co-construct the shift from notes to prose.

W ant to learn more strategies to scaffold your EAL students' learning? Check out our critically-acclaimed PD course, Teaching in English in multilingual classrooms.
© Lexis Education, All Rights Reserved

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23 strategies to scaffold EAL students' listening and viewing - Lexis Education

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The ability to listen effectively is dependent on a complex interplay between the listener, features of the text, and the context in which the text is being listened to. While listening comprehension requires a range of abilities on the part of the listener, it is also dependent on features of the text being listened to: [...]

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https://youaut-aknow.com/scaffolding-spelling/

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Are you ready to scaffold CVC spelling in your classroom? Scaffolding academic skills in the classroom looks a lot like how you teach functional skills. When scaffolding CVC spelling, I usually start with visual prompts so my students are successful. Then, I fade the prompts so students become independent spellers.

In this post, I'm going to share two ways that I scaffold CVC spelling activities for students in my classroom. These spelling techniques are great for my visual learners and have a strength in memorizing and rote skills.

Whole Word Spelling

Some of my students are able to learn to spell whole words at a time. In order to scaffold for these learners, I use CVC spelling cards where the students are shown how to spell the word. They match the word with letter tiles.

Once they are able to spell the word, I fade the letters to a lighter color. This allows students to match or trace letters to spell words. After that, I move to boxes as prompts. Doing this allows students to see how many letters are in the word, but they are not prompted with letters.

Finally, students are given a blank box where they can build or write CVC words. Check out this prompt progression I use with my students:

Partial Word Spelling

Some of my students learn better in smaller chunks. For these students I use a different approach. In this style of scaffolding, I start by providing a full visual model of the target word. Then the student builds or writes the word on their own.

After the student can spell the word when given a model, I start fading the letters in the word. For example, if we are learning to spell "cat", I would show them a model of __at and cue the student to spell the word. Now the student is given 2 letters as a prompt while remembering the third letter on their own.

Once they have mastered the first letter, I will present the model __ __ t and cue them to spell. I continue eliminating letters until there are no prompts remaining and the student can spell the word independently.

You can grab the spelling template I use here. I write my model on the line at the top and students build the word in the box below.

You're not limited to teaching CVC spelling with these scaffolding styles. I've taught students how to spell sight words with these prompting activities, too. You can even use them to teach students to spell their names.

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How to Scaffold CVC Spelling for Special Education - You Aut-A Know

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Are you ready to scaffold CVC spelling in your classroom? Scaffolding academic skills in the classroom looks a lot like how you teach functional skills. When scaffolding CVC spelling, I usually start with visual prompts so my students are successful. Then, I fade the prompts so students become independent spellers.

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Choosing a Task

The next way to support your struggling listeners is through the task. I mentioned above that the task is more important than the recording, which is why it's so important to be realistic with your expectations and to give your students the support they'll need to be successful.

Be Realistic: If I have a beginner-level class and I play them a segment from Good Morning America there should be no issue. However, if I ask them to listen to that segment and then give me their opinion on the issue that is discussed, I'm going to lose them.

Creating realistic tasks is one of, if not THE most important part of a listening exercise. Asking my students to give their opinion on the segment will require them to understand the words being spoken, comprehend the topic, connect it to their previous experience and knowledge on the topic, and formulate their own thoughts. That's a lot of work.

However, if I ask my students to simply tell me what is being discussed, it becomes a lot more attainable. They'll be able to use body language, vocabulary, tone, and visual cues to identify the issue that is being discussed on a show created for native speakers.

Listen for a Purpose: So, you have realistic expectations for your students, now you have to explicitly identify them and communicate them. If you show your students the Good Morning America clip with no context and no purpose, you'll receive blank stares when you ask your follow-up question.

Listening to something created for native speakers in your second language is an overwhelming task, especially when you don't know what you're listening for. Tell your students why they're listening, so that they're prepared to extract the data they need!

If you want your students to listen for the main idea (the topic being discussed or the hosts' feelings), tell them that! If you want your students to listen for a specific detail (the name of the celebrity or the date of the crime), tell them that!

Stay on Topic: If you've set a realistic goal and a purpose for listening, then stick to it. No curve balls, especially if your students are struggling with listening comprehension! The goal here is to strengthen your students' listening skills and provide them with the support they need to be successful.

If there are multiple things that you want your students to identify, split it up into multiple listening sessions. Listen once for the main idea, a second time for a specific detail, and a third time for the way the host pronounces a certain word.

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Supporting Struggling Listeners: 3 Ways to Scaffold Listening Exercises in the ESL Classroom - Everyday ESL

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There are three ways that you can support your struggling listeners and scaffold your listening exercises. The first is to support them through the recording that you choose or the materials that you make available.

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Diapers, training wheels, arm floaties. All three were a part of my childhood. The same is likely true for you and most kids growing up. They helped us navigate the world with some freedom while our bodies grew enough to manage without them. The same is true for instructional scaffolding as kids learn to read.

Scaffolding is one of those teaching buzzwords we hear a lot but seldom talk about. To put it simply: scaffolds are temporary supports we all need as our skills grow. Once our bodies and brains mature, we remove those supports and shift the focus of responsibility. It allows us to use skills we're not quite ready for as we move toward independence. The goal of scaffolding is twofold: to increase learning and to foster students' ownership.

Here are five proven instructional scaffolding techniques you can use in your classroom today.

1.Prior Knowledge

Accessing prior knowledge helps our students make connections between what they already know and what they're learning. A recent study of scaffolding strategies shows successful teachers using cognates to help their bilingual students as they came across new words. Other examples might be as simple as walking through the text together, highlighting text features, and asking students questions about what they see. The beauty of accessing prior knowledge is that it's an exercise everyone can participate in, regardless of their abilities.

2.Preteaching Vocabulary

Preteaching vocabulary is a scaffolding strategy mentioned a lot throughout educational research. Experts talk about the importance of being thoughtful when we select words. Choose words that are useful, connect with other topics you've been talking about, and bring more meaning to what you're teaching. This gives your students a better chance to understand what they're reading as they learn the content.

3.Visual Aids

As reading becomes more sophisticated, we can support thinking with diagrams, pictures, and graphs. As a scaffolding tool, visual aids are less about the destination and more about the journey. They serve as the bridge between what students think and what they may want to say or write. Visual aids are the vehicle that drives intangible thoughts to reality.

4.Modeling

Think of modeling as a supercharged show-and-tell, in that you show your students how to do something the right way. Processes, behaviors, language-you can use modeling for anything! But the key to effective modeling needs to include the telling part. It's important to show as well as explain exactly what is being done when you model for your students. Another tip is to give your students time to demonstrate in various scenarios. I guarantee you'll earn back the time you spend on this step.

5.Student Oral Expression

A final scaffolding strategy is to give students time to talk about and write about what they're learning. In separate studies, both Dr. Beth Maloch and Dr. Wendy Cumming-Potvin said we need to intentionally allow students to take more ownership of discussions during literature circles.

Normalize wait time so everyone has an opportunity to process new ideas and formulate their responses.

Give students a chance to talk about what they do and don't understand in the text.

Final Thoughts about Instructional Scaffolding

We want students to be independent readers who have ownership over their own learning. Instructional scaffolding supports student agency and, over time, helps our students learn to apply their skills with little to no teacher support. Ultimately, this is the goal: to create readers who use problem-solving strategies to better comprehend complex texts.

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5 Instructional Scaffolding Ideas | Curriculum Associates

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Try out these 5 proven instructional scaffolding techniques in your classroom! They allow students to use skills they're not quite ready for as they learn.

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Sentence frames are a great way for students to practice their writing skills. By having an option to fill in the blank or expand on a basic statement, ELLs are given some structure but also leeway for creativity as they write. There’s no pressure to get it all right if there is already something given to them. This scaffolding strategy is perfect for morning writing or journal work, but it can also be used across domains and into speaking. By having students speak using these frames, it helps give them a starting point for responses or conversations.

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Rooted Linguistics: Serving Teachers of Multilingual Learners

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Sentence Frames
Sentence frames essentially frame a sentence and students add in some verbiage. Think of a picture frame where you add in a picture. Sentence frames look very much like traditional fill in the blank sentences.

Here are some examples of sentence frames:

The square has ___sides/angles.

The ____has ___sides/angles.

The ___are the same/different.

Based on the experiment, I can infer that the ____will increase and the ____will decrease.

My name is_____ and I am ___years old.

The _____ revolted against the ____.

____ is north/south/east/west of ____.

___have ____, however, ____ have ____.

​Both ____ and ____ have ____.

Sentence frames are scaffolds that may fit the needs of English learners at beginning levels of English proficiency. Some students may also benefit from visuals and word banks.
However, sentence frames can be used with English learners at higher levels of English proficiency to teach specific language structures or to teach mortar words/tier II words.
Sentence Stems
A sentence stem is the beginning of a sentence. Think of the stem of a plant. It's not the whole plant, just the beginning of it. It helps students get their sentence started. Sometimes we use the term sentence starter interchangeably. Sentence stems give students the inertia to get their thoughts going. Then their sentences bloom.

Here are examples of sentence stems:

What surprised me was...because....

I think that...for example

First...then...next...

In my opinion....in addition...

Based on the passage, I can infer that...for example....

I don't understand why....

Based on the pattern, the numbers will...

Sentence stems are scaffolds for English learners at all levels of English proficiency. They are open ended.
Personalizing
By thinking of the end in mind, you can level and personalize sentence frames or sentence stems to help English learners progress in language proficiency.

Beginning-Simple sentence structure: ____and ___ are quadrilaterals.

Intermediate-Comparative sentence structure: ___and ___ are quadrilaterals, however ___has___.

Advanced-Complex comparative sentence structure: Although___and ___ are ___, ___is different because...

Why is it important for us to provide students with sentence frames or sentence stems?
Learning to communicate effectively is important for all of us. I think we can all agree on that. But providing students with vocabulary lists will not achieve that goal.

Backward Design
Let's begin with the end in mind again. What is our over-aching goal? If we want students to, let's say, understand and communicate effectively using domain specific vocabulary (vocabulary of our content area), then how will we get them there?

Students will need to hear the vocabulary in context (from the teacher and peers)

Students will need to use the vocabulary in context (in speaking and writing)

To set English learner up for success, we will provide them with linguistic supports that they may use until they no longer need them. Any student can use them, but English learners especially will benefit as they are learning English and content simultaneously.

