Meeting the Needs of ELL and Non-ELL Students

Meeting the needs of students whose primary language is not English can be challenging.  To encourage the students’ mastery of English, as well as content, classroom teachers should address the language domains of reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  By giving students opportunities to use language in these ways, English language learners (ELLs) will become more competent in English while developing content knowledge.

During a sheltered English instruction course, I was exposed to a variety of strategies.  Some of the strategies jumped out as me as having a big bang for the buck for both ELL students and others.

Partner Reading

I was first exposed to partner reading through Larry Ferlazzo (http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/).  Simply, students read aloud in pairs.  They alternate reading paragraphs and can do a variety of things to process the information after each paragraph, all involving discussion:  one sentence summary, circle key terms, draw the main point, question the paragraph makes you think about, etc.

This process slows the students down and makes them think more deeply about what they are reading.  All the students have multiple opportunities to manipulate the information.  I continually go back to this strategy, as it benefits each student.  In addition, if the reading were assigned for home, a percentage of students, especially those who struggle with reading, would not engage.  This strategy makes a difficult task far more engaging and productive.

Vocabulary/Idea Carousel

This strategy proved great as both a review and a prewriting activity.  Students are put into groups of four to five with one sheet of paper.  They are given a focus and need to write one thing associated with it before passing it to the next person in the group who would then add another item.  The paper keeps going around the group for a minute.  When a minute is up, each group shares their list to the class.  They are given a few minutes to review their materials: reading, notes, handouts, etc.  They then follow the procedure for another minute but cannot repeat anything their group wrote in the first round.

The students are exposed to a variety of ideas while reviewing or  prior to writing.  Instead of having students brainstorm individually, this collective means of brainstorming, complete with the sharing aloud, exposes students to far more ideas.  Students often stumble out of the gate trying to come up with ideas about which to write.  Instead, this strategy allows the student to start strong with a ready made list of key ideas and vocabulary which they can use to focus their writing. It also broadens their understanding as they review information.

Write Around

Students sometimes balk at writing.  The write around gets them to write in a more social setting and allows them to review ideas as they write.  The students each start with a piece of paper and a prompt or sentence starter.  They each write a sentence on the paper they have and, when done, pass it to the person to their right.  They then read what is written on the paper and add another sentence to the new paper.  They keep reading, writing a new sentence, and passing the paper to the right until the teacher asks them to stop.

Content is continually reread and the task of writing does not seem as daunting (compare it to asking the students to write a summary on a topic by themselves).  By blending the writing talents of several writers, there is exposure to a variety of understanding.  Write around has been a both a great review and writing activity.

_______________________

These three strategies are highly engaging for all students.  They also engage the ELL student in reading, writing, listening, and speaking while offering enriching opportunities to gain mastery of content.
  If you have any positive experiences with these strategies or others, please leave a comment. I would love to hear about them.