Strategies for ELLs that Work for All Students

One of the most popular questions that I get asked by general education teachers is How can I help my ELL students during whole group instruction? Although differentiation and assignment modification is essential to the learning process of our ELLs, there are many things that teachers can do during instruction that will help ELLs, but also all other students in their classroom.

1. The first thing that teachers can do is have strong classroom management. This ensures that students know procedures and expectations that are consistent and predictable. Students will pick up on the language you use during these routines and will learn to apply them during other activities. Also, it will help students to know what to do in your class, when, and why.

2. Another thing general education teachers can do for all of their students that is particularly beneficial to ELLs is introduce your topic, teach your topic, and then review your topic. This repetition of what is important can help ELLs grasp the content and stay focused because they will hear the key points three times. It can do the same for all other students in the classroom.

3. Add visuals to your lessons. This can include photographs, pictures, charts, diagrams, realia, etc. These can be things that you present to the class or give to your students to look at at their seats. It helps students to visualize the words and concepts more easily.

4. Explicitly teach vocabulary. This is something that I have talked about in other posts. It is important to make sure that you don't assume that students know the key terms and that you spend some time working on them. A great way to reinforce vocabulary is to add pictures or show videos of the vocabulary words. This is also helpful because sometimes we don't realize that ELL students do not understand the words in the definitions that we give them. This will help all students visualize the terms and give them a picture to connect to the terms. It is also helpful to keep a word wall in your classroom and even allow students to play charades with the key terms.

5. Model for students. Most every assignment that you do with students should be modeled. We should be giving students examples of work which received high scores and work which received low scores in order to show them what is expected of them. This can also clear up any confusion they have from oral instructions to an assignment due to limited listening skills. Oftentimes, even native English speakers need this modeling to feel confident about how to complete an assignment or activity.

These are just some of the suggestions that I think can be most easily worked into daily lessons. For more ideas look at this article titled ELL Strategies that Work for the Whole Class.