Read and comment on at least 2 of your colleagues’ discussion posts (at least 150 words each). Comments should be positive and professional. Make sure to review the Forum Rubric to ensure full points.
- Thomas Woolford
Hi everyone,
Designing lessons for English Language Learners requires us to acknowledge that these students face a double challenge: they must learn language and content at the same time. My approach to lesson design focuses on reducing the cognitive load of language decoding so students can access the academic content. To achieve this across multiple proficiency levels, I prioritize “scaffolding,” which involves putting in place temporary supports that are “gradually removed as students build proficiency”.
To implement this using multi-sensory instruction, I would utilize the following two activities:
- Building background with real-life objects or concepts. In social studies, we would call these artifacts from history or even Primary Sources. For the opening of a lesson, specifically in social studies, I would use realia (real-life objects) to build background knowledge. As noted in the readings, “background knowledge is the hook that students hang new information on.
The Activity: If teaching a unit on the Civil War, I could purchase relics on eBay like musket balls or coins. Students would then engage in a concept sort. This is where students are given the objects and asked to group them into categories based on shared characteristics. This forces them to engage in critical thinking and recognize patterns.
Differentiation: This is inherently multi-sensory (tactile and visual). For entering/emerging students, I would ask them to simply group the objects by physical traits (color, texture) and label them with single vocabulary words I have pre-taught. For bridging/expanding students, I would ask them to sort the objects based on abstract categories (“Confederate vs. Union”) and justify their sorting in writing. This allows all students to engage with the same materials but at their own linguistic level.
- To support speaking skills, I would implement think-pair-share. This cooperative learning strategy allows students to process information individually before sharing, which lowers anxiety.
The Activity: After a lecture or reading, I would pose an open-ended question.
Differentiation: To ensure success for lower proficiency levels, I would provide sentence frames. A newcomer might receive a frame like, “I think ___because___.” An intermediate student might receive, “I agree with ______ because ______.” This provides the academic language they need to write or speak in complete sentences.
The challenge in applying these strategies often lies in pacing. As Kristina Robertson (from the Colorin colorado! Website) advises, we should “only introduce one new thing at a time”. If the content is brand new and complex, I must ensure the language structures (like the sentence frames) are familiar, or vice versa, to avoid overwhelming the students.
2. Lena Alabed
Making lessons for English Language Learning requires flexibility with your planning because there could be various levels of ELLs in each classroom. In math, I try to focus my attention on making the material easy to understand through visuals, kinesthetic, and movement. I try these multisensory strategies instead of always providing verbal explanations. These types of differentiated strategies help students make a deeper connection with the content and the meaning of the standard and hopefully becoming less overwhelming for students.
As a teacher, I love using visuals and hands-on modeling with manipulatives. For example, when teaching linear versus exponential functions, I have the students create a comparison chart that requires them to color code using graphs, formulas, and real-world examples. This helps students who have a lower language proficiency be able to identify key differences that help support them when solving math problems. Visuals for vocabulary support the concept of ELLs. Making this a class work assignment allows every student to participate and make the English Language Learners feel supported, and not isolated.
Another activity that helps ELLs is structured partner talk with sentence frames. Using frames like The visual difference between the graphs is _____ I notice that your initial value and your y-intercept are the same color, this is because _____. This can be a turn and talk where students discuss their ideas and practicing their language and sentence structure before presenting their ideas to the class. This helps support oral language development while supporting content understanding.
A challenge with lesson planning is being able to get all students to the same standard at the end of the unit. Providing rigor and support can be a challenge. Scaffolding helps this challenge, however, sometimes lowers the academic content. My goal is to teach a lesson where language becomes a bridge to learning and not a barrier.