How I Use Scaffolds with My ELLs

So we know that every student, no matter if they're an English language learner or not, needs certain supports and English language learners are no different. So, they all need scaffolds. And scaffolds are exactly like scaffolds in the construction world. They're meant to help us do a task and then we remove them when we don't need them anymore.  

One of the scaffolds that I use for my younger students is a writing dictionary. I actually purchase primary writing dictionaries that are, it's an alphabetical list of commonly used words that students that age would use along with lists of words for family lists of animal names, color names, sports names along with pictures. And that's a scaffold that my young students use when we begin writing because if they're writing, ‘I have a ball’ and they don't know how to spell ‘ball,’ they know that ball begins with a letter B.  

They turn to that, they're able to find the word ball and copy that down, then they reread it. Eventually, they won't need that. But that is a scaffold that I have in place for my younger students. For my older students, we do pre-writing, and if they're writing about George Washington, we will sit and do a chart together where they tell me the things that they know about George Washington beforehand, and then they're able to actually incorporate that into their writing. We then practice reading it back because those are things that the research tells us that are effective for teaching English language learners.