This is one of my absolute favorite strategies when teaching vocabulary to English Learners. Grab the FREE template here and watch the video below to learn more ..read more

In this strategy, students are asked to select or draw and image they feel relates to a concept, topic or text. Students share their images with one another. The teacher then leads a whole group discussion where students comment on their own picture, or another picture. *Note: this activity is most easily accomplished via technology! The example below shows how a teacher used this show-and-tell activity in Jamboard to start a discussion about life cycles. This activity ensures that all students are participating, even if the student doesn't feel comfortable talking during whole group d ..read more

Blackout poetry is a type of found poetry that students create by blacking out words and phrases in an existing text. The remaining words comprise their poem. This strategy can be used with fiction and non-fiction texts across content areas.  Blackout poetry allows students to "play" with language- this is particularly important for ELLs. Students have to choose which words and phrases to keep in order to express their ideas, helping them practice the skill of summarizing. Unlike typical summarization, this particular strategy is great for English learners because of the lower languag ..read more

This is a simple, no-prep strategy that is super easy to implement with your ELLs. It works as a pre-assessment for new vocabulary, or as a review for vocabulary that's already been introduced, or as an exit ticket. This strategy works well in person and is easily adapted for the virtual or hybrid environment. This activity allows the student to assess their own knowledge of the vocabulary, helping them to identify key words that they don't know or don't understand fully. Such self-assessment at the beginning helps students know which words they need extra practice with so they know wher ..read more

Before starting a new unit or topic, it is important to find out what students already know, and connect it to the new concepts they'll be learning. One way to do that is with an anticipation guide. Anticipation guides stimulate students' interest in a topic and set a purpose for reading or learning. They also teach students to make evaluate statements in terms of their existing knowledge. By evaluating a statement about a topic or related to a topic, students are able to assess their own knowledge and determine which information they're lacking. This helps them to set goals for their own lea ..read more

One key way to get your ELLs talking is to ask high-quality questions. This means we should plan our questions in advance, and ensure that we are asking a variety of questions to ensure students at all levels of proficiency are able to participate. Check out the chart With that in mind, I created a document that breaks down some of the types of questions most appropriate for each level. This document is a starting point that can help you plan questions appropriate for various proficiency levels. However, please keep in mind that this is not exhaustive, and w ..read more

As part of my job, I routinely visit content classrooms to observe instruction. Often times I walk into these classrooms and find them to be quiet places where you can hear a pin drop. The teacher is lecturing or monitoring independent work. And the students....well, they're not talking about what they're learning. I'm always a little baffled by this! After all, Academic discussion is a critical part of learning and a key factor in language growth for ELLs. Rich discussion gives them opportunities to use the language authentically to answer important questions, share key ideas, explain t ..read more

As you may remember from my previous post, I believe that Sentence Frames are a high-yield strategy for our English learners and should be provided for every speaking and writing activity. However, sentence frames for ELLs are not one-size fits all. We want to be sure to differentiate our sentence frames to make them appropriate for learners at all levels of proficiency. What's appropriate for each level? Since 40 US states currently use the WIDA standards for ELLs, I'm going to show how we can use the WIDA performance definitions to help differentiate our sentence frames.  As you ..read more

This week, I want to focus on one of the simplest strategies you can use to support your ELLs- sentence frames. Sentence frames are designed to encourage the use of academic, content and technical vocabulary, to increase the linguistic complexity (how detailed and connected the ideas are) and to help develop fluency in language forms and conventions.  In my opinion, when working with ELLs, sentence frames should be provided for every speaking and writing activity. They provide students with quality language models, which can be assimilated into the student's own lexicon.  Using ..read more

So, in my previous post, I talked about how to create an effective, high-quality word wall. BUT- it's not enough to just have an awesome word wall. What's the point in going through that effort to put it up, keep it relevant, and change it out.....if you're not going to actually actively use it as part of instruction? If you're not using it, it's just decoration, friends! There are a number of word wall activities that you can do to get students actively using the word wall. Here are a few suggestions: List-Group-Label  This strategy can be used for building or organizing your word wall ..read more