Instructional Strategies for ELL Students
Claude Goldenberg’s article, “Teaching English Language Learners: What the Research Does and Does Not – Say” is a thorough summary of major research on educating English Language Learners (ELLs). He sites three major findings, one of which is how teaching students to read in their first language promotes higher levels of reading achievement in English. Given the diversity of languages and limited resources of our schools, teaching students in their first language isn’t always possible. However, his two other findings are something teachers can and do everyday. They are: what we know about good instruction and curriculum in general holds true for ELLs and teachers must modify instruction to take into account students’ language limitations.
More specifically, what does good instruction and curriculum look like? Goldenberg states that it includes clear goals, learning objectives, and well designed, clearly structured and appropriately paced instruction, which teachers accomplish with thoughtful planning. He also suggests that instruction should include active engagement and participation and opportunities to interact with other students in motivating and appropriately structured contexts. Teachers do this when they model their thinking in such contexts as reading a text aloud or taking notes on an overhead projector or whiteboard.
Instruction like Goldenberg describes also happens with guided practice activities like turn and talk with a partner or a cooperative learning strategy like numbered heads together. Active engagement can also include jigsaw reading, if the text is accessible to students or at their level. Jigsaw reading isn’t limited to one text. Students can read a variety of texts based on their reading level and share out using generalized questions about the content or summarizing their text. Text book companies have been publishing companion texts with their textbooks for ELL students, which can be helpful for such activities.
In addition Goldenberg recommends periodic review and practice. This is often a part of a lesson’s opener, warm up, or do now at the beginning of class. Some teachers can also make review a part of “Friday Fun Day” with vocabulary review games like Go Fish or Concentration, or some kind of PowerPoint game. Activities to engage students are endless; the key is to find a balance between explicit instruction and student-centered the activities.
Finally, assessment is also essential to good instruction. Goldenberg asserts that students should be frequently assessed with re-teaching and receive feedback on correct and incorrect responses. Both of these ideas apply to formative assessments. Some activities that enable teachers to give immediate feedback and assess learning are: using whiteboards where students write their responses; using thumbs up, down, or side ways to indicate agreement, disagreement or unsure; or randomly select students’ names from participation cards, popsicle sticks, or numbers. If assessment shows that students do not understand the concept, it is time to pull a small group to work on it, or re-teach. Re-teaching may include experiencing the information with another one of Gardner’s multiple intelligences.
Often re-teaching can be avoided if teachers thoughtfully modify instruction, which is Goldenberg’s third major finding from the ELL research. While this may seem tedious when first planning, modifying instruction can avoid the frustrating feeling of “what do I do now – they don’t get it.” Simply previewing and teaching vocabulary explicitly is one modification especially important to ELLs who are struggling to develop their social vocabulary and have barely begun to develop their academic vocabulary. Another essential modification is selecting text that is accessible to students (some characteristics include small chunks with headings) or at their level.
Above all, ELLs are not like the rest of our students; however, not one of our students is like another. All students learn in unique ways. Therefore, we must differentiate and allow them to interact with the content, so that they can process it how they will best understand it.
Heather Warren taught middle school English, Bilingual Science, History, and Spanish in Milwaukee Public Schools, Wis. and Glendale Unified School District, Calif. for six years. She is currently a Bilingual and Literacy Instructional Resource Teacher for Lincoln Elementary School in Madison Metropolitan School District, Wis.
Please find the full version of Goldenberg’s article at http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/summer08/goldenberg.pdf.
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