I'll be the first to admit, I had no idea what I was doing when I began teaching English as a Second Language students. Yes, I'm a highly qualified teacher, with degrees in Elementary Education and Curriculum and Instruction, as well as a Structured English Immersion endorsement from the state of Arizona, but none of that prepared me for taking on a third grade ELL classroom.
At first, I was lost. I was teaching typical third grade content, I knew I was delivering engaging lessons, but the content wasn't sticking with the students and my students weren't showing any progress. It was frustrating and it was difficult. The worst thing that can happen to a teacher is failing their students and that's what I was doing.
I decided that I needed to know more about learning a second language in order to present the content in a way that would allow my students to access it. My first big A-ha! was discovering that most of my students could decode, but didn't have any meaning behind the words they were reading, so I focused my effort on developing vocabulary. I researched vocabulary acquisition and I looked for strategies that would help my students increase their understanding of English.
Some of the things I learned helped me to change how I structured my lessons, how I presented concepts, and how my my students practiced their new vocabulary. Here are a few tips I keep in mind when I am developing lessons:
1. In order to develop a new vocabulary word, ELL students need to practice it anywhere from 16-250 times.
2. It is believed that both languages are stored in separate (language) systems within the brain, but connect in shared semantic (visual) representations.
3. Studies have shown that comprehension activities that embed vocabulary acquisition are often more effective than phonics based vocabulary acquisition.
Based on what I learned, I began to make changes in my classroom.
One of the first things I changed was my word wall. Prior to being an ELL teacher, my word wall consisted of what teachers sometimes call "no excuse" words. High frequency words that I expected my students to spell correctly in their everyday assignments. It was essentially a dictionary on the wall- almost completely useless, but I had put it up because it was a requirement by my principal.
Now, my word wall routines are completely different. I begin with a shared read: sometimes I read a story to my students, sometimes we listen to an audio recording, and sometimes we work in small groups to decode passages at our instructional level. Beginning with the words in context gives my students a place to begin making connections to the words. Also, I choose words that have a relationship to each other- synonyms, antonyms, or adjectives that can be used to describe specific nouns, etc.
Once we've discussed the target words in context, we place illustrated cards on the word wall. Using illustrated cards helps us to tap into those shared semantic memories. When I put the word duck on my word wall with an illustration, I'm hoping that the illustration connects to the word for duck in my students' home languages and their brain creates a connection between the two words. In addition, my students and I develop kinesthetic symbols for the words, adding a movement gives their brains one more piece to hook into and allows my students a simple way to coach their peers during vocabulary activities.
After placing the words on the word wall my students move on to one of their favorite activities- vocabulary illustration sheets. These are simply empty tables that contain the definition for the word. My students write the target word on the line and draw an illustration to develop meaning. Sometimes they illustrate events in the story and sometimes them draw their own understanding of the word. My students love to do gallery walks and look at how their peers illustrate the words.
Thanks for hanging out long enough to read this extremely long post. I hope you found some information that has been useful to you.
K
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