ESL strategies for teachers

By exhibiting particular speech patterns and behavior, such as speaking clearly and slowly, pausing between your sentences, using basic syntax, and speaking slowly, teachers can increase their students' ability to understand what they are hearing. And stressing high-frequency words.

Teachers can increase students’ comprehensible input by using specific instructional strategies such as using visuals to support concepts, providing hands-on material, promoting critical thinking and study skill development, and incorporating cooperative learning activities into the class.

KEY VOCABULARY:

ESL strategies

MATERIALS

Lesson preparation materials:

Realia

These are real-life objects that help students connect to their own lives. Examples of realia include play money to be used in units teaching money or photos depicting text subject matter.

Pictures and Visuals

Visual cues support learning for ELLs. The use of a class document camera or pictures contained within PowerPoint presentations on a given topic communicate a great deal to ELLs. Other important visuals include models, graphs, charts, timelines, maps, or props.

Multimedia

The internet provides many brief video clips on diverse topics for student viewing. Take advantage of professionally produced DVDs and interactive web sites.

Demonstrations

Students benefit from teacher demonstrations. Students can then practice the same process which the teacher has demonstrated with partners using the same manipulatives and supplementary material.

Building background materials

Create Content Word Walls

Teachers create content specific word walls. These word walls should be organized in alphabetical order and include photographs or pictures of the new vocabulary words alongside the new vocabulary words. These words can be displayed on butcher-block paper taped to a classroom wall. Selected words should be key terms, reviewed before and after the content lesson, and the selected words should be adjusted frequently.

Create Concept Definition Maps

These types of graphic organizers reinforce language, categorize events and critical facts.

Create Visual Vocabulary Power Point Slides or Display Boards

A picture is definitely worth a 1,000 words when teaching vocabulary to ELL students. ELL students envision concepts through photographs or slide shows depicting the academic topic.

Students Create Personal Dictionaries

Students form cooperative groups or teams and read the text aloud. They collectively highlight new key terms and create individual dictionaries formatted in alphabetical order or by topic.

Create Word-Generation Activities

The teacher reviews new content key vocabulary through word analogy. For example, port means to carry, “What does transport and export mean?”

Comprehensible input materials

Question Cubes

This is a teacher-made manipulative used for answering questions about any given academic text. The question cube is constructed from paper that has the question words who, what, when, where, why and how written on each face (see model below – cut out, fold, and paste together). Students roll the cube (like a dice) and answer the predetermined question.

SIOP Clarification Buttons

Clarification buttons allow students to communicate their understanding to the teacher without embarrassment. Teachers create three different colored circles containing one of the following statements: “I totally understand,” “I’m getting it,” “I need help.” When the teacher asks an academic question, students hold up the button that best represents their feelings about the question

Strategies and features materials.

Create an “I Wonder Chart”

Students write questions generated from previewing the text. Questions are created with the sentence stem, “I wonder…..” based on the reading.

Create a Graphic Organizer

Students complete a teacher-selected graphic organizer and complete it based on the reading.

Perform Creative Demonstrations

Students create a song, poem, poster, or play based on the newly learned material. Students work in cooperative groups and share their creative demonstration with the entire class.

Conduct a Graffiti Write

Students work with partners or cooperative groups, and each group is given a large poster and a set of different colored markers.

The teacher posts a question or topic on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom and gives the signal to begin the activity.

On the timed-signal (2-3 minutes), each student writes a comment about the topic on the poster.

When time is up, as a group, students rotate to another poster board and repeat this exercise.

After all students have had the opportunity to respond to the topic on all poster boards, these poster boards now resembling graffiti are posted in the classroom.

Students conduct a gallery walk reading their peers thoughts and concepts of the topic.

Thinking Cubes

Students work with partners or in cooperative groups, using thinking cubes, to generate higher-order thinking questions based on the topic.

Motivation materials.

SIOP Wait Time Buttons

The teacher creates three different circular buttons and distributes one packet to each student. Throughout the lesson, the teacher asks the students if they are ready to proceed to the next problem, step or sequence. Students place their hand on top of the button that answers the teacher questions. The buttons read: I’m ready, I’m almost ready, and I’m not ready.

Practice and application materials.

Create Games for Practice

The teacher can create an electronic Jeopardy game for cooperative groups to play. This game can be written to practice any core content area.

Create an Electronic Quizlet Practice Set

Quizlet is a free web-based electronic flash card and game application, with games that can help ELLs learn core concepts and new vocabulary. The teacher develops the flash card practice sets and then distributes the link to the students’ dashboard.

Create a Class Bingo Game

Teachers can create a whole class Bingo game for ELLs based on academic facts, new concepts, and new vocabulary words.

Create Graphic Organizers

Teachers can create academic graphic organizers that can be completed individually or in small cooperative groups. The teacher can begin the lesson by modeling the completion of this graphic organizer to the class.

Lesson delivery materials

N/A

Review assessment materials

Handheld Devices

Handheld clickers can be used to judge classroom performance in academic areas. Each student is given a clicker where multiple choice responses are correlated. The teacher asks a question and the students click their own personal answer. The computer connected with the clicker records and displays the student responses and gives the correct response.

