If Language Functions were a car, then Language Forms would be the tires, gas, engine, steering wheel and all the other parts that make that car drive. Teaching language functions has been the driving force (no pun intended, LOL) behind my English Language Development (ELD) instruction for several years and I love it! Students in every grade level, K-12 and beyond, use language functions across all content areas, so IMO, teaching Forms and Functions is an excellent way to build academic language and provide a pathway to language proficiency for English learners. My previous post was all about teaching Language Functions. Well, Form and Function go hand in hand, so let's dive into how Language Forms plays a role in ELD instruction. With Language Functions being the PURPOSE of language, Language Forms is all about the STRUCTURE of language. For example, vocabulary, syntax and grammar all play key roles in how well a function performs. As I plan out a language function unit, I think about what the end goal will be. Students will be speaking or writing, or sometimes both, so which language forms should I sprinkle into the unit to support students in reaching that end goal, aka, learning target? For my compare/contrast unit, students need to use comparative and superlative adjectives, so I include a mini lesson on that skill. After explicitly teaching the skill in a mini lesson on this day, students then applied their learning by reading this book and identifying comparative adjectives. I then passed out some vocabulary cards of items to contrast. Students could work with a partner or independently to create sentences using comparative adjectives. So, this is where my grammar lessons come from. I think about which aspects of grammar are needed for students to successfully use a given language function? Sometimes it's DURING a unit that I realize my students need a particular structure, so I'll add a mini-lesson and some practice as needed. During a sequencing unit, I taught my intermediate students about adverbs of time, which expanded into adverbs of time, location and manner. I'm planning out my cause/effect unit in this picture and thinking about the language my students might need to discuss seasonal effects on plants and animals. Mini lessons for this unit included negative contractions, conjunctions and verb tense. Key vocabulary and phrases are also an important part of Language Forms. It's that specific vocabulary that guides the language function. In sequencing, for example, students need to use words such as first, next, then, and finally, so I include these key words into in my instruction. When practicing opinion writing, students learned key phrases that supported this language function. For each language function unit, I always post a Language Board that includes many of the key words for that function. Content vocabulary is also a consideration. Again, during the cause/effect unit, there were a few important terms students needed to know in order to discuss seasonal changes on animals, so I gave a mini lesson on some specific content vocabulary. It's a great way to tie in content vocabulary from the grade level curriculum. Incorporating Language Forms and Functions is awesome for the ELD classroom because it really helps guide instruction. Students need to be able to use expressive language to compare, persuade, sequence, describe, analyze, etc., so teaching them the language and structures that go with these functions is extremely beneficial, not only for English learners, but for all students. You know I love to say, WHAT'S GOOD FOR ELLS IS GOOD FOR ALL! If you'd like to read my previous post on Language Functions, it's linked here! I'll also link some of the resources found in this post down below. Happy Teaching (Language Forms and Functions),
The following infographic offers some simple Dos-and-Don'ts for how to teach vocabulary in any content area.
WIDA ELD Standards Using Language Objectives to Differentiate Instruction for ELLs. What is WIDA?. ELD Standards (English Language Development Standards). What is WIDA?. WIDA stands for World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment Adopted by 22 states Visit the WIDA website:
WIDA ELD Standards Using Language Objectives to Differentiate Instruction for ELLs. What is WIDA?. ELD Standards (English Language Development Standards). What is WIDA?. WIDA stands for World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment Adopted by 22 states Visit the WIDA website:
WIDA ELD Standards Using Language Objectives to Differentiate Instruction for ELLs. What is WIDA?. ELD Standards (English Language Development Standards). What is WIDA?. WIDA stands for World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment Adopted by 22 states Visit the WIDA website:
WIDA ELD Standards Using Language Objectives to Differentiate Instruction for ELLs. What is WIDA?. ELD Standards (English Language Development Standards). What is WIDA?. WIDA stands for World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment Adopted by 22 states Visit the WIDA website:
WIDA ELD Standards Using Language Objectives to Differentiate Instruction for ELLs. What is WIDA?. ELD Standards (English Language Development Standards). What is WIDA?. WIDA stands for World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment Adopted by 22 states Visit the WIDA website:
Learn to plan sheltered instruction lessons by following the SIOP framework for lesson planning for ELs. SIOP lesson plans teach both content and language.
Marzano Effort & Achievement Rubric -all content areas Students and teacher can use Marzano's effective instructional strategies to score effort and achievement. Great for group work, individual work, and building independent students! Put in the front of interactive notebooks to always be ...
Advice from three ESL teachers on the things regular classroom teachers can do to help English language learners thrive in mainstream classrooms.
