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Teaching Out of the Box: Algebra for ESL Students

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A Day in the Life of a Multilingual High School

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At Pennsylvania's Upper Darby High School in suburban Philadelphia, more than 15 languages are spoken in a student body of nearly 4,000. To help support such a diverse array of English-language learners, the school created a peer tutoring program. Nearly 5 million children in U.S. public schools are learning the English language.

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The information just keeps coming!

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Fregeau - Assessing ELLs in ESL or Mainstream Classrooms: Quick Fixes for Busy Teachers (TESL/TEFL)

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Simple strategies will be described for modifying existing tests for ELLs, preparing Ells to take tests and incorporating other forms of assessments to determine student progress.

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ESL Survival Guide Online Resources and Links

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During the New Year, we reflect on past joys and concerns from the previous year and take the opportunity to look ahead. During these difficult times and uncertain times, it is especially important to take time for reflection, identify our strengths and challenges, and consider where our efforts will be most effective.

In this article, I will recommend some specific and measurable actions you can implement to support the success of your English language learners (ELLs). You may wish to focus on just one of these strategies so you can work on it consistently, or try different strategies at different times through the year. Many of the strategies can be used in any learning setting, whether you are in-person, hybrid, or remote for the coming months.

I also suggest teachers employ the "support group" method and use the chosen strategy as a topic for a professional learning community. Sharing strategies, achievements, and challenges with colleagues will help you all grow professionally, and more students will benefit academically. It will also provide the team with much-needed support and you can use some of these ideas to jumpstart collaboration.

Note: We have added some ideas around advocacy and collaboration to this article due to the additional responsibilities and uncertainties educators are currently facing.

Strategies for Instruction

1. Look for ways to build relationships with your ELLs.
Specific and measurable goal: I will try one new strategy that can boost my connections with students.
When asked for their top piece of advice for working with ELLs, veteran ELL educators often talk about the importance of building relationships with their ELLs and how the time invested in those relationships pays dividends in the future. There are lots of ways to support those connections with strategies such as those in the article below, which also includes many tech tools that can be used online or in-person with students.

Recommended resources

Videos: Building relationships with ELLs

2. Increase ELL students' English language production and peer interaction.
Specific and measurable goal: I will use one or two key strategies that can support oral language in my instruction and share ideas that work with my colleagues.
There are two key items students need in order to further develop skills in a new language - time and practice. There is nothing teachers can do to rush language acquisition, but there are many ways to provide opportunities to practice their skills in the classroom. If activities are structured to support student-to-student or group interaction, ELLs will need to use their oral language skills 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 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.

Recommended resources

Albuquerque teacher Ali Nava walks her students through a cooperative paragraph summarizing the beginning, middle, and end the children's book Burro's Tortillas and uses the exercise as an opportunity to practice their writing skills.

3. Explicitly teach academic language vocabulary and structures.
Specific and measurable resolution: I will identify one key area where my students need more practice in academic language and look for ways to support their language development.
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 academic 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 collaborating with ESL teachers to learn how to identify the academic language demands of content-area lessons and how to scaffold academic language and vocabulary instruction. With practice, it will become easier to review a content-area lesson and identify 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.

Recommended resources

Video: What are sentence frames?

ESOL specialist Sheila Majdi explains what a sentence frame is and how she might use this strategy with ELLs.

4. Build on ELLs' background knowledge to support 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. ELLs come with many building blocks, but it takes practice learning how to identify what they are. 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.

Recommended resources

Videos: ELL educators speak about background knowledge

5. Increase opportunities for writing.
Specific and measurable goal: I will choose one targeted activity that focuses 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 critical skill for a college student and in most careers. Students need to have many positive opportunities to develop writing skills in a variety of formats in order to strengthen their communication skills, and 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.

Recommended resources

Strategies: ELL Family Engagement

Multilingual families are legally entitled to information in their home language. Here are some ideas to improve and expand outreach and partnerships with ELL families.

