MODULE 4

New York classrooms serve more than 2.5 million English language learners (ELLs) with more than 150 home languages. This session shows us how to embrace welcoming and affirming linguistic diversity by first understanding the road to proficiency for our ELL students. We introduce the Blueprint for English Language Learner (ELL)/Multilingual Learner (MLL) Success and explore how we can shift our mindsets to honor and utilize our students’ linguistic diversity and foster equity across learning environments.

This session starts by exploring the experiences of a student that has immigrated to a Chinese-speaking country and explores the scaffolds they might need as a Chinese language learner, including how to leverage their home language as an essential practice in their language acquisition. We revisit the Blueprint for English Language Learner (ELL)/Multilingual Learner (MLL) Success, this time focusing on Principle #1, which asserts that we are all teachers of ELL and MLL students and must plan accordingly to ensure their success. The session concludes by demonstrating Principle #1 in action and sharing key takeaways for your classroom.

In this session, we explore translanguaging – the language practices of bilingual people – as an instructional strategy proven to effectively teach content and language to English language learners (ELLs). We see how this practice can be applied in the classroom to differentiate learning according to each ELLs’ individual progress in learning English. We also look at instructional strategies that support translanguaging and tools you can use across learning environments. Through this session, we will explore multiple pathways for students to use their linguistic repertoire as a strategy for learning grade-level content.

The concept of comprehensible input helps us make content “just right” for English language learners (ELLs). This session shares how we can add additional context to learning materials through physical objects, gestures, and visuals to make lessons more comprehensible based on students’ proficiency levels. Through the examples shared in this session, a set of questions to use during lesson planning, and ideas on how to make your lessons more comprehensible, we will be better prepared to support ELLs to achieve proficiency across learning environments.

Being able to assess what students know is critical to our work as teachers. This session supports us in creating equitable assessments for English language learners (ELLs) by exploring how we can modify our existing methods to effectively gauge the learning of our ELLs. In embracing the mindset shift to use students’ home languages to assess understanding, we can more accurately determine what ELLs know. We conclude this session with ideas on how to offer equitable assessments to ELLs through a variety of methods across learning environments.

As teachers of both content and language, we know that deliberate planning for the oral language production of our English language learners (ELLs) is crucial. This session introduces practices that enable us to scaffold discussions and use translanguaging supports to aid ELLs as speakers in our classrooms. We learn that by encouraging translanguaging – and scaffolding language demands – ELLs leverage their entire linguistic repertoire to engage meaningfully in grade-level academic content as they learn the language. We leave this session with tools to apply these concepts in our classrooms.

Now that we’ve gained tools to help us support English language learners (ELLs) in developing speaking and listening skills, we’ll examine how to support the written language of ELLs. This session introduces the concept of recomposing to allow ELLs to develop grade-level ideas in multiple ways without the heavy demand of language production. We learn how to integrate writing scaffolds across the writing process to better guide ELLs in developing their writing skills. The session concludes by introducing two additional portable instructional strategies – sentences from boxes and round robin writing – to further support ELLs across learning environments.

The final session of Module 4 helps us put it all together so we have a toolbox full of supports for English language learners (ELLs) across learning environments. We revisit the mindset shifts needed to adapt our lessons by using portable practices that work across learning environments while promoting equity for ELLs. We’re reminded that a pillar of our work is the relationships we build with our ELLs. As teachers, it is up to us to find their strengths as part of selecting scaffolds that are “just right” for each classroom activity.