Many teachers have "tried and true" resources that they pull from year after year. I've been an elementary ESL teacher since 2005 working with grades 1-6. During this time I have used a ton of resources with my students; and my favorites have stuck with me. Even though my "classroom" can change year to year, from pushing-in, co-teaching, to predominantly working with small pull-out groups, these tried and true resources are ones that I wouldn't want to do without. Here's a look at a few of my top favorites... Graphic Organizers This resource is #1 for a reason! I almost always use graphic organizers to teach reading comprehension. I find them to be highly effective because they are not text heavy. Students read with a purpose, then complete an activity that supports that specific reading skill/strategy. No matter my students' level of reading or language proficiency, a simple graphic organizer is what I need to reinforce that skill or strategy! I keep these graphic organizers on my desktop, and when I'm planning my lessons I can quickly pull up the organizers I need, then print and go! Tip: When I print, I reduce the setting to 80% and then trim the sides. Students glue the graphic organizer into their reading notebooks which makes for a great collection of student work and visual reference of student progress and effort. Leveled Books for Reading Instruction I have been very lucky to work in schools that have had awesome book rooms full of guided reading sets. I hope that you have the same access to books in your school. Finding books on my students' levels is one thing, but finding relevant books, especially for my upper elementary beginning ELs, is another. It's a challenge, for sure, but with a good book room I know that I can almost always find what I need. Click here for a free modified guided reading lesson plan template! Don't have a stocked book room? I also order several grade levels of the Scholastic News Magazines. (I think 10 magazines per grade level is the minimum order; that's what I get.) I mostly use grades 1, 2 & 3 with my ELs. With your order, you also have access to the online magazines, which is awesome! You can project to an interactive whiteboard, or have students read on an iPad or computer. These various grade levels make it easy to differentiate text levels. Since I use the magazines for reading instruction, students do not take them home. I keep the magazines organized by grade level and time of year, then I reuse the ones I love, year after year. Reading instruction is a big part of my day, so having access to leveled reading materials is a must! Visual Reading Word Wall Cards I love this resource because of the visuals. and the versatility. When introducing a reading concept, such as "making predictions" or "plot," to beginning or intermediate English learners, a meaningful visual is definitely worth a thousand words! These reading word wall cards provide my students with the visual supports they need as they are learning new concepts in English. I use these cards at my reading table, as a word wall, in anchor charts, as sorting headers, and in my learning objectives that I post on the board. Guided Reading Table Anchor Chart Lesson Objectives Words Their Way for Word Study For ELLs, learning spelling patterns in English is important. I especially like this resource because I can differentiate it according to the needs of my students. First, I assess what my students already know, as far as consonants, short and long vowels, word families, digraphs, etc., then start from there. We systematically work through the sorts building their knowledge of sounds and spelling patterns. A bonus with this resource is that it's another exposure to new vocabulary! Each Monday my students receive their list of words, and each day of the week they have various independent activities to do with their words. Then on Fridays, we finish up with a quick spelling quiz. Click for a free download of Weekly Word Study Activities To start, I set up their notebooks with their weekly Word Study Activities. We do this together the first week or two, so that I know that they understand what's expected. This is a word sort that my newcomers might be working on. And this is a sort that my intermediate ELLs might be working on. After I copy the page, I'll cut the page so that they have about 15 new words per week. My advanced ELLs might have 18 to 20 words. Once my students understand their weekly activities, these Word Study Activities become independent activities during the week while in Reader's Workshop. Students are responsible for completing the weekly work and learning their words. I set them up on Monday with their new words, then quiz them on Friday. It's up to them to do the work Tuesday through Thursday. Vocabulary Mini Office This is a MUST have for my newcomers! When they arrive, this is the first resource I give them. It's basic vocabulary that students use everyday. The Vocabulary Mini Office is kept at their desk to use during independent work time. Whether during Writer's Workshop, Reading or Vocabulary practice, it provides them with access to everyday vocabulary. My newcomers love this resource and they use it often. For my older newcomers I put the pages inside their reading folder. When they practice their writing, they can easily find the vocabulary they need. Daily Language Review I often use this resource as a warm-up activity. With my beginner and intermediate students, this is a group activity we do together. I want them to get used to the format of the questions so I do a lot of guided practice and modeling with this resource. My advanced kiddos do this as a quick independent warm up and then we go over it together. It takes about 5 minutes. Depending on the language level of my groups, I pull pages from either the first, second or third grade book. It also provides a great jumping off point. I can see in which areas of grammar my students need direct instruction, such as contractions, sentence structure, mechanics, etc. It's just a quick warm-up. My students like it and I get good information about them from it. As a teacher of English Language Learners, these are some of my must have resources. When I plan my lessons, these are many of the first resources I grab. They make my instruction consistent, effective and meaningful. Yes, there are other resources that I would not want to do without, and perhaps that would make for a follow up post, but if I were to pick my top resources, these would be them! I'd love to know what some of your favorite resources are! (Affiliate Links Below)
The Tips for Effective Vocabulary Instruction Infographic highlights ways that can help set the stage for discussions to strengthen vocabulary instruction.