6. Start positive, strengths-based conversations with families.
Specific and measurable goal: I will contact one family each week to share a success story about their child.
No matter what language they speak, ELL families want their children to succeed as much as any other family. Regular, open and friendly communication from the teacher can make a big difference in ELL parent engagement, especially if families are intimidated by the U.S. school system.

It can also feel daunting to call an ELL family, but often 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 families 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 families are, the more likely it is that the student will get support at home and families will have the information they need to help their child be successful.

Recommended resources

Video: Our parents value education and their children's teachers

ELD Specialist Diana Alqadhi explains how the fact that teachers are held in high esteem in Yemeni culture helps strengthen family partnerships at her middle school.

7. Try a new tool to support family engagement.
Specific and measurable goal: I will try a new way to reach out to a multilingual family.
There are more tools than ever before to support multilingual family outreach. These include the app TalkingPoints, as well as innovative ways to use social media and video conferences with families. The more you know about resources and staffing your district has in this area, the more effective your outreach will be!

Recommended resources

Video: Partnering with families in the service industry

This video features Juliana Urtubey, 2021 National Teacher of the Year and the 2021 Nevada Teacher of the Year, sharing her experiences in partnering with families who work in Las Vegas.

Strategies for Collaboration & Advocacy

8. Look for ways to collaborate informally with colleagues.
Specific and measurable goal: I will reach out to one colleague to see if we can increase our collaboration.
There are a lot of ways you can initiate collaboration on behalf of ELLs with very small steps.

If you are a classroom or content-area teacher, you can:

send your ELL or bilingual colleagues a question about a student or an area of instruction where you'd like some support

ask your ELL colleagues to share some favorite strategies with you.

If you are an ELL/bilingual teacher or specialist, you can:

write a letter to colleagues introducing yourself and some of the ways you collaborate with others

invite colleagues to share questions about their ELLs with you

approach a content-area colleague and ask them how their ELLs are faring.

There are a few different benefits to this kind of collaboration:

Students can benefit as more teachers' capacity for ELL instruction increases.

Staff get to know each other's areas of expertise better.

Colleagues can team up to ask for more support for formal collaboration opportunities for ELLs.

Staff can increase the number of voices speaking up for ELLs, which is more critical than ever during COVID-19.

Recommended resources

Video: Tips for collaboration from an ESOL specialist

ESOL specialist Katy Padilla shares some of the tips she's learned in her experience collaborating with classroom and content-area colleagues.

9. Identify an area where you'd like to advocate for your ELLs.
Specific and measurable goal: I will choose one topic where I would like to see change for our ELLs and identify some small steps I can take to make a difference.
When you consider how your ELLs are currently doing, you may feel overwhelmed by a constellation of factors that are impacting them. Try identifying one issue that you think could make a difference if it were to improve or change. This might be an area of instruction, family engagement, language access, services and support, or creating a more welcoming environment at the school. For some ideas on first steps you might take to work on that issue, take a look at the following resources.

Recommended resources

10. Help administrators develop their capacity to serve ELLs.
Specific and measurable goal: I will reach out to one administrator to set up a conversation about our ELLs.
Communicating with administrators about ELL instruction, support, and family engagement can make a big difference. Not only can it bring important issues to administrators' attention, it can help them understand the role and value of ELL educators and why collaboration on behalf of ELLs is so valuable.

Try reaching out to an administrator with a question, issue, topic, or resource you'd like to share related to ELLs, such as the issue you identified above. Keep in mind, however, it doesn't have to be a big question to get the conversation started. Even though everyone is working within challenging circumstances right now, shining a light on ELLs' experiences, challenges, and needs can help put some important changes in motion.

Recommended resources

Learn more about the laws and regulations relating to the education of ELLs in the following article:

Video: What administrators need to know about what ESOL specialists do

Dr. Karen Woodson shares an overview of the expertise that ESOL educators bring to their schools and districts.

