Essential Practices: Instruction



Educators implement specific instructional strategies that support Multilingual learners in accessing and producing the grade-level academic language and content knowledge.

Sign into Ellevation for more information about the strategies listed below.

Build Background

Learning takes place when it bridges to student’s previous knowledge, experience and capabilities.

Strategies: Language Experience Approach, Realia, Brainstorm Walk, Hanging Hashtags, Be a Detective, Virtual Field Trip, Snippet, Anticipation Guide, Anticipation Creation, I Notice/I Wonder, Reverse Read

Clarify Input

New language and content can only be learned when the learner is able to clearly understand the input.

Strategies: Dramatize It, Total Physical Response, Visuals, Sentence Frames, Word Banks, High Interest/Low Readability Texts, 5 and 2, Teach! Teach!, Anchor Charts, Learning 1-2-3, Make Your Mark, Double Vision Video, Echo Echo, Guided Notes, Prediction Cafe

Fortify Output


When students are given multiple writing and speaking activities that are authentic, targeted and meaningful, their language will become stronger and clearer.

Strategies: Find Your Match, Writing Windows, Inside Outside Circle, I am Monologues, Respond with RACE, Conversation Grids, Think Write Pair Share, Clock Buddies, Speaking in Paragraphs, Written Conversation, Writing Using Text Types, Mix and Math with Constructed Response, Dialogue Journal, Which Corner>, Information Exchange, A Reader/Reporter and Announcer, Jigsaw, Fortune/Misfortune, Numbered Heads Together

Foster Interactions

Only through authentic interactions in which students are communicating for meaning will significant development in language proficiency occur.

Strategies: Directed Discourse, Find the Fib, Common Thread, Do You Know?, Opinion Continuum, The Expert and the Novice, Don't Mention It, Tell More, Fishbowl Review, Same Scene Twice, QSSA, T-Chart/Pair/Defend, Pro Con Impov

Develop Academic Language

Student development of grade-level academic vocabulary, sentences, and message discourse results from explicit teaching, modeling, and practice with reading of a wide range of authentic texts.

Strategies: Vocab Go Fish, 360 Words - Move t! Make It! Mean It!, Building with Bricks and Mortar, Sentence Scramble, Sticky Thinking, Cloze Sentences, It's in the Details, Word Walls, Simultaneous Round Table, Text Types, Single Word Flip Books, Draw that Idiom, Vocabulary Rating, Direct Teaching Affixes, Single Word Flash Cards

Cultural Relevance: CLEAR

Learning takes place when instruction honors, respects, validates and incorporates the cultural, racial, ethnic and linguistic identities of students.

Strategies: Language Buddies, Collaborative Groups, Investigate a Language, Translanguaging, CLEAR

Resources

One-Pager Essential Practices Instruction

Rubric: Essential Practices Instruction

ELLevation Login Information

Specific instructional strategies beneficial for students at certain English proficiency levels. Click the links to find strategies for Entering and Emerging and Developing and Expanding.