As the United States population shifts from the increasing numbers of emigrants reaching our shores, so does the population we serve in the classroom. Like many other waves of emigrants, these new members to our communities bring a wide array of resources, specifically culture, language and lifetime experiences. However, they also represent multiple challenges for the school communities where they settle down. Among the unique challenges to classroom teachers is the need to make the age appropriate curriculum accessible because of the lack of language. In order to do so, teachers need to pay specific attention to their linguistic and academic needs. As part of this challenge it is important for the teacher to understand that in order for ELLs to attain age-appropriate English literacy, they must develop within the four language domains: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It is through the development in each of these domains that ELLs are able to build-up the necessary literacy skills needed to achieve academically and reach on par with their monolingual English peers. For this to happen, these second language learners must make more than a year's progress for each school year in attendance.
As an instructional coach working with classroom practitioners and students, I am always looking for ways of integrating the four language domains into challenging age appropriate classroom activities that differentiate the linguistic and academic needs of the students.
These multiple challenges, in meeting the linguistic and academic needs of the ELLs are significantly different than those challenges exhibited by monolingual students. Although, many of the strategies that differentiate the linguistic needs of ELLs are good effective practices for all students, they are necessary and essential in working with linguistic minority students.
Research-based Instructional Strategies
Marzano, Pickering, and Pollock (2001) conducted an extensive review of the literature and explored nine categories of research-based instructional strategies that show significant student achievement outcomes. Under the category of identifying similarities and differences, are included the strategies of comparing, classifying, metaphors, and analogies. Hill & Flynn (2006) expand on these strategies and explore how these strategies can be better implemented in working with ELLs.
In dealing with such abstracts concepts as the Earth's history, as well as high-level scientific concepts, it is important to use familiar contexts that students can relate to. It is through metaphors and analogies that students can be able to better understand the concepts of time. In order to contextualize and make more comprehensible the abstract concept of Earth's history, Calder in Abbott (2004) uses the analogy of Earth as a forty-six year old woman. In this metaphor, millions of years of evolution and of the Earth's history are narrowed down to something concrete and more tangible. In this metaphor, each 100 million years of Earth's history is equivalent to a year in the woman's age. Thus, most of we know about Earth would have taken place in the past six years of her life. It was not until she turned 42 that the continents had little life and plants did not appear on the Earth until she become 45 years old. Dinosaurs become extinct eight months ago; and it was only in the middle of last week that some ape ancestors evolved into human ancestors. Twenty-four hours ago Homo sapiens begun to hunt other animals, and in the last hour humans settled down and discovered agriculture. Fifteen minutes ago Moses leads his people to safety, five minutes later Christ was preaching, and in the last minute the Industrial Revolution begun.
The analogy of an egg previously examined, is another clear example on how we can facilitate comprehension of abstract concepts to explain the different Earth's layers and plate tectonics concepts.
Furthermore, another clear example of this effective strategy is the analogy of the rate at which human fingernails grow in trying to understand the rate at which the tectonic plate movements take place and the concept that repeated small changes (e.g., from earthquake related movements) occurring for great lengths of time will create Earth's features such as mountains.
Another category of research-based strategies is that of non-linguistic representations. We store knowledge in two different ways: linguistically, and non-linguistically. We can think of linguistic knowledge as actual sentences stored in long-term memory. Nonlinguistic knowledge is presented in terms of mental pictures or physical sensations. The use of both linguistic and nonlinguistic representations of concepts, allows the students to recall and think about information. Although this is important for all the students, it is necessary for ELLs in that they are still developing their second language and therefore presenting information linguistically will not make the knowledge easily accessible. The use of charts, graphs, and diagrams complement the narrative and present the basic key concepts both linguistically and non-linguistically. Thus, many of the electronic, teacher, and student's resources, listed in the reference section, offer many figures and diagrams to visualize these concepts, which in combination with the metaphors and analogies, will make the content more comprehensible.
As part of the strategies in scaffolding knowledge, the use of before and after pictures, will act as a 'hook' at the same time that will make tangible for our students the forces of nature in our physical environment. It has been said that a picture is a worth thousand words. In attempting to describe the devastation following a natural disaster, words cannot do justice to the chaos and horror of lost communities. Often, all that is left is an altered and often unrecognizable desolated community. However, a picture can hardly describe the human feelings of loss or pain caused as a consequence of the natural disaster. It is for this reason that first-hand accounts are so important to give us a more complete sense of the long lasting consequences of natural disasters. Special attention is needed when presenting the material so that neither the accounts nor the pictures are so disturbing that will cause unnecessary anxiety or stress to our students.
However, it is through before and after pictures that the students can observe what are the consequences to the physical environment at the same time they catch their attention. It is through first-hand accounts that we begin to feel what it means to be engulfed by the direct and indirect consequences of a natural disaster.