English Language Learners
The population of English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. public schools is growing quickly. This section includes information on the most effective ways to teach ELL students (sometimes called ESL students), methods for encouraging learning, and ways to promote family involvement. Please also visit our sister website ColorinColorado.org, which focuses on helping ELL students succeed.
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Pre-Reading Activities for ELLs
Pre-reading activities may be designed to motivate student interest, activate prior knowledge, or pre-teach potentially difficult concepts and vocabulary. This is also a great opportunity to introduce comprehension components such as cause and effect, compare and contrast, personification, main idea, sequencing, and others.
English Language Learners in Middle and High School
In this 45-minute video, Dr. Deborah Short, a Senior Research Associate for the Language Education and Academic Development division of the Center for Applied Linguistics, discusses how to teach content to late-entry ELLs and how to ensure reading comprehension for success in the content areas.
Connect Students' Background Knowledge to Content in the ELL Classroom
As you teach content areas to ELLs of diverse backgrounds, you may find that they struggle to grasp the content, and that they approach the content from very different perspectives. Drawing on your students’ background knowledge and experiences, can be an effective way to bridge those gaps and to make the content more accessible. This article offers a number of suggestions to classroom teachers as they find ways to tap into the background knowledge that students bring with them.
What Does Research Tell Us About Teaching Reading to English Language Learners?
In this article, a seasoned ELL teacher synthesizes her own classroom experience and the findings of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth to make recommendations for effective literacy instruction of ELL students.
Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners
Explicit teaching of reading comprehension skills will help students apply these strategies to all subject matter.
Urgent but Overlooked: The Literacy Crisis Among Adolescent English Language Learners
English language learners represent more than 10% of the national pre-K through 12th grade enrollment. Also, over 70% of ELLs fail to develop strong literacy skills. To increase this group's educational, college, and job opportunities, policymakers must address the unique ELL literacy questions.
Time is Not on Our Side: Literacy and Literature for High School Language Learners
Given that teachers often have too much to teach and too little time, Dana Dusbiber suggests an alternative approach to teaching literature for secondary ELLs: the introduction of more multicultural literature in the classroom.
Academic Language: Everyone's "Second" Language
Being able to speak English fluently does not guarantee that a student will be able to use language effectively in academic settings. Fluency must be combined with higher order thinking skills to create an "academic language," which allows students to effectively present their ideas in a way that others will take seriously. The author, an ELL teacher, describes her use of "protocols" (a cheat sheet of sentence starters) to build students' cognitive academic language proficiency.
Rethinking Schools: An Introduction to New York City's Experience
Only half of New York City's public school students complete high school in four years, one third of all 9th graders fail, and fewer than 40 percent of students in large, low-performing schools graduate. To address student needs and thereby increase future student achievement, the district is working with nonprofit organizations and funders to support and develop small high schools. The preliminary results of these efforts are promising.
Building Trust with Schools and Diverse Families
While increased family involvement is linked to improves student performance, it is not always fully understood and examined within schools. Different types of involvement may include parenting, communicating with schools, volunteering at schools, supporting learning at home, participating in school governance and decision-making, and taking part in school-community collaborations. In order to encourage and foster this comprehensive involvement with all families, school administrators and teachers must develop mutual trust, consider the different cultural attitudes some families may have towards schooling, and be diligent in reaching out.
