This document discusses key considerations for helping English language learners (ELLs) succeed academically. It covers 9 categories of effective instructional practices for ELLs identified through research, including setting objectives and providing feedback, using nonlinguistic representations, asking questions to activate prior knowledge, and incorporating cooperative learning. The number of ELLs in schools has grown significantly in recent decades, making it important for all teachers to understand how to support ELLs' language development and content learning. While challenging, accommodating students' varying language proficiency levels can help ELLs to learn content as they progress in English.

1. Language Matters
Lecture based on Hill & Flynn’s (2006)
Introduction and Chapter 1

2. “We are our language” (p.1)
• Educators can’t take language for granted.
– (applicable to both L1 and L2 contexts)
• “just talking” won’t help ELLs succeed with
language demands of schools.
• Accommodations for language: Help ELLs
– New to mainstream teachers
– Challenging
• Phonology, lexicon, syntax, semantics, speed of speech,
visuals, body language, model, scaffold, activate prior
knowledge, etc.

3. Growing Numbers of ELLs
• Over the past 25 years:
– Between 1979 and 2003: total school-age
children population grew by 19%
– School-age children who speak a language
other than English at home 161%
– Large majority of this population with
difficulties in English

4. ELLs Instruction: Everyone’s
Responsibility
• Historically the job for the ESL teacher in the
ESL classroom
• Now, ALL teachers should know how to help
ELLs in the classroom
• Challenge:
– ELLs are not the same: language proficiency,
educational background, grounding in their L1

5. Classroom Instruction That Works
for ELLs
• Research-based practices, adapted from L1
instruction to L2 instruction.
– Meta-analyses of over 100 studies of instructional
practices
– 9 categories identified To help ELLs to learn
language while they learn content

6. Category 1: Setting Objectives and
Providing Feedback
• Ts offer Ss direction for learning
• Ts offer Ss information on their performance
• Setting objectives:
– Narrow the focus of students
– Ss may adapt the Ts’ goals to personal needs
• Providing Feedback:
– Corrective in nature
– Timely
– Specific to a criterion
– Self-evaluation

7. Category 2: Nonlinguistic
Representations
• Use of mental images to enhance Ss’
ability to represent, elaborate, and add to
their knowledge
• Activities that produce nonlinguistic
representations:
– Graphics, physical models, generating mental
pictures, drawing pictures and pictographs,
kinesthetic activity

8. Category 3: Cues, Questions, and Advance Organizers
• Targets Ss’ abilities to retrieve, use, and organize what
they know about a topic.
Activation of Prior Knowledge!!
• Cues: focus on critical info for Ss to understand
• Questions: Higher-level produce deeper learning than
lower-level
– Higher-level question: What do the authors mean when they
state ‘language is the air that we breathe’?
– Lower-level question: What is the first of the 9 categories on the
book?
• Advance Organizers: Organize and focus the Ss
information. Most helpful when the information is not well
organized.

9. Story Map
Time
Characters
Resolution
Problem 2
Problem 1
Place
Mr. Sticky

10. Story Map: Jack and the Beanstalk
Characters Place Time Plot Resolution

11. KWL Chart (Ogle, 1986)
Known Will learn… Learned…

12. Category 4: Cooperative Learning
• Interaction in groups to enhance
learning To make sense of new
knowledge
• Be mindful of putting together
homogeneous groups!
• Small groups
• Should be consistent and systematic

14. Category 5: Summarizing and Note Taking
• Ss’ abilitiy to synthesize and organize
information to capture main ideas and main
supporting details.
• Both help students process information.
To summarize:
Students must deeply comprehend the info.
– Delete, substitute, and keep information.
• To take notes:
– Identify key info and restate it.

15. Category 6: Homework and Practice
• Extends learning opportunities for reviewing and
applying knowledge
• Offers opportunities to reach the level expected
• Practice:  to develop a skill so that it can be
applied promptly and fluently, with minimal
conscious thought.
– Multiple opportunities required.

16. Category 7: Reinforcing Effort and Providing
Recognition
• Effort contributes to achievement.
• Students should know that it is their effort
the responsible for academic success
• Recognition rewards or praise students
accomplishment of a goal.

17. Category 8: Generating and Testing
Hypotheses
• Inductively or deductively
• Students should explain their thought
process.

18. Category 9: Identifying Similarities
and Differences
• Ss make new connections, experience
new insights, and correct misconceptions.
• Ss compare, contrast, and classify.
• Comparing
• Classifying
• Creating metaphors
• Creating analogies