11. Strengthen your network of support.
Specific and measurable goal: I will take one step to expand my network of support, such as reaching out to another colleague or joining an online community of educators.
There is a lot of wonderful work being done and shared in schools, districts, professional learning communities, and online networks. If you need some ideas, encouragement, or validation, these can be powerful connections to make. There are recommended resources and ideas in the article below to help you get started.

Recommended resources

12. Keep returning to self-care & reflection.
Specific and measurable goal: I will share one self-care goal with a friend or colleague so we can check in about it in the near future.
Even if self-care is the last thing you've been able to think about during COVID-19, it's never to late to bring it back into focus.

Keep conversations going with your colleagues about what self-care means to you and what might help support it at the school level.

Don't give up on trying to make the self-care you need for your physical and mental health a regular part of your routine.

Share your success stories with colleagues to help boost motivation.

Take some time for reflection. While the reflection article below focuses on end-of-school-year questions, they could be used at any time during the year.

Together, colleagues can support each other and each other's self-care as part of their important work on behalf of students.

Closing Thoughts

I hope that this list will be helpful as you set goals for the upcoming 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. 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 area that you think will support your ELLs' success, and commit yourself to continued improvement in the coming year. All the best in the New Year!

Video: Bonus Tips from Kristina

Here are some bonus tips from Kristina for educators ELLs!

Video: Try one new thing at a time

Video: When a new strategy doesn't work

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Twelve Things Teachers Can Do to Support ELL Success in the New Year

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During the New Year, we reflect on past joys and concerns from the previous year and take the opportunity to look ahead. During these difficult times and uncertain times, it is especially important to take time for reflection, identify our strengths and challenges, and consider where our efforts will be most effective.

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What to do first: Creating a welcoming ELL classroom environment

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Lesson Planning for ELLs | Colorín Colorado

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When planning a lesson for a class that includes English language learners (ELLs), it may be difficult to know how to help students at different language levels participate fully in the activities. However, there are a number of steps you can take to help strengthen students' language development and engage them, no matter their level of language proficiency.

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How to Develop a Lesson Plan that includes ELLs

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How to Develop a Lesson Plan that includes ELLs

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In content-area courses, English language learners (ELLs) have a double challenge: they must learn language and content at the same time. ELLs may struggle in content-area courses such as literature, science, math, and social studies because they haven't acquired the literacy, language skills, or background knowledge necessary to master that new content knowledge.

One way to address that challenge is through effective lesson planning. Depending on their different stages of English proficiency and literacy, ELLs will benefit from the skills that a well-designed lesson can address.

Effective lessons include:

building background knowledge

explicit instruction and modeling

guided practice

peer practice

assessment of content learned

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

Teacher-student interactions, as well as peer interactions, are critical for learning. Because of the diversity in experiences and backgrounds that ELLs bring to the classroom, it is essential to prepare lessons that can address a wide range of needs. This broad sweep will also benefit all other students in your class.

Teacher preparation

Effective lesson planning requires a number of steps from initial preparation to the final review of material. This Lesson Plan Checklist for The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) offers a general roadmap for that process.

Once you get started, survey your target content to:

determine your standard or lesson objective

eliminate unnecessary information that does not meet your objective

select the concepts to teach

choose specific vocabulary to pre-teach

develop assessments to test that content

Lesson components

Once you have identifed your target objectives, concepts, and vocabulary, consider the following elements of your lesson plan.

Building background knowledge

As you prepare your lesson, determine what background knowledge students need in order to master the material. Teachers may find that their ELLs' background knowledge varies greatly from one student to another. It's also important not to assume that ELLs' background knowledge matches that of other students who were raised in this country.

For example, a student may not have learned much about geography in previous schooling or if he has had little or no schooling, so the concepts of a "city," "state," or "country" may be new to him. Also consider your students' different cultural backgrounds - in some countries, students learn that there are 5 or 6 continents rather than 7, so if they are expected to learn the 7 continents here that may be a bit confusing at first.

