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The teacher who taught our double-period Intermediate ELL class last year has left our school, and a first-year educator will be taking over.
As I typically do at our school when a teacher takes over an ELL class for the first time, I try to provide as much support as possible, including sharing a rough idea for how they might – or might not – want to structure their class.
I never have any ego investment in if they follow my plan or not, but it may give them so ideas to start with.
I cannot necessarily say that this is how I would teach it if I was taking it over. When I teach ELL classes, I always incorporate many peer tutors who I have recruited from my previous classes – a new teacher may not want to take that on, or just take one or two tutors. I also have twenty-two years of experience ELLs and others, and this plan is designed for someone who might have less experience.
Here goes:
Warm-Up – fifteen minutes
Two days-a-week, an assigned Brainpop, Jr. video and accompanying activities that connect in some way to another lesson being taught that week.
Two-days-a-week, work on Quill, the online grammar and writing tool
On Fridays, do a version of a Retrieval Practice Notebook, where students identify the most important thing they’ve learned in each of their classes. However, instead of doing it how I have done it in the past, do it the way I plan to do it in my ELL Newcomers class this year – first, write down the key points in English; then convert them into a letter in their home language they write to their parents explaining what they did that week.
Reading/Writing Activity – 30 Minutes
I’ve previously shared the sequence of writing genres I teach Intermediate ELLs. The first unit is on Fables. Many of the units can be found in one of the three books Katie Hull and I have written about teaching ELLs. Most, if not all, of these activities are done off-line.
I’d also alternate those longer writing units with shorter ones related to Social Emotional Learning, like ones on a growth mindset and student’s “Struggle Stories” about perseverance, which I talk about in my book, The Student Motivation Handbook.
Part of this time could also be devoted towards doing a lesson about, and then page in, the National Geographic Edge grammar book each day.
Reinforcing Game – 10 Minutes
Though I’m a fan of Quizizz and Blooket online games as useful formative assessment tools, and students love playing them, sometimes a handful of students will use this time as opportunities to play on their phone or watch YouTube videos on their Chromebooks, instead. So, yes, use the online games, make them low-stakes, but do have some stakes attached to them and have students recorded in the gradebook. With the new versions of these games, it’s easy for students to eventually get them all correct eventually – as long as they take them seriously. These could relate to the grammar lessons done earlier.
Seven-Minute Break Between Classes
Warm-Up – Fifteen Minutes
Three days-a-week reading, either on their own or with a partner – using this process. Again, reading on their own would be an option, if they chose it.
Two-days-week, students would work in pairs to create a “Word Play” activity from the Brainpop video they watched during the first period. They develop simple question/answer mini-dialogues using vocabulary from the movies, and then perform them in small groups and sometimes in front of the entire class.
Problem/Project-Based Learning Activity or Activity From National Geographic Edge textbook or Task-Based Activity or Simulation – 30 Minutes
The Problem/Project-Based Learning Activity and the Task-Based Activity provides opportunities for students to work in partners if they want, along with offering guided student choices. We have an excellent chapter on Problem/Project-Based Learning in our upcoming second edition of The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox (which I’ll obviously give our new teacher early access to), and you can also find lots of resources here.
David Deubelbeiss offers lots of Task-Based Activities here and here. These tend to be less ambitious than PBL lessons.
And, then, of course, there’s our National Geo Edge textbook, which is not awful, and can provide a lot of support to a newer teacher.
The Brainpop “Word Play” dialogue would fit into the category of a simulation/category, and perhaps once-a-week another one can be done (see the bottom of The Best Online Learning Simulation Games & Interactives — Help Me Find More for ELL-related simulation ideas).
Listening Activity – Ten Minutes
This could be a simple class wide dictation activity with mini-whiteboards and/or students could practice in pairs. The teacher could also say cloze sentences, with students having to fill-in-the-blank on their whiteboards.
Obviously, this is just a simple outline, but it could offer a start to our new teacher, and to others out there.
Let me know what you think, and how I can make it better!
I’m adding this info to THERE ARE TONS OF RESOURCES ON THIS BLOG TO HELP EDUCATORS TEACH ELLS – THIS POST IS A GOOD PLACE TO START.
The teacher who taught our double-period Intermediate ELL class last year has left our school, and a first-year educator will be taking over. As I typically do at our school when a teacher takes over an ELL class for the first time, I try to provide as much support as possible, including sharing a ESL Web Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