1. We can begin by modeling the language we want students to use. We want students to hear the language structures and vocabulary over and over again.

2. Then we move to letting them use the vocabulary and language structures with partners. We provide them with sentence frames or sentence stems. They practice verbalizing and hearing a peer multiple times.

3. Finally, we move to writing. Students are asked to write. Some students will rely on the sentence frames or sentence stems as scaffolds. Others will be able to write independently. Either way, students will have had the opportunity to learn from the teacher, verbalized themselves, and heard from peers.

This model takes students through the Gradual Release of Responsibility or I do, We do, You do model.
How do I think of vocabulary?
Start with your grade level standard. Look at what students need to know. Whether it's Common Core or not, your state standards will reveal vocabulary that is critical for your students to master.

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Well, first and foremost, we should care if we want our students to speak like scholars. If we want our students to be marketable after they graduate. If we want them TO graduate! Then we should...

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Blog post: 6 Ways to Scaffold Writing for ELLs

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I really believe this link was informative, as it presented many ideas for scaffolding in writing. I specifically liked the model brainstorming and model writing process. Visuals definitely help ELLs see and understand the topics they are learning!

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Writing in school poses a unique challenge for ELL students. Beyond the obvious hurdle of using a new language, many ELL students come from oral cultures, so their writing experiences in general may be limited. Now inside English-speaking classrooms, they are expected to write up to grade-level standards while using unfamiliar words and grammar.

It should come as no surprise, then, when ELL students are reluctant to write. But you can change that. Through support and scaffolding, you can grow ELL students into capable, confident writers.

What practices grow confidence?

Although ELLs may lack writing experience, they don't lack experiences. Whenever possible, invite them to write about their own background, culture, interests, and memories. ELLs shouldn't be expected to write well about new subject areas without first having a chance to write about knowledge and vocabulary they already possess.

Next, adjust your expectations. Because of limited vocabulary and unfamiliarity with English grammar, ELLs' writing can be difficult to understand. Your first instinct might be to correct as much as you can, but that will make the situation worse. Overcorrecting overwhelms students and saps their confidence. Instead, read for, mark, and celebrate the "small" victories-incremental improvements that can be repeated in future writing.

You can help ELL students achieve more and more "small" victories through scaffolding.

What scaffolding builds competence?

ELL students benefit from scaffolding throughout the writing process. Start with these prewriting scaffolds, which help students build vocabulary, generate writing ideas, and understand common writing moves:

Mentor Texts

To introduce ELL students to a new writing activity, present simple models that students can emulate. Read through at least one model out loud, highlighting features or techniques you would like your students to practice.

Write-Aloud Models

After sharing mentor texts and reading models, talk through your own process for completing the same writing activity as students. Follow these steps:

1. Introduce the lesson by explaining what you are modeling and why.

2. Model brainstorming. Use a quick list or other graphic organizer.

3. Model your writing process. Explain what you are thinking as you write each part of a paragraph: a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence.

4. Allow students to follow the pattern of your model when they write.

Prefilled Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers help students gather and organize writing ideas prior to writing. ELL students may need extra time to fill out organizers effectively. By prefilling parts of the organizer, you save students time and introduce useful sentence models and high-frequency words they can apply to their writing.
See an example of a prefilled cause-effect organizer.
When students are ready to begin writing, introduce these scaffolds.

Sentence Frames

Sentence frames (or sentence starters) are partially completed sentences with blank spaces for students to fill in. Frames work well for students who struggle to write complete sentences or need practice with new sentence structures.

One of my favorite family traditions is ______________.

We always ______________, ______________, and ______________.

While other people may think ______________, the truth is ______________.
See a sentence-frame activity.
Paragraph Frames

You can integrate sentence frames into a larger paragraph framework for students to complete.

Traditions bring families together. One of my favorite family traditions is ______________. The tradition started when ______________. As a part of this tradition, we always ______________, ______________, and ______________. What I enjoy most about ______________ is ______________. For example, ______________. While other people may think ____________, the truth is ______________. I wish everyone could experience ______________ because ______________. I hope this tradition ______________.
See a paragraph-frame activity.
As the year goes on, make your frames less prescriptive, giving students more freedom to test out different sentence patterns on their own. The goal, of course, is for students to eventually write with no frames at all.

Signal Words

Experienced ELL writers may be ready for a less rigid form of framing. Instead of giving them a set of sentence structures to fill in, present a bank of related signal words as building blocks for a full paragraph.

A writing prompt might look like this:

Describe what your ideal classroom would look like. Include at least four location signal words somewhere in your description: above, below, near, between, on top of, under, beside.

How else can I use scaffolding?

Scaffolding, as shown above, is an essential component of any writing instruction-and not just with ELL students. You can and should use the same scaffolds with other reluctant writers. Through extra modeling and guidance, you help all students see that writing is something they are capable of doing and even enjoying.

Teacher Support

Consider this support as you help ELL students with writing.

Level

3-12

Learning Objectives

Use graphic organizers to gather details for writing.

Create different types of sentences.

Build paragraphs using different types of sentences.

Acquire and use grade-appropriate academic and domain-specific words and phrases.

Teaching Tips

When giving ELLs writing feedback, first highlight "small" victories. Show students what they are doing well.

When offering suggestions for improvement, focus on one skill at a time, particularly when it comes to grammar.

Give ELLs regular chances to reflect on their writing, asking what they're doing well in writing, what challenges they face, and what strategies help them work through problems.

Create opportunities for collaborative writing. When ELLs work with peers, they see how other students write, which often feels more authentic and achievable than writing produced by a teacher.

Check out additional writing support for ELL students:

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Blog post: 6 Ways to Scaffold Writing for ELLs

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Writing in school poses a unique challenge for ELL students. Beyond the obvious hurdle of using a new language, many ELL students come from oral cultures, so their writing experiences in general may be limited. Now inside English-speaking classrooms, they are expected to write up to grade-level standards while using unfamiliar words and grammar.

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5 Scaffolding Strategies for ELL Students

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Sadie Voyles- Turn and Talk, among other methods

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Sadie Voyles- Turn and Talk, among other methods

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Many of these strategies mentioned here involve classroom interaction with peers. Scaffolding can also occur among classmates, and this link explains how to do so. I specifically liked the turn and talk and participation techniques through games and other methods mentioned here.

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Imagine that you and your family recently moved to a new country. You're trying to learn a difficult language that everyone around you already knows and adjust to a school culture that's much different than what you're used to.

You're already feeling overwhelmed, but to top it off, your teacher asks you to read a three-page article that's written in gibberish and complete five short-answer response questions all by yourself. Nervously, you get to work, but you aren't feeling very confident in yourself.

Unfortunately, the lack of support in this scenario is a harsh reality for many English learners.

English language learners (ELLs), like all students, certainly don't benefit from this type of "sink or swim" teaching. Rather, to be able to acquire new content knowledge and cultural understanding, English learners (ELs) require intentional and strategic instructional scaffolding. In this blog, we'll explore what scaffolding instruction means and provide five scaffolding strategies for ELL students that you should use in your classroom.

What is Instructional Scaffolding?

Before we answer this question, let's first consider what scaffolding is used for in construction. Scaffolds are temporary structures that construction workers use to support themselves and heavy materials as they complete a project, such as constructing a building or repairing a bridge. It helps crews access heights that they wouldn't be able to reach on their own and serves as somewhat of a safety net.

Educational scaffolds provide a much different type of support, but similarly to construction, they help students reach new heights that they can't do alone (metaphorically speaking).

In education, scaffolding is a teaching method where the educator helps support students to complete tasks just beyond the level that they could achieve by themselves. This technique stems from Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who developed a theory that children learn best when an adult helps them expand upon what they already know and can do.

His theory birthed the concept of a Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)-the area between what is known and unknown where students can achieve a task with guidance from a knowledgeable teacher. Over time, the teacher can gradually reduce their support until the students master the task themselves (like how the scaffolding around a building is torn down once a project is completed). Then, they're ready to move on to the next concept.

Rather than teaching concepts that are well beyond your students' understanding and simply pulling them along, your instruction should take place within their ZPD with appropriate scaffolds.

How Does Scaffolding Help English Language Learners (ELLs)?

Scaffolding instruction is beneficial for all students, but it's particularly essential for English language learners.

By breaking up new concepts into smaller chunks and using scaffolding strategies for ELLs, you'll make learning the English language less intimidating and help increase their understanding by gradually building upon what they already know. It also reduces frustration and helps ELs become more confident, motivated, and independent learners.

Let's look at some simple scaffolding strategies for ELL students that you can use to support your students' language proficiency.

5 Scaffolding Strategies for ELL Students

There are many techniques that you can use to support the English language learners in your classroom. Here are five of our favorite scaffolding strategies for ELLs.

1. Modeling

Most people learn best when they see or experience something rather than just hear about it.

Think about when you learned how to change a tire. Someone likely walked you through how to do it step by step while getting their hands dirty. Well, imagine instead that they just wrote out the steps on a piece of paper, or worse, just rattled off what to do and set you off on your own.

Learning words and concepts in a new language is a lot like changing a tire for your ELs. Therefore, whenever possible, you should explicitly show your students what they're expected to do rather than just telling them.

Think Aloud

A think-aloud session is a great technique to demonstrate how good readers make sense of a text and monitor their understanding as they read. Before having students read a passage themselves, the teacher should first read the passage aloud, stopping along the way to model their thoughts at points that may be difficult or confusing.

Some questions that you can encourage students to ask themselves during a think-aloud include:

What do I already know about the topic?

What do I think I'm going to learn?

Do I understand what I just read?

What more can I do to better understand?

What new information did I learn?

What were the most important points?

While you read, be sure to model how you're working with and thinking about the text to answer the above questions, such as rereading a tricky sentence or using context clues to make predictions. From there, you can have your students read the passage with a partner and practice the think-aloud strategy. Then, once they understand the process, ask the students to read the passage once more individually so they can process it internally.

Modeling for your students how to approach their thinking before, during, and after reading a text will not only help them become better readers but also become self-regulated learners.

2. Activate Prior Knowledge

For new concepts to sink in, they must be built upon prior understanding.

Think back to the tire scenario. To teach someone how to change a tire, you expand upon their previous knowledge of how a tire works. So, before you dive into a new topic or text, ask students to share their ideas and experiences related to it. This helps them connect content to their own lives and increases engagement.

