Teaching Strategies
"All students are ELL (English
Language Learners)!" All students are LEP (Limited English Proficient) at
some point in their education (especially when faced with a new concept and
vocabulary). What procedures and ideas can you provide that will help all
students in the classroom as well as ESOL students? Good teaching strategies
are good for everyone.
Indeed, good teaching strategies are good for everyone! This question in
particular refers to "Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English"
or SDAIE, that is, the academic classes taught by qualified teachers who are
"endorsed" or "certified" in teaching methods for content
area classes in which English Language Learners or ELL’s participate.
As explained in other questions,
ELL’s must be provided equal access to the academic curriculum and to all
educational opportunities, curricular and extracurricular, available at a
school. ELL’s must be enrolled in academic classes appropriate for their grade
level or age. In addition, ELL’s must receive English Language Development (ELD
or English-As-A-Second Language/ESL) instruction and primary language support,
as needed, to insure equal opportunity for academic achievement and to prevent
any substantive academic deficits.
In SDAIE classes ALL students can
participate: English-only speakers and ELL’s at all stages of language
acquisition: ELL’s at Pre-Production, Early Production, Speech Emergence and
Intermediate Fluency levels, and former ELL’s now re-designated as Fluent
English Proficient (FEP) students.
What are the methods, techniques or strategies that a teacher can use to
successfully promote content area concept development with such a heterogeneous
group of students?
STRATEGIES USED IN SDAIE
1.
Emphasis on the Academic Language: This is
the key instructional component in SDAIE. It is NOT to develop general English
language skills, but to develop the use of, and proficiency in, the academic
language of the content areas. This key component of SDAIE is the same for ALL
students, English-only speakers and English Language Learners. Teachers must
make sure that the academic language is mastered, otherwise teachers cannot
obtain evidence of learning. To facilitate mastery teachers must implement two
essential "best instructional practices:" Posting the academic
language: ALL words, not just a few key words. Words need to be organized by
meaning categories, for example, "clean, tidy, neat, spotless, immaculate,
impeccable, scrubbed, disinfected, sterilized, pristine, etc." THEN POST
THE CATEGORY!!!!! Consciously using the academic language constantly, and
requiring that all students express themselves using the academic language,
too. That is why all academic language words must be posted: For teacher and
students TO ALWAYS REMEMBER to use them!
2.
Active Learning: Students must be constantly
giving the teacher EVIDENCE OF LEARNING. To provide the teacher with evidence
of learning, students must DO some observable action or behavior that the
teacher has requested. Throughout the lesson, the teacher must plan educational
activities that give students opportunities to:Observe, Recognize, Locate,
Identify, Classify, Practice, Collect, Distinguish, Categorize, Repeat, Match,
Show, Select, Construct, Assemble, Arrange, Put Things In Order, Etc. Name,
Recall, Give Examples, Draw, Organize, Decide, Describe, Tell, Imagine,
Restate, Create, Appraise, Dramatiza, Contrast, Compare, Question, Map,
Discriminate, Etc. List, Underline, Review, Interprete, Compose, Dictate, Point
Out, Record, Report, Predict, Express, Plan And Evaluate. Relate, Generalize,
Demonstrate, Outline, Summarize, Suppose, Estimate, Judge, Explain, Debate,
Illustrate, Infer, Revise, Rewrite, Assess, Interprete, Justify, Critique, Etc.
All of the above are observable actions that help teachers obtain EVIDENCE OF
LEARNING.
3.
Assessing/Tapping Prior Knowledge: Teachers
must become very familiar with the background knowledge that students bring to
the learning situation so they can ALWAYS emphasize what students already know,
have experienced, are familiar with, and build on those bases that prior
knowledge, experience and familiarity provide. Visuals, realia, posted academic
language from previous lessons, all kinds of connections to prior knowledge,
experience and familiarity need to become essential components of all lessons.
4.
Building New Knowledge: Each and every lesson
must result in the acquisition of new knowledge by students. To determine if
new knowledge has been acquired as the result of a lesson, it is only necessary
to check on the acquisition of new academic language. EACH WORD IS A CONCEPT. A
student who has acquired and begins to use appropriately new academic language
at the end of each lesson is a students who has acquired new knowledge. If at
the end of an instructional day the students go home without mastery of at
least one new academic word, no new knowledge has been provided or mastered
during that entire instructional day. It was a nice school day for reviewing
what students already knew. But it was a day when students did not BUILD any
new knowledge.
5.
Collaborative Problem-Solving; Cooperative
and Other Groupings: Teachers need to plan instruction through educational
activities that provide for flexible groupings of students to meet specific
purposes. In SDAIE there are many levels of language proficiency. ELL’s may be
at different stages of language acquisition: Pre-Production, Early-Production,
Speech Emergence, Intermediate Fluency. Fluent English speakers may be
English-only speakers or former ELL’s now redesignated Fluent English
Proficiency (FEP) students. Teachers need to implement varied instructional
activities where heterogeneous students can work productively. 7
6.