I'm back! I totally apologize to all my readers for disappearing for the last couple of months. I took my first real grad class this fall and had no time to breathe. Something had to give and unfortunately it was my blog. But, the class is over and I am back! I have so much to tell you but instead of one long post, be looking for short posts over the next week or so to catch you up! The class I took was TONS of work but also very rewarding. In Massachusetts, if you have even one student in your class who is and English Language Learner, you need to take a class called Rethinking Equity and Teaching for English Language Learners (RETELL). It's basically an intro to ELL and walks you through tried and true activities that helps ELLs succeed in the classroom. Being my second year in district, I found the class to be EXTREMELY helpful and my biggest takeaway is direct vocabulary instruction. I have always felt that vocabulary is such an important part of teaching social studies and last year I just knew I wasn't cutting it. My students were just understanding vocabulary on the most superficial of levels and I knew it was because I was teaching a population I had never really experienced before. In the class they taught us a vocabulary activity called the Seven Steps to preteach vocabulary. Here is a fabulous example of Seven Steps from an elementary teacher: I knew this was exactly what I needed but I decided to tweak it for my class. Now, almost every day, my kiddos walk in and we preteach a word or term they are going to need in order to understand the upcoming content (Tier 2 and Tier 3 Words). We do it in the same order every day: Introduce word and have them pronounce it twice. Ask if they know anything about the word and identify and prefixes, suffixes, and/or base words. Have them write down a student friendly definition. Tell them how we are going to use it in content. I also like to tell them how it is used in other contexts (for the word "convention" this week, we talked about the Constitutional Convention but we also talked about ComicCon). I show the kids a YouTube video that better illustrates the word or a visual. Lastly, the students are given a sentence stem that they need to finish with the students in their table groups. We then share out as a class. This method has truly revolutionized my class! Not only are the kids truly understanding the vocabulary, it has allowed me to frontload my teaching. As an example, I taught the term Articles of Confederation three days before we really learned about the Articles of Confederation. The kids absolutely love it and have been acing their vocab quizzes like champs. They can use the words weeks later in a sentence and I really feel like it has helped me make bigger connections in my content. I showed two different videos with this term. The first clip, I explained to them, is how the British knew how to fight and the second video was how the Americans learned to fight from the native Americans. We were able to compare and contrast the two styles and this whole lesson took less than ten minutes of my class. If you're interested, I have started to gather together these vocab lessons and have made them available on Teachers Pay Teachers. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Mesopotamia-and-First-Civilizations-Direct-Daily-Vocabulary-Instruction-1675580 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/American-Revolution-Direct-Daily-Vocabulary-Instruction-1672787 Head on over to TPT to check these out and look for more as I progress in the year!
Somewhere, on Pinterest, I found many images that I felt would be useful to use for speaking or writing prompts. They are filled with so many people/animals and activities that even the most retic…
Guided reading is an excellent instructional tool, but guided reading for ELLs is equally as effective--and maybe even more important!
A visual illustration of the hierarchy of skills required in children’s reading skills
How can content teachers be teachers of language? Dr. Toppel shares strategies that show us how we can be teachers of our disciplines.
Would you like to decorate your classroom with fun, hand-drawn anchor charts/posters? Do you simply not have the time to get them done? Well, you have come to the perfect place! I love making these engaging and appealing anchor charts. I also can draw/create any other topic you would like, just contact me directly and ask! My students absolutely love these posters and references them every day. Many of them are visual learners, so the colorful images really help them connect and remember what they have learned. This particular anchor chart is for readers/writers practicing comparing vs. contrasting. My students have so much fun with the two animal cliparts and the visuals really help them understand the material better. **These will be copies unless asked otherwise for a custom poster. They are not laminated, and are printed on normal, anchor chart paper. I ship these out ASAP after being ordered, but please keep in mind once shipped, it is outside of my control. Therefore, if shipping does not meet your expectations, I highly encourage you to please reach out to me first, and we have always been able to work something out to make up for anything that may have occurred after I have sent your package, thanks so much!! Hope you love it :)
ESL Exercises and Worksheets for Talking about Cities Talking about cities is a nice topic for an upper elementary discussion class. All students can relate to this topic so it's relatively easy to brainstorm vocabulary and opinions. City related images in the ESL worksheets play an important role in engaging the students. 1 Cities: advantages/disadvantages
As language teachers, our goal for our students is to be more proficient in the target language when they complete our course than when they began. We probably have other goals for our students (being more kind, more empathetic, more responsible, more culturally aware), but all of these objectives fit into the overarching mission of…
Free Family Feud for the classroom instructions with questions and answers. This is an easy ESL game that all classes will enjoy!
Being an English-language learner in the United States is no honeymoon. Efforts to support ELLs have often been well meaning but misinformed. Indeed, a lot of assumptions about how to serve ELLs need to be checked. In this article, UC Berkeley experts Margaret Bridge and Bruce Fuller offer three examples of these faulty assumptions.
Explore some uses of Wakelet via this edition of Twitter Takeaways. Learn more about how to use Wakelet, as well as embedding in OneNote and more.
A district-wide unit that affirms the experiences of ELLs while teaching content and developing their language skills. ELLs voices were highlighted through this multi-grade, multi-school unit.
