Educating ELLs: 5 Tips to Help Your Students Succeed

Working with English language learners is one of the most rewarding experiences. Watching the progress of an ELL student is a hard feeling to replicate. When you get a student who has just come to the United States, is intimidated by all of the newness around them, and most likely has gone through some difficult challenges in their life within their family and/or the country they came from, it can be a little overwhelming. However, by the end of the year, when you have a student who has made such strides- it is really something to celebrate! For those of us who have a degree in educating ELLs, we have the experience and background to support these students; an endless toolbox of tips and tricks. Unfortunately, there are a lot of teachers who are responsible for educating English language learners without that support. Below are 5 tips for working with your amazing, smart, resilient, and English language learners!

1.Get to know them & connect

Every student has a unique story. Some of your ENL students were born in the United States and have been speaking only their first language up until they get to school; while other ENL students have recently moved from another country. Some students are from fortunate households and are here under positive circumstances while other students are faced with challenges many of us will never experience. Sadly, we may encounter SIFE students who have had inconsistent schooling-an added obstacle some of our ENL students face. Every time I have gotten a new ENL student I think about how scary it must be to be in their shoes. Imagine being in a new, unfamiliar environment, alone without anyone you know in school, and are unable to adequately communicate with the people around you. This is why it was so important to me to get to know my students and find ways to connect with them. I want to know as much as I can about their family history, culture, their interests and anything else that would be important for me to know. I find that once my students and their families know that I’m on their team and want to see them succeed, there is no way to go but up. I’m able to use their interests to incorporate into my lessons, which increases their motivation and engagement. Building relationships with their families enables me to have productive conversations about how to support their emotional, academic, and linguistic needs. If you were making a “to-do list” for yourself as a new ENL teacher, this should be #1!

2. Vocabulary 

Building students’ vocabulary is critical for their progress when learning English-whether they are at the beginning level or closer to proficient-especially when it comes to academics. Have you ever listened to one of your ENL students talk to their friends in English? Did it sound almost proficient but they continue to struggle with their performance in your class? To understand this is to understand the difference between BICS and CALPS- don’t worry, I’ll keep it short and sweet. BICS stands for Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills aka social language. BICS is used when talking to their peers, is low pressure and context-based. This can start to develop for ENL students as early as 6 months and why when talking to their friends, they can sound like their proficiency level is higher than it actually is. On the other hand, CALPS is the academic language that is much more abstract as it requires students to utilize skills such as analyzing, synthesizing, and comparing & contrasting. CALPS stands for Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency and takes at least 5 years to master. The content-specific vocabulary necessary for students to understand units of study is much more complex and outside of what they connect to. It requires repetition, visual cues and a multimodal approach. For this reason, incorporating vocabulary activities and strategies into your lessons regularly is essential. 

3. Use L1 to your benefit and theirs

As I mentioned earlier, for many English language learners, it is a matter of language transfer. Even if you don’t speak another language other than English, you can still use students’ L1 to support their English language acquisition. When planning vocabulary lessons, for example, you can look up how to say/write the words in their first language. You can also refer to cognates (words that are similar in English and their first language) when teaching new words and concepts (ex: familia/family or historia/history). Without relying on them too heavily, you can have students that speak the same language help to explain or check for understanding. There are also several translation resources that you can use for speaking, reading, writing, and even making videos that would be great to take advantage of all it takes is a quick Google search. Lastly, add to the fun and have your students teach you how to say things in their first language-why not learn together.

4. Partnerships and small group work

I always found that my ENL students felt more comfortable taking chances outside of whole group activities. For this reason (and a few others), I try to incorporate small group work and partnerships often. I am always strategic with how I group my students; basing it on the activities within the lesson and what I want them to accomplish by the end. Grouping ENL students with native English speakers is beneficial during times that I want a strong model for language or a chance for my ENL students to practice conversing in English. Other times I may want to partner my ENL student with someone who also speaks the same language. I usually group students this way if there is a lot of new or complex information that may be challenging. I may even group them this way at times simply for comfort-especially if they’re new; with the hopes that I can see what they know and are capable of.

5. Use multi-modalities for instruction and student production

It is important to think outside the box when working with your English Language Learners. Finding different ways to deliver the information for your class is helpful for students newly learning English. Showing videos, playing games, going on field trips and incorporating hands on activities and projects are some way to go about doing this.  We want to provide a rich environment filled with experiences that students can make connections to. In addition to the delivery of the content, provide opportunities for your students to demonstrate what they know outside of standard tests. Assign projects, let them make videos, create art, draw instead of write, and share in their first language.  You can even take some of the pressure off of yourself and give them some choices!

If you’re interested in learning more, below are just a few of my favorite resources for educating your English Language Learners that are definitely worth checking out:

https://www.colorincolorado.org

https://www.edutopia.org/article/resources-for-teaching-english-language-learners-ashley-croni

https://researchguides.library.wisc.edu/c.php?g=177873&p=1169756

If you would like more information about how we can help support ELLs in your school or district, go to our website www.cmdi.us to set up a free discovery call.