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I thought that schools were not quite accommodating ELL learners in the best way possible.

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Importance of Interactions with ELL leaners

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Importance of Interactions with ELL leaners

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"People have a notion that talk is not productive use of class time."
Even though some ELL learners may not be in ESL or ELD programs, they enhance their understanding in English through communication.

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Assisting learners through ESL and ELD programs.

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As educators, who are committed to students and student learning, how can we further accommodate our ELL learners who feel excluded amongst their peers?

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What are some strategies for educators to assist ELL learners through independent work?

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Many Roots
Many Voices

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What to do first: Creating a welcoming ELL classroom environment

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Brain-Friendly Strategies for the Inclusion Classroom

About

Many teachers in regular classrooms feel unprepared to teach students with learning disabilities. Fortunately, brain research has confirmed that strategies benefiting learners with special challenges are suited for engaging and stimulating all learners. In this book, neurologist and classroom teacher Judy Willis explains that we can best help students by putting in place strategies, accommodations, and interventions that provide developmentally and academically appropriate challenges to suit the needs, gifts, and goals of each student. Brain-Friendly Strategies for the Inclusion Classroom will help teachers

Table of contents

Looking into Multiple Intelligence Brains

Teaching Students with Attention Disorders

ASCD empowers educators to achieve excellence in learning, teaching, and leading so that every child is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

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Brain-Friendly Strategies for the Inclusion Classroom

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Brain-Friendly Strategies for the Inclusion Classroom About Many teachers in regular classrooms feel unprepared to teach students with learning disabilities. Fortunately, brain research has confirmed that strategies benefiting learners with special challenges are suited for engaging and stimulating all learners.

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Supporting English Language Learners with Limited Prior Schooling

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Supporting English Language Learners with Limited Prior Schooling

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It is resolution season! In January we reflect on past joys and concerns from the previous year, and take the opportunity to make a resolution that will improve our lives in the New Year. Of course, we all know that resolutions are hard to keep and can often be unrealistic. The expert advice I've received on resolutions (mostly advice from women's magazines) states that you are more likely to be successful if your goal is specific and measurable. So, instead of saying, "I want to save more money" you might say, "I want to save enough money each month so that I can buy a new computer in August."

Teachers are always looking for ways to improve in the classroom; to assist with any of your New Year's resolutions that relate to instruction, I will recommend five specific and measurable actions you can implement to assist English language learners in the classroom. To increase the likelihood of success and continuity, I suggest teachers pick one item and stick to it for the rest of the year. It is better to do one thing consistently and do it well than to try to do all five and possibly lose focus and motivation, becoming a Jack of all trades and master of none. I also suggest teachers employ the "support group" method to ensure success and use the chosen strategy as a topic for a professional learning community. Sharing successes and challenges with colleagues will help you all grow professionally, and more students will benefit academically.

All of the following strategies have been featured on the Colorín Colorado website, and the Hotlinks section has links to helpful articles and websites for further support. When choosing an instructional strategy, frame it as a specific and measurable goal and display it next to your desk to remind you of what you want to accomplish.

Strategies for the New Year

1. Increase ELL students' English language production and peer interaction.
Specific and measurable goal: ELL students will verbally demonstrate their English speaking abilities in classroom work at least three times a week.
There are two key items ELLs need in order to improve their English - time and practice. There is nothing teachers can do to rush English acquisition, but there are many ways to provide opportunities to practice English in the classroom. If activities are structured to support student-to-student or group interaction, ELLs are required to use English to explain concepts and contribute to the work. This gives teachers an opportunity to gauge what the student has learned, and it demonstrates student progress in English language development.

Teachers can also informally assess for correct use of language structures and academic vocabulary. If ELLs are having difficulty with phrases or vocabulary, the teacher will be able to offer guidance or further instruction to support language development. See the Hotlinks section for links to ideas on interactive learning activities.