Vocabulary Journals

Students create their own word journals with definitions and illustrations of new key concepts. Students can review these terms again and again at any time.

Games

Teachers can create games for ELL student review which are very engaging. For example, students can play Bingo (with cards that relate to specific academic vocabulary words), Pictionary or any other charade-like game that an expert teacher creates will also engage students.

Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down

This strategy is used for questions that require an either-or answer. The teacher asks a content-area question and the students respond by showing a thumbs up for yes (agreement or true) and a thumbs down for no (disagreement or false).

Response Boards

Mini dry erase boards are used for this teaching strategy. Each student or group of students receives a mini white board. The teacher asks a content question and the students write the answer on the mini-board. When the teacher says, “Show me,” all the students simultaneously hold up their boards for teacher review.

Rubrics

Used to evaluate the attainment of a specific academic level.

STRATEGIES AND FEATURES:

Objectives

Teachers will identify learning strategies that promote student comprehension and understanding.

Teachers should understand that new learning strategies can be taught and then transferred to new academic tasks.

ELL students have the ability to perform and relate higher-order thinking skills when the correct learning strategies are engaged.

Teachers will be required to use the following strategies:

SQP2RS (Squeepers)

This is an instructional framework for teaching academic content for informational/expository texts. It involves six teacher-directed steps:

Survey - Students preview the text and scan it to determine the key concepts that will be taught.

Questions - In small cooperative groups students determine questions that could be answered by reading the text. These questions are written on chart paper and posted in the classroom.

Predict - The entire class now creates three or four key concepts they believe they will learn while reading the text.

Read - Students now read the text with partners or in small groups.

Respond - Students answer formerly generated questions with partners or in small groups and generate new questions based on the reading.

Summarize - While using key vocabulary, students with partners or within small groups summarize the text orally or in writing.

GIST (Generating Interactions between Schemata and Texts)

This is a summarization strategy that everyone has heard of, “getting the gist” of it. Here the teacher and students read the text together aloud.

Next, with partners, or in small groups students select the 10 most important words or key concepts and record them on chart paper.

Finally, students use each word in a complete sentence, connecting all of the newly written sentences in a paragraph. This process is repeated throughout the text reading.

MOTIVATION:

Objectives

Expert teachers analyze and create grouping structures that promote maximum student learning.

Expert teachers select at least two different grouping structures per academic lesson.

Expert teachers utilize grouping structures that reduce teacher-talk time and increase student responses.

PRESENTATION:

Objectives

In order for ELL students to practice and then apply newly learned material effectively, teachers should provide a variety of learning opportunities:

Separate the newly learned material into sections

Allow for timed practice periods of 12-15 minutes

Newly learned material should be reviewed periodically throughout the day

Formerly learned concepts should be scaffolded into new concepts

Teachers should allow for different types of social interaction opportunities for ELLs to practice language skills:

Small group interaction (cooperative learning groups)

Team (two students working together on a predetermined question or project)

Triads (three students working together on a predetermined question or project)

Whole group discussion (teachers can model concepts with the class)

Teachers should provide students with immediate feedback on their practice and application activities. At this time teachers can address incorrect language by modeling correct responses and then directing students to self-correct the incorrect response.

LESSON DELIVERY:

Objective

The lesson’s content and language objective must:

Be clearly displayed in the classroom, either on the white board, power bulletin board, or merely displayed on poster paper on the classroom walls.

Be repeated orally by students in a whole class forum or with partners.

Be taught to the class, not just posted in the classroom.

Expert teachers actively engage students in their lesson for 90%-100% of the lesson.

Active student engagement can be achieved through:

Providing clear explanations.

Executing a well-planned lesson.

Providing the appropriate amount of time to be spent on academic tasks.

Demonstrating excellent classroom management skill.

Involving students in academic learning through the use of hands-on materials.

Effective teachers consider pacing time when teaching. Allowing extra time for ELLs to process new information is essential in teaching new academic material. A balance of pacing time is achieved when the lesson pacing is just fast enough to keep ELL’s interest and yet not at a pace where they cannot comprehend the lesson at hand.

REVIEW AND ASSESMENT:

Objectives

Undertake a comprehensible review of the key vocabulary through the entire lesson by:

Determining the root word, prefix and suffix that are attached to the word itself.

Investigate synonyms, antonyms and homonyms for each key vocabulary word.

Review key vocabulary at the beginning, middle and end of each academic lesson.

Additionally:

Recognize that the four languages should be used to review the key vocabulary using the Frayer diagram. ELLs will be required to write key vocabulary word in the diagram, define it, use it in a sentence, draw a picture of it and verbally share the diagram with partners.

Undertake a comprehensible review of the key content concepts through asking the students to repeat the word and the meaning of the word.

Provide regular feedback to the students on their input by using appropriate body language affirmation, oral language and writing. It promotes self-correction and builds language skills in students.

Assess students’ comprehension and learning of all lesson objectives throughout the lesson.