In order to build background knowledge, try the following:

Create interest in the subject by using pictures, real objects, maps, or personal experiences. Say the names of objects as often as you can so ELLs can remember them. Relate material to students' lives when possible.

Build text-specific knowledge by providing students with information from the text beforehand, particularly if the text is conceptually difficult or has an abundance of information that is important. For example, if there are six main topics on the animal kingdom, highlight them beforehand.
Also, develop concept background by explaining difficult concepts and labeling them with key words ELLs can remember. For example, "This is the Statue of Liberty. Liberty means freedom. Liberty means libertad. The people of France gave us the Statue of Liberty..."

Establish the purpose for reading (e.g., "Now we are going to read to find out about a country called France. What are some things we might learn about France as we read?")

Select a specific comprehension strategy for students to use. For example, decide to focus on the main idea, cause and effect, or comparing and contrasting.

Learn more about background knowledge in the following articles:

Pre-teaching vocabulary

Select tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 words from target content. Write an ELL-friendly definition for each and post them where students can see them throughout the lesson.

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

You might want to use your state or local English language acquisition standards as a guide for choosing words to highlight.

Read about vocabulary development in this article, and take a look at our Academic Language webcast to learn more about teaching academic vocabulary.

Peer review and cooperative learning strategies

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

Use graphic organizers.

Have students work in collaborative groups and use a graphic organizer so together they can identify main ideas, relationships between information, etc. It gives a purpose while reading while interacting and using the language.

Assign reading partners.

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

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

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

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

You can learn about other ways to effectively using cooperative learning strategies in these articles:

Writing

Writing is another way for ELLs to demonstrate and extend their understanding of content. You can ask teams to compose questions about the content and use those questions for their test. Throw in one of your questions as a 'surprise test question.' Or, ask students to practice writing short simple summaries of what they read.

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

Graphic organizers
Another writing option is to give students a graphic organizer to fill in. This will demonstrate that they understood the concepts and content, even if they only use a symbol or write one or two words for each category. Graphic organizers can also be used as a pre-teaching or post-teaching strategy for introducing or reinforcing key concepts and how they are related. The more connections ELLs make to the overall content and organization of the content before reading, the easier it will be to focus on and understand what is important. When teachers and/or students use graphic organizers at the end of a lesson, this helps to reinforce and synthesize lesson content.

For example:

Review and assessment

There are many ways to review and assess content following instruction. For some ideas, take a look at these articles:

Reading comprehension and using textbooks

Reading is an important part of learning new content in the classroom. Remember that ELLs (especially those students with limited educational experience) may also need some help with two areas in particular:

1. Reading comprehension

2. How to effectively use textbooks

There are a few ways to support these skills:

Explicitly teach reading comprehension skills. Learning skills such as summarizing and finding the main idea will help students apply these strategies to all subject matter.

Teach students how to make predictions. One method is the Directed Reading-Thinking Activity (DR-TA), which encourages students to be active readers.

Help students recognize the structure of expository text. Introduce the various parts of the text, such as the table of contents and the glossary. Show students how the text is organized, and teach them how to use these tools for informational reading:

Read an introductory portion of the textbook aloud. Model thinking aloud about what you are reading, how you figure out difficult words, and how to summarize what you read.

Develop study guides to guide ELLs through their content area textbook reading. Study guides will focus their attention on the major ideas presented, and can include graphic organizers as described above, key vocabulary, and guiding questions.

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

Encourage student engagement. One strategy is the "Say Something" activity. Students take turns reading aloud, and following the reading, each student 'says something,' such as asking question, making a comment, making a connection to something already read, or responding personally to the text. The exercise also engages students as readers and get them thinking about the text.

For more tips on supporing reading instruction in the ELL classroom, take a look at our reading tips for teachers.

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How to Develop a Lesson Plan that Includes ELLs

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In content-area courses, English language learners (ELLs) have a double challenge: they must learn language and content at the same time. ELLs may struggle in content-area courses such as literature, science, math, and social studies because they haven't acquired the literacy, language skills, or background knowledge necessary to master that new content knowledge.

