Hello Colleagues! Happy Friday!!
Although I do not have a catchy alliteration for my ELL Updates like Amy has for Wellness, nor are they on a regular time schedule, I do hope my updates are helpful in teaching all of our students, not just ELL students.
As part of our ELL professional development, the ELL Team attended a presentation on Guided Reading through the ELL lens by Molly Williams, an ELL coach. Our school’s ELL coach is Michelle Story- Kohl if you have an ELL question that you cannot get answered by one of ELL teachers here at West Lincoln, please ask Michelle.
Since every teacher here at West Lincoln teaches guided reading to at least 1 ELL student, I thought you would like to see how we in ELL modify a guided reading lesson. The attached power point is Molly Williams power point, I cut out several slides, if you would like to have the original I can give you the link.
The first slide is a comparison between Expository and Narrative text that compares language features that ELL teachers are very aware of, as we present new text to our ELL students. This table shows how much we as native English speakers and teachers can take for granted, but can be very difficult for our students and what we constantly need to be aware of. The expository text side also applies to teaching math and Unit studies. With our large numbers of current ELL students and graduated ELL students the language structure of these curriculum areas is different as well as the content, a double whammy. So Math and Unit Studies teachers really need to be language teachers, in addition to being a content area teacher.
Finally, the last 3 slides are the comparison between a Regular Guided Reading lesson based on Jan Richardson’s lesson plans to show how ELL modifies the lesson. A major difference is that it takes more time to teach a guided reading lesson because we have to help build prior knowledge, and often time give language support and instruction within the context of the text. If you have questions about what some of the abbreviations are on the power point, please come and ask one of us.
Hopefully you can look at this title + 4 slide power point and it will help you to focus one little thing in your teaching to help you to work just a little smarter and not harder. I also think that, although this is for guided reading it could help in other subject areas as well, especially for our students who do not have the same language background that we have grown up with.
Happy Friday!!
Becky