Instructional Strategies for ELL Students

English language learners (ELLs) bring diverse cultures and experiences to schools, but they also have unique needs as they learn a new language while engaging with academic content. Teachers of ELLs face the challenge of addressing the various factors that can impact a student's engagement and progress. Schools classify students as English language learners (ELLs) according to the Department of Education.

Understanding the Needs of ELLs

It is crucial to understand the students in your class, especially ELLs, who may come from various countries and cultural backgrounds. Being culturally responsive involves educating oneself about different cultures, as actions or sayings may be acceptable in one culture but offensive in another. A culturally responsive teacher will vary texts used in class, incorporating authors from different countries or themes from different cultures into the curriculum. ELL teachers should also acknowledge and embrace other cultures by discussing celebrations, artwork, and events from different countries. Encouraging students to share their culture with classmates and teachers can be invaluable.

Nothing is more important to a person’s identity than their name. It is a travesty when teachers do not take the time to learn how to pronounce all their students’ names correctly. ELL teachers can make this as part of their first-day assignment encouraging all their students to introduce themselves to the class. The ELL teacher should write it down phonetically in their role book if she does not think she will remember.

Family connections are also essential to building relationships, especially with families of ELL students. Calling families and welcoming them into the school for various events (with translators on hand) will increase student performance in school. Families who can know about their child’s education will encourage them to do well in school and interact with the language and content. ELL teachers ought to create projects and assignments that allow them to get to know who their students are, what their likes and dislikes are, and where their strengths and weaknesses lie. By knowing all of these, you can make connections with content and the students by bringing their likes into the lessons.

ELL teachers may have varying proficiency levels in their classrooms. Essential ELL teaching strategies consist of providing multiple means of engagement. In the past, many schools and ELL teachers thought “English-Only” was the only way ELLs could learn the language. We know now that is not true. By allowing L1 (first language) in the classroom, students can learn complex ideas or thoughts quicker. Allowing a student to respond in L1 can open the doors to more learning, because they won’t get stuck on a word or phrase and give up. It is also beneficial to provide outside resources in L1. If you are reading a novel and you find it in your students’ languages, encourage them to read it at home. These are great ELL teaching strategies to use as an ELL teacher and for teachers who have ELLs in their content classes. Are you a teacher interested in further education, or interested in stepping into ELL education in general?

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Core Principles for Effective Instruction

Having an asset-based perspective, rather than being deficit-focused, is the underlying foundation for effectively teaching English language learners (ELLs). Educators must hold an inherent belief that all students bring a richness of cultural and linguistic backgrounds and experiences to the learning environment. Teaching ELLs is the responsibility of all teachers. With some adaptations to regular teaching routines, as described in the recommendations below, all teachers are capable of providing high-quality instruction that leads to ELLs achieving rigorous standards.

Educators understand that there is wide variability in the ELL population and consider individual students’ linguistic abilities, literacy skills, and cultural and linguistic backgrounds when planning instruction. ELLs vary considerably in factors that significantly affect learning. These factors include language and literacy proficiency in students’ native languages and in English. Educators should learn about individual students’ development of first and second languages. Cultural and experiential factors also influence learning. born and those whose parents are recent immigrants. Family routines and communication practices shape the knowledge and experience that students bring to the classroom.

Such differences are not deficits. Despite difficulties with learning in a nonnative language, ELLs are not struggling thinkers. Rather than treating all ELLs the same, educators must understand that no one strategy or adaptation will work for all students because they do not all have the same strengths and needs. It is important for teachers to consider each student’s language development, background knowledge, and literacy skills in planning instruction that is rich in content with ample opportunities for language development.

Adapting Instruction for Language Demands

Teachers analyze the language demands of the lessons they teach and provide support for ELLs to understand both the language and the content of the lesson. To make content accessible to ELLs, teachers must carefully assess the vocabulary and language skills that students need to fully engage in instruction. Across kindergarten to grade 12, teachers must be able to recognize high-demand situations and provide appropriate supports for ELLs.

