Five More Teaching Strategies for ELLs

 

Strategies for developing literacy skills for English language learners can be easily incorporated into any classroom. It is often overwhelming for teachers to craft different learning plans for the various kinds of learners that we have in our classrooms, responding intensively and inventively to the needs of each of our students. However, the strategies listed below are meant to integrate the social aspect of learning, and focus on strengthening teacher-student relationships and peer relationships, while developing comprehension, vocabulary, writing skills, and content knowledge. It is important for teachers to focus on strengthening ELL language skills in both their first or home language and English.

 

Interactive read aloud

•          Modeling fluency and comprehension
•          Developing oral language abilities and literacy knowledge

Though read alouds are often thought of as an activity for younger grades, conducting interactive read alouds (also known as shared reading) is beneficial for all ages of English language learners. This activity occurs when teachers read a book or text to the whole class and employ strategies to check for comprehension during the reading, while students may or may not follow along with their own copies of the book. Start by prereading a text and determining vocabulary and concepts that may be difficult for students. Gathering support materials such as photos, other visuals, or even plans of how to paraphrase. Teachers should have an instructional goal when doing interactive read alouds, and make predetermined stops in order to ask open-ended questions, expand on students’ oral responses, and prompt them to use higher vocabulary to describe their viewpoint. Making predetermined pauses in reading allows for assessment of student understanding, as well as breaking the content into manageable chunks for ELL students. This also allows teachers to make connections from events in the book with students’ background knowledge and identify key vocabulary. Learning can be assessed by having students create a visual or paraphrasing orally, or with a written response.

 

Immersive content area reading

•          Scaffolding language abilities
•          Content knowledge enrichment
•          Interdisciplinary reading skills

Immersive content area reading refers to a more intensive shared book reading experience in areas such as social studies or science. ELL students can have trouble with content-specific advanced vocabulary, like science terms or social studies concepts, and immersive content area reading involves analyzing informational text (rather than fiction normally used in read alouds). This can take place in small groups after whole group instruction, and the same text should be reread twice. Teachers will take time to discuss more difficult terms and concepts, narrowing down each lesson to smaller topics (for example, a pre-K science unit of study about living things, then narrowing down to plants, birds, land animals, and ocean animals). Words in the text that are not likely to be learned outside of school should be focused on, and should be reviewed and integrated into each lesson. Instruction on content-related words should include visuals, and assessment can be carried out by having students complete tasks like labeling pictures, writing out sentences about the content, or talking about the information they know about the subject. It is important to review, reread, and identify content-related vocabulary that can be difficult for ELL students to learn.

 

Visual cues/artifacts

•          Deepening comprehension
•          Decoding

Visual cues for English language learners can provide needed clarification of concepts and associating English words with their meaning in an easy to comprehend way. Visual cues during lessons can include physical objects or artifacts like charts, photos, drawings, and toys, or bodily gestures such as sign language and total physical response (assigning a body movement to a word, phrase, or concept during instruction). Visual cues are especially useful for more complex vocabulary, such as content-area vocabulary (science terms, social studies concepts, etc.). Drawing pictures on an anchor chart, showing photos on a projector, or even making PowerPoint presentations with Google images are helpful visual cues. Assessing student learning using visual cues will include having students repeat words back to you and continued practice with recognizing vocabulary words. Students can draw pictures if appropriate or find objects in the classroom that represent a concept or word.

 

Peer-mediated instruction

•          Collaboration
•          Comprehension

Peer-mediated instruction refers to pairing an ELL student with another ELL student who speaks the same language that has a larger English vocabulary and more advanced reading skills in order to discuss instructional objectives and text meaning. Students can also be paired with English speaking students for this exercise, but it works best for students who speak the same home language. Students can preview text with each other (guided by teacher) to activate background knowledge and generate informed predictions about the text. Then, the “click and clunk” strategy can be used, which is a self-monitoring strategy that identifies which concepts students are familiar with (click) and which words or concepts they don’t understand (clunk) and will focus on later. Students identify the main idea of the text together, and then wrap up after discussing and defining the “clunk” words or concepts. For wrap up, students can answer questions about the text to help teachers assess their knowledge of the text, including the following:

-How were ___and___ the same?

-How were they different?

-What do you think would happen if­­___?

-What do you think caused ___to happen?

-How would you compare and contrast___?

-What might have prevented the problem of ___from happening?

-What are the strength and weakness of___?

-How would you interpret___ ?

 

Previewing and reviewing texts

•          Identifying/expanding vocabulary
•          Expanding grammar/language skills
•          Comprehension

Previewing text can be beneficial for many types of struggling readers, but for ELL students, previewing a text or assignment in their home language can extend comprehension skills. First, teachers can write target vocabulary in English and the student’s home language, define the words and discuss them, and most importantly, relate them to real life. If the text is a work of fiction, short sentences can be written that connect personal information to that of the character in the text. After previewing, students can take home assignments or texts to complete independently, then learning can be assessed during review by having them engage in story retelling or written summary of the text.

 

References

Bolos, N. (2012). Successful Strategies for Teaching Reading to Middle Grades English Language Learners. Middle School Journal, 44(2), 14-20.

Bouchereau Bauer, E., & Arazi, J. (2011). Promoting Literacy Development for Beginning English Learners. The Reading Teacher, 64(5), 383-386.

Davison, M., & Qi, C. (2017). Language Teaching Strategies for Preschool English Learners. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, 2(1), 170-178.

Pollard-Durodola, S., Gonzalez, J., Saenz, L., Soares, D., Resendez, N., Kwok, O., Zhu, L. (2016). The effects of content-related shared book reading on the language development of preschool dual language learners. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 36, 106-121.

Vaughn, S., Klingner, J., & Bryant, D. (2001). Collaborative Strategic Reading as a Means to Enhance Peer-Mediated Instruction for Reading Comprehension and Content-Area Learning. Remedial and Special Education, 22(2), 66-74.

 

https://minds-in-bloom.com/why-visuals-are-important-for-ells/

https://www.edutopia.org/article/6-essential-strategies-teaching-english-language-learners