ESL Quick Facts: Challenges for Els in Content Areas

ESL Quick Facts: Challenges for ELs in Content Areas

Reminder about grading of ELs-please consult the Help! My Student Doesn’t Speak English handbook or the district’s EL Plan to review JEFCOED’s EL grading policy. Contact your ESL teacher immediately if you have questions or concerns.

ELs are often faced with specific challenges in each content area and teachers must determine strategies to make the content comprehensible to them. Following are examples of content specific challenges faced by ELs and some suggested strategies to assist teachers. Contents included are Reading, Writing, Math, Science, Social Studies.

Challenges in Reading: Strategies for Reading:  Comprehending the meaning of a  Help ELs build background text. knowledge before reading.  Comprehending a text that contains a  Provide student experiences. Show large number of unknown words. videos.

 Understanding text that includes  Teach unfamiliar vocabulary before idioms, homophones, homonyms, and presenting a new concept. synonyms.  Use pictures.  Deciphering regional U.S. dialects.  In small group tell ELs about the  Understanding the cultural story before its read. Act out the story. background depicted in a literacy piece. If using a textbook, highlight the most important facts you want the ELs to  Recognizing correlation between learn. letters and numbers.

Challenges in Writing: Strategies in Writing:  ELs have a limited vocabulary and  Teach nonfiction reading and writing. are reluctant to use inventive ELs can easily access facts and language spelling. chunks that they can use in their writing.

 They use verb tenses inaccurately  Spend more time helping ELs in the and often write in the present tense. prewriting stage. Generate oral sentences and make a chart of facts  Some ELs have not internalized the about nonfiction topic. This helps them sentence structure of English learn to speak the words they are going grammar. to write.

 Some students are reluctant to share  Use graphic organizers to help their work during peer editing. students gather facts. When they do, they prefer working with same language peers who may  Create a web to help students learn not provide appropriate feedback. how to organize information. Have students practice writing from the web.  ELs don’t have a sense of what sounds right when they read their  Model repeatedly. writing aloud.  In small group with teacher, help  In many cultures, students are not students brainstorm vocabulary and encouraged to express their opinions. themes.

 ELs may have little experience with  Don’t expect ELs to edit their work creative writing in their native because they usually don’t find their language. mistakes. Pick out one skill for them to edit, provide a mini-lesson for this skill, and group EL with a partner to edit this skill.

 Show ELs models of good writing at their language level. If student is learning how to write an opening paragraph let them see several pieces of good work.

 Give students real writing situations such as letters, invitations, postcards, lists, and classmate interviews.

Challenges in Math: Strategies in Math:  Students with low reading  Pre-teach vocabulary and use visuals comprehension skills will struggle in for clarification. math.  Assess students through questioning  Mental math is the norm in many to make certain they understand the cultures. Students have difficulty process. Never use yes/no questions. explaining how they arrived at an answer.  Explicitly teach how to solve problems and demonstrate how to show  In many cultures math concepts are your work. Model and use Think Aloud not taught over a period of time. For and Questioning strategies. example, students might have no prior exposure to estimation, rounding, or  Show students how to properly use geometry. math manipulatives and let them know it is not meant for play.  Numbers and problems are sometimes formed or written  Know your students culture and be differently. In the U.S. we use decimals prepared to provide lessons on the U.S. to separate the dollars and cents. In measurement system, etc. South America they use a comma to mark this distinction.  Give students suggestions on how to help them express their ideas.  Using the U.S. measurement system and Fahrenheit.

 Using math manipulatives. ELs can view this as play.

 Understanding time on a 12-hour clock. Many cultures us a 24 hour clock.  Understanding math vocabulary. A huge problem.

Challenges in Science: Strategies in Science:  In some cultures science is based on  Give ELs one-step directions at a rote-learning and not hands-on learning. time. Allow them to complete one step. Assess/re-teach and give the next step.  Making predictions and drawing conclusions.  In small groups demonstrate Think Aloud while making predictions and  Science vocabulary. drawing conclusions.

 Following multistep directions.  Pre-teach vocabulary and use pictures to help support the vocabulary.  Understanding visuals.  Before the lesson: teach students the  Using lab equipment. names of the lab equipment and make equipment vocabulary cards with the  Applying the scientific method. names of the equipment written on the cards and placed next to the object.  Drawing conclusions and making hypotheses during the discovery process  Explain the use. of the lesson.  In small group model the thinking process for drawing conclusions and making hypotheses.

 Ask guiding questions while avoiding yes/no questions.

 Place ELs in cooperative learning groups so they can hear other students’ ideas and reasoning. Allow ELs to work with many different groups.

Challenges in Social Studies: Strategies in Social Studies:  Facts are not relevant to the student.  Find similar ideas of the topic and link to student’s culture and history.  No background knowledge to  Provide opportunities through role understand new concept. playing so students can feel the  Uses high-level thinking skills for experience. reading and writing.  Use nonfiction books related to the  Reading text contains complex topic that is at the ELs reading and sentences, passive voice, and comprehension level. multiple pronouns.  Use graphic organizers to help  Taking notes. students’ record facts and organize  Comprehending large blocks of text information. during class.  Decide what is most important for  Deciphering what is important in the the student to learn and write this on text. paper for the students.  Accessing background knowledge.  Use simple sentences and vocabulary  Understanding nationalistic or at the students’ level of culturally focused maps. comprehension.  Recognizing the proper names of  Use videos to help with countries, cities, and oceans that are comprehension. not the same as they have learned in  Pre-teach vocabulary and have their country. pictures to match the vocabulary  Understanding passive voice in words. English texts.  Teach lessons on how to find important facts and information from the textbook.

If you have any questions – please let me know!