2. Explicitly teach English language vocabulary and structures.
Specific and measurable resolution: I will identify, teach, and post key academic vocabulary and structures for one content lesson each day.
In, "What Teachers Need to Know about Language" by Lily Wong Fillmore and Catherine Snow, the authors state that:

Teachers play a critical role in supporting language development. Beyond teaching children to read and write in school, they need to help children learn and use aspects of language associated with the academic discourse of the various school subjects. They need to help them become more aware of how language functions in various modes of communication across the curriculum. They need to understand how language works well enough to select materials that will help expand their students' linguistic horizons and to plan instructional activities that give students opportunities to use the new forms and modes of expression to which they are being exposed. Teachers need to understand how to design the classroom language environment so as to optimize language and literacy learning and to avoid linguistic obstacles to content area learning (Wong Fillmore & Snow, p. 7).

The need to understand English language structures and language acquisition theory is increasingly important as the number of ELLs increases in classrooms. However, very few teachers have had the formal training required to be prepared to identify and teach the English vocabulary and structures found in specific content areas. When I first started teaching ESL, my students knew way more about grammar than I did. I joked with them, "I don't know English; I just speak it."

Content teachers can begin by reviewing a content area lesson and identifying not just the vocabulary that every student needs to know, but other vocabulary words and grammar structures that ELL students may not be familiar with. See the Hotlinks section for resources on how to provide explicit instruction on English vocabulary and structures.

3. Build on ELLs' Background Knowledge to Increase Comprehension
Specific and measurable goal: I will elicit background knowledge from ELLs in one content area through a variety of activities, including questioning and graphic organizers.
Learning something new is like stacking building blocks. The more you have, the higher you can go. It is not always apparent what building blocks ELLs come with due to language barriers, and sometimes ELL students don't connect their previous experience with the lesson currently being taught. That is where the teacher's skill at drawing on background knowledge becomes so important.

Teachers can work creatively to elicit background knowledge from students on content topics in order to increase comprehension of the material. This may be as simple as taking the time to do a "K/W/L" (Know, Want to Know, Learned) chart, or as individualized as asking questions about the topic: "Has anyone ever visited the jungle? A jungle is like a rainforest. What do you see in a jungle?" Students can share their knowledge and see how it is connected to new academic information. See the Hotlinks section for more resources on strategies to increase connections with student background knowledge.

4. Increase ELL Parent Involvement
Specific and measurable goal: Teacher will contact one ELL parent each week to share information on his/her student or to inform the parent of a school event.
No matter what language you or your students' parents speak, parental support is a big key to academic success. ELL families are often at a disadvantage when it comes to supporting their child because of language and cultural barriers. It can be easy to interpret ELL parent "no shows" as a lack of interest in education; however, very often ELL parents want their children to succeed as much as any other parent but are unable to participate to the same extent that other parents participate due to these barriers or their work schedules.

Regular, open and friendly communication from the teacher can make a big difference in ELL parent participation. It can feel daunting for an English speaking teacher to call a non-English speaking parent, but usually there is someone in the family who speaks enough English to interpret the message for the parent, or the parent speaks enough English to understand a simple message. It may also be possible to get help from a bilingual school staff member to assist in making a quick phone call. ELL parents will be very pleased and excited to hear positive news about their child and will feel more comfortable asking questions and visiting the school in the future. The more informed the parents are, the more likely it is that the student will get support at home and parents will have the information they need to help their child be successful. See the Hotlinks section for links to further resources with specific ideas for ELL family outreach.

5. Increase Writing Opportunities
Specific and measurable goal: Students will engage in a weekly writing activity that will focus on developing a certain skill such as creative vocabulary use, the correct format of an essay or the peer editing process.
The ability to write effectively and accurately to convey a message is a very important skill for a college student and in most careers. However, it often seems as if the curriculum is largely focused on developing reading and math skills. Of course, these are very important too, but students need to have many positive opportunities to develop writing skills in a variety of formats in order to strengthen their communication skills. For ELLs this is particularly important. Depending on their writing skill level in their first language and their English language abilities, writing may be frustrating. Students need to engage in a variety of writing to develop an understanding of different types of writing and to identify their strengths and weaknesses as a writer.

I want to underscore the importance of interacting with writing in a positive way by examining creativity and word usage, in addition to the mechanics of writing. Many ELLs will focus negatively on problems with mechanics and miss the strengths they display in their writing. We write the way we think and speak, and by analyzing our writing we begin to analyze our thoughts and speech as well. When students discuss their writing they are able to see their thoughts and statements from someone else's perspective and they gain awareness of their own language development. In this age of technology where a lot of communication is done electronically, it is more important than ever that students develop the ability to state their thoughts clearly and accurately in writing - as well as to know the difference between texting a message to buddies and sending an email to the boss. See the Hotlinks section for links to instructional resources for writing.

