Tips for including and supporting ESL students

Each month, I invite a different educator to share a few classroom management tips that have worked in his or her classroom. It’s part of a blog post series called Real Teachers, Real Tips.  I’m hoping to feature a wide cross-section of teachers from all different parts of the world, at a wide range of grade levels, in a variety of teaching scenarios. Want to share your ideas here? Just fill out the guest blog form!

November’s featured teacher is Nicole Heinlein, an experienced K-3 educator who currently teaches second grade  in Hawaii on the island of Lanai. Nicole has worked extensively with ESL students and ESOL students (English as a Second/Other Langauge) and has some incredibly creative lesson ideas and activities for English Language Learners. Thank you, Nicole, for sharing your perspective here.

This is Nicole from Teaching With Style and I’d like to share with you some ideas for teaching English Language Learners (ELLs) in your classroom.  For the past five years I worked in a school in Portland, OR , which had a 90% free and reduced lunch rate and also 85% of our students spoke another language at home.  The first two years I taught kindergarten, and it was not uncommon to have only a handful of my 30, all-day students who could speak English at all.

I had to quickly learn tips and tricks for getting all students engaged and able to participate in each lesson. Here are my top three tips for supporting English Language Learners:

1. Use Visuals

• An easy thing to do when explaining concepts to students is to model, model, model.  If teaching a math game, go through the game with the class to show them how to do it (don’t just tell them).

• If possible, use gestures and pantomime everything.  This technique is not only good for students learning English, but for visual-learning students.

• Anchor charts are another way to create visuals for students to better understand concepts and tie meaning to the language.

• Attaching pictures and sentence frames to help ELL students use vocabulary words correctly when discussing the concept is extremely helpful for them.  Even if they cannot read the sentence frame, it will help you remember what to reinforce when asking students to respond.

Ideas for supporting ESL/ELL kids

Anchor Chart with pictures, vocabulary words, and sentence frames Ideas for supporting ESL/ELL kids

A teacher writing on a KWL-type anchor chart

2. Use kid-friendly definitions

• I always teach high-academic content and words.  My students know what an entomologist is when we study insects!  The key to use kid friendly definitions when teaching these higher words.  My favorite website to use is http://www.wordsmyth.net/.  It is a free online dictionary that has advanced, children’s, and beginner definitions.  You can pick which one will work the best for your class!

• Creating a class dictionary anchor chart is a great way to monitor meaning.  This is a specific GLAD (Guided Language Acquisition Design) strategy, called the Cognitive Content Dictionary.  First, students predict the meaning, then the final meaning, then use the word correctly in a sentence.

• I also help reinforce these academic words by using them as our signal word for the day.  We tie in Total Physical Response to make it fun!  For example, last year in 3rd grade we did a social studies unit on navigation.  To help them understand the concept, when I wanted them to “go” after explaining directions, I would say “Navigation” and they would repeat “Navigation: getting from here {pointing in one direction} to there {pointing in another direction}.”  They would say the word, say the kids friendly definition, and also act it out.  After doing this several times a day, most students could tell me what navigation meant by the end of just one day!

Tips for including and supporting ESL students

Class Dictionary Anchor Chart

ideas for English Language Learners

Use the words to name your table groups!

3. I also utilize shared supplies in my table groups.  I feel that is a great way to teach, model, and foster important social skills for all students: sharing, asking politely to use an item, responding when people ask you a question.  It’s great!Use collaborative groups

• A great way to scaffold instruction for English Language Learners is to do LOTS of collaborative grouping.  I wore out my Kagan Cooperative Learning book the first couple years of teaching, just thumbing through and trying out all the strategies.  I love it!

• In SIOP (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol), there is a great strategy called Jigsaw.  There are 4 steps students take and it helps them really work together.  Check out this freebie from my Teachers Pay Teachers store to learn more about it.

Blog post with ideas for supporting ESL kids: this is a free cooperative learning activity that supports ELLS.

Jigsaw reading strategy for cooperative learning (freebie)

ideas for helping ESL kids

Turn and Talk assigned partners with popsicle sticks and a pocket chart.

ESL/ELL support ideas

Use labeled bins to store table group materials

There you have it!  My top 3 tips for making your classroom run well and including all students, native and non-native English speakers.  Thanks for allowing me to share my ideas with you today!

Any questions for Nicole? How do you help ESL/ESOL students participate in your lessons? We’d love to read your tips and tricks in the comments!