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More Information and Examples

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

In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Jennifer Himmel of the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners. Her overview includes:

what a language objective is

steps that teachers can take to create language objectives

how to implement language objectives in a general education classroom

how to align objectives to content and language standards

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

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

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

Teaching content to ELs: The challenge

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

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

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

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

Teaching content to ELs: The solution

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

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

To this end, language objectives:

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

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

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

Back to top

Writing Language Objectives

What is a language objective?

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

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

the language functions related to the topic of the lesson (e.g., justify, hypothesize)

vocabulary essential to a student being able to fully participate in the lesson (e.g., axis, locate, graph)

language learning strategies to aid in comprehension (e.g, questioning, making predictions).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aligning Language Objectives and Standards

English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards

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

communicative tasks (e.g., retelling, asking clarification questions)

language structures (e.g., sequential language, past-conditional tense)

types of texts students need to understand (e.g., informational text versus literature).

English Language Arts (ELA) standards

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

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

Getting Started

How can I get started?

Careful lesson planning

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

Collaboration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

List

Retell

Summarize in writing

Record

Read

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

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

Describe

Orally explain

Report findings in writing

When should I share language objectives with students?

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

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

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

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

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

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Next Steps

How can I learn more?

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

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

Practices that focus on explicit academic language teaching include:

development of key vocabulary

peer-to-peer interaction

meaningful activities that allow learners to practice the academic language in authentic contexts.

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

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Final Thoughts

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

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

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Resources

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Video Clip: Language Objectives

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This article provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and offers classroom-based examples from different grade and subject levels. In this article written for Colorín Colorado, Jennifer Himmel of the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners.

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An Introduction

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NJ DOE

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Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

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NJ Home |Services A to Z |Departments/Agencies |FAQs

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Title III of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

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NJ Home |Services A to Z |Departments/Agencies |FAQs

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...to balance out the practical

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Key Uses:  Recount, Explain, Argue, Discuss

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12 Ways to Support ELLs in the Main Stream Classroom

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12 Ways to Support ELLs in the Main Stream Classroom

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
A note on terminology: The acronym ESL is used less often now in schools than it used to be, because we recognize that many students who are learning English already speak several other languages, so English would not be a "second" language. I use it several times in the post because schools sometimes refer to the teachers as ESL teachers, and the term is still widely used as a search term for this topic. My intent in using the acronym is to make this post easier to find online.

You have a new student, and he speaks no English. His family has just moved to your town from Japan, and though he receives English as a Second Language (ESL) support, he will also be sitting in your room every day to give him more exposure to his new language. How can you be a good teacher to someone who barely understands you?

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, an average of 9 percent of students in U.S. public schools are English Language Learners (ELLs); that number is closer to 14 percent in cities. Although many of these students start off in high-intensity, whole-day English programs, most are integrated into mainstream classrooms within a year, well before their English language skills would be considered proficient.

How prepared are you to teach these students? If you're like most classroom teachers, you have little to no training in the most effective methods for working with English language learners (Walker, Shafer, & Iiams, 2004). So that means we have a problem here: Lots of ELL kids in regular classrooms, and no teacher training to ensure the success of that placement.

Below, three ESL teachers tell us what they know about the things regular classroom teachers can do to improve instruction for ELL students. These 12 strategies are simple, they are not very time consuming, and best of all, they will help everyone in your class learn better:

1. Make it Visual

"Avoid giving instructions in the air," says Melissa Eddington, an Ohio-based ESL teacher. "ELL kids have a harder time processing spoken language." So instructions - even basic directions for classroom procedures - should be written on the board whenever possible. Challenging concepts should be diagrammed or supported with pictures. And modeling the steps of a process or showing students what a finished product should look like can go a long way toward helping students understand. "Sometimes showing our students what to do is all they need in order to do it," Eddington says. Not only will this kind of nonlinguistic representation improve comprehension for ELL students, it will help all of your students grasp concepts better.