Here are some instructional support strategies:

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Vocabulary Support: Pre-teach and reteach vocabulary, using charts or posters with definitions and examples. Encourage vocabulary journals or class logs to keep track of terminology. Help students break down difficult words by examining prefixes, suffixes, and base words.
Text Comprehension: Chunk the text into smaller segments, summarizing along the way. Use video clips and supplemental reading materials to enhance understanding. Utilize highlighters to color-code key ideas and teach students to annotate text or take reading notes.
Sentence Structure: Model how to unpack complex sentences and parse their structure. Use repeated-reading techniques and ask students to paraphrase key ideas in their own words, providing support as needed.
Inference Skills: Use graphic organizers to help students identify and connect key ideas. Model the inferencing process, use highlighters to identify key ideas, and engage students in interactive discussions of possible interpretations.

Building on Background Knowledge

Teachers build on students’ background knowledge by making clear connections between current learning and students’ prior experiences. Making connections between students’ prior knowledge and current learning is good teaching for all students. For ELLs, however, teachers need to learn what background knowledge and student experiences are relevant to the topic. Asking open-ended questions to probe for background knowledge is important. When students do not have sufficient background knowledge to anchor instruction, teachers may need to provide experiences and explanations to build the requisite foundational knowledge.

Activity: Making Connections to Text

In this activity, teachers select an excerpt from a reading passage that is likely to evoke personal connections. Students relate an experience from their own lives to the excerpt. Students can share their connections in writing or oral discussion. The teacher reads aloud the excerpt, first modeling how it connects to her life. Then, with scaffolding and support, students describe their own experiences and how they relate to the text.

Select a brief excerpt from a text that holds personal significance.
When reading aloud, stop and reread the excerpt.
Think aloud or model the process of making a connection. For example, “This makes me think of…” (an event from your past, an event in another book, or a world event). Explain how making this connection helps us to better understand what we read.
Scaffold students’ personal connections. Using the same excerpt, or another one that students may relate to, ask students to tell a partner or the class a personal experience related to the excerpt. Discuss how making connections helps us to understand what we read. Emphasize that different readers make different connections. Repeat often until students are accustomed to the process.

Explicit Instruction and Modeling

Teachers provide explicit instruction that includes clear directions, teacher and peer modeling, practice with detailed feedback, and ongoing review. Explicit instruction is important for all students across grades and subject areas; for ELLs, explicit instruction is crucial. Explicit instruction should occur in three phases: modeling, guided practice, and independent practice. These phases are often referred to as “I do it,” to indicate that students should watch and listen carefully as the teacher explains and demonstrates; “We do it,” to indicate that students will try it together as the teacher watches and provides feedback; and “You do it,” to indicate individual student practice.

In the modeling phase, effective teachers of ELLs use language that is comprehensible. This means choosing words carefully, avoiding complex sentences, and breaking down processes into simple steps. During the guided practice phase, teachers provide immediate feedback for discrete tasks, such as spelling a word or calculating in mathematics, but may briefly delay feedback for complex tasks to allow ELLs additional time to think through the process. Explicit instruction also moves systematically through the steps of a process and maximizes engagement in the task. ELLs may need more read-alouds and interactive discussions of concepts.

Phases of Explicit Instruction

"I do it" (Modeling): The teacher provides explicit verbal instruction while demonstrating the process and using simple, comprehensible language.
"We do it" (Guided Practice): The teacher walks the group through the steps of the process, giving the same verbal instructions while students perform the task. The teacher watches students carefully and offers praise and feedback. This step may be repeated several times until the teacher feels the students are ready to perform the task independently.
"You do it" (Independent Practice): Students perform the task several times on their own, asking questions if needed. The teacher walks around, checking students’ accuracy and understanding and giving praise and feedback to individuals.

Strategic Use of Native Language

Teachers strategically use ELLs’ native language when possible to support their conceptual understanding. Effective teachers of ELLs are resourceful in drawing on students’ native language to help them understand a concept or process. For example, teachers may find that pulling in words, concepts, and examples from a native language aids comprehension. Even if teachers do not speak a student’s native language, it is helpful to know how concepts and ideas are expressed in the native language.

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Latin-based languages such as Spanish have cognates, or words derived from the same Latin roots with similar word parts in English and Spanish (e.g., acceleration and acceleración). A study of textbooks and science standards showed that 85.5% of biology terms were Spanish-English cognates, though many words occur with low frequency in conversation. Using cognates in instruction will help ELLs to grasp key words, as long as they are familiar to students in their native language. Concepts that are unfamiliar in both the native language and English need elaboration.

