EXT K-2 Sampler

28 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. Try Peer Teaching Other students can sometimes bemore effective than the teacher in explaining a new idea or concept. As new learners themselves, peers are sometimes better able to seewhere comprehension has broken down and can “repair” the understandingwith a simple explanation or analogy. After introducing a new concept, look for opportunities to do small-groupwork, pairing native English speakerswith ELL students. Break It Down New vocabulary can be particularly overwhelming to ELL studentswhenwords look long and unmanageable. Take the time to break larger words into their component parts, identifying common roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Number words, for example, can easily be broken down so students can see how a larger number relates to a smaller one, as in six and sixty or eight and eighty . Use theNative Language Don’t be afraid to use an ELL student’s native language as a comparison point to facilitate comprehension. Often you can find cognates—wordswith common etymological roots—that may help students remember and internalize concepts. 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.” Use Sentence Frames Sentence frames are an effectiveway to offer scaffolding for an ELL student as he or she gains comfort in speaking or writing. Provide enoughwords in the frame so that verb tense or subject/verb agreement is not an issue. “I have (more/less) cubes than you have.” This allows the student to focus on the content-relatedwords that aremost relevant to the lesson. Use Their OwnWords Often, an ELL student will be close to verbalizing a concept effectively, but he or shemay lack a few essential words or phrases. Encourage students to give it their best shot and say asmuch as they can. Repeat students’ words back to them, modifying and “pruning,” and encourage them to improve through practice and feedback. Give Them Time With lessons to get through and studentsworking at varying paces, it is often difficult to give ELL students the one thing they needmost: time. ELL students are often more facile than teachers realize, but they lack the time during class to plan, organize, and express their thinking. While it’s not feasible to give every ELL student unlimited time to respond to prompts, consider setting aside some time eachweekwhen these students can have the freedom to practice their new languagewithout feeling rushed. UniversalAccessStrategies ELLStrategies&Tips General strategies and specific tips clarifypossiblemisconceptions andmake mathaccessible for ELL students. ELLTips L sson-SpecificELLTips Page 13 Difference Studentsmay need help teasing out themultiple definitions of theword difference .Write the subtraction equation 6 – 4 = 2 on the board. Say, “The difference is 2.” Then draw two simple pictures of faces on the board. The faces should be exactly the same except for one clear difference . Ask, “What is the difference between the two faces?” Tell students that when two objects have a difference , they are not the same. Page 16 UsingDoubles ELL stude tsmay find it challenging t describe how to use doubles to add 7 and 8. Offer sentence frames to help: I saw that _____ and _____ are neighbors. To add a number and its neighbor, I _______ the lower number and add _____ . Page 31 Regrouping Student may need practicewith the t rmreg ouping to inter alize itsmeaning.Wr te re-gr up on the board and say, “Re-m ans to do again, so thewor regroupm ans to group again.Whenwe group inmath, we c ange the waywe group the umbers.” As studentswork through regrouping problems, ffer a sentence frame to help students verbalize their understanding: ______ tens and _____ ones is equal to _______ tens and _______ ones. Page 42 Place Value: Hundreds, Tens, andOnes Some studentsmay strugglewith verbalizing big numbers that they understand intuitively. Theymay try to use the plural of hundredwhen naming a number such as 372. Offer a frame students can use to say the number correctly: _____ hundred ________________.