Rebecca Greene, a certified teacher for students learning English as a Second Language, discussed this in her article "5Key Strategies for ELL Instruction." Her article also included a video in which Emily Park-Friend utilized certain nonlinguistic skills to better teach her ELL students.(I have provided a link to both the article and video at the end of this post.)
Being a nation of opportunity, American teachers can only expect to see a rise of ELL in the classroom. As teachers, we are responsible for reaching these students and providing information in a manner that is understandable to any student in the class. Using and expanding on examples from Greene's article and the Tch Video, here some examples of strategies I believe would aid any teacher in reaching out to ELL students.
- Use Graphic Organizers
Sometimes words are not enough. Or in the case of English Language Learners--too much. Using symbols and images to organize information not only allows students to analyze and break information into manageable chunks, but allows students to place meaning to pictures/symbols outside of the English Language. This means focusing on the most important concepts and picking them out for students to focus on and recognize.
- Use Manipulatives or Physical Models
As Park-Friend showed in the Tch Video, information can be broken into physical pieces and manipulated by students for better analysis and understanding. The Jigsaw activity in which Barbra Jordan's speech was broken apart onto separate sheets of paper for students to reorganize, made students analyze the use of language, the key components used in organizing an effective English speech, and the important concepts the speech touched on pertaining to national equality among the races. So students were able to not only learn important information about Barbra Jordan's history and her impact on society, but ELLs were also able to analyze how her speech was constructed and better understand the English Language.
- Generate Mental Pictures
When students imagine and create images within their own minds of new information, they make that information personal and meaningful. Such information is easier for students to recall and master, rather than foreign information entering one ear and exiting the other. For ELL students, generating and sharing mental images not only allows students to build on their understanding of information, but also allows teachers to better see how well the students understand the information.
- Create Pictures
Students, more often than not, will take pride and interest in creative expression of information. Personalizing new information into pictures, illustrations, or graphs allows students to analyze methods of accurately portraying the information in a recognizable and understandable manner to their peers. Not only then do students gain better mastery, but they also teach their peers information that may have been confusing and complicated in boring textual fashion. As pictures and art speak across languages, pictures are a key way to invoke understanding to students who lack the understanding of complex English words. Vocabulary and meaning are transferred through image into the learners own language, allowing for better grasp of the subject at hand.
With these examples in mind, the possibilities are endless for teaching to English Language Learners. And learning becomes all the more exciting.
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