Some commonly used scaffolding strategies for ELLs that activate prior knowledge include:

You may need to drop hints and lead students to make connections at first, but once they see the relevance in what they're learning, it'll start to become easier.

Like all students, English language learners need time to verbally process new information. Therefore, as an ESL teacher, it's important to incorporate frequent opportunities for your students to engage in structured peer discussions during your lessons.

Turn & Talk

Turn and Talk is a simple and effective scaffolding strategy for ELL students that promotes classroom interaction. Simply ask your students a question or provide them a prompt, then have them discuss with a partner. Give them enough time for both partners to contribute to the conversation and be sure to roam around the room, assisting as needed. Here's a short video that further explains how the Turn in Talk technique works.

The Turn and Talk is a total participation technique, where instead of calling on a few students to share their thoughts with the whole class, you're encouraging all students to think and share their thoughts. This technique also helps ELs feel more comfortable and confident sharing, as it's less intimidating than speaking in front of a large class.

There are several other total participation techniques that you can use, such as

By providing ample opportunities for students to interact and use the language they're learning, you're helping your students boost their language proficiency and their confidence.

4. Pre-Teach Vocabulary

Pre-teaching vocabulary, or frontloading vocabulary, is an incredibly effective scaffolding strategy for ELLs to help them tackle difficult texts.

Before your students read something new, you should always dedicate time for explicit vocabulary instruction of important terms within the text. By that, though, we don't mean simply asking students to pull out a dictionary, copy the definitions of ten words, and begin reading. This happens way too often in classrooms and, unfortunately, doesn't have a lasting impact on language acquisition.

Vocabulary Gallery Walk

Instead of relying on memorization, introduce vocabulary terms in a way that captures your students' interest and allows them to make connections. Print out photographs for each word and place them around the room, then have students do a gallery walk and use context clues to determine what they think each one means. After they're done, give them time to share their thoughts before providing the actual definitions.

To help them better understand each definition, you can also have students create drawings, make a short skit in groups, or simply get with a partner and take turns using each word in a sentence. Not only does pre-teaching vocabulary support your ELs' reading comprehension, but it also helps them learn how to use new words naturally.

5. Use Visual Aids

As we mentioned above, people often learn better by seeing rather than just hearing. This is especially true for English language learners, as visual aids help them contextualize information and build upon their prior knowledge. For that reason, you should use visual representations of new concepts as much as possible in your classroom, including:

It's important to note that visual aids should serve as a tool for learning rather than a product of learning. For example, a graphic organizer is often used as a scaffold to help students gather their thoughts (tool) to then write an essay (product). Over time, they won't need the visual aid to understand a concept or complete a task-sort of like training wheels for riding a bike.

Learning a new language is hard enough without having to do it alone. To ensure that your students achieve language proficiency and become well-adjusted to their new school culture, you must use scaffolding strategies for ELLs within your classroom.

Looking for more teaching tips and resources for your English language learners (ELLs)? Check out our ESL Resource Center!
Thank you to Melissa Miller, an ESOL teacher in Howard County, Maryland for consulting on this blog post. This blog was originally published on March 8, 2022. It was updated on March 10, 2023.

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5 Scaffolding Strategies for ELL Students

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Looking for better ways to support the English learners in your class? Check out these proven scaffolding strategies for ELL students!

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Scaffolding Techniques for English Language Learners: Part 1 - Center for the Collaborative Classroom

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Sadie Voyles- Verbal and Procedural Scaffolds

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Sadie Voyles- Verbal and Procedural Scaffolds

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These technique requires listening skills. Through listening, the teacher can infuse scaffolding to encourage further learning.

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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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This scaffolding strategy is a great way to increase oral language both in a whole group and in a small group. Because of the collaboration among students, this increases speech through communication and it helps students to practice their spech through answering a question aloud. This scaffolding strategy is organized by splitting the class into collaborative groups and then having each group answer a question. The twist is that each studnet in the group is numbered and the teacher spins a wheel and every number in each group stands up to answer the question.

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In this series, we discuss Student Interaction Routines, which are task-based strategies that help ensure each student has abundant strategic practice using new language for meaningful purposes. Developing a robust wheelhouse of interaction routines enhances student engagement and increases productive talk time.
Numbered Heads Together is a small-group interaction routine in which students practice negotiating language by generating multiple responses to a prompt. In their groups, students share ideas, listen to one another's ideas, and share out what they talked about. This activity can be used to generate multiple responses or to collaboratively agree on a common response.

The beauty of this routine is that it increases accountability for all students. They feel positive peer pressure to participate and represent their team's best thinking. This motivates students to listen closely, ask questions, and explain their reasoning clearly.

As with other interaction routines, model the activity and language structures. Consider using Discussion Cards for Pose a Question, Build on an Idea, and/or Challenge an Idea to support students as they collaborate on their responses.

Students form small groups by numbering off, 1-4.

The teacher provides think/talk/write time for students to discuss a prompt. Depending on the performance task, they generate multiple credible responses or come to agreement on a response. Students may chart their ideas, log their summaries, etc.

Using a spinner, drawing a number card, or rolling a die, the teacher randomly calls a number from 1 to 4.

All students with the selected number must stand and share their group's thinking using a public speaking voice.

Mix it up! Once a number has shared, rearrange groups. Call twos together, number that group 1-4, and have them respond to another prompt. The shuffling keeps students moving and working with more classmates, which makes the routine feel like a game.

This blog is one in a series on Student Interaction Routines. Read the additional installments: Growing English Proficiency: What's Practice Got to Do with It? Growing English Proficiency: Talking Stick
Growing English Proficiency: Lines of Communication
This blog was previously published with the title, "Blog Series: Empowering students to grow their language - Collaboration Adds Up: Numbered Heads Together." Susana Dutro, Co-founder and CEO
Donna Smith, Director of Research and Communications and District Support Lead
Find more details on Numbered Heads Together and other interaction routines in the Cue Card Booklet.

Visit the E.L. Achieve blog regularly for details on different routines and creative variations you can use with your students.

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Growing English Proficiency: Numbered Heads Together

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In this series, we discuss Student Interaction Routines, which are task-based strategies that help ensure each student has abundant strategic practice using new language for meaningful purposes. Developing a robust wheelhouse of interaction routines enhances student engagement and increases productive

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This resource has scaffolding methods for writing, speaking, and listening; however, I found the listening strategies the most interesting. I use these strategies to help my students at the YMCA learn to swim. For example, we play "Simon Says" and it allows the kids to engage in the activity and build awareness of what they are doing. This also helps them follow multi-step directions. For ELLs, it is important to remember that they have to learn how to complete multi-step directions in their non-native language, so the fun listening games listed on this website are a great way for ELLs to feel less intimidated.

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Every student learns a little differently. This is especially true when it comes to ELLs who may struggle to sit through a lesson or reading they simply can't understand. As an ELL teacher, you'll need to find engaging and educational activities that help students learn the curriculum and grow social skills.

Luckily, there are hundreds of creative vocabulary, writing, listening, and speaking activities for ELLs to choose from. We've compiled some of our favorite tried-and-true activities for ELLs that get students excited about learning. While not every activity will be appropriate for your students' age group or fluency level, many of these activities can work in your classroom with modifications. Just remember - you know your students best, so choose (and adjust) the activities that work best for your classroom!

Vocabulary Activities for ELLs

ELL newcomers must build their English vocabularies quickly and exponentially. Additionally, ELLs need support in developing mastery of academic language. Here are some of our favorite in-context and isolated vocabulary activities for ELLs.

Previewing Text - Before reading, have students scan the text for words or phrases they don't know. Create a list on the board and then work together as a class to see how many you can define based on context clues and prior knowledge. You may want to create a vocabulary word wall so that students can reference these terms. Celebrate the process of discovering new words and understanding their meanings.

Word Bingo - If you have a large amount of vocabulary to cover at once, try playing word bingo. Call out the words to practice recognition, and as your students' understandings grow, you can call out definitions or fill-in-the-blank sentences to check for comprehension as well. In order to check their winning board, students must read back the words they've marked. Games like bingo can also help students build confidence in their pronunciation alongside other listening and speaking activities for ELLs.

Mad Libs - This simple game is a great way to test word recognition and teach definitions at the same time. Create a paragraph of text using your vocabulary words. Then, remove either the vocabulary words themselves or the context clues around them. Students take turns filling in the words or the context clue words that reveal their definitions.

Picture Dictionary - Picture dictionaries are a great classroom resource, but having students create their own picture dictionaries is one of the best vocabulary activities for ELLs. Provide a template with words in place and then offer drawing materials, magazine clippings, clip art, or even a camera to help students create images that will help them remember each word. Since they choose what to draw and how to draw it, they'll be more likely to create personal connections with each word, assisting with vocabulary retention.

Categorizing and Connecting - Appropriate for all levels of ELLs, categorizing vocabulary and showing connections among words is easy and effective. Give students familiar and new vocabulary words in whatever platform you'd like. Students should categorize the words according to what makes sense to them. You can pair it with discussions or short writing activities. Throughout the unit, build upon the vocabulary and have students repeat the activity as many times as you'd like as a formative assessment. By the end of the unit, students should be able to make connections and categorize the vocabulary for the unit. This is a great way to scaffold a large writing or speaking assignment and can be modified for newcomers with the use of pictures.

Writing Activities for ELLs

In addition to listening and speaking activities for ELLs, writing is less time-depending and therefore offers unique opportunities to build vocabulary in context and demonstrate critical thinking. For many, writing activities for ELLs are one of the best ways to check their understanding without the pressure of speaking in front of the class. Here are some of our favorite writing activities for ELLs.

Social Media Writing Prompts - Social media prompts are a great way to make writing more fun and engaging for students. Ask them to summarize a story they read in five "tweets" or short sentences. Provide photos and ask them to write an "Instagram" caption for each. The possibilities are endless and students love the tie-in to social media.

Write an Advertisement - Ask students to bring in a favorite object (or a photo of it) and then write an ad that tells the class why they should buy one, too. This is a great way to introduce persuasive writing and allow students to share their passions and hobbies with the class.

Practicing Proofreading - Proofreading can be stressful for students because they are often asked to correct another student's work and identify errors on their own. Instead, create a writing sample yourself and ask for your students' help as a class to take turns finding mistakes and correcting them.