2. Build in more group work.

"Kids aren't just empty glasses that we pour stuff into and then at the end of the day they dump it back onto a test," says Kim, an ESL teacher who was the subject of my very first podcast interview. "If you really want the kids to learn, they've got to be engaged." That means less teacher-led, whole-class instruction, and more small groups, where students can practice language with their peers in a more personal, lower-risk setting. And if ELL students attend your class with a resource teacher, make use of that person: In most cases the resource teacher doesn't have to work exclusively with the ESL students; they can work with smaller groups that happen to contain these students, helping to improve the teacher-student ratio and give kids more time to practice.

3. Communicate with the ESL teacher.

Mary Yurkosky, a former ESL teacher in Massachusetts, credits much of her students' success to the strong relationship she had with the regular classroom teachers. "The classroom teachers were always talking to me about what they were doing in their classes," she says. "They made it so easy for me to support them: If a teacher was going to be doing a unit on plants, I could make sure we used some of that same vocabulary in the ESL class."

Ideally, this could be systematized, where ESL teachers could regularly get copies of lesson plans or collaborate with regular classroom teachers to build solid back-and-forth support, but "it doesn't have to be that much work," Yurkosky insists. "Just talk to each other. Talk about what's going on in your classrooms, invite each other to special presentations, share what your students are learning, and the words will naturally find their way into the ESL class."

4. Honor the "silent period."

Many new language learners go through a silent period, during which they will speak very little, if at all. "Don't force them to talk if they don't want to," says Eddington, "A lot of students who come from cultures outside of America want to be perfect when they speak, so they will not share until they feel they are at a point where they're perfect." Just knowing that this is a normal stage in second language acquisition should help relieve any pressure you feel to move them toward talking too quickly.

5. Allow some scaffolding with the native language.

Although it has been a hotly debated topic in the language-learning community, allowing students some use of their first language (L1) in second-language (L2) classrooms is gaining acceptance. When a student is still very new to a language, it's okay to pair him with other students who speak his native language. "Some students are afraid to open their mouths at all for fear of sounding stupid or just not knowing the words to use," Yurkosky says. "Letting them explain things or ask questions in their first language gets them to relax and feel like a part of the class."

And this doesn't only apply to spoken language. If you give students a written assignment, but the ELL student doesn't yet have the proficiency to handle writing his response in English, "Don't make them just sit there and do nothing," Eddington says. "Allow them to write in their first language if they're able. This allows them to still participate in journal writing or a math extended response, even if you can't read what they write." There has even been some evidence that allowing second-language learners to pre-write and brainstorm in L1 results in higher-quality writing in L2 in later stages of the writing process (Yigzaw, 2012).

6. Look out for culturally unique vocabulary.

"For most of these kids, their background knowledge is lacking, especially with things that are unique to American or westernized culture," says Eddington. It's important to directly teach certain vocabulary words: "Show them videos of what it looks like to toss pizza dough, show pictures of a juke box or a clothing rack - things that are not common in their own language."

One way to differentiate for ELL students is to consider the whole list of terms you're going to teach for a unit, and if you think an ELL student may be overwhelmed by such a long list, omit those that are not essential to understanding the larger topic at hand.

7. Use sentence frames to give students practice with academic language.

All students, not just English language learners, need practice with academic conversations. Sentence frames - partially completed sentences like "I disagree with what _________ said because..." - show students how to structure language in a formal way. Keep these posted in a highly visible spot in your classroom and require students to refer to them during discussions and while they write.

For this kind of language to really sink in, though, Kim says it has to become a regular part of class. "They won't do it if it's not the norm in the class, because they'll be embarrassed to use it among their peers," she says. "But if they can put it off on the teacher and say, Oh, well, you know, Miss Kim makes me talk like this, then they don't look as hoity-toity as they would otherwise."

