teaching strategies
Four Keys for School Success for Older English Learners
 | ELL leaders Yvonne and David Freeman share four keys for school success for older English language learners.
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Scaffolds to Help ELL Readers
|  Supporting comprehension through the use of T-charts and sticky notes turned out to be a successful strategy for ELL teacher Barbara Fagan in helping her students with the recall and synthesis of key text information. Her teacher research is shared in this September 2003 article from Voices from the Middle.
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An Exploration of Text Sets: Supporting All Readers
| Text sets focus on one concept and include books, Web sites, maps, pamphlets, poetry, almanacs or encyclopedias. In this lesson, students create text set collections on topics of keen interest and explore the texts using three reading strategies. The elements of the lesson maximize conditions to support engagement of less experienced readers.
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Shared Spelling Strategies
| Students increase spelling accuracy by "constructing" spelling using sound, sight recall, and analyzing strategies, as opposed to memorizing word lists. The aim is to focus on spelling convention during drafting and at the same time preserve fluency.
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Contemporary Proverbs
| "Don't store all your data on one disk" is a contemporary update of the traditional proverb "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." This lesson challenges students to craft more comprehensible meanings for traditional maxims by updating proverbs from around the world and writing proverbs of their own. It can support ELL learners by making their own English language confusions available for study.
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Promoting Diversity in the Classroom and School Library through Social Action
| Students explore the effects of stereotypes by analyzing children’s books and then use their findings to promote diversity by matching stereotypical portrayals and coverage of issues with more balanced and diverse texts. Students create bookmarks that encourage readers to question the assumptions of stereotyped books and to seek out matching, balanced texts.
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Connecting Students to Culturally Relevant Texts
|  Yvonne and David Freeman illustrate how connecting a reader with one culturally relevant book can launch a learner on the path to academic success, including producing higher quality miscues and better retellings, in this April/May 2004 article from Talking Points. They also offer a definition of culturally relevant.
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professional readings
Language Learners in the English Classroom
|  This book is designed as a tool to guide English teachers in designing powerful lessons that accelerate the achievement of students who are learning English. It also helps English teachers play a role in helping ELLs achieve academic success across disciplines. Nancy co-authored this book with Doug Fisher. |
Meeting the Needs of English Language Learners
| English language learning students develop language in authentic social contexts as they help each other make sense of content and concepts, crucial information for teachers working with multilingual and multicultural students. The authors offer eight major questions and a student survey to help educators better consider how to create optimal learning conditions in this Fall 2000 article from Talking Points.
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Language, Literature, and Learning in the ESL Classroom
| Two educators discover the importance of 1) including in the English syllabus works by a range of authors who bring diverse visions of what it means to be American or Canadian, and 2) the literature teacher as facilitator of key strategies to pique student interest and prompt discussion. They share specific strategies and picture book, drama, short story, novel, and poetry titles in this November 1998 article from English Journal.
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Supporting Preliterate Older Emergent Readers in Becoming Bilingual and Biliterate
|  Sandra Mercuri creates a safe learning community in her classroom, as one means to provide students with the literacy skills and academic concepts they have missed and that are crucial to success in their junior high and high school classes. She shares details in this Fall 2000 article from Talking Points.
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Revaluing: Coming to Know Who We Are and What We Can Do
| The authors invited six eighth graders to participate in a bilingual Reading Detective Club with the goal of helping them revalue themselves and what they were able to do as readers, making the case that when students believe their thinking and ideas are valued beyond getting a correct answer, their self-efficacy and engagement with reading are likely to increase. Read about their project in this article from the September 2002 issue of Voices in the Middle.
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Spelling and the Middle School English Language Learner
| Understanding the consistent system that underlies English spelling is a huge step in making spelling predictable. English language learners benefit from this understanding as much as anyone, if not more, contends the author of this May 2004 article from Voices in the Middle. Explaining this system, assessing students' current knowledge, and employing specific instructional strategies all support ELL literacy development.
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related resources
ELL Pathways
|  ELL Pathways is an online professional development opportunity for teachers, coaches and administrators to develop understanding and skills in working with English language learners. Essential questions, video clips, related readings and tools for classroom application guide individuals or groups in an investigation of how to increase achievement levels of ELL students. |
Teaching English Language Learners Kit
|  Featuring the book Closing the Achievement Gap by Yvonne Freeman, David Freeman, and Sandra Mercuri, this kit provides the guiding principles and practices for supporting literacy development of long-term and limited formal-schooling ELL students in middle and high school. |
NCTE Position Paper on the Role of English Teachers in Educating English Language Learners (ELLs)
| This position paper, created by the NCTE ELL Task Force, addresses the knowledge and skills mainstream teachers need to have in order to develop effective curricula that engage English language learners, develop their academic skills, and help them negotiate their identities as bilingual learners. More specifically, this paper addresses the language and literacy needs of these learners as they participate and learn in English-medium classes. |
NCTE Consultants Specializiing in Working with English Language Learners
|  If your district is seeking ways to improve literacy instruction for ELL students, contact NCTE's Professional Development Consulting Network to invite David & Yvonne Freeman or Danling Fu to present on current content and effective ELL instructional practices.
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ELL / ESL
| Funding opportunities for ELL/ESL |
Bilingual Learners: Principles That Help; False Assumptions That Harm
| Fact sheet on English language learning compiled by the Center for the Expansion of Language and Thinking (CELT).
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An On-line Magazine for Learners of English
| Learners of English as a second language are invited to express their ideas and opinions on topics of interest to them. Readers can explore the international world described by these learners.
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Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000
| This October 2003 brief from the Census Bureau looks at language use and English-speaking ability across the country. The 11-page report begins with a discussion of the questions asked about language use on the 2000 Census reporting form; the initial findings include the fact that approximately 47-million persons in the U.S., or 18 percent of the population, speak a language other than English at home.
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When They Don’t All Speak English
|  ELL educators Pat Rigg and Virginia Allen offer a collection on how to integrate new students of English into classroom communities, elements of quality ELL programs, language acquisition through children’s literature, content area activities, and more. Read a sample chapter.
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