Teachers who work with English as a Second Language learners will find ESL/ESOL/ELL/EFL reading/writing skill-building children's books, stories, activities, ideas, strategies to help PreK-3, 4-8, and 9-12 students learn to read.
How to Develop a Lesson Plan that Includes ELLs
English language learners (ELLs) often have problems understanding literature and mastering science, math, and social studies concepts because they cannot comprehend the textbooks for these subjects. Depending on their different stages of English proficiency and literacy, ELLs will benefit from explicit instruction of comprehension strategies, along with other skills that a well-designed lesson can address.
Comprehensive lessons include:
- building background knowledge
- explicit instruction and modeling
- guided practice
- peer practice
- assessment of content learned
Teacher-student interactions, as well as peer interactions, are critical for learning.
Because of the diversity in experiences and backgrounds that ELLs bring to the classroom, it is essential to prepare lessons that can address a wide range of needs. This broad sweep will also benefit all other students in your class.
Components of a comprehensive lesson
Teacher preparation
Survey the text to:
- determine your standard or objective
- eliminate unnecessary information that does not meet your objective
- select the concepts to teach
- choose specific vocabulary to pre-teach
- develop assessments to test that content
Building background knowledge
- Create interest in the subject by using pictures, real objects, maps, or personal experiences. Say the names of objects as often as you can so ELLs can remember them. Relate material to students' lives when possible.
- Build text-specific knowledge by providing students with information from the text beforehand, particularly if the text is conceptually difficult or has an abundance of information that is important. For example, if there are six main topics on the animal kingdom, highlight them beforehand.
Also, develop concept background by explaining difficult concepts and labeling them with key words ELLs can remember. For example, "This is the Statue of Liberty. Liberty means freedom. Liberty means libertad. The people of France gave us the Statue of Liberty…"
- Establish the purpose for reading (e.g., "Now we are going to read to find out about a country called France. What are some things we might learn about France as we read?")
- Select a specific comprehension strategy for students to use. For example, decide to focus on the main idea, cause and effect, or comparing and contrasting.
Learn more about building background knowledge.
Pre-teaching vocabulary
- Select tier 1, tier 2 and tier 3 words from the text. Write an ELL-friendly definition for each and post them where students can see them throughout the lesson.
- Choose different strategies to teach each word. If there are five words to be pre-taught, use different ways of engaging the students to hear and produce each word in context.
Learn more about pre-teaching vocabulary.
Introducing text
Read an introductory portion aloud to show students how to read content text. Model thinking aloud about what you are reading, how you figure out difficult words, and how to summarize what you read.
Peer Reading
Assign reading partners. Pair ELLs with friendly fluent readers. Ask partners to read aloud to each other, alternating sentences or pages. After partner reading, ask them to summarize what they read. For variety, use choral reading once in a while. Assign different sections to each team, ask them to rehearse, and then ask teams to read chorally.
Consolidating content, skills, and language
Assign a Cooperative Learning method to help students practice a skill, explore a topic in depth, or master new words or concepts. While students are working with peers, walk around and have conversations with ELLs. These conversations can be about the lesson or simply to get to know them better.
Writing
Writing is another way for ELLs to demonstrate and extend their understanding of a text and its contents. You can give Cooperative Learning teams questions to answer together and study for a test. Or, you can ask teams to compose questions about the content and use those questions for their test. Throw in one of your questions as a 'surprise test question.' Or, ask students to practice writing short simple summaries of what they read.
Another writing option is to give students a graphic organizer to fill in. This will demonstrate that they understood the concepts and content, even if they only use a symbol or write one or two words for each category. For example:
Category: Pets |
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Land |
Water |
Wings |
Fins |
Legs |
Fur |
|
dog |
+ |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
+ |
fish |
- |
+ |
- |
+ |
- |
- |
frog |
+ |
+ |
- |
- |
+ |
- |
bird |
+ |
- |
+ |
- |
+ |
- |
Other ideas
Graphic organizers can also be used as a pre-teaching or post-teaching strategy for introducing or reinforcing key concepts and how they are related. The more connections ELLs make to the overall content and organization of the content before reading, the easier it will be to focus on and understand what is important. When teachers and/or students use graphic organizers at the end of a lesson, this helps to reinforce and synthesize lesson content.
Develop study guides to guide ELLs through their content area textbook reading by focusing their attention on the major ideas presented. Study guides can include graphic organizers as described above, key vocabulary, and guiding questions.
It's quite funny because when I finish reading a story, I always say, "Colorín, Colorado," and the children finish the saying for me, "Este cuento se ha acabado." Great work, please keep it up!
~ Higinio M.