The "New" Student - This is one of the best writing activities for ELLs because it also tests their understanding of classroom rules and procedures. Tell the class you want to compile a list of tips for an imaginary new student joining the class. Then, ask each student to create a list, letter, or idea web of everything they think the new student should know. Review the final list as a class to reinforce any classroom procedures that still need practice.

Listening Activities for ELLs

Listening is one of the most essential skills students will need to develop to find success in the classroom. Listening activities test cognition, retention, and their ability to follow instructions. Check out these engaging and interactive listening activities for ELLs.

Simon Says - This classic game is fun and practical. It can be played traditionally or with classroom-oriented instructions like "Simon says pick up your red marker" to practice relevant vocabulary. You can also extend the game by adding flashcards.

Two Truths and a Lie - Students come up with three statements about themselves, including two true statements and one false. The other students discuss and choose which is the lie. This game can be played in pairs, small groups, or as a class. You can also provide groups of three statements about a current topic in the classroom.

Back-to-Back Interview - This game is one of our favorite listening and speaking activities for ELLs because it eliminates facial expressions and gestures, forcing students to truly rely on their listening skills. Students sit in pairs, facing away from one another. One student is the interviewer and asks the other student questions to learn more about them. Then the students switch. Once both students have been interviewed, they share what they learned about the other student with the class. This game can also be played where you or a student play as a book character or celebrity and the other students have to figure out who you are.

Flashcard Games - These games can be especially helpful with tricky vocabulary sets like minimal pairs. Students lay out a set of flashcards on their desk and listen carefully for the word the teacher calls out or uses in a sentence. Color code your flashcards for a quick way to check the class's answers.

I Spy/Scavenger Hunt - Instead of giving an object or a color, start by giving students phonemes or letter sounds (e.g. I spy something that starts with "ch"). You can then follow up with additional clues about the object until the class finds it.

Long-Form Listening - In addition to short-form listening and speaking activities for ELLs, offer your students audio options during silent reading time as well. Audiobooks, podcasts, and even kids-oriented news shows provide engaging listening for ELLs of all ages and skill levels. Follow up the listening with a discussion or questions to check for comprehension.

Speaking Activities for ELLs

Speaking in front of the class can be difficult for many students, so fun and engaging listening and speaking activities for ELLs can make a big difference in the classroom. Here are a few of our favorite ideas to get your students talking.

Question of the Day - This speaking activity for ELLs is a perfect option for morning work as students arrive. Each day, choose a simple, silly, or strange question and have students answer it as they enter the classroom. This is a great activity even for ELL newcomers since all eyes won't be on them, and you have the option to ask follow-up questions or continue the conversation as much or as little as you want to.
To make this activity even more newcomer-friendly, offer a handful of questions all week long and allow students to choose the question they want to answer each day. This way they can get to know the questions better and practice their answers over time.

Desert Island - In pairs, small groups, or as a class, students take turns choosing an object in the room. The next student has to come up with a way to use the object to survive on a desert island. There are no wrong answers, which can take some of the pressure off of speaking in front of the class. For another fun twist on this activity, have students role play and pretend to be a character instead of themselves, explaining how the character might use the item in their story.

Mini Debates - Create a list of opinions you want the class to weigh in on. They can be related to a recent lesson or reading, or something random like "purple is the best color." Create two groups: one to make an argument for your statement, and one to make an argument against. This is a great way of teaching persuasive speech and also helping ELLs learn to think on their feet. It can also be an exercise in empathy since the student may not agree with the stance they're given.

Similarities and Differences - Students pair off (or turn to the student next to them) and take turns asking questions until they discover one commonality and one difference between them. Then the students take turns sharing with the class. In addition to being a great speaking activity for ELLs, this is also a good way to explore and celebrate cultural differences in your classroom.

Songs, Rhymes, and Responses - Especially for ELL newcomers, speaking in front of the class can be daunting. Group speaking can help take the pressure off, so don't be afraid to experiment with different formats like songs, rhymes, and "call and response" to get ELLs speaking. Whatever you choose, use it often to help students learn and memorize their parts.

Thank you to Ellen Richardson, an ELL teacher at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Lancaster, PA for consulting on this blog post. This blog was originally published on May 28, 2021. It was updated on January 19, 2023.

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Writing, Listening, and Speaking Activities for ELLs | Continental

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Every student learns a little differently. This is especially true when it comes to ELLs who may struggle to sit through a lesson or reading they simply can't understand. As an ELL teacher, you'll need to find engaging and educational activities that help students learn the curriculum and grow social skills.

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Kaylee Norman -Writing Strategies for ELLS

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Kaylee Norman -Writing Strategies for ELLS

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Scaffolding Writing Instruction for English-Language Learners (weareteachers.com)
Here are some strategies that can help you set up you ELLs for success in writing :)

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This article is the second in a two-part series on supporting ELL literacy, sponsored by Middlebury Interactive Languages. Click here to read the first post in the series.
In recent years, many schools have raised the bar on writing instruction. We now expect middle and high school students to do the kind of written analysis and critique that was once limited to the college classroom.

When you teach English-language learners (ELLs), the concern is that this kind of increased expectation can lead to an even wider achievement gap. That's why we recently asked educators in our WeAreTeachers Helpline group to share their best tips for scaffolding writing instruction for ELLs at the secondary level. Here's what they had to say:

1. Consider writing in their native languages: If your students are at "entering" or "beginning" WIDA levels, you might consider allowing them to write in their native languages and then to use a translator app or tool to interpret their work. Be sure to spend some time comparing the two versions side by side so that students can begin to see what their ideas and thought processes look like in English.

2. Use dictation: "I have students use Dragon Dictation to dictate their responses out loud," says teacher Erin M. "Then I work with the students to teach them to group topics together into paragraphs and to use a dictionary and thesaurus to add detail words."

3. Review writing prompts: "I give ELL students the same writing assignments as the rest of the kids, but I make sure to define any unfamiliar words in the prompt itself," says Emily B. Do a verbal check for understanding before students start writing to avoid confusion and frustration down the road.

4. Give students sentence stems: It's a good idea to give students sentence stems and phrases for the different types of writing you will be doing all year long. So provide a narrative-writing word bank, an argumentative word bank and an informational word bank, for example.

5. Encourage outlining: If writing full sentences is a challenge, encourage outlining as a first step. "I had a student who couldn't write a paragraph in 11th grade," says Lauren P. "So I gave him the same assignments but had him bullet-point his ideas. We then worked one-on-one to form sentences. We started with just one well-developed paragraph, but as the year progressed, he'd write a little more."

6. Provide models from literature: "For example," says Erin. M., "if we were writing a reflective piece, I would show them paragraphs or selections from favorite books or articles that were reflective to use as examples for structure and even word use."

7. Try the four-square writing method: In this model, students simply divide a piece of paper into four sections to use as a graphic organizer for persuasive or informational writing. They write their topic/argument at the center and then one reason or claim with supporting details in each of the four boxes. As students progress, you can encourage them to add more details and evidence to their graphic organizers.

8. Grade selectively: Choose one or two skills that you want to target for each writing assignment, and focus the majority of your grading and commentary on those skills. For English-language learners, sometimes those skills might be about language acquisition (e.g., vocabulary, syntax), and other times, you might want to focus on a deeper understanding of writing (e.g., argument building).

Want more support for your English-language learners? Learn more about Middlebury Interactive Languages' exciting new curriculum focused on closing the ELL achievement gap.

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This article is the second in a two-part series on supporting ELL literacy, sponsored by Middlebury Interactive Languages. Click here to read the first post in the series. In recent years, many schools have raised the bar on writing instruction.

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This resource gives great ideas for teachers when it comes to scaffolding reading for their ELLs. It suggests using color, breaking up text, inserting synonyms and symbols, among other things.

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We've all been there: You're preparing for a new lesson, with standards-related content to teach your students. You've got great activities lined up...but you can't locate text for your English learners that is relevant AND on a reading level they can access. You think you could probably track down a sort-of-relevant book for early readers. But you have a feeling it is not going to sufficiently get across the content. You don't have time to go hunting on the internet for that "just right" text, and couldn't afford the expensive differentiated book set on the topic. This is a common and often frustrating position to find yourself in, but there is good news! English learners can often have a positive learning experience with grade-level text, and get some instructional "meat" out of it. They just need the text to be presented in a way that supports their comprehension. I'm here to share how to scaffold for ELLs so they can interact with your grade-level text and participate in learning.

These strategies aren't too hard to put into practice in your classroom! Don't try to do them all at once, of course. Choose one or two to try out the next time you have some important text to present to your class.

Text Accessibility Strategies for ELLs

So you might be about to read from a textbook as a class, or giving a reading passage to teach about a science or social studies topic. Maybe you're modeling how to write a letter or an opinion paper. Perhaps you're simply writing your content and language objectives on the board. With your English learners always in mind, you may be already in the habit of considering with each text that shows up in the classroom: Is this comprehensible to my ELLs? What strategies for ELLs might be beneficial here?

The thing is, they already have some cognitive assets that they've been using already to make sense of words on a page. They are constantly making connections to familiar words, contextual clues, synonyms, and cognates. There may be some things that their home language has in common with English, and they may already have locked in on some patterns. When confronted with a grade-level text, our ELLs can put these assets together with our scaffolds to get the most out of the reading. With time, they will need fewer scaffolding as their English proficiency grows. No, they may not understand grade-level texts 100% right now. But if you're in a bind and those texts are all you've got, can we agree that it's worth doing our best to help them gain some new understandings from it? Here are some ways it's possible.

Use Color

One of my favorite strategies for ELLs is the purposeful use of color in text. There are many possibilities. You can add color to set apart:

Parts of speech

Key vocabulary

Parts of a word, sentence, paragraph, or whole text

Rhyming words

Academic vocabulary

Characters or characters' actions

Important details or information

Important components of activity instructions

Key words in assessment questions

Topics that need to be differentiated or compared to one another

Spelling or phonemic patterns

and more!

The important thing to remember is that the colors used should be premeditated, purposeful, and explained to students. When learning how to scaffold for ELLs, you become stronger in determining what works best for your students and your lessons.

