The English Language Learners: How to Serve our Diverse Students

1. The English Language Learners: How to Serve our Diverse Students By: Rosario Tapia rosario.tapia@smail.astate.edu

2. Take a moment to write down what you as an educator know about our ELL students. • How are you serving them? • Collaborate with peers share beliefs and ideas! What do you already know about ESL students?

3. ELL (English Language Learner): an active learner of the English language who may benefit from various types of language support programs. This term is used mainly in the U.S. to describe K–12 students. • ESL (English as a Second Language): formerly used to designate ELL students; this term increasingly refers to a program of instruction designed to support the ELL. It is still used to refer to multilingual students in higher education. • LEP (Limited English Proficiency): employed by the U.S. Department of Education to refer to ELLs who lack sufficient mastery of English to meet state standards and excel in an English-language classroom. Increasingly, English Language Learner (ELL) is used to describe this population, because it highlights learning, rather than suggesting that non-native-English-speaking students are deficient. • EFL (English as a Foreign Language) Students: nonnative- English-speaking students who are learning English in a country where English is not the primary language. Know the difference

4. Who are our ell students? • Newcomers to our country. • Students who's first language is not English. • Comes from a home where the language usually spoken is a language other than English. • Students who lack the skills necessary to participate fully in classes taught in English. • Students who could benefit from instruction in their native language.

5. Tips for classroom instruction: Including ELL students • Always assess background knowledge. • Make a plan for filling in the gaps as you plan your lesson/unit. • Assume that ELLs will not have experiences with the concepts being taught in American schools. For example, concepts like freedom, democracy, and right-to-privacy may be different, or non-existent, in their culture. • Use real objects, pictures, and hands-on activities as much as possible.

6. How to adjust instruction for ell students • Instruction should be comprehensible to all learners. • Learning should be interactive. • Instruction should be cognitively challenging. • Instruction should facilitate language learning in the content area. • The goal of instruction should be achievement of academic standards by all students.

7. How to Facilitate Language Learning..

8. Increasing Comprehensibility

9. Increasing interaction • Flexible grouping configurations within the classroom to allow ELLs to actively participate and ask questions when they don’t understand. • ELLs are more likely to take a risk and try speaking in a smaller setting. • Student talk greater in small groups than in whole class setting, and student-talk is generally less complex/easier to understand. • Include ELLs in classroom activities don’t isolate them. • Assign a buddy when necessary and appropriate.

10. Vocabulary help • Provide word banks for any crossword puzzle or fill-in-the-blank assignments. • No more than 5 words at a time for fill-in-the-blanks or matching definitions. • Try not to change the wording of definitions from when you give them to when they are put on a test- it confuses ELLs when the wording is different. • Circle the first letter of each word in a word search.

11. Things to remember

12. Questions?

13. references • https://www.education.com/reference/article/english-language-learners-key-terms/ • http://www.supportrealteachers.org/strategies-for-english-language-learners.html • https://www.edutopia.org/article/resources-for-teaching-english-language-learners-ashley-cronin • https://www.thoughtco.com/how-to-facilitate-learning-8390 • https://www.tefl-online.com/tefl-jobs/online-tefl-articles/efl-terminology/