Cultural Affirmation / Multicultural
Perspectives: English Language Learners (ELL’s) and English-only students all
bring to each and every lesson their prior knowledge, their own experiences,
their cultural backgrounds. ELL’s may come from many different countries and
English-only students may come from many parts of the United States
7.
Demonstration and Modeling: Here is the most
crucial instructional component in ALL lessons, but particularly in SDAIE
lessons. The key role of the teacher is to demonstrate and model all the
behaviors to be learned in the lesson, ESPECIALLY THE VERBAL BEHAVIORS EXPECTED
TO BE MASTERED BY THE STUDENTS, that is, the language of the content areas. ALL
teachers must remember that for most students, and especially for ALL English
Language Learners, TEACHERS are the ONLY role models that students will ever
come in contact with for the language of the content areas. In today’s world,
few parents have the time or the energy –or the knowledge—to discuss the
concepts of the content areas using the language of the content areas at home.
ONLY TEACHERS can provide that.
8.
Graphic Organizers: The language of the
content areas, the language of a new reading selection students are about to
begin reading, all words students DO NOT KNOW that are used in what students
are about to listen or read, all those words MUST BE UNDERSTOOD BEFORE students
listen or read. Thus, the SDAIE and the ESL/ELD teachers, cooperatively, must
help students acquire, practice, develop, learn, and master 95-100% of the new
vocabulary BEFORE they listen or read. Instructional activities that, through
visuals, manipulatives, realia, dramatization, or any other means, help
students master the new academic vocabulary BEFORE the content area lesson
begins, are very important. Graphic organizers can be used to help students become
aware of what they know and the new words they are about to learn. Graphic
organizers that group words in categories by MEANING are the most effective
means to introduce new words. WORD DEFINITIONS, or looking up the meaning of
words in a dictionary, ARE NOT the most effective means to introduce new words.
For younger ELL’s and for ALL young learners, graphic organizers can be used
with pictures instead of printed words.
9.
Integrating Listening, Speaking, Reading and
Writing Across the Curriculum: If all instructional strategies described above
(1- 8) for the implementation of effective practices in Specially Designed
Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE) for ALL students, both English-only and
English Language Learners, have indeed been implemented, then it follows that
students would have had ample opportunities:
(I) To listen to the new academic
language of the lesson as the teacher uses visuals, manipulatives, realia, and
other means to physically convey the meaning of the academic language,
(II) To speak the new academic language
through active learning instructional activities,
(III) To see –in posted graphic organizers or
categories—the new academic language. Now students are ready to read the
textbook or parts of the textbook or reading selection, and they will do so
with 100% understanding the first time around! And then students can write
about what they have learned –expressive writing—or answer the textbook
questions IN THEIR VERY OWN WORDS. Only when students have been provided fully
integrated visual, listening, speaking, reading and writing instructional
activities would they be able to provide ample evidence of learning the
language of the content areas.
10.
Higher Order Thinking Skills: In SDAIE
Strategy Number 2, above, we indicated that students must be engaged in Active
Learning and suggested a series of observable behaviors that students can
perform to give evidence of learning. That series of observable behaviors,
(listed in 2 above) describe simple to complex or higher order thinking skills.
Students who can perform these observable behaviors are giving evidence that
they are operating and developing from simple to complex or higher order
thinking skills.
11.
Questioning techniques: The most effective
tool a teacher has to promote all of the above SDAIE Strategies is the
question. Every time a teacher asks a question the student must actively
respond – active learning. Through questions, teachers can monitor student use
of the language of the content areas. Questions help assess prior knowledge and
provide the most effective tool to obtain evidence of learning. Through
questions teachers can provide new information to students while demonstrating
and modeling the use of the academic language. Questions can be asked at the
lowest –knowledge—and the highest –evaluation—levels of thinking skills.
Questions give teachers the best opportunity to provide opportunities for
students to listen and to speak. In fact, questioning techniques allow a
teacher to keep control of (h)is/er classroom while helping students succeed.
How? By controlling the level of LANGUAGE difficulty of the
questions. The following four questions all have the exact same answer.
Thus, a teacher can choose which question to ask a student depending on how
much knowledge the student has. By choosing the right question appropriate for
each student, teachers can promote learning while at the same time allow
students to experience success.
1. Who was the 22nd President of the United States
2. Who was the 22nd President, was it Nixon,
Cleveland, John Quincy Adams or Zachary Taylor?
3. Who was the 22nd President, was it Abraham
Lincoln, Reagan, John Adams or Cleveland?
4. Cleveland
was the 22nd President of the United
States
12.
The Teacher is a Facilitator of Learning:
Because a teacher must be constantly interacting with students, teachers in
SDAIE content area classes have a primary role of facilitators. Through visual
aids and manipulatives, verbal and non-verbal cues, teachers guided students
into practicing the academic language as they acquire the concepts represented
by the words. These twelve instructional strategies characterize
effective lessons in Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English for ALL
learners.
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