Explore Boards to Build Background Knowledge

Have you used an Explore Board with your multilingual learners?  Explore Boards build background knowledge (essential to reading comprehension) BEFORE MLs dive into a text or subject. We learned about this idea from Holly Clark of Infused Classroom. You can find her template and suggestions here. 

Our ELL2.0 Explore board has been modified for MLs. It includes texts and resources at various levels -- with language support and linguistic simplification. We've also included support for the pre and post-exploration videos on Flip. (If your students aren't familiar with Flip, you could always turn these into writing tasks or use a simple audio recorder like Vocaroo.)

Using an Explore board with MLS supports oracy, reading, viewing, and representing. It also supports universal design for learning by promoting engagement, multiple modes of representation, and student choice. Feel free to use this template and change the content links to match your next unit, text, or novel. 

Good luck -- and please share your boards so we can all learn together!