Instructional Strategies

Workshop Model

The Workshop Model is a delivery model consisting of four parts: opening, mini-lesson, work time, and closing. The opening is a time to share the learning targets for the lesson and set the stage for the day. Setting up the lesson using a hook helps get students interested and ready to learn. During the mini-lesson the teacher provides direct instruction to the whole class. Modeling is often included during this time. During work time students practice the learning. This is the most important part of the lesson as students are actively engaged in the learning process, questioning, solving problems, seeking feedback, and providing feedback to others. Work time is when the teacher is able to conference or conduct small group learning to assess understanding individually. If the class period is longer then a mid-workshop mini-lesson may be needed to enrich the learning experience and allow for students to dig in deeper to the content for the last work time part of the class. The closing occurs at the end and gives students the opportunity to synthesize, reflect on, and name what they learned during the lesson. Exit tickets or other types of formative assessments are often conducted during the closing so the teacher will be able to gauge readiness for the next lesson.

The Workshop Model

Elementary example of Workshop Model

Video posted by Pearson North America

Highschool examples of Workshop Model

Video posted by Evergreeen Public Schools

ELL Strategies

Go to Your Corner

Go to Your Corner gives opportunities for students to share knowledge about a topic and practice paraphrasing skills. To get started, choose a topic that has at least four dimensions and assign each topic to a different corner of the room. Students move to a particular corner based on interest or by assigning each student a word or picture. In the corner space, students will share why they chose that corner.

4 Corners Vocabulary

4 Corners Vocabulary helps students contextualize words by creating a chart with illustration, a sentence, and a definition.

You may use the template to the right. Visit Strategies for Students for more ideas using this strategy in content areas other than ELA.

4-Corners Vocabulary

Inside - Outside Circle

To get started with the Inside-Outside Circle you will need to prepare the classroom ahead of time. Split your students into two groups. One group sits in a circle facing outwards with a second circle group facing the first. Questions are posed and the inner group answers to the outer group. This strategy works well for peer editing writing assignments or defending a math problem.

QSSSA

The QSSSA strategy is designed to structure conversation in the classroom. This strategy is perfect at any grade level and content area as it encourages academic talk. To begin, pose an open ended and thought provoking question. Post the question so students can refer back to it as needed. Next, provide students a sentence stem to answer the question and practice saying the stem with them. Practicing together provides students repetition to practice speaking any words they may not know before doing it individually and sets them up for success. The third step is signaling. When students are ready to complete the sentence they give a thumbs up. Next, partner students up to share answers. Partnering can be done as teacher sees fit, but often in A/B partners, triads, or small groups works well. Share time gives teachers the opportunity to listen in on conversations. As you listen give feedback, but be careful of saying 'Good job' instead your feedback should encourage more speaking. Feedback such as 'You are on the right track, can you tell more?' is helpful. The final step in this strategy is to assess. Randomly call on a few students to share their answers to the whole group

This strategy was posted on the English Learners blog by Valentina Gonzalez.

Online Resources:

https://elementaryenglishlanguagelearners.weebly.com/

https://sites.google.com/view/ell20/home

https://www.janaechevarria.com/

Other Tech Tools to support ELL students:

Flipgrid

Flipgrid is a great video discussion tool to use with students.

Closed Captions in Slides

Closed Captions in Google Slides is available for everyone. This tool allows the spoken words of the presenter to be visible on the screen.

Rewordify

Rewordify makes vocabulary easier to understand by taking difficult text and replacing it with synomyns that are easier to understand.

Rewordify helps learners:

Learn words in context, not in isolation.
Focus on reading, not word lookup
Learn from text that they want to read

Screencastify

Screencastify is a screen capture tool available in the Chrome Webstore. There is a free version that is great to get started, but for the full features including editing you may want to purchase a full subscription for $24/year.

Smmry

SMMRY.mp4

Google Translate

Parent Conference Translator

Have you ever struggled to hold a parent conference with families who don't speak English?

Often times it is difficult to schedule a time with a family in need of a translator, but when you use Parent Conference Translator the language barrier can be eased. Parent Conference Translator is one of the many 'Ott-o-matic' functions developed by Jeran Ott. The Google Sheet used for this handy translator tool is preloaded with the formulas/scripts needed to pull Google Translate into the sheet for you. There is also an embedded Speech to Text tool in the Sheet you may choose to use.

Try it out totally free with this download.

How It Works:

You type in your comment and the Sheet will translate the text to the language of choice. The parent may then type in their comment back and like magic the text will translate back to English!

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