Module 3: Support

1. Read Chapter 4 (pgs. 86-107)

2. Note these questions to ask yourself as you plan supports:

• What are my content and language goals for student learning?

• What can students understand and do relevant to my goals?

• What instruction and supports will I provide to help students build from current understandings to succeed with the goal?

3. Review Figure 4.5 (p. 99) and note how this guide might be useful in future lessons.

4. Review Figures 4.6 and 4.7 and reflect on how these continuums might be relevant to you. 

1. Read Chapter 5 (pgs. 108-135)

2. Reflect:

   • How do you approach learning about your students’ prior experiences, home language assets and prior knowledge?

   • How do you determine what background knowledge and which vocabulary is essential for a lesson you are teaching?

   • What is a familiar strategy (from the list of building background strategies on pages 112-134) you want to improve on?

3. Begin to build an ‘exemplar library,’ so that you can implement strategies 5.7, 5.8, and 5.9. Tip: use AI tools like “Magic School,” to find exemplars

1. Read Chapter 6 (pgs. 136-155)

2. Reflect:

   • Review the “Four Steps to Design Just-Right Linguistic Scaffolds” on pages 137-139. How is your approach similar or different?

   • Which tasks in everyday teaching (in content classrooms) present the greatest linguistic challenges for your English Learners?

3. From the strategies on pages 142-155, note one familiar strategy you want to improve upon or one new strategy you want to try?

1. Read Chapter 7 (pgs. 156-168)

2. Reflect:

   • Which aspects of language are your top priorities to teach with language mini-lessons? Choose one goal and one strategy from Chapter 7 to address that goal.

   • In what ways do you help students have multiple exposures to learn and use new vocabulary?

   • Choose an academic text that students read in a content classroom. Notice how the text is structured at the text level, and notice sentence level, grammar, and word choice. What is one aspect of language used in the text you’d especially like to help all students understand and use in their academic communication? How might you use strategy 7.2 to teach this goal?