8. Pre-teach whenever possible.

If you're going to be reading a certain article next week, give ESL students a copy of it now. If you plan to show a YouTube video tomorrow, send a link to your ESL students today. Any chance you can give these students to preview material will increase the odds that they'll understand it on the day you present it to everyone else. "That kind of thing is wonderful," Yurkosky says. "The kids feel so empowered if they've had a chance to look at the material ahead of time."

9. Learn about the cultural background of your students...

Our second-language populations grow more diverse every year. Taking the time to learn the basics of where a child comes from - exactly, not 'somewhere in the Middle East/South America/Asia/Africa' - tells the student that you respect her enough to bother. Kim remembers one time when she had to set the record straight about the diverse South American population at her school: "I was listening to the teachers talking about the 'Mexican' kids in our building," she says, "and I was like, 'We don't have any Mexicans.'" Not taking the time to at least correctly identify a child's country of origin, much like not bothering to pronounce their name correctly, is a kind of microaggression, a small, subtle insult that communicates hostility toward people of color. Make a commitment to be someone who bothers to get it right.

Once you have the country straight, take things up a notch by learning about students' religious and cultural practices. If he is a practicing Muslim, he should be told if one of the pizzas you ordered for the class party has sausage on it. If she comes from a culture where eye contact with adults is viewed as disrespectful, you'll know not to force her to look you in the eye when she's talking.

10. ...but don't make a child speak for his entire culture.

In her podcast interview, Kim shared a story about watching a teacher ask a new Iraqi student how he felt about the war in his country, right in the middle of class. "That's not cultural inclusiveness," she explains. "I've seen teachers do this and then pat themselves on the back. The students' English is limited so they can't express themselves very well, and they don't want to 'represent'; they just want to be there." If you anticipate a theme coming up in your class that's going to be relevant to one of your students, have a conversation with them in advance, or check with your ESL teacher to see if they think it's appropriate for in-class discussion.

11. Show them how to take themselves less seriously...

By modeling the risk-taking that's required to learn a new language, you help students develop the courage to take their own risks, and to have a sense of humor about it. "I tried to say the word 'paint' ( pinta) in Portuguese and instead I said the word for 'penis' ( pinto). They all roared with laughter while I stood there with a What?? look on my face," Yurkosky says. "When they explained what I'd said, I laughed so hard! I told them that laughing was fine because sometimes mistakes are really funny, but ridicule is never okay."

12. ...but always take them seriously.

One of Kim's pet peeves about how teachers interact with English language learners is the way they often see students' efforts as 'cute,' missing the whole point of what the student is trying to say. "A student will be desperate to communicate, and the teacher will get distracted by the delivery and miss the message," she says. "That's painful for me to watch." It bothers her when teachers mistake a lack of language for a lack of intelligence or maturity. When a child can't express themselves as well as they would in their native language, it's far too easy to assume the concepts just aren't in their heads.

"It breaks my heart when I hear teachers say (ELL kids) don't know anything," says Eddington. "These are brilliant kids and they know a lot. They just can't tell us in English yet." Make a conscious effort to see past the accent and the mispronunciations and treat every interaction - every student - with the respect they deserve.

"They're doing twice the job of everybody else in the class," Kim adds, "even though the result looks like half as much." ♦

Further Reading

The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide is one of the highest-rated books on teaching English-language learners available. In addition to offering an overview of the research on second-language learners and best practices in teaching ESL, it also includes a whole section on teaching ESL in the content areas and another specifically geared toward teaching ELL students in mainstream classrooms.
References:
Walker, A., Shafer, J., & Iiams, M. (2004). "Not in my classroom": Teacher attitudes towards English language learners in the mainstream classroom. NABE Journal of Research and Practice, 2(1), 130-160.

Yigzaw, A. (2012). Impact of L1 use in L2 English writing classes. Ethiopian Journal of Education and Sciences, 8(1), 11-27.

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12 Ways to Support English Learners in the Mainstream Classroom

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Advice from three ESL teachers on the things regular classroom teachers can do to help English language learners thrive in mainstream classrooms.

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How can we best support our ELLs in the classroom?