Break Text Into Smaller Sections

Also called "chunking the text," this strategy visually breaks up longer pieces of text. This helps the student be able to process and comprehend the text in manageable amounts. This can be helpful at the word, sentence, and paragraph level. There are several ways you can do this:

Draw a vertical line after sentences to add a more evident break where desired

Circle or underline sections of words/text

Increase space between paragraphs

Break apart a longer text and add each paragraph to a slide in a presentation

Use sections of a longer text to focus on during small group instruction

Use sections of a longer text for assessment purposes

Insert Synonyms and Symbols

As students are learning new vocabulary all the time, they can really benefit from some reminders or reinforcement of word meanings. When you spot a word that you predict might hinder comprehension, simply inserting a synonym next to it can be extremely helpful. For example, if you're handing an exit ticket to students, and the directions read, "Consider our lesson today...," you might insert the words "think about" right above "consider."

Symbols or "think marks" can be a great way to increase engagement during a shared reading or think aloud activity. They can aid comprehension of meaning, as students view you modeling your own response to text. This might include emojis, stars to show importance, or simple lines to connect ideas.

Add Images and Sketches

Many strategies for ELLs involve adding images to support text comprehension. If you've broken down a reading passage into sections, take a moment to also insert a small image next to each one. Want some essential unit vocabulary to be noticed and understood in context? Slide an image in near/next to the word. Have a multiple choice quiz coming up? Images are a great way to scaffold for ELLs.

Even if you're in the middle of a lesson and realize the text lacks visual scaffolds, whip out a marker and do a quick sketch to support vocabulary meaning. (Repeat after me...a stick figure is better than no figure!) 🙂

Stick to a More Standard Font

Ok, so I can appreciate the beauty of a perfectly executed anchor chart heading, complete with cute calligraphy. I've seen so many amazing teacher font artists produce some enviable handwritten font! I've been thinking though...How well can our students read those elaborate fonts? I'm not saying resort to boring, plain lettering all the time. Just encouraging us as teachers to keep in mind what the text looks like to our students. Is it easy to read? Does it represent correct grammar and capitalization? Just some things to keep in mind.

Use a Graphic Organizer

This one is a bit next-level, but is a powerful scaffold for ELLs. If your able to take those "chunked text" pieces and insert them into a graphic organizer such as a circle map, timeline, comparison chart, or order of events template, it could help your ELLs:

See the relationship between parts of the text

View the order of importance or chronological order of events

Understand a cause and effect

Grasp the main idea of an entire text

How to Scaffold for ELLs that are at Beginning Proficiency Levels

So you have a newcomer in your class, or an ELL with a beginning level of English proficiency? They may need a more appropriately modified text in order to access the content and information. For these students, I would recommend providing the text to them in their home language. A translation app such as Google translate or the Read&Write extension for the student's internet browser are some recommended tools.

Another option (that can actually be even more time-efficient) is for you to rewrite, rephrase, or paraphrase the text, bringing it to a reading level that is appropriate. The benefit of this strategy is that you can be sure to include all the most important content that the student should learn.

At the end of the day, it is important for students at this proficiency level to have exposure to and engagement with grade-level text. So I would recommend using your professional judgement to determine when significant text modification is needed.

Some Related Resources:
Using Anticipation Guides To Assess Prior Knowledge and Engage Students in a New Topic How to Write Content and Language Objectives for Lessons Scaffolding Complex Essential Reading (Edutopia) 4 Questions that Drive Successful Scaffolds (Actively Learn)
I hope these tips can be helpful to you as you lesson plan, teacher friend! I have to be honest, my own personal struggles as a classroom teacher are what motivate me to offer coaching and support to you. I'm with you in wanting your students to have the best learning experience possible. I'm always learning more about how to scaffold for ELLs.

I'd love to get to know you better on Instagram, and have a free tool for you to try (see below)! Let's make your classroom an All-Access Classroom! 🙂

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How to Scaffold for ELLs So They Can Better Comprehend Grade-Level Text - The All-Access Classroom

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Need to scaffold for ELLs so they can access your grade-level text? Here are some easy strategies to try with your students!

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This scaffolding strategy can be used across all domains, but is focused under speaking because it includes interacting with peers. I love this strategy because it can be integrated within all subject areas and can be done in various ways, such as discussion in small groups, pairs, or with the whole class. The teacher can create questions for students to respond to as they move around the room, or students can create a story/responses to a story that could be used as the topics. For younger grades, like in our Kindergarten placement, the students could draw a picture and "teach" their peers about what they draw as they walk around the room.

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What Is a Gallery Walk?

A gallery walk is a student engagement activity where groups of students interact with different stations set up around the classroom. At each station there is a question written on a large sheet of butcher paper or poster board that students have to think critically about to answer. Students usually write their response on a sticky note or directly on the large sheet of paper and then continue to the next station. At the end of the walk, a student at each station reviews what is written on the poster board/butcher paper.

Organizing a Gallery Walk

In general, and depending on class size, a gallery walk can have five to ten stations. Group sizes are typically small, ideally between four to six students. For example, a class of 30 students might be split into six groups, with each group containing five students. Small groups maximize engagement and ensure students are not lost in a crowd.

Gallery Walk Examples

Let's take a look at a few examples of gallery walk ideas for various subjects.

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gallery walk teaching strategy | study.com

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Gallery Walk Teaching Strategy | Study.com

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A gallery walk is a student engagement activity where groups of students interact with different stations set up around the classroom. At each station there is a question written on a large sheet of butcher paper or poster board that students have to think critically about to answer.

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Partner reading allows children to create connections between the words being said aloud and the words they are reading on the page.

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Video 35: Partner Reading (REL Southeast)

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This scaffolding strategy is a visual demonstration of how to write text. Basically, the teacher is attempting to give the students an idea as how to properly and effectively write a piece. They can learn how to recognize what it means to write as they are learning what different parts of a sentences are like adjectives, prepositions, verbs, etc. As the teacher stands in front of the class, they are modeling the overall structure and thought process behind writing an effective work.

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Modelled writing defined for primary-school parents, including an example of how a teacher might use this technique in the classroom.

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This scaffolding strategy could technically work for listening as well as speaking. The students are put into two groups, half are "within" the fishbowl (in the center of the room) and discuss/question/answer/reflect on the topics of the class. Meanwhile the students "outside" the fishbowl (standing around those in the middle) listen and pay close attention. The students then swap places and those originally within the bowl listen, while those originally outside now discuss further. This can go on multiple rounds to encourage deeper discussion and reflection for the students' work, based on peer communication.

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Use the Fishbowl discussion strategy to help students practice being contributors and listeners in a group conversation.

Advisory

Civics & Citizenship

English & Language Arts

History

Social Studies

The resources I'm getting from my colleagues through Facing History have been just invaluable.

- Claudia Bautista, Santa Monica, Calif

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Use the Fishbowl discussion strategy to help students practice being contributors and listeners in a group conversation.

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Sarah lang- 8 Ways to Scaffold Writing for English Learners

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Sarah lang- 8 Ways to Scaffold Writing for English Learners

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by Valentina Gonzalez

Scaffolds are temporary supports meant to be released when no longer needed. Think of buildings that are under construction. When the building is in the early phases, more scaffolding is necessary to sustain the structure. As the building progresses, less scaffolding is needed. Finally, before the construction is complete, the scaffolding is removed.

Scaffolding our instruction for students, English learners or not, is similar in theory. Assessing when and where the scaffolds are needed, and removing them at the right time is critical. Keeping a scaffold for too long can create a crutch for some, and students may become dependent on scaffolds that remain too long. The goal of a scaffold is to support students toward future independence.

These 8 writing scaffolds can be implemented in any grade level or content area:

1. Sentence Frames

Sentence frames are highly structured. They are basically sentences with fill in the blanks that support students at earlier stages of language proficiency. Here are a few examples of frames:

The ___has ___sides.

The ____revolted against the___.

A ___is larger/smaller than a ____.

2. Sentence Stems

Sometimes sentence stems and sentence frames are used interchangeably. However there a difference between the two. As shown above, a frame provides a tight grammatical structure. A stem, on the other hand, is as the name indicates, just the "stem" or base of a sentence and not a whole sentence. Students must continue the thought. Sentence stems give students just enough structure to begin more elaborate writing. Here are some examples of sentence stems:

Based on the experiment, I can conclude that...

In the beginning I thought..., but now I think...

One way that ___and ___are alike is that....

On the other hand, they are different because...

3. Mentor Texts

Mentor texts are also known as exemplars. They are models of high-quality writing for students. While adult-authored books or articles are often a main source of mentor texts, it is also effective to use high-quality student-authored examples. One teacher I know would save the original student samples of writing to use as exemplars. Another made digital copies. (Either way, always be careful to remove any identifiable information such as names.) Mentor texts set students up for success because they show students what the target is, which makes it much easier to achieve. Sometimes using student-created exemplars makes the target seem more attainable for students.

4. Interactive Word Walls

Interactive Word Walls (IWWs) are large, thematic or unit-based graphic organizers filled with rich vocabulary and visually supported with graphics and real objects. IWWs are often co-created with students rather than premade by the teacher. They can be used as scaffolds for writing in all content areas because students can easily take the language from the unit-based word wall and use it in their writing.

5. Model Writing

Model writing is similar to the Read-Aloud; in fact, some call it Write-Aloud. When we write in front of students in real time, we have the opportunity to "think aloud" and model what effective writers do mentally. This helps to make the writing process visible for students. Students see how an idea moves from the abstract to a concrete piece of writing. Modeling writing in all content areas helps students develop the language of the domain. For example, when we model how to write a lab report, we can share with students the language structures and academic vocabulary that scientists use. This modeling process supports students as they go off to write on their own.

6. Quick Writes

Not every piece of writing students do has to be lengthy. In fact, quick, daily writing is an effective way for English learners to practice writing in a low-stress setting. Long essays and pages of writing can be intimidating for students who are learning the structures of the English language. What's the saying? "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." Breaking a task into small chunks (or "chunking" the task) makes it seem doable. A Quick Write is a short writing task-usually about 3-10 minutes. Author and teacher, Larry Ferlazzo writes about the power Quick Writes, or Micro-writing, holds for ELs here in an article for ASCD. He shows how this type of writing can improve English learners' confidence and language proficiency.

7. Language Experience Approach

The Language Experience Approach has been around for a long time. It is a method of shared writing in which students and the teacher write together after a shared experience. This is actually one of my favorite techniques because it builds community, models writing, and increases student participation and engagement. Students listen, speak, read, and write.

