Teaching Strategies For ELLs

This week we continue discussing teaching strategies to help our English Language Learners. Keep in mind that these strategies are a help to ALL children and are good ways to assist children who may not have background knowledge and school skills.  These two strategies are different and may be used depending on your class and the topics you are presenting. They are Total Physical Response and The Silent Way.

Total Physical Response  

Children can learn language when they listen to and follow along with an adult’s speech. The key is that the adult must use many gestures and facial expressions to talk with children. Children can merely watch and participate using their bodies, without any oral responses. This helps children feel less pressure to speak. They can respond in a physical way, which is so appropriate for preschoolers. An example of this might be to talk about elephants by using your arm as a trunk, your hands as ears, making an elephant sound, and showing pictures of foods elephants eat. Children can then pretend to be elephants, without any pressure to describe an elephant.

The Silent Way

When we give children a train of unifix cubes in a pattern, with a tub of cubes to continue this pattern, we can think of this as being an example of The Silent Way. Adults should give as little direction as possible and let children explore and discover new concepts on their own. Adults might use gestures and gestures, but little language is used. Children can experiment, without the need to process teacher direction. This helps children develop important concepts and encourages self-reliance.  

Standards Alignment:
NAEYC - 2.D.01 & 03.
Head Start - VIII.A. & B.

Comprehensible Input for Preschoolers: A Video

Last week we talked about the benefits of comprehensible input - the idea that you pair known gestures, expressions, and actions with vocabulary to help both English Language Learners and those who may not have the background knowledge to understand a concept or book. As promised, today we share a video of comprehensible input in action. Watch carefully as we also demonstrate our favorite way to avoid b/d reversals! 

Standards Alignment:
NAEYC - 2.D.01 & 03.
Head Start - VIII.A. & B.

Helping ELLs and ALL Children: Age-Appropriate Comprehensible Input

How can we help our ELLs and even our young children who may not have the background knowledge to understand the contents of a book we are reading? We can use gestures, pictures, objects, and even videos to help children understand the content of a book or even our directions. 

We find that gestures are so important. Here are a few examples of helpful actions:

• Want children to listen? Be sure to cup your hand over your ear. 
• Want children to be quieter? Put your finger over your lips.
• Want children to think or wonder about something? Point to your head.

As you can imagine, it is also helpful to include appropriate facial expressions with these gestures. Look puzzled or happy. These facial expressions can align with a book character's feelings, too. They are helpful in so many ways.

If you are reading a book about a dog, be sure to show pictures. If you are reading about someone running, you can act this out or even have children do this. Talking about rain? Use a rain stick to get children involved. Want children to look closer at something? Wear BIG glasses! It's fun, too! 

Gestures, facial expressions, body language, pictures, objects...all of these are helpful examples of comprehensible input that help all of the children in our class to understand the language of school. 

Stay tuned next week for more on comprehensible input.

Standards Alignment:
NAEYC - 2.D.01 & 03.
Head Start - VIII.A. & B.

In Like A Lion - Out Like A Lamb

March: In like a lion – out like a lamb?

Your bulletin board might show these two animals as you welcome spring into your classroom. But you can use this traditional saying to teach important concepts. Let’s start with science.  How does a lion act?  Does a lion hunt? What does a sheep do? How does a sheep get its food? You can contrast these two animals.

Have a grand conversation about lions and sheep. Children can help develop background knowledge of others in the class by acting out what a sheep does and what a lion does. This is helpful comprehensible input for your ELLs. They can put together what they already know with what is shown them by their peers. Repeat key vocabulary/phrases like lion, sheep, grass, other animals, etc.

If the background knowledge in your class is limited about these animals, look for appropriate videos for your children. We are not suggesting any, as we know there are many helpful videos in “Internet World.” But only you know what is just right for your class.

Next give children two half sheets of paper. Ask them to draw a picture to answer one of the questions about the actions and food gathering habits of a lion. Have them use the other paper to show the characteristics of a sheep. Continue with the conversation as children show their pictures and use speaking and listening skills as they tell about their drawings.

Put the lion pictures together by either tacking them on a bulletin board or gluing them to a large sheet of paper. Do the same with the sheep pictures. Add the conversation of these pictures to your calendar time. Talk about how a windy, cold day might be like a lion or a warm, sunny day makes you feel like a cuddly sheep.  This can help your ELLs as you constantly refer to their drawings throughout the month and they hear key vocabulary repeated.

