Ext 6-8 Sampler

27 ELLStrategies Teachersworkingwith English Language Learners in the classroommay use the following strategies to facilitate student comprehension and understanding. Act It Out One effective strategy is to have ELL students act out concepts in short skits. When teaching, don’t be afraid to use your body to pantomime actions or concepts to help students visualize an idea. Youmay also find that students who are less confident speaking in front of their peers suddenly lose their shyness if, for example, they are workingwith a puppet. Acting out can be a fun and productiveway to encourage reluctant speakers to experiment with newwords and phrases in English. Offer Synonyms When introducing a new concept, youmay need to explain it many times. Instead of offering the same explanation twice, try substitutingwords in your explanationwith synonyms. Sometimes oneword can be the stumbling block that prevents a student’s comprehension of a whole concept. When it comes to regrouping, you may need to be particularlymindful of this strategy, usingwords such as “trade” or “change.” Lesson-SpecificELLStrategies Teachersworkingwith English Language Learners in the classroommay use the following strategies to facilitate student comprehension and understanding. Page 4 Finding the Pattern ELL studentsmight be aware of different meanings for theword pattern. Ask students to find examples of patterns in the classroom, including in their textbooks. Possible exampleswill be on clothing, onwall tiles or cinder blocks, or in pictures in the classroom. Explain that when something repeats, such as the design on a piece of fabric, it is a pattern. This is also true inmath, where a repeated rule produces amathematical pattern. Using small cubes or tiles, ask a volunteer tomake a group of 3. Then say, “Our rule is to add three,” and ask the student tomake the Page 48 Defining Perimeter Some perimeter problems can appear to look like area problems and vice-versa. ELL studentswill need to know the difference before attempting to solve perimeter problems. Clear a section of the classroom floor for a student tomodel the perimeter of a rectangle by first placing a book on the floor to represent one vertex. As the student takes 4 steps tomark the next vertexwith another book, draw the side length on the board and label it 4 units. Continue the process, using awidth of 3 paces, until the student has formed a rectangle Thenwrite: perimeter = UniversalAccessStrategies ELLStrategies&Tips General strategies and specific tips clarifypossiblemisconceptions andmake mathaccessible for ELL students. ELLTips