If you teach in Revere, you are a teacher of English learners!  We all share the responsibility for promoting English proficiency in our classrooms, no matter what content area is our specialty.  So while it may be tempting to provide frequent and ongoing translations to students’ home languages, we ultimately hope all students can access the same grade-level curriculum as their peers.  Translation is just one of many tools in our toolboxes.  

Overarching Ideas

• Explicit language instruction is essential for some, helpful for all, harmful for none.

• Scaffolds are *temporary* supports that can be added and scaled back according to student needs.

• Please reach out for support, ideas, and with any questions and concerns!

Ideas for presenting yourself and the class

• Give clear instructions: Say it slowly using your “teacher voice”, write it, show it (gestures, pictures, using realia/manipulatives), repeat it, have students repeat it back to you.

• Use cognates: when possible, use words with Latin roots to maximize understanding.  For example, use the word “instructions” instead of “directions”, “utilize” instead of “make use of”, “liberty” instead of “freedom”, “explain” instead of “tell”.

• Post common academic language on your walls or “academic conversation placemats”.  Examples: sentence starters like language of clarification, expressing an opinion, etc. (just like MSTV).

• Implement and explain routines: It’s hard to learn new content and a new structure at the same time.  When students know what structures and routines to expect each day, they can allow their brainpower to be directed to learning new language and content.  Examples: start with a do-now/end with an exit ticket or reflection, keep student notebooks in a certain place, use and refer to a calendar of learning each day.

• Plan and post both language and content objectives: even if there are only a few ELs in your class, all students can benefit from knowing both what they will learn, and how they will use language to show their understanding.

• Limit figurative speech:  During whole group instruction and key teacher talk, be cognizant of figures of speech, jokes that may not be universal, sarcasm unless accompanied by dramatic gestures :)

Ideas for instruction and class activities

• Visuals: slides w/ graphics, photos, labels, clipart that represent structure, instructions and content

• Linguistic scaffolds: Word banks and sentence frames for language functions (language of compare/ contrast, cause and effect, persuasion, inference, predictions, etc.)

• Format for easier readability: use spacing, chunking (small amounts of text at a time), large font size,  emphasize sets of keywords (especially new or important vocabulary) with bold font, underlining, or highlighting.  

• Have the students interact with the text by using highlighters to identify vocabulary, write margin notes

• Structured group and pair interactions: for beginning ELs, provide scripts for group or pair work.  For intermediate/advanced level, model and give choices for academic language (e.g. a list of sentence stems for paraphrasing or checking for understanding).

• Time: Wait time, extra time, think/writing time before calling on students

• Low-risk/low-anxiety speaking opportunities: choral reading, turn-and-talk with partners

• Graphic organizers: charts, diagrams, tables, note-taking organizers for new content

• Simplified language, but not simplified content. Break up longer sentences into shorter ones, leave out tangential stories that don’t affect the comprehension of the text, do not assume prior knowledge of history, culture, context, etc.  Look below at Rewordify.com.

• Cultural responsiveness: when designing activities or tasks, take into account our diversity of races, classes, family situations, citizenship statuses, past traumas and other situations; be cognizant of how what you say and do may be experienced by the kids.  

• Accommodations: scribe as they speak, read aloud, extra time to complete work, one-on-one time

• Partner with bilingual helpers and intentionally mixed-language partners.

• Bilingual writing: Rather than writing in their first language then translating, encourage students to write “translingually” - half in their L1 and half in English so their thoughts can flow.  Over time the proportion of English in first drafts should increase.

Ideas for formative and summative assessment

• Frequent checks for understanding: hand signals, color-coded cards, exit tickets, etc.

• Reduction of choices for answers, or better yet, opportunities to explain in short answers rather than multiple choice options.

• Multiple ways to demonstrate understanding: allow students to demonstrate their content knowledge using a variety of language domains.  This could be through comprehension of a text they read or listen to, a video they watch, through written or spoken production, or a combination.

• Use the same graphic organizers/ scaffolds on formative and summative assessments

Online Tools

• Learner’s Dictionaries:  Cambridge LD and Oxford LD.  Online dictionaries for learners using simplified definitions.  You can select American or British English.

• Rewordify: Copy and paste any text into this website to see the reading level of a text. It will also automatically rewrite the text into simpler language. There are a lot of settings that you can change to get exactly what you want (side by side parallel texts, glossaries with simple definitions, etc.)

• Newsela: Current events for different topics. Each article has several versions for different ELD levels.

• Readworks: based on science of reading, high-interest texts at many levels

• Duolingo: Teachers can create English classes and invite students to complete assignments and compete on the app

• Quizlet: Students can do a variety of activities and games based on vocabulary sets that you create or find in their library

• Unite for Literacy: high-interest texts in many languages