This also connects with a later language skill – similes. You can guide children who would benefit from this extension by sharing other examples of similes.

Standards Alignment:

NAEYC – 2. D. 01 & 07; 2.G.07.

Head Start - VIII. A & B; XI. B1.

In honor of the birthday of Dr. Seuss, take a visit to our Green Eggs and Ham reading. 

Affricate Poem

In a previous post, we discussed affricates, a common phonological error made by young children. We have even seen 6th graders make these kinds of mistakes. That's why it is important to correct the confusion that often results from the letters/letter combinations: j, tr, dr, and ch. You can read more about these ideas by clicking Affricate Instruction. 

As part of any phonics instruction, we like to have children go on word hunts to see if they can find examples of words containing the target letters. Using poetry is always a help in this. Even if children cannot read all of the words, they can identify the letters. This helps with concept of word, developing visual skills, and is the first step in reading high-frequency words. Children can underline, circle, or use our favorite, highlighter tape, to find words containing affricates or other phonics features. 

After we posted our original discussion of affricates, several teachers pointed out to us that it was difficult to find poems that contained this feature.  So...we decided to write our own silly poem. Read this little ditty to your children several times. Then have them circle the words that start with j, tr, dr, and ch. This heightens awareness of affricates. 

Jill's Word Trick! 

A silly word game sat on the tray,

“Come on let’s match words,” said the boy, Jay.

A card from the pile you will draw,

Put words together like a jigsaw.

So Jay and his friends, Jack, Jill, and Joy,

Started to play to win a fun toy.

They all picked words to make a train,

The words were alike, to make a looping chain.

Jill drew the word, jeep, and then looked around.

She found the word trip, without the same sound.

That doesn’t work, you must put trip back.

“Play fair or stop with this game,” said Jack.

“Oh Jack,” said the friends, “this is fine, don’t quit,

Words with these sounds are an affricate!” 

By Kathy Hart  

Standards Alignment:

NAEYC - 2.E.06

Head Start - VII. B & C.

One Game - Many Objectives

We love games that help children practice their math skills along with giving them important opportunities in speaking and listening skills. This is a game that we have found holds the attention of everyone, from preschoolers to adults.

Begin by cutting out the following shapes: large triangles, circles, and squares in 4 different colors. We have used red, blue, green, and yellow paper as shown below. 

Then cut out small triangles, circles, and squares in the same 4 different colors. 

Hide one of the shapes. Children are to guess this hidden shape by asking yes or no questions. For example, a child may ask, “Is it red?” You reply with a yes or no.

Keep track of how many questions are asked by tallying them.

When children think they know the hidden shape, someone may ask, “Is it a large, red triangle?”

Celebrate when the shape is guessed correctly.

We like to divide the class into two “teams.” Keep track of which team guesses the hidden shape using the fewest number of questions. This means team members must listen carefully to one another.

You can easily spot all of the integrated objectives of this game: listening skills, thinking critically about questions, formulating questions, understanding adjective order, asking complete questions, recalling responses, understanding and counting tally marks, identifying shapes, and identifying colors. You can differentiate for members of your class in many ways by using this simple game.

Standards Alignment:

NAEYC – 2.D.01 & 2.F.06.

Head Start – VIII.A. & B.; X.C.

High-Frequency Words For All Learners

High-frequency words, Dolch words, Fry list, sight words…many terms for the words our young children need to learn to recognize. We have previously explained the five components of reading here.  Under the reading umbrella, one of these components is vocabulary. When children are emerging readers and writers, vocabulary means recognizing sight words. Later, vocabulary focuses on words that students may be able to decode (sound out) but cannot understand. Then teachers focus on using context clues, Greek and Latin roots, etc.

As teachers of young children, we focus on teaching sight vocabulary. We want our children to recognize words like this:

it

Many of these words DO follow phonics patterns. The word it is an example.  Let’s take a look at the pre-primer list of Dolch words. Many of these words can be taught using phonics principles. This is helpful for children who are auditory learners.  Below we have listed words from this list that follow the early short vowel rules and the common long vowel pattern, vCe.  We have listed 18 out of the 40 pre-primer words. Many of the remainder words like play do follow higher-level phonics rules but because they are further along the phonics continuum, we have not included them here.

and

big

can

go

help

I

in

is

it

jump

make

me

my

not

red

run

up

we

Look for more posts on teaching both visual and auditory learners as you focus on high-frequency words.

Standards Alignment:

NAEYC – 2.E.06 & 2.E.09.

Head Start - VII. B & D.