4. Strategies

Feature #13: Ample Opportunities Provided for Students to Use Learning Strategies

As English learners develop their proficiency, it is important that their language, literacy, and content instruction include a focus on learning and practicing a variety of strategies. Strategies can be taught and can help transfer to new learning.

Cognitive Learning Strategies are used by learners to mentally or physically manipulate information or apply a technique to a learning task. Examples include the following:

• Previewing a story or chapter before reading
• Establishing a purpose for reading
• Consciously making connections with past learning
• Using mnemonics
• Highlighting, underlining, or using sticky notes to identify important information
• Taking notes or making outlines
• Rereading to help comprehension
• Mapping information (concept maps)
• Using graphic organizers
• Identifying key vocabulary
• Identifying, analyzing, and using varied text structures

Metacognitive Learning Strategies are used by learners to purposefully monitor their thinking. Examples include the following:

• Predicting and inferring
• Generating questions and using questions to guide comprehension
• Monitoring and clarifying
• Evaluating and determining importance
• Summarizing and synthesizing
• Making mental images

Language Learning Strategies are used to increase students' progress in speaking and comprehending the new language. Examples include the following:

• Conscientiously applying reading strategies, such as previewing, skimming, scanning, and reviewing
• Analyzing and using forms and patterns in English
• Making logical guesses based on contextual and syntactic information
• Breaking words into component parts
• Purposefully grouping and labeling words
• Drawing pictures and/or using gestures when words do not come to mind
• Substituting a known word when unable to pronounce an unfamiliar word
• Self-monitoring and self-correcting while speaking English
• Paragraphing
• Guessing and deducing
• Imitating behaviors of native English-speaking peers to successfully complete tasks
• Using verbal and nonverbal cues to know when to pay attention

Feature #14: Scaffolding Techniques Consistently Used, Assisting and Supporting Student Understanding

Scaffolding is a practice that is associated with Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). ZPD is the difference between what a child can accomplish alone and what he or she can accomplish with assistance. The assistance provided by the teacher is called scaffolding.

Types of Scaffolding

• Verbal Scaffolding
  • Paraphrasing
  • Think-Alouds
  • Reinforcing textual definitions
  • Repeating students' responses to provide correct pronunciation
  • Encourage students to "add on", "tell more", or explain ideas more fully.
• Procedural Scaffolding
  • Use an instructional framework such as the gradual release model, that includes explicit teaching, modeling, guided practice, and independent practice, with the expectation of eventual student independence.
  • Small group instruction, where students practice a newly learned strategy with another more experienced student
  • Partnering or grouping students for reading and content activities, with more experienced readers assisting those with less experience.
• Instructional Scaffolding
  • Graphic organizers used as a pre-reading tool
  • Models of completed assignments
  • Manipulatives
  • Word Wall
  • Labeled Visuals
  • Sentence Stems / Sentence Frames

Feature #15: A Variety of Questions or Tasks that Promote Higher-Order Thinking Skills

• DOK questions
• Designing questions that require analysis
• Avoiding "yes"/"no" questions
• Review Bloom's Taxonomy for sentence stems
• GIST (Generating Interactions between Schemata and Texts) activities
• Graphic organizers
• Reciprocal teaching
• QAR (Question-Answer Relationships)
• Pre-Questioning