Begin by sharing an experience (like a field trip, science experiment, movie, book, etc). Next, have students talk about the experience with partners or a group, and come up with sentences to share with the teacher. Then lead the class in creating a text about the experience on chart paper (or under a document camera) as students share their sentences with you. After you write each sentence, have the class read it aloud chorally. (This provides tons of reading practice for fluency.) When the shared writing is complete, the class rereads the whole piece. Finally, lead the class in discussing organization, revision, and editing. Students can suggest adding and deleting sentences and decide to change words or punctuation. To see an example of what this can look like, check out Carol Salva's use of LEA here!

8. Mentor Sentences

Think of a mentor in your life. Who did you imagine? Someone you look up to? Someone you try to emulate? Mentor sentences are sentences students try to emulate. Jeff Anderson, author of Mechanically Inclined and Patterns of Power writes about the effectiveness of mentor sentences. The sentences that we choose can come from Read Alouds or we can make up our own sentences using information relevant to our students and our class.

For instance, suppose we had a visit from the fire department and the kids couldn't talk about anything else. So my mentor sentence may have been, " While waiting anxiously to hear all about the apparatus, a crowd of kids huddled around the fire truck ." First I read it aloud, and then we read it chorally. I then invited students to discuss the sentence with their partner or in groups. What did they notice? What did they observe about the sentence? I called on a few students randomly. Some noticed that there was a comma. One student said that the sentence was in the past tense, and we asked how he knew. He said, "Because the word 'huddled' ended with an -ed." Another student said that it looked like two sentences stuck together. We talked more about that and discovered that the first part of the sentence wasn't a complete sentence but a phrase. Finally, the students wrote their own sentences modeled after the mentor sentence. Some students used this frame:

While waiting ______to hear all about the_____, a crowd of ___huddled around the ____.

One student wrote: While waiting eagerly to grab all the kibble, a crowd of dogs huddled around the food bowl. To add to it, he drew a group of dogs around an empty food bowl.

If you have students who struggle with writing, try some of these scaffolds to support them along the way to independence and success!

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8 Ways to Scaffold Writing for English Learners

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by Valentina Gonzalez Scaffolds are temporary supports meant to be released when no longer needed. Think of buildings that are under construction. When the building is in the early phases, more scaffolding is necessary to sustain the structure. As the building progresses, less scaffolding is needed.

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The scaffolding strategy Gallery Walk uses the method of Pre-Teaching, which focuses on giving students small pieces of information before introducing more complex content. I like this activity because it gets students out of their seats and it can be modified to fit each classroom.

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Imagine that you and your family recently moved to a new country. You're trying to learn a difficult language that everyone around you already knows and adjust to a school culture that's much different than what you're used to.

You're already feeling overwhelmed, but to top it off, your teacher asks you to read a three-page article that's written in gibberish and complete five short-answer response questions all by yourself. Nervously, you get to work, but you aren't feeling very confident in yourself.

Unfortunately, the lack of support in this scenario is a harsh reality for many English learners.

English language learners (ELLs), like all students, certainly don't benefit from this type of "sink or swim" teaching. Rather, to be able to acquire new content knowledge and cultural understanding, English learners (ELs) require intentional and strategic instructional scaffolding. In this blog, we'll explore what scaffolding instruction means and provide five scaffolding strategies for ELL students that you should use in your classroom.

What is Instructional Scaffolding?

Before we answer this question, let's first consider what scaffolding is used for in construction. Scaffolds are temporary structures that construction workers use to support themselves and heavy materials as they complete a project, such as constructing a building or repairing a bridge. It helps crews access heights that they wouldn't be able to reach on their own and serves as somewhat of a safety net.

Educational scaffolds provide a much different type of support, but similarly to construction, they help students reach new heights that they can't do alone (metaphorically speaking).

In education, scaffolding is a teaching method where the educator helps support students to complete tasks just beyond the level that they could achieve by themselves. This technique stems from Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky, who developed a theory that children learn best when an adult helps them expand upon what they already know and can do.

His theory birthed the concept of a Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)-the area between what is known and unknown where students can achieve a task with guidance from a knowledgeable teacher. Over time, the teacher can gradually reduce their support until the students master the task themselves (like how the scaffolding around a building is torn down once a project is completed). Then, they're ready to move on to the next concept.

Rather than teaching concepts that are well beyond your students' understanding and simply pulling them along, your instruction should take place within their ZPD with appropriate scaffolds.

How Does Scaffolding Help English Language Learners (ELLs)?

Scaffolding instruction is beneficial for all students, but it's particularly essential for English language learners.

By breaking up new concepts into smaller chunks and using scaffolding strategies for ELLs, you'll make learning the English language less intimidating and help increase their understanding by gradually building upon what they already know. It also reduces frustration and helps ELs become more confident, motivated, and independent learners.

Let's look at some simple scaffolding strategies for ELL students that you can use to support your students' language proficiency.

5 Scaffolding Strategies for ELL Students

There are many techniques that you can use to support the English language learners in your classroom. Here are five of our favorite scaffolding strategies for ELLs.

1. Modeling

Most people learn best when they see or experience something rather than just hear about it.

Think about when you learned how to change a tire. Someone likely walked you through how to do it step by step while getting their hands dirty. Well, imagine instead that they just wrote out the steps on a piece of paper, or worse, just rattled off what to do and set you off on your own.

Learning words and concepts in a new language is a lot like changing a tire for your ELs. Therefore, whenever possible, you should explicitly show your students what they're expected to do rather than just telling them.

Think Aloud

A think-aloud session is a great technique to demonstrate how good readers make sense of a text and monitor their understanding as they read. Before having students read a passage themselves, the teacher should first read the passage aloud, stopping along the way to model their thoughts at points that may be difficult or confusing.

Some questions that you can encourage students to ask themselves during a think-aloud include:

What do I already know about the topic?

What do I think I'm going to learn?

Do I understand what I just read?

What more can I do to better understand?

What new information did I learn?

What were the most important points?

While you read, be sure to model how you're working with and thinking about the text to answer the above questions, such as rereading a tricky sentence or using context clues to make predictions. From there, you can have your students read the passage with a partner and practice the think-aloud strategy. Then, once they understand the process, ask the students to read the passage once more individually so they can process it internally.

Modeling for your students how to approach their thinking before, during, and after reading a text will not only help them become better readers but also become self-regulated learners.

2. Activate Prior Knowledge

For new concepts to sink in, they must be built upon prior understanding.

Think back to the tire scenario. To teach someone how to change a tire, you expand upon their previous knowledge of how a tire works. So, before you dive into a new topic or text, ask students to share their ideas and experiences related to it. This helps them connect content to their own lives and increases engagement.

Some commonly used scaffolding strategies for ELLs that activate prior knowledge include:

You may need to drop hints and lead students to make connections at first, but once they see the relevance in what they're learning, it'll start to become easier.

Like all students, English language learners need time to verbally process new information. Therefore, as an ESL teacher, it's important to incorporate frequent opportunities for your students to engage in structured peer discussions during your lessons.

Turn & Talk

Turn and Talk is a simple and effective scaffolding strategy for ELL students that promotes classroom interaction. Simply ask your students a question or provide them a prompt, then have them discuss with a partner. Give them enough time for both partners to contribute to the conversation and be sure to roam around the room, assisting as needed. Here's a short video that further explains how the Turn in Talk technique works.

The Turn and Talk is a total participation technique, where instead of calling on a few students to share their thoughts with the whole class, you're encouraging all students to think and share their thoughts. This technique also helps ELs feel more comfortable and confident sharing, as it's less intimidating than speaking in front of a large class.

There are several other total participation techniques that you can use, such as

By providing ample opportunities for students to interact and use the language they're learning, you're helping your students boost their language proficiency and their confidence.

4. Pre-Teach Vocabulary

Pre-teaching vocabulary, or frontloading vocabulary, is an incredibly effective scaffolding strategy for ELLs to help them tackle difficult texts.

Before your students read something new, you should always dedicate time for explicit vocabulary instruction of important terms within the text. By that, though, we don't mean simply asking students to pull out a dictionary, copy the definitions of ten words, and begin reading. This happens way too often in classrooms and, unfortunately, doesn't have a lasting impact on language acquisition.

Vocabulary Gallery Walk

Instead of relying on memorization, introduce vocabulary terms in a way that captures your students' interest and allows them to make connections. Print out photographs for each word and place them around the room, then have students do a gallery walk and use context clues to determine what they think each one means. After they're done, give them time to share their thoughts before providing the actual definitions.

To help them better understand each definition, you can also have students create drawings, make a short skit in groups, or simply get with a partner and take turns using each word in a sentence. Not only does pre-teaching vocabulary support your ELs' reading comprehension, but it also helps them learn how to use new words naturally.

5. Use Visual Aids

As we mentioned above, people often learn better by seeing rather than just hearing. This is especially true for English language learners, as visual aids help them contextualize information and build upon their prior knowledge. For that reason, you should use visual representations of new concepts as much as possible in your classroom, including:

It's important to note that visual aids should serve as a tool for learning rather than a product of learning. For example, a graphic organizer is often used as a scaffold to help students gather their thoughts (tool) to then write an essay (product). Over time, they won't need the visual aid to understand a concept or complete a task-sort of like training wheels for riding a bike.

Learning a new language is hard enough without having to do it alone. To ensure that your students achieve language proficiency and become well-adjusted to their new school culture, you must use scaffolding strategies for ELLs within your classroom.

Looking for more teaching tips and resources for your English language learners (ELLs)? Check out our ESL Resource Center!
Thank you to Melissa Miller, an ESOL teacher in Howard County, Maryland for consulting on this blog post. This blog was originally published on March 8, 2022. It was updated on March 10, 2023.

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5 Scaffolding Strategies for ELL Students

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Looking for better ways to support the English learners in your class? Check out these proven scaffolding strategies for ELL students!

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6 Ways You Should Be Scaffolding Student Writing-Lily Brogan

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6 Ways You Should Be Scaffolding Student Writing-Lily Brogan

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6 Ways You Should Be Scaffolding Student Writing - It's Lit Teaching

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You've probably heard a million times that you should be using differentiated instruction in your classroom. If you're in a stricter building, it may even be required that you document your differentiation strategies. But how, exactly, are we supposed to differentiate writing instruction for our advanced, gifted, special education, trauma-sensitive, and ELL learners in a single class period!?

