Strategies

I have used graphic organizers, visuals, and word banks with ELL's and Special Education students. I find these three strategies improve students comprehension particularly when introducing content specific vocabulary. They have a point of reference from viewing the visuals and word banks. The graphic organizers are key in developing their emerging writing skills. 

As far as scaffolds used in the classroom: we always use graphic organizers to help categorize information and organize it in meaningful ways. Using a glossary/dictionary with both English and/or Spanish could be another way that we could help some of our students. We have used sentence frames/starters to help students get more done in their writing, along with the use of word banks. Using structured pair work and small group work is a way I could see using to be more effective as well.

I have tried to incorporate the student's home language to not only help them embrace the important skill of being bilingual, help them keep their native language and part of who they are, but to also help them learn the content with a little less stress since they are not trying to translate everything all the time. Next, I frequently use visuals and songs when I can. I know songs can be catchy and can help students remember things whether they are fluent in English, or any other language. I'm constantly trying to diversify my classroom library as well. Whether it be books in different languages to reflect the languages that I have in my classroom or finding books where students can see themselves within the book. 

I have many scaffolds in place for teaching ELLs, including: providing graphic organizers, visuals and word/sound wall resources; providing pre-teaching of vocabulary and background knowledge; and providing teacher-led, small-group instruction.  However, three resource scaffolds that I need to add to my classroom are home language materials and bilingual dictionaries and bilingual glossaries.  In addition, I would like to employ more instructional strategies that would reduce the linguistic load for ELLs.  One strategy that I currently use is teaching motions for letter-sounds during phonics instruction.  I plan to expand the use of actions to reinforce the learning and recall of other concepts and skills for all students.  I also plan to increase opportunities for ELL students to share vocabulary in their home language by simply asking them what the word for something is in their language.  Lastly, now that I have been informed about the layered questioning strategy, I plan to use it to provide all students with the opportunity to share ideas and answers at a level that matches their oral language abilities.  ELL students are not the only children who lack the skills and confidence they need to effectively share their thoughts and ideas.  All students would benefit from the instructional strategies introduced in the videos.     

One scaffold that I currently use is visuals; these are used to display information, provide gestural cues, provide a schedule for the day. We also use a lot of music for instruction, to help students with vocabulary and concepts. In the future I would like to try using background knowledge as well as structured pair work. 

1. I teach reading/reading intervention so the ELLs in my classes use a lot of graphic organizers, sentence frames, sentence stems, and paragraph frames. These resources help the ELLs feel productive and successful when we have finished a lesson. Some of my ELLs enjoy bringing these resources home to explain a story to a family member.

2. Before reading a story with ELLs, I always go through the story and look for vocabulary words that may be a bit too tricky for the ELLs. I predetermine which words we will look at a bit more closely and define those words for the students. When I do this, i always add visuals so the students can see what we are talking about and understand the word even better.

3. I enjoy using structured small-group work with my ELLs. I will explain, model, check for understanding, but then take a step back and let the ELLs work in a group with not just other ELLs, but non-ELLs too. Allowing the non-ELLS to help the ELLs sometimes sparks something that I wasn't able to explain well enough that made it stick with the ELL. Using their peers to continue the learning is a great way to use student grouping.

I have used the following scaffolds in my classroom to assist ELLs: (1) Graphic organizers: I always provide organizers for writing assignments as a nice visual of the structure and format the assignment needs to be. (2) Sentence frames: for components line thesis statements, I provide "mad, -libs style" sentence frames with fill-in-the-blanks that ELLs can use to help scaffold the task (3) Structured group work: I strategically group ELLs with other students who can help support their learning. I also assign ELLs group tasks that they can feel success completing. For example, my student from Ukraine is assigned tasks in his discussion circles that he can find more success with, such as locating two powerful quotes from the novel, as opposed to being the question master who would have more responsibility in moving the group conversation forward. He might find that role overwhelming with the language barrier, so a different, pre-assigned group task would help him feel more success and contribute to the group work.

1) The Differentiating Instruction movie mentioned playing videos at slower speeds. I also teach students to play audiobooks at slower speeds.

2) Over the last two years I have started occasionally projecting a book that I am reading onto the SMARTBoard. Students can see the words that I am reading if they want to follow along. 

3) When students are learning to use ebooks and databases, I try to show them how to access home language materials. (This is easiest for Spanish.)

One scaffold that I've used in the past are word banks.  I would often use these on quizes and test.  I had students that were both ELLs and had learning disabilities.  Another scaffold that I used was repetition.  The ELL teacher and myself would share vocabulary words we were each working on, so as the other could review and work these into their instruction.  A third scaffold that I've used was teacher-led small-group work.  I had two students (a third and second grader) who I would do a reading intervention group with.  The students had similar reading levels, but also were from the same country and spoke the same language.  This gave me the time to focus on reading instruction, while also being able to address areas where there was confusion with background knowledge, vocabulary, etc.  

1- Play videos at slower speeds- This is a scaffold new to me- most of the videos we watch at school are on youtube and we have the ability to adjust the playback speed. Playing a video slower could potentially help many students in the class understand better- which goes along with the point of it being good for everyone.

2. Give everyone the same text- This is a strategy I use in reading. Sometimes the skill we are practicing is within the students ability level, but they don't get to try this skill because it isn't present in texts they can currently read independently. Having the same text gives them the opportunity to access the skill even though the text may be to hard.

3. Pair them up with another native speaker- When two students speak the same language they can share vocabulary in both their native language and their home language. They may even feel comfortable taking a risk with someone else they know is learning a new language.

1. Visuals and models: For when I push in to Reading AIS, I often use visuals. Last year, I worked with three ELL students in a Kindergarten classroom. I used soft, colorful cubes to practice phonemic awareness lessons. For example, for adding phonemes, I used two different colored blocks - let's say red and blue. Red was to add the beginning phoneme, while the blue was the rime/word part. 

2. Word walls: Word walls are a great way to build vocabulary and to practice sight words. This is a permanent model for high frequency words, and to build phonics and spelling skills.

3. Sentence frames: Sentence frames are a great and creative way to build sentences with the words the students have learned. This helps build fluency and writing skills. The students can fill in the missing spaces on the sentence strip or worksheet.