Scaffolding Strategies for ELLs by NaTasha Clever

nclever — 2025-04-06 17:13:09 UTC

Consider the following questions as you formulate your post:

1. What is the lesson activity?

2. What are the language needs within that activity?

3. How can you increase accessibility for an ELL without simplifying the task? (hint: not just translating)

4. Describe your scaffolding strategy, and explain how you aim to address the language need you've identified.

jnotario2 — 2025-04-07 17:03:38 UTC

We are currently working on interviewing skills. Students are practicing coming up with answers for specific questions they may receive next week during their mock interviews. They will be using the skills of reading and speaking. Students can work together to read through the questions and practice answering with one another. I as the teacher, or the students partner can help a struggling student reading the question and trying to think of the best way to respond. If necessary, we could also rephrase to question in a way that could be better understood or give examples of a good answer to the question.

mmeyer26 — 2025-04-08 17:37:26 UTC

Melissa -

Students will analyze online behaviors and create a footprint visual, placing positive digital choices inside and negative ones outside the footprint.

ELL students may struggle with digital vocabulary and understanding the difference between positive, negative, and neutral online behaviors.

I will provide a list of sample behaviors with visual icons and allow students to rate and discuss them before choosing which to include in their footprint.

Using visual aids, modeling the task, and giving sentence frames, I will support comprehension and language production without lowering expectations.

2025-04-08 18:25:19 UTC

The lesson activity is having my 8th grade students look at their social media and/or technology habits and come up with a challenge that they can do on their own. Students will be asked to reflect on their social media/technology use before during and after the challenge activity. For students who are ELL, I will be giving the instructions in English, while simultaneously using my cell phone Google Translate App to voice translate into Spanish for my two young ladies. This way my students have the understanding of what I am asking them to do. (This is something we have been doing together and it works well for them). When it comes to the reflection worksheets and tracking chart, I will be keeping my expectations the same for my ELL students as my regular ed students but will use images to scaffold to help the students connect to the content and questions in a more meaningful way to them.

2025-04-09 19:20:02 UTC

As part of our unit review prior to the assessment, we have a study guide/worksheet with key terms that the students will work on in class the day prior to the assessment. There are multiple ways that I am going to scaffold the worksheet for the ELL students without diluting the purpose of the task. First, I will add page #'s by the key words, so the students know where to look for the words in the text and in context to what we have learned in the lessons. For the places where definitions are required, I will add sentence starters to help guide the students in the correct direction of how to define the term in English. Third, I will add images/graphics that help to explain the term visually where possible-although not all business terms are easy to connect to an image. And lastly, rather than only give the instructions verbally to the class and send them on their way to complete the activity, I will do a better job at writing the instructions and expectations out on the board and the worksheet itself so the students can reference it as needed while they are working and/or translate them to ensure they are achieving what is expected. (This correlates to the example during the PD session where if we do not understand what is being asked of us to complete (instruction in German or Spanish), it is hard to know what to do to take actions and get the correct/desired results)

jacostello5 — 2025-04-11 16:26:18 UTC

Students are studying color psychology and how it affects the mood and tone of a room. Students researched the emotions associated with the color, what rooms are best designed using the color, and in what rooms the color should be avoided. I find students struggle with interior design vocabulary since it is not used in their daily lexicon. Then students write a short poem using the information they researched. In order for ELD students to be successful and complete the same task, I implemented a Diamante diagram. This give ELD students the opportunity organize their thoughts, choose specific vocabulary with sentences starters and write a poem.

2025-04-11 19:17:23 UTC

Currently I do not have any students who show many language barriers. In Child Development I have a student who grew up in a refugee camp and therefore did not have a US-recognizable childhood. Her language is very good and often slows her down but is not an issue in comprehension. Her biggest issue is understanding of context - she didn't have books as a child, childhood games and toys and our technology are all new to her.

We have an activity coming up where students will create their own childcare center/program and create a website for it. This activity follows notes, games, articles, videos, etc. of the different kinds of programs. A lot of the information provided prior to the activity acts as a scaffold to the project - giving her understanding of the different options. We will research local day care centers as well to see what their programs are like and how their websites are set up.

I will both do a Site tutorial with her and allow her to do a slide show if she prefers.

I will show her additional programs' websites and how each of the parts of the assignment look on that site.

2025-04-29 14:06:49 UTC

Kathie-

We were working on learning vocabulary for our hand-sewing unit. They needed to know the names and uses of the tools for their sewing tools quiz. Students may have a difficult time with the specific vocabulary, so I modified their quiz to adjust for that. I changed the sewing tools to matching the name with the picture. For the open ended and multiple choice questions, I reworded some of the questions. They were still able to identify each item by the name.

2025-05-05 16:49:24 UTC

In Child Development, we cover principles of behavior management in early childhood settings.
One activity we do is reviewing/analyzing temper tantrum scenarios. Students review short scenarios and identify the underlying need or cause of the behavior. In groups, students apply positive behavior management strategies and create a brief action plan. A strategy I use for this activity to make it more accessible for an ELL is to provide the class with structured sentence frames for describing the behaviors and then proposing possible strategies. Ex: One possible strategy to use is ___ because it helps the child ___.

shanrahan13 — 2025-05-12 15:58:17 UTC

In Personal Finance we are currently working on completing a tax return. This involves vocab that is new to every student and requires a large amount of scaffolding. This unit has a heavy emphasis on guided notes. One strategy that works well for ELL students is introducing a new vocab word (usually a type of form), giving the definition of the word, having students make their own understanding, and using some kind of visual. At the end of guided notes and as a closing activity I will sometimes have students explain these tax concepts as if they were teaching a kindergarten class about it. This can help to make them more aware of the language they are using as well as demonstrate their understanding of the concept. These forms can be difficult to follow so chunking them also helps students to follow along.