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Interactive Word Wall: Management in the Active Classroom

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Rich Richardson's eighth-grade students at the Expeditionary Learning Middle School in Syracuse, New York, use an interactive word wall to demonstrate their conceptual understanding of words in context. A word wall in the classroom is a powerful instructional tool to strengthen content vocabulary or concepts. A word wall can be an organized collection of words (and sometimes phrases) displayed on a wall or other space in the classroom. In this example, however, the "wall" moves to the floor to allow students to easily connect to one other's ideas and show their collective understanding. It allows both the students and the teacher to see how their knowledge has grown or perhaps where gaps may still exist.

In this video, students and teachers are engaged with a protocol/engagement strategy from EL's grades 3-8 ELA curriculum.

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Quick writes are a way in which students can write own their thoughts, ideas, feelings, or even personal ideas about the topic a class is about to discuss. This strategy allows students to connect to connect the topic to their own personal ideas/feelings. A result of this is that students usually are more engaged and will develop a better understanding during the learning process.

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Quick Write Learning Strategy | BrainPOP Educators

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In the Quick Write learning strategy, students are given a few minutes to write down their thoughts, ideas, or feelings about a topic, a personal experience, or a reaction to a picture.

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​ A KWL chart is a graphical organizer designed to help in learning. The letters KWL stand for what students already know, want to know, and ultimately learn in that lesson. This type of procedure helps teachers become more responsive to students learning.·

1. Elicits students' prior knowledge of the topic of the text.

2. Sets a purpose for reading.

3. Helps students to monitor their comprehension.

When starting a new lesson or reading a new story, it could be helpful for not only ELL's but also the whole class to do a KWL chart. This could be a whole class activity. First, ask the students what they already know about (topic). Make a list on the K. Then, ask students what they are curious about or would like to learn about (topic). Finally, once the lesson is over go back to the KWL chart and write what the students learned. This is a great summarizing tool at the end. One great use of a KWL chart is vocabulary lessons. Students can write words they have heard but don't exactly know what they mean. Students could also use the chart in small groups while working on lessons. For ELL's this is another way to review the information and have it on paper for them to get another perspective. They could even have their own copy to write down their own KWL's.

During a content area the KWL could be used to prepare for a test. For example, in social studies the K column could be used to list facts/dates that specific events have happened. Looking at the study guide, they could list the events they haven't learned yet in the W column. Once they have found the events/dates they could list it in the L column and do a summary at the end. The ELL's will be able to use this as an additional study guide.

​When beginning a new math lesson this could be a great start. Like is stated in reading, this could be a whole group or small group or even individual. There could be math problems like adding and subtracting in the K column and the W could be multiplication and division. When they have learned the basics of multiplication and division they can put examples on the L column. This will help ELL's by laying everything out on paper and talking about what they have already learned, will learn, and leaned.

This video is a quick 30-second clip from Compass Publishing about how to integrate the KWL chart into your classroom.

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​ A KWL chart is a graphical organizer designed to help in learning . The letters KWL stand for what students already know, want to know, and ultimately learn in that lesson. This type of...

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Scaffolding Strategies that would be effective in an Elementary School :) <3

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Scaffolding Strategies that would be effective in an Elementary School :) <3

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6 Scaffolding Strategies to Use With Your Students

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Support every student by breaking learning up into chunks and providing a concrete structure for each.

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Any form of using the scaffolding strategy of a Paraphrase Passport requires a child to listen intently to the child who speaks before his or herself. Click the link to learn about this strategy! :)

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Description/Procedure: Paraphrase Passport is discussion protocol that can be used in small group, pair, or whole class discussions. In this protocol, students must paraphrase was the previous person said before they can add their comments about a specific topic. Each group or pair must have a facilitator to keep all students on track and ensure everyone has the chance to contribute to the discussion.

Explanation: This protocol helps to build listening skills in small group or whole class discussions. By requiring students to paraphrase the previous person's statement, they are forced to actively listen as well as process the information so they can accurately paraphrase it. This also helps all students feel as though their answer is not only heard but understood by their group, so it can help build student confidence.

An Example: Paraphrase Passport

Question: Come up with a definition for what is means to be an animal. Describe any essential characteristics.

1. Form groups of three or four students.

2. One student begins by making a comment related to the topic.

3. The next person to speak must paraphrase the first comment before stating their comment.

4. Repeat the process and continue for a predetermined time, or until the topic has been thoroughly discussed.

Suggestions: This protocol can be used with science topic questions or with debates and be successful. However, this will be challenging for many students, so it would likely be important to model how to do this and practice with your students as a whole class before allowing students to go into groups and perform this individually. Additionally, having students write the summary of the previous person's statement may help keep them accountable when in small groups or pairs. This protocol may, however, discourage students who have lower listening comprehension skills from participating. Thus, you may need to mandate that everyone gets to speak in a group to avoid this.

The Source: Success In Science Through Dialogue, Reading, and Writing by Arthur Beauchamp, Judi Kusnick, and Rick McCallum

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Paraphrase Passport - Science Language & Literacy Strategies

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Description/Procedure: Paraphrase Passport is discussion protocol that can be used in small group, pair, or whole class discussions. In this protocol, students must paraphrase was the previous person said before they can add their comments about a specific topic.

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Writing in school poses a unique challenge for ELL students. Beyond the obvious hurdle of using a new language, many ELL students come from oral cultures, so their writing experiences in general may be limited. Now inside English-speaking classrooms, they are expected to write up to grade-level standards while using unfamiliar words and grammar.

It should come as no surprise, then, when ELL students are reluctant to write. But you can change that. Through support and scaffolding, you can grow ELL students into capable, confident writers.

What practices grow confidence?

Although ELLs may lack writing experience, they don't lack experiences. Whenever possible, invite them to write about their own background, culture, interests, and memories. ELLs shouldn't be expected to write well about new subject areas without first having a chance to write about knowledge and vocabulary they already possess.

Next, adjust your expectations. Because of limited vocabulary and unfamiliarity with English grammar, ELLs' writing can be difficult to understand. Your first instinct might be to correct as much as you can, but that will make the situation worse. Overcorrecting overwhelms students and saps their confidence. Instead, read for, mark, and celebrate the "small" victories-incremental improvements that can be repeated in future writing.

You can help ELL students achieve more and more "small" victories through scaffolding.

What scaffolding builds competence?

ELL students benefit from scaffolding throughout the writing process. Start with these prewriting scaffolds, which help students build vocabulary, generate writing ideas, and understand common writing moves:

Mentor Texts

To introduce ELL students to a new writing activity, present simple models that students can emulate. Read through at least one model out loud, highlighting features or techniques you would like your students to practice.

Write-Aloud Models

After sharing mentor texts and reading models, talk through your own process for completing the same writing activity as students. Follow these steps:

1. Introduce the lesson by explaining what you are modeling and why.

2. Model brainstorming. Use a quick list or other graphic organizer.

3. Model your writing process. Explain what you are thinking as you write each part of a paragraph: a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence.

4. Allow students to follow the pattern of your model when they write.

Prefilled Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers help students gather and organize writing ideas prior to writing. ELL students may need extra time to fill out organizers effectively. By prefilling parts of the organizer, you save students time and introduce useful sentence models and high-frequency words they can apply to their writing.
See an example of a prefilled cause-effect organizer.
When students are ready to begin writing, introduce these scaffolds.

Sentence Frames

Sentence frames (or sentence starters) are partially completed sentences with blank spaces for students to fill in. Frames work well for students who struggle to write complete sentences or need practice with new sentence structures.

One of my favorite family traditions is ______________.

We always ______________, ______________, and ______________.

While other people may think ______________, the truth is ______________.
See a sentence-frame activity.
Paragraph Frames

You can integrate sentence frames into a larger paragraph framework for students to complete.

Traditions bring families together. One of my favorite family traditions is ______________. The tradition started when ______________. As a part of this tradition, we always ______________, ______________, and ______________. What I enjoy most about ______________ is ______________. For example, ______________. While other people may think ____________, the truth is ______________. I wish everyone could experience ______________ because ______________. I hope this tradition ______________.
See a paragraph-frame activity.
As the year goes on, make your frames less prescriptive, giving students more freedom to test out different sentence patterns on their own. The goal, of course, is for students to eventually write with no frames at all.

Signal Words

Experienced ELL writers may be ready for a less rigid form of framing. Instead of giving them a set of sentence structures to fill in, present a bank of related signal words as building blocks for a full paragraph.

A writing prompt might look like this:

Describe what your ideal classroom would look like. Include at least four location signal words somewhere in your description: above, below, near, between, on top of, under, beside.

How else can I use scaffolding?

Scaffolding, as shown above, is an essential component of any writing instruction-and not just with ELL students. You can and should use the same scaffolds with other reluctant writers. Through extra modeling and guidance, you help all students see that writing is something they are capable of doing and even enjoying.

Teacher Support

Consider this support as you help ELL students with writing.

Level

3-12

Learning Objectives

Use graphic organizers to gather details for writing.

Create different types of sentences.

Build paragraphs using different types of sentences.

Acquire and use grade-appropriate academic and domain-specific words and phrases.

Teaching Tips

When giving ELLs writing feedback, first highlight "small" victories. Show students what they are doing well.

When offering suggestions for improvement, focus on one skill at a time, particularly when it comes to grammar.

Give ELLs regular chances to reflect on their writing, asking what they're doing well in writing, what challenges they face, and what strategies help them work through problems.

Create opportunities for collaborative writing. When ELLs work with peers, they see how other students write, which often feels more authentic and achievable than writing produced by a teacher.

Check out additional writing support for ELL students:

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Blog post: 6 Ways to Scaffold Writing for ELLs

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Writing in school poses a unique challenge for ELL students. Beyond the obvious hurdle of using a new language, many ELL students come from oral cultures, so their writing experiences in general may be limited. Now inside English-speaking classrooms, they are expected to write up to grade-level standards while using unfamiliar words and grammar.

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Reading Scaffolding Strategies: Ansley Howard 

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Reading Scaffolding Strategies: Ansley Howard 

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Scaffolding Early Readers and Writers in Guided Reading - TeamTom Education

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This is such a critical stage for young readers as they progress rapidly through 1st and 2nd-grade reading levels. Here are nine guided reading strategies you can use with early readers in guided reading! In this post, you will discover: Guided Reading Strategies for Early Readers and Three ways to connect writing in your guided reading lessons.

