1. How Can ESL Teachers
Support Teachers in
Other Mainstream
Subjects?
Presentation For AGIS
By Lindsay Raggett
Leipzig International School
2. Who are the ESL students teachers
need support for?
• Beginners in English?
• Intermediate English learners?
• Upper intermediate or advanced English
learners who may have exited the ESL
programme?
• The majority of students in our mainstream
class?
3. Remember what research says.
• Students schooled in two languages take
four to seven years to reach norms on
standardised achievement tests.
• Younger students who have had no
schooling first in their Mother Tongue may
take up to ten.
Collier (1979) and Cummins (1984)
4. How must it feel for our English
learners?
Add text from German text book.
5. ″ Effective education for ESL students
is only possible if ‘every teacher is an
ESL teacher.’ ″
Maurice Carder, 2007, p42
1. How can mainstream teachers themselves
support ESL students in their classes?
2. How can ESL teachers support students
in subjects beyond English?
3. How can ESL teachers and other teachers
support each other?
6. What teachers can be doing already
• Thoughtful use of words and slower
speech, awareness of TTT
• Vocab lists for topics, preview vocab, vocab
notebooks from A-Z
• Subject dictionary
• Bilingual dictionary
• Display vocabulary and pictures on the wall
• Allow the use of MT in the classroom
8. What teachers can be doing already
• Thoughtfulness in grouping
• Keep in mind your ESL students when
selecting a text book
• Use a text book and jotter
• Visuals, demos, hands-on material
• Graphic organisers
• Give students time to process.
• Share objectives with class (write them up)
11. What teachers can be doing already
• Range of classroom participation
opportunities, e.g. agreement circles
• Range of interactive activities, e.g. Tic-Tac-
Toe; Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (Echevarria et al.
2008 p127)
• True/False, matching, gap-fills etc preceding
more lengthy reading exercises
• Students give feedback to short texts with
symbols e.g. x ? ; Clunk Click Sadler 2001
• Comprehension checks e.g. Blockbuster style
12. What teachers can be doing already
• In tests provide more time for students who
need it
• Graduated testing from cloze to longer
answers
• Share your rubrics with students
• Let students propose alternative ways to
accomplish goals Tomlinson et al 2006
• Adapted texts
• Homework Club
13. What teachers can be doing already
• Parental involvement
• TESMC course
• Don’t make assumptions about what your
student does/doesn’t know
• Have language objectives as well as a
content objectives in planning
• Give feedback (language and content)
• Drafts, redrafts and redrafts again
14. What teachers can be doing already
Ultimately the aim is for all teachers to not
only facilitate academic achievement, but to
also support the English learners’ academic
proficiency.
Goal Adapted from Virginia P.Rojas Presentation Tokyo Int School 2009
15. What about the ESL department?
Is it our job to support students in other
academic subjects?
16. In Primary
Pull out or push in?
• A pull-out program with a language
based curriculum with little or no
coordination with the mainstream
classroom is not suitable.
• If the ESL lessons are too relaxed in pace
or the mainstream is too
difficult, acquisition is slowed down. Calderon
(2007)
17. Pull out or push in?
• ‘Ownership’ of the ESL students can be an
issue. ESL teachers feel the need to
protect from discomfort in the classroom.
Classroom teachers are concerned when
ESL students are not keeping up with the
curriculum and can blame it on their time
away from the class.
• Pull-out risks the students falling behind.
18. Pull out or push in?
• The pull-out lessons need to be content as
well as language based and balance
academic rigor with sensitivity
• Communication between teachers
• ESL attendance at Grade Level meetings
• Creation/adaptation of worksheets
• A folder
• Time is needed for the ESL teachers to
familiarise themselves with materials
19. In Secondary
A Sheltered Instruction programme in
addition to normal ESL classes
″Sheltered Instruction is an approach for
teaching content to ELs in strategic ways that
make the subject matter concepts
comprehensible while promoting the
students’ English language development. ″
Echevarria et al. 2008 p13
20. The Pitfalls of Sheltered Instruction
• Getting the students on board
• Where can we pull the students from?
• Reassuring students that they aren’t
missing out
• Timetabling nightmare
21. Getting started in Sheltered
Instruction
• Become a student
• Communication with the mainstream teacher
• Share objectives with the students
• Work together with the teacher to achieve
specific language objectives for individuals
• Share resources both ways
• Provide scaffolding for lessons/Mini-lessons
• Find alternative resources, e.g. GCSE
revision Aids adapted
22. How can we help each other?
• Give colleagues feedback regularly so that
progress is being monitored carefully (this
should happen in both directions)
• Share the material that will help scaffold the
content. This is often very useful for many
students.
• Partner Grade level or subject teachers with
an ESL specialist
• Set aside some time to read and discuss
research.
23. How can we help each other?
• Remember, ESL or Sheltered Instruction
teachers cannot meet all of the linguistic
and academic needs of the English
language learners by themselves. Rojas, 2009
• ‘We’re all in this together.’ High School Musical