Some ELLs speak languages that are not similar to English. Teachers can look up native language equivalents to target words to help these ELLs understand terminology in English. It is easy to find translations for words using online resources. However, it is important for teachers to do a little research to make sure the translations are accurate. Consulting more than one source, including native speakers in the community, may aid teachers in finding appropriate key word equivalents.

Creating a Language-Rich Classroom

Teachers provide instruction that integrates listening, reading, writing, and speaking about content, resulting in a language-rich classroom. Understanding of academic content is anchored by oral and written language that focuses on content. A content-rich classroom is also a language-rich classroom. Talking, reading, and writing about content enhance all students’ conceptual understanding but are critical for ELLs, and these activities may need to be enhanced to ensure that ELLs can participate. Effective teachers often use short video clips, visual demonstrations, and hands-on activities to establish a shared experience among students as a basis for launching deeper into discussion of content. ELLs benefit from listening, discussing, reading, and writing about key concepts. Increasing ELLs’ oral and written language improves their understanding of key concepts.

Effective teachers often use short video clips, visual demonstrations, and hands-on activities to establish a shared experience among students as a basis for launching deeper into discussion of content. ELLs benefit from listening, discussing, reading, and writing about key concepts. Increasing ELLs’ oral and written language improves their understanding of key concepts.

Ways to Support ELLs in Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing

Listening: Use audiovisual aids to engage students in active listening. Use gestures or visual demonstrations when giving directions. Use predictable language patterns when giving oral instructions. Provide “turn-and-talk” opportunities that require active listening (e.g., ask students to paraphrase what their partner said).
Speaking: Set clear expectations when structuring peer discussions. Ask students to retell or paraphrase. Use sentence frames to prompt discussion (e.g., The most important thing about is because .) Use graphic prompts to help students organize an oral discussion (e.g., write “topic sentence,” “three reasons,” and “conclusion” on the board).
Reading: Use strategies and prompts to help students extract main ideas and support.
Writing: Provide sentence starters and frames to support writing development.

Additional Strategies for ELL Success

Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM)

The Picture Word Inductive Model (Calhoun, 1998) is an effective instructional technique that leverages students’ funds of knowledge and builds upon them. Through the PWIM, ELLs are engaged in thinking and in all language domains: listening, speaking, reading, and writing with scaffolds and supports such as visuals and sentence stems or frames. This engaging instructional strategy helps to lower students’ anxiety levels, which increases participation.

Sentence Frames

The use of sentence frames for writing and speaking not only give English-language learners a framework to communicate through both oral and written language, sentence frames also help build students’ self-efficacy.

Comprehensible Input

Comprehensible input means that the teacher speaks in such a way that students are able to understand what is being said even when they do not know or understand all of the words being stated.

Below are some strategies to make input comprehensible:

Slow down rate of speech and enunciate clearly.
Avoid figurative language and idioms.
Use gestures and total physical response (TPR).

Collaborative Summarizing

Utilizing purposeful dialogue to practice oracy expands student thinking. The most effective instructional strategy I’ve used to practice oracy is Collaborative Summarizing.

There are five steps to successfully implement Collaborative Summarizing. These steps allow ELLs to read, think, exchange information, and negotiate through dialogue. In preparation, the teacher must select a text appropriate for the students’ independent reading level, or lexile level, and determine the language demands. The purpose of reading the passage is to utilize the information to make meaning through oracy. However, you may find another purpose such as language functions, content, or to acquire background knowledge. Once the text has been selected and vetted by the teacher, the five-step Collaborative Summarizing can begin.

First, the teacher models how to identify the big ideas in the text. This may include the important people, things or ideas, what is occurring, and details. Then, the students individually read the text and determine 3-5 big ideas. Students utilize a graphic organizer specifically made for this strategy to record their information. Using those big ideas, students write a 15-word summary.