I hope that this list of "Five Things" will be helpful as you set academic goals for the rest of the year. You may find, of course, that if you create your own they will be more meaningful, and you're more likely to stick with your plan. I hope you will be able to pick at least one thing and give it a try. The other thing I have learned from the resolution experts at women's magazines is that baby steps are better than no steps at all. So give it a try and go easy on yourself if it doesn't go as well as planned or if you get busy and don't keep up as well as you'd like. The most important thing is that you explore an instructional area that you know will improve the academic achievement of ELLs, and commit yourself to continued improvement in 2009. Happy Teaching in the New Year!

Note: For more recommended online resources, take a look at the Hotlinks that follow each of these articles and webcasts.

Increase Interaction

Explicitly Teach Academic English Structures

Build on Background Knowledge

Increase ELL Parent Involvement

Writing

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Five Things Teachers Can Do to Improve Learning for ELLs in the New Year

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It is resolution season! In January we reflect on past joys and concerns from the previous year, and take the opportunity to make a resolution that will improve our lives in the New Year. Of course, we all know that resolutions are hard to keep and can often be unrealistic.

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Iowa Department of Education - Creating excellence in education through leadership and service.

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Over 10 percent of students in the United States-more than 4.8 million kids-are English language learners (ELLs), and the number is on the rise. Though these students do not learn differently than their native-English-speaking peers, they do have particular educational needs.

To learn about these needs-and best practices for addressing them-I interviewed a range of educators and observers, including Larry Ferlazzo, an educator and author of The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide; longtime teachers of English as a second language (ESL) Emily Francis and Tan Huynh; and the journalist Helen Thorpe, who spent a year observing a teacher who works with ELLs.

The group emphasized that the strategies listed here, which include both big-picture mindsets and nitty-gritty teaching tactics, can be incorporated into all classrooms, benefiting both native English speakers and ELLs.

1. Cultivate Relationships and Be Culturally Responsive

No surprise here. A successful classroom, our educators agreed, is one in which students feel known, appreciated, and comfortable taking emotional and intellectual risks. That requires intentional planning and consistent messaging by the teacher.

Emily Francis, an ESL teacher in Concord, North Carolina, makes clear that she wants her students to "embrace their culture and their language as a foundation of who they are" and to consider their acquisition of a new culture and language "not as subtractive, but as additive." To help support students who may never have attended school before or may be coping with migration-based trauma, Francis emphasizes that little things make a big difference. "The first thing that I need to think about is, how is my student feeling in my classroom?" she says. "Are they sitting next to a buddy they can ask a question in their home language? Do they feel comfortable tapping me on the shoulder if they have to go to the bathroom?"

But creating a supportive environment is also about cultivating an appreciation of diversity-it's critical that both the curriculum and the classroom environment honor and reflect the lives of the students. For instance, Francis makes certain that her classroom library is reflective of her students' diverse backgrounds and identities.

ESL teacher Katie Toppel, who teaches near Portland, Oregon, champions the value of home visits to get to know students' families and takes care to incorporate the particulars of students' lives, such as pets' names and favorite sports, into lessons. Students are most engaged when they feel a personal connection to a lesson or unit, a connection that's created in part by a teacher's investment in culturally competent relationships.

2. Teach Language Skills Across the Curriculum

English language learners should not be learning the fundamentals of English in isolation; they should be applying their developing language skills to rich academic content in all subjects.

"It is key that in mainstream classrooms, teachers understand their role as language teachers," says Valentina Gonzalez, a district leader in Katy, Texas, suggesting that all teachers should be aware of the specialized idiom they work within. "If we teach math, then we teach the language of mathematics. If we teach science, then we teach the language of science." Math teachers, in other words, should take the time to teach the unfamiliar vocabulary of mathematics- add, subtract, calculator, solve -concurrently with the teaching of math skills.

