General ELL support suggestions and resources
In the Academic Success Classroom (ASC) we are starting to accumulate a small collection of ELL teaching resources. While they are kept in the room to support ELL students in the room working on content-area course work, subject area teachers are welcome to come take a look at the materials and either make recommendations for ELL students in their classes who are also in the ASC or to see if the resources might be helpful in their own classroom practice.
This blog post is written by Dr. Olenka Bilash of the University of Alberta - Edmonton. In it she offers some suggestions of general adaptations suitable for ELL students in subject area classrooms.
Many Roots, Many Voices is an exemplary document put together by the Ministry of Education in Ontario, where ELL/ESL education has been part of the educational landscape for a much longer time than it has yet been here in the Yukon. There are some great tips for practical, day-to-day strategies teachers of all grade levels can use in their classrooms. Click on the link to the PDF. Consider downloading and saving the PDF for reference. While we follow the B.C. Ministry when it comes to curriculum and assessment / evaluation, it can be a useful thing indeed to consider what other jurisdictions have successfully implemented in the way of classroom strategies for support programming.
Consider what it means for your classroom to be culturally responsive. This is not only relevant to having students in your room from other countries, but First Nations students, and students who might be second or even third generation Canadians, living in homes where the culture may be traditional to another culture and/or a mesh of multiple cultures.
Adapted from her work, Teaching English Language Learners Across the Content Areas (ASCD, 2010), here are author Judie Haynes' top seven strategies for any educator working with ELL students, on her site, www.everythingesl.net
SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol) is a very particular form of lesson planning designed to offer scaffolded support to ELL students, but like many types of universal design, can be useful and beneficial to students of all ability levels.
The link below goes to a page that includes several lesson plans as samples, including resources, for different subject areas, including history, science and teaching irony in the English Language Arts classroom.
The link below goes to a page that includes several lesson plans as samples, including resources, for different subject areas, including history, science and teaching irony in the English Language Arts classroom.
An article on the general, and then subject-area specific, challenges that ELL students may face in their subject-area courses. By Judie Haynes at Everything ESL.
ELL and Math
This is an article from Scholastic publishing, compiled from different math teachers, with different suggestions for beginner, intermediate and advanced ELL learners.
ELL and Science
This article from the periodical Educator's Voice reviews strategies that can be used by science teachers in working with ELL students.
This Statement of Position document from the American National Science Teacher's Association outlines some good basics to keep in mind as guiding principles in teaching ELLs in the Science, or truly, any classroom.
The Museum of Science's digital / virtual field trips offer some excellent online, interactive science materials which can support subject-area content in a manner that pairs auditory practice with visual text. If you're feeling very keen, you can combine the online material from that source with apps like EdPuzzle, Quizzative, Quizlet, ThingLink, Symbaloo, HSTRY, Edmodo, Blendspace, Flipboard or Storify collections etc.
A brief list of reasons regarding why it is important for ELLs to learn English in part in the context of their subject area classes, in this case, Science. From Judie Haynes' Everything ELL site.
The official National Geographic website. Why? It's National Geographic! As such it offers a wealth of multi-modal texts through which students can practice their reading and their receptive oral language with the support of accurate, dynamic visuals.
Not to be outdone, The Smithsonian also has an online virtual portal. This links directly to the Science and Technology section.
Also exciting from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History is their dynamic Ocean Portal.
A junior official NASA site where the language is more accessible for ELLs.
Another treasure trove of articles, galleries, videos and other digital artefacts, The Field Museum allows students to access a wide range of text formats (video, written, audio, images) to practice language with visual support.
Jefferson Labs BEAM hands-on projects include lesson plan materials that are in fairly simple English and offer students the opportunity to conduct simple experiments and employ the scientific method to plan, observe and record the process of their science experiments.