Dearest Bedraggled Educators of the Gateway STEM Building,
On this glorious Monday, I'd like to remind you of a simple tool to differentiate your teaching to for your students: sentence stems.
This fairly common tool in other levels is sometimes removed in the high school setting because students have mastered the writing of simple extended responses and sentences. If your students need help with breaking down their writer's block for any reason, sentence stems are for you.
"Sentence frames and sentence starters are "fill in the blank" phrases and sentences that provide the structures or patterns that students need to express themselves." Source: https://www.colorincolorado.org/sentence-frames
Below, you'll find many sentence stems for a variety of content areas:
If you learn better by video, try our website: https://sites.google.com/view/mlltoolbox/sentence-stemsframes
¡Colorín Colorado!'s website has some great sentence frames: https://www.colorincolorado.org/sentence-frames
If you are looking for extended response or essay sentence frames in English, history, math, or science, you can find them here: https://sites.google.com/view/mlltoolbox/paragraph-writing-tools
At a COCA PD, I found this set of discussion stems that has been very useful: COCA Stems
Rooted Linguistics has some math and general sentence stems and frames: https://www.valentinaesl.com/blog/sentence-stems-or-sentence-frames
The Texas Education Agency has a deep collection of general sentence stems and frames here: https://www.txel.org/media/uzkla5kw/elps-sentenceframes.pdf
The Math Department created these stems to create short written responses to justify answers and describe graphs: Math Stems
Kathleen Saalfeld created art sentence stems that are very useful: Art Stems
Emily Welch provided me with these CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) stems: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s4zvFzQpR53OdBUlwwmIKIijQ-6ndOP_/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=111352336254388900992&rtpof=true&sd=true
Sentence Stems for Comprehension Strategies: https://www.rcsdk12.org/cms/lib/NY01001156/Centricity/Domain/2096/SentenceStemsforComprehensionStrategiesandSkills.pdf
If you are interested in help with your sentence stems, first work through this mastery check: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSerMqNH7w09dHLMZdzd_5QUEa63LUFVTjTOgH-bhwUMWmnMww/viewform
Other ESOL Resources
If you would like to see your ELL's Language Learning Plan, see that here: Gateway STEM LAP for ELLS 24-25.pdf
If you are trying to contact home about an ESOL student, you can email one of SLPS's translators and they'll handle it for you: https://www.slps.org/cms/lib/MO01001157/Centricity/Domain/5082/Language%20Access%20Team%20August%20%202024%20new.pdf
If your student's parents do not speak one of the 9 languages we have staff translators for, use this PDF: Language Access 24-25 Gateway STEM.pdf
Should you ask students about their immigration status? No: https://sites.google.com/view/mlltoolbox/student-immigration-status
If a student needs immigration resources, send them here: https://sites.google.com/view/stlimmigrationresources/home
This, the first ELL Toolbox Newsletter will be stored here and I'll add the other ones as content is published: https://sites.google.com/view/mlltoolbox/ell-toolbox-newsletter
Other Resources:
The MLL (Multilingual Learner, a synonym to ELL) Toolbox has many helpful differentiations strategies: https://sites.google.com/view/mlltoolbox/home
I like to share teaching resources. I share them here: https://sites.google.com/view/mccoy-teaching-resources/home
Onward and Upward,
Jason McCoy (he/him)
ESOL Instructor
Gateway STEM High School
5101 McRee Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63110
McCoy Web Page
MLL Toolbox: Resources for Teaching ESOL Students