Most general education teachers of ELLs (English language learners) will tell you they are usually doing one of two things to support their readers. They are either figuring out the best way to teach them within a full class inclusion or what kind of activities can suit their abilities within a full class framework. That's the only way to ensure the steps of engage them in a full class where it is often very easy to loose them.
One way to make it easier to support struggling ELLs is to develop a weekly plan. A good time to develop this plan for the week is after you pre-assessed your students' reading abilities. You can do this using either an oral or written assessment based on the areas you want to teach. Your support plan will provide a blueprint or "road map" of the weaker areas that are difficult for your ELLs to acquire.
Your weekly support plan should consist of a list of the following:
1. Areas or skills you want to concentrate on - This may include areas that correspond to the educational standards that the textbook focuses on or any supplementary material to the textbook.
2. Core or supplementary reading activities - These are activities that you may choose to adapt from the textbook in order to cater to their level. You might however use some of the textbook activities or from a website that provides information and guidelines on differentiated instruction. Core activities simply means using identifying those activities that correspond to a particular benchmark or educational standard.
3. Opportunities for Assessment - Struggling learners needs periodic follow-ups and assessment opportunities. Try using mini-assessments, which don't focus on too much information at one time, but rather small(er) chunks of information like a grammar point or the vocabulary that you taught in a reading lesson.
4. Small group lesson planning - This category is a bit different from the traditional lesson planning for full group instruction. Working in small group can be a good intervention tool if you know the areas of weaknesses. You might join other teachers and map out targeted areas of the curriculum if you are also teaching the similar levels and grades.
Have a plan for introducing the main input to the rest of the class before you direct students to learn in small groups.
You can make your weekly lesson plan for your struggling readers as general or as detailed as you like. Not every activity works for every student, but once you have taught using your lesson plan for the week, you will know which areas take more planning and preparation time. Generally, more experienced classroom teachers change their weekly lesson plans as they acquire more information about their struggling readers. You might need to observe more before you make on the spot classroom decisions.
Dorit Sasson is an ESL teacher and freelance writer. To receive a free weekly article on classroom management and lesson planning tips, please email Dorit at sasson92@gmail.com To learn more about how Dorit can help with the task of mentoring your new teachers or to purchase the ebook "Taking Control of the Classroom," please email Dorit at sasson92@gmail.com Please visit the website: http://newteacherresourcecenter.blogspot.com to read more information on the New Teacher Resource Center. |
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