Building a Bridge for ELL’s Participant Packet
Building a Bridge for English
Language Learners
By: Catherine Arnold-Maciel
and Elizabeth Greenwood
2015
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Building a Bridge for ELL’s Participant Packet
Strategy #1
10:2
Purpose:
- gives students 2 minutes of processing time for every 10 minutes
of instruction
- students can discuss and clarify content with their peers
- risk is lowered for trying out new vocabulary and concepts
How Do You Do It?
1. Post a sign that says 10:2 to remind yourself and your students
what they strategy is all about.
2. Use 10:2’s in every area of instruction, especially during the
strategies we are going to discuss in this session.
3. Listen in on conversations to clarify and affirm thinking.
4. Allow students to use native language when needed.
Your 10:2
Questions to consider:
Do you have any connections or reactions?
Was there any new information you gained?
What is your role in ELL instruction?
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Building a Bridge for ELL’s Participant Packet
Strategy #2
Narrative Input Chart
Purpose:
- incorporates high academic language in a story or narrative
format
- students understand better in a storytelling format
- students connect the visuals with the text
How Do You Do It?
1. Choose vocabulary and concepts based on the standard and
lesson taught.
2. Either adapt a pre-existing story or create your own
incorporating standards and vocabulary.
3. Use pictures and paste the text to the back. Laminate for
further use.
4. Make sure the students are close to see the pictures, posting
them on a simple background.
5. Go back to the chart to add vocabulary or sentence strips.
Your Narrative Input Chart:
Retell what happened in the story? What did you learn?
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Building a Bridge for ELL’s Participant Packet
Strategy #3
Observation Chart
Purpose:
- piques student interest
- gives a way to build background while teacher formatively
assesses student’s knowledge
- gives language support from classmates
How Do You Do It?
1. The best photos to use are real, however others may be used that
generate student interest.
2. Paste photo to butcher paper
3. In groups, students can write their observations about what they
see.
4. Go back to charts to affirm correct thinking and change
misconceptions.
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Building a Bridge for ELL’s Participant Packet
Strategy #4
Expert Groups
Purpose:
- show examples of non-fiction text with/without non-fiction
text features
- helps kids understand expository text
How Do You Do It?
1. Students are put into groups for a section of the expert text.
Normally, this would be paired with a process grid to record
information.
2. Have students pay attention to non-fiction text features.
3. Expert groups contain one student from each team, which will
in turn teach their original team about their expert section.
My Expert Group:
What were the important words used in this
text?
What is the main point the author is trying to
make?
What connections do you have to the text?
What is something interesting you would like
to share with other groups?
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Building a Bridge for ELL’s Participant Packet
Strategy #5
Important Book
Purpose:
- Focuses on Common Core/NGSS Standard
- Academic language and vocabulary are embedded
- Text is comprehensible and repetitive
How Do You Do It?
1. Research a topic focusing on main ideas, important vocabulary,
and other details.
2. Keep the most important ideas and phrases and repetitive.
3. Incorporate pictures that will illustrate/demonstrate content
My Important Book:
What did you learn from the Important Book?
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Building a Bridge for ELL’s Participant Packet
Strategy #6
Gallery Walk
Purpose:
- a gallery walk is many observation charts put together
- student discuss input while having the advantage of seeing the
written thoughts of others
- students build their background knowledge and teachers can
formatively assess student schema
How Do You Do It?
1. In small groups, have students rotate through each of the
charts.
2. Students will record their observations on the chart in their
group’s color.
3. Either with a chime or tone, students will receive the signal to
rotate through the stations.
4. Teacher observes group thoughts by looking at their group’s
color in writing.
My Gallery Walk
What was some interesting information I learned from the gallery walk?
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Building a Bridge for ELL’s Participant Packet
Strategy #7
Co-Op Strip Paragraph
Purpose:
- allows student to build a sentence about a given subject in
groups.
- students learn how to piece together a paragraph, making sure
their ideas flow correctly
How Do I Do It?
1. Give each group a sentence strip. To differentiate, have a sentence
starter on the sentence strip.
2. Have groups fill in the rest of the sentence based on the content
learned.
3. Place the strips together.
4. Allow the students to manipulate sentence order and rephrase for
paragraph flow.
My Co-Op Strip Paragraph
My group’s sentence:
How did it fit with the other ideas?
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Building a Bridge for ELL’s Participant Packet
Strategy #8
Chants
Purpose:
-
repetitive songs/chants with embedded vocabulary
students process information in an auditory and visual manner
builds student fluency
uses academic language in an accessible manner
becomes a reference tool
How Do You Do It?
1. Choose key vocabulary and concepts to embed
2. Set the vocabulary tune to an existing song/tune
3. Chant the pattern and rhythm first with students, then
incorporate vocabulary
4. revisit the chants to solidify academic vocabulary
My Chants
What are some good tunes/rhythms that can easily be turned into a
chant?
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Building a Bridge for ELL’s Participant Packet
Strategy #9
Topic Sorts
Purpose:
-
students can develop more advanced cognitive skills
students learn how to classify groups
allows practice for speaking and explaining in groups
builds cooperative learning
students need to justify their thinking
What Do You Do?
1. Give out cards to students. Cards can have pictures, words, or
phrases depending on the content and their level.
2. Students group the pictures into categories, giving each category a
label.
3. Students explain their justification to the teacher of their thinking.
My Topic Sort
How did you decide which cards to put into which category?
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Building a Bridge for ELL’s Participant Packet
Strategy #10
Team Task/Process Grid
Purpose:
- students can engage in cooperative learning while teachers pull
flexible groups
- students apply and use classroom content
- students learn to organize given information and put it into
categories
What Do I Do?
1. Use previously taught strategies for team tasks, continually
revisiting ones students are familiar with ensuring the greatest
amount of success.
2. Teacher provides input to disseminate into the process grid.
3. Can connect to expository text writing.
4. Groups present to class to provide accountability and allow for
speaking practice.
My Team Task
How can multiculturalism be incorporated into all subject areas?
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