3. Emphasize Productive Language

The educators I interviewed agreed that productive language skills-hard-to-master dimensions of language fluency like speaking and writing-should be front and center from day one, even if students feel hesitant about them.

Beginning ELLs often develop receptive language skills like listening and reading first. Educators who are unaware of the typical path to fluency may believe that students who can follow verbal or written directions will be able to produce oral or written language, but that's usually not the case.

To support reluctant speakers, Tan Huynh, an educator who blogs at Empowering ELLs, suggests using sentence frames. "For example, when a science teacher wants ELLs to produce a hypothesis, they might offer the sentence, 'If _____ was added, then _____ because _____.' This sentence frame provides clues that empower ELLs to sound and think like scientists," Huynh says.

Andrea Honigsfeld, a professor of education at Molloy College in Rockville, New York, suggests that all lessons touch on every letter of the acronym SWIRL, which stands for Speak, Write, Interact, Read, Listen. The approach intentionally privileges productive language skills "from the beginning," she says.

4. Speak Slowly-and Increase Your Wait Time

Easier said than done. Still, many of the teachers I spoke to said this simple change is vital. You can record yourself speaking in class to measure your cadence, and adjust.

"Adding in an extra three to five seconds after we pose a question offers all students time to think," explains Gonzalez. "However, for English learners, it also gives time to translate, process their thinking, translate back into English, and develop the courage to answer. If we call on students too quickly, many of our students will stop thinking about the answers-or trying to answer at all."

That means undoing some of our own habits, according to Larry Ferlazzo, a high school ESL teacher in Sacramento, California. "Researchers have found that typically most teachers give one to two seconds between asking a question and expecting a student response," he says. "The same researchers have shown that if you wait three to five seconds, the quality of responses is astronomically greater."

5. Differentiate-and Use Multiple Modalities

All kids learn better when they engage with material in multiple ways: Lessons that involve writing, speaking, drawing, and listening, for example, give students four opportunities to deepen their understanding of the work. For ELLs, those additional engagements also provide a little breathing room so they can work through the language barrier.

Helen Thorpe, a journalist who spent a year observing Eddie Williams's classroom in Denver in order to write a book about immigrants called The Newcomers, marveled at Williams's method of differentiation. "Eddie would enunciate very clearly in English multiple times, he would write it on the board, and he would go to the projector to give a visual. And, finally, he'd be asking the kids to verbalize aspects of the lesson themselves," she says, tracing Williams's efforts to move his students from receptive to productive language fluency.

Toppel uses a strategy called QSSSA to scaffold classroom discussions with ELLs. The letters stand for Question (the teacher poses a question, then gives ample think time); Signal (a designated motion like a thumbs-up, a finger on the nose-something that lets students indicate that they're ready to answer); Stem (the teacher provides a sentence starter for the question-for example, for "What is your favorite place to read a book?" the stem might be, "My favorite place to read a book is _____"); Share; and Assess.

6. Incorporate Students' Native Languages-and Don't Be Afraid of Technology

Bilingualism is the goal, of course, not replacement.

Ferlazzo uses a strategy called "preview, view, review," which leverages a student's native language skills as a foundation for learning the new language. He introduces a topic and encourages students to preview it in materials in their home language (often using multilingual videos and other online resources); he then teaches the topic in English, and then has students review the information in their home language.

Ferlazzo also encourages teachers to embrace technologies that students find helpful, like Google Translate. He stresses that the app can be a useful way for students to translate words quickly-but warns that it can quickly "become a dependency" if it's used as more than a handy dictionary.

Thorpe agrees that Translate can take pressure off teachers, who sometimes find that they "just stand at the front of the room and say things over and over. And if the kids didn't know what those words are, they're out of luck." Translation technology means you can say it once (or twice) and let the students use the technology to translate key words and phrases.

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6 Essential Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners

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We interviewed educators with decades of experience in teaching ELLs and tapped a network of experts and observers to find the strategies that work.

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Strategies for working with ELL Students

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Provide a welcoming class environment

Know and include the student

Modify your speech

Provide opportunities for interaction

Support literacy development

Reading Instruction

Development of Writing Skills

Vocabulary Development

https://ed.psu.edu/pds/elementary/intern-resources/esl-handbook/supporting-ells