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Learning logs are a great tool to use as a formative assessment for ELLs. Students can document their learning process throughout a lesson and then write a reflection once the lesson is completed. This gives them not only practice with writing in English, but also mastering the concepts they are learning by representing them creatively visually through sketches and developing metacognition as they write and think about the learning they are doing as they are doing it. Its a great assessment at the end of a lesson to see what the students took from it as well as at the end of the year for teachers, parents, and students to look back on what the student learned as well as how their writing and thought processes have developed throughout the year!

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Students each have three cards of the colors red, yellow, & green. At the end of a lesson, the teacher will ask them to hold up a card depicting how they feel about their level of understanding. (Red=very confused, Yellow=somewhat confused but somewhat understands, Green=fully understands) The teacher will then use this to note how well the students are picking up on the material.

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The teacher would give each student a piece of paper with a question about the lesson on it. Then, each student would write their answer on the paper and crumple it up. Then the students will engage in a "snowball fight" and toss these papers across the classroom. At the end, the student will choose a "snowball" and uncrumple it and read the question and answer aloud. The class can discuss the answer and the teacher can see how effective the lesson was.

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This formative assessment requires students to display their work or projects around the room so that their peers can view what they did, and then the teachers ask the students to write one thing they liked about their peers work and one constructive criticism. This allows the students to be vulnerable which can create a better class community and hearing their peers feedback and ideas can be very beneficial to students.

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Offer students a "3,2,1" Meaning: 3 things I learned, 2 questions I still have, and one thing I really enjoyed.
It allows them to remember part of what they learned, it allows us to see what questions they have, and for them to get the chance to ask questions, and it also allows us to hear what they enjoyed so that we can continue to help them learn in the ways they enjoy learning.

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"Turn and Talk" is a speaking scaffold in which students will discuss a topic (usually a question posed by the teacher at the start or end of a class) with a partner. This is a great scaffold for speaking because it allows casual, peer learning to occur; in a less formal setting, ELLs can build their confidence speaking in the classroom.

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Teacher Toolkit: Turn and Talk (Secondary)

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Total Physical Response is a scaffold for ELLs that encourages students to engage multiple modes of learning. This video explains the process in depth and shows real life classroom examples at the end!

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ESL Teaching Strategies: #1 TPR or Total Physical Response (VIPKID)

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The students will be asked to write down a question that they have about the day's lesson. They will crumble up the piece of paper and through it around the room. Each child will get a different question, and they will have to answer it out loud to the class.

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Mind Maps are like brainstorms with pictures. there is a central topic and then branches come off that topic into subsections and then branches come off the subsections to make smaller subsections. This could be given to students when starting a new unit. Some parts of the mind map could be provided to the students like central topic and subsections that are going to have a lot of branches coming off. Then the student fills in the knowledge as we progress through the unit.

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Using graphic organizers as a reading scaffold helps ELLs organize the information they pull from the text. Directive labels may help them to know key information to look for as well.

From "The GO TO Strategies: Scaffolding Options for Teachers of English Language Learners, K-12"

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Read-alouds allow students to make connections by seeing how words are pronounced, used, and how context clues are used. It also gives the teacher the opportunity to help students that struggle with story-telling and how pictures help tell the story.
https://www.collaborativeclassroom.org/blog/scaffolding-techniques-english-language-learners-part-1/

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This activity, as shown in the video below, is a great way for students to get up and moving. Hula Hoops are placed on the ground with numbers in them in sequential order from 1-20 (or any group of numbers that you want your students to review). Then the students are asked to jump in the hoops, like hop scotch, in the correct number order. This scaffolding activity, like the others in the video below can be altered and created based on the students learning level. By creating differentiated groups, you can cater a more individualized learning experience for your students to be successful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iki2hAYK74

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This activity can be used when introducing a new "sound" into the classroom. For example, if you are practicing the /ae/ sound (like in “cat,” “hat,” etc…, you could read the following script. “Yesterday, my cat ate a plastic toy and swallowed it fast.” Whenever students hear this sound for the first time (cat), they should stand. When they hear it again (plastic), sit down. This is beneficial for ELL because something as simple as developing recognition of a sound may be harder for them as they are not native speakers, so spending time on really listening for these sounds will help in all domains. This also encourages movement in the classroom which I believe to always be better than requiring children to sit in a desk all day.

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by abepiusc 654,456 views

Listening is the gateway to understanding and communicating and, therefore, is absolutely critical for language learners of all skills.

If students struggle to listen carefully, they will miss out on important interactions both inside and outside of the classroom.

The problem with listening instruction is that it is commonly thought to be boring and passive; students simply sit and listen. However, teaching listening doesn't have to be dull! There are many ways to create engaging and interactive lessons that focus on listening skills. Here are eight different ways to build students' listening skills:

Try These 8 Activities to Improve Listening Skills

1. Voice blogging

Using a free website (such as Voice Thread) have students record voice journals about their week. Encourage students with semi-personal topics or hypothetical questions (e.g. What would you do if you had one million dollars? Describe your best vacation. etc..) to prompt speaking. This works just like a blog but with student voices rather than writing. Even if your school doesn't have computers with microphones or recording capabilities, with VoiceThread students can use any phone to record their voice blog.

Students can then be assigned to listen to several of their classmates and give each other comments. By listening to each other and giving encouraging comments, you are building a positive classroom environment and cooperation within the classroom all while students build their listening skills.

2. Listen for the hidden phrase

An engaging whole class activity is to pair students up and give each pair a "secret" word or phrase. For easier dialogues, give a simple phrase such as "I love soccer," or "My father works a lot;" etc... To challenge students, give a slightly more obscure phrase, such as "John does yoga every Saturday," or "I saw a UFO in my yard last night."

Students are then tasked with developing a dialogue with their partner that somehow uses this phrase. Students may script the dialogue if they wish, but only give them limited planning time (5-10 minutes). After they have prepared their dialogue, students perform the dialogue in front of the class, and the other students listen carefully to hear which words or phrases seem extra carefully planned to find the secret phase. If you have individual white boards, have the students write down the phrase as they hear it and then show their board after the pair has finished the dialogue. If they found the correct secret phrase, they get a point. If no one finds the pair's secret phrase, the pair that developed the dialogue gets a point.

3. Listen for the word

Using popular culture media is always a good way to practice listening skills. Using songs, watching TV shows, or even listening to podcasts will help build skills. To go an extra step, have an additional task while listening to the song or TV show such as assign students different words to listen for and have them keep track of how often they hear these words. This is particularly helpful with reductions like gonna, wanna, hafta.

Listening to various media is also a good time to practice unfamiliar words. Encourage students to write down words they have never heard before. Without subtitles or lyrics, students will have to rely on the sounds they think they heard to make a guess at how to spell this unfamiliar word. Encourage students to write down other surrounding words to help you decipher what the word might be or to write down the time when they heard the word so you can go back to the spot and listen again. These are important skills for students to master so that they can continue learning even outside of the classroom by hearing new words.

5. Student-designed quizzes

If students are in a computer lab or if they have iPads/iPhones, give each student a dialogue, lecture, or song to listen to. These can be easily found on various free listening websites. Have students listen to the lecture multiple times and then create a quiz for another student to take. Students will be excited to "play teacher" by creating quiz questions, and they will have to rely on their listening skills to write accurate questions.

6. Describe the...

Place students into pairs and have them sit back to back. Give one student in the pair a unique picture with a lot of simple shapes drawn on it. I prefer to draw my own pictures with some randomly placed like:

Hearts

Flowers

Stars

Houses

Stick Figures

1. Put these shapes in different places, angles, and with extra features as desired. Give the second student in the pair a blank piece of paper. The student with the picture must dictate to his/her partner how to draw the picture. Make sure to emphasize no cheating or peeking! When finished, change the pictures around the groups and have the partners switch roles. When everyone has drawn once, the team with the most similar pictures win!

2. Put the celebrity in the right place

Similar to the picture describing game, this game has a similar setup but without the drawing. Give students a chart with many different celebrities in the boxes/grid. This can be easily done by creating a table in a word processing program and pasting internet images of celebrities in the table. Be sure to make several different versions with celebrities in the different spaces. It's okay if the students don't know all of the celebrities; in fact, it may be better if there are some they don't know, so they have to rely on describing physical features rather than giving names. Print a second blank grid with the pictures of the celebrities cut out into individual pieces but not attached to the grid.

Students should sit back to back and be instructed to not peek or cheat. The student with the table with pre-assigned celebrities should give the other student instructions on how to fill in his table with the celebrity picture pieces. For example, the first student might say "The picture of Brad Pitt goes in the first square, and Angelina goes in the square below Brad Pitt." It may be helpful to pre-teach the vocabulary "columns" and "rows."

3. Stand up/sit down

When working on individual sounds, give students a target sound and then read a script out loud that contains multiple examples of this sound. For example, if you are practicing the /ae/ sound (like in "cat," "hat," etc..., you could read the following script. "Yesterday, my cat ate a plastic toy and swallowed it fast." Whenever students hear this sound for the first time (cat), they should stand. When they hear it again (plastic), sit down. Read slowly enough for them to have time to stand up or sit down. This activity is great because it gets them out of their seats and lets them get some excess energy out!

5. Vowel discrimination

Another good activity to do when you are studying specific vowel sounds is to give students two different color note cards (e.g. one red card and one blue card). For a review activity, assign one vowel to the red card (e.g. the /ae/ sound as in "bat") and another card to the blue card (e.g. the /ei/ sound as in "bay"). When you read a word, have students raise the card in the air for the correct vowel/sound they heard. For a more advanced game, give students several colors of cards to correspond with several different vowels. Also, you could give the students several cards and read a sentence where each word represents a different vowel. Students must recreate the pattern of sounds they heard by lining up their note cards in the correct order.

Students engage in listening every day, so it's important for ESL students to continue developing their listening skills.

Engaging them in fun listening activities will hopefully motivate them to practice more listening and take advantage of all opportunities around them.
How do you get your students excited for listening practice? If you're an English teacher teaching students aged kindergarten to senior high (or even adults), check out our partner sites HelpTeaching, KidsKonnect, and Elementary Librarian for hundreds of additional ESL resources including worksheets, quiz questions, tests, books, and more!

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Do You Hear What I Hear?: 8 Activities to Improve Listening Skills

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by abepiusc 654,456 views If students struggle to listen carefully, they will miss out on important interactions both inside and outside of the classroom. The problem with listening instruction is that it is commonly thought to be boring and passive; students simply sit and listen. However, teaching listening doesn't have to be dull!