Planning for ELLs

Our next PYP unit in grade 4 is on rights and responsibilities.

 

 I've selected four 4th grade ELLs I work with regularly:

•  Henry (Pre-production) knows the alphabet and some isolated words and phrases. He is new to the school, and has presented with behavior problems so far. He is missing much social/instructional English, which has made it harder for him to follow directions and make friends. He reads by recognition only, not yet able to decode words.
• Wendy (Early Production)  communicates in short words and phrases. She came to APIS six weeks before Henry, is eager to learn, and makes excellent use of her limited vocabulary. She can read K-1 level texts with some attempts to decode and strong comprehension.
• Lulu (Beginning Fluency) has severe ADHD and is extremely creative and talkative. So far this year, her verbal fluency has exploded, but her reading level has not risen significantly (still about the same as Wendy). She loves writing, listening to reading, and speaking English, but seemingly finds it difficult to concentrate when reading.
• Kaw-Oat (Beginning Fluency) is my most advanced grade 4 ELL. He accesses content language more readily than his peers, and communicates handily in social situations, but currently falls short of fluency. He speaks and writes without tense and plurals, which suggests he relies heavily on his L1 lexicon. In other words he mentally translates everything from Thai to English before he speaks, ignoring the grammatical differences between the two.

I'll go through one by one and talk about how I can help each ELL participate in the mainstream classroom and access the same content as their peers.

HENRY

 

 For Henry, I'm going to use visuals related to the content vocabulary and ask his Chinese-speaking peers to translate some concepts to him. Images are also a good way of giving a pre-productive ELL an alternate way of responding. In my experience, these kids respond well to kinesthetic games, for example, a quiz game where kids run to different corners of a room to answer questions. I want him to gain confidence to start decoding unfamiliar words, so I'm going to be doing word-building phonics activities in ELL and ELA time, as well as helping him with social/instructional language, both of which could easily integrate with a rights and responsibilities unit.

 

WENDY

 

Teaching ELLs though student art

Wendy loves to draw and readily connects to prior knowledge given an image prompt, so visuals will be a big part of my approach with her as well. Further along than Henry, I would hope Wendy can connect the pictures to the words solidly enough that she can use some of the content vocabulary verbally and in writing. Typically, given 10-12  polysyllabic vocabulary words, I'll pick a few terms to focus on that especially are relevant to that particular student's unit work (eg. their final project). I will be able to find books at her level that connect to the concepts of rights and responsibilities (civics, chores, people's occupations and so forth).

 

LULU

 

Lulu does well with discussions guided by images or realia. Without some physical "anchor", she quickly loses focus. With a little bit of scaffolding, though , her curiosity about the content begins to show. I'll engage Lulu in discussions about the content, scaffolding along with images and picture books. as with Wendy, I'll focus on content vocabulary she will have the most opportunities to use in an authentic context. I may pair her with Wendy in a reading group, since their reading ability is comparable, and because Wendy benefits from exposure to Lulu's more advanced language production.

 

KAW-OAT

 

 Kaw-Oat is able to grasp most content vocabulary, but needs some help integrating it fluently in his work. For example, he may use a word in a way that demonstrates understanding, but misuse it as a part of speech: "People must be responsibility for their actions." He also ignores most English writing conventions unless specifically reminded. Many Thai ELLs struggle with these last two, because their own respective systems are so different. Kaw-Oat could benefit from completing syntax trees with relevant vocabulary and "name-the-part-of-speech" games.