Second, students find one partner to dialogue with and “create a negotiated list that reflects their combined agreement on the three to six most important ideas.” Once students have discussed the most important ideas, they turn them into one, collaborative 15-word summary. Teachers can strategically pair up students, or students can choose. Students must first determine the negotiating rules they will follow. For example, act respectively, cite evidence to prove your opinion, or use academic-language sentence frames, such as Kate Kinsella’s, for discussing and collaboration. Students use these sentence frames to support the function of negotiating and intentionally use academically language correctly. The purpose of negotiating with their partner is to “identify who or what is the most important in the section, [and] identify what the subject is doing,”(English Learner Toolkit of Strategies).

Third, have each pair meet with another pair. One student from each pair reads their summary. Then, they dive in and renegotiate a common summary for their new group of four and add it to their graphic organizer.

Fourth, each group of four chooses another group of four to repeat the renegotiating process. Once again, the group will add this new summary to their graphic organizer.

Fifth, ask groups to edit their summaries for meaning, language, and word choice. As the focus of Collaborative Summarizing is utilizing purposeful dialogue to practice oracy, this could be an optional step.

Sixth, chose one student from the group to present the summary to the class. As ELLs have varying comfort levels of reading in front of a class, give the students time to practice in their group.

Practical Classroom Strategies

Slow Down

Teachers of ELLs are encouraged to consciously slow things down, providing extra time for students to think and formulate a response.

Differentiated Instruction

The strategy of using visual aids also connects to the idea of differentiated instruction, which is considered central to teaching English language learners.

Collaboration with ESL Specialists

Since ELLs are often receiving specific English as a Second Language instruction from an ESL specialist, it can be very helpful to check in with their ESL instructors.

Group Work

It can also be very helpful to build in time for group work as well.

Patience and Understanding

Many new language learners tend to be a little reticent and quiet, opting for silence over speaking up and saying something “wrong” in a language that is still unfamiliar. Therefore, teachers are encouraged to be mindful of this and not be too aggressive in forcing students to open up at the outset.

Multiple Modalities

The idea here is to provide students with multiple options for taking in information, processing and making sense of ideas, and sharing what they are learning. According to Edutopia, “All kids learn better when they engage with material in multiple ways: Lessons that involve writing, speaking, drawing and listening, for example, give students four opportunities to deepen their understanding of the work.

Kinesthetic Activities

Though all students benefit from hands-on learning activities, they are particularly important for ELLs. Manipulatives provide a common language for students to communicate their thought processes.

Focus on Language Production

Teachers need to intentionally help them increase their language production by giving ELLs time to talk with each other and ask questions.

The Interconnectedness of Math and Language

For ELL students to fully participate in the math classroom, teachers must employ strategies to promote both their academic and linguistic development. It’s important to provide your ELLs with support in navigating the linguistic challenges of math. Vocabulary instruction plays a key role in ELL math achievement. ELL students benefit from pre-teaching academic vocabulary terms in a lesson, as it provides them with a foundation of understanding. Get creative with teaching definitions. Math vocabulary includes both specific terminology and everyday words that have different meanings in the context of math. Words like “face,” “table,” and “carry” have different meanings when they’re used in math.

Fostering a Love of Reading

The key is to foster a general interest in reading by encouraging these students to engage with works that interest them. By encouraging these students to engage with works that interest them, you are ultimately building the skillset they need to be successful in their classroom content reading. Give them time and help them find joy in reading. Finding joy in reading will be a different journey for every student, especially as students bring different prior knowledge and experiences into the classroom.

Strategies to Foster a Love of Reading

Tell stories: Allowing ELL students the opportunity to tell stories without reading them allows them to develop an interest in text structure and, in some cases, plot.
Read bilingual books: Students who are literate in their native languages are much more likely to build literacy in English.
Listen to audio books: Students are gaining vocabulary, applying comprehension strategies, and attending to information.
Choose material that is relevant and interesting: Or better yet, allow them to choose! Give them ownership of their learning and let them steer for a while.
Fill your shelves with readable materials: Readability is key! Invest in a few really interesting titles. Try graphic novels. Look for books with great illustrations.
Give them some background information: Before you start any sort of reading, gauge what the student knows and understands, and then give them some vocabulary and details that they may struggle with later on in the text.
Reading away from school is crucial! Talk to their caregivers about it. Tell them about nearby thrift stores and used bookshops, along with community resources like public libraries and services that provide free books.

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