If You Build It, They Will Come

While there are aspects of my school days that I wish would have been different, there was one area where I consider myself to have been very lucky. I was in a classroom and school that spoke the same language that I did. Being a student is hard enough. There are so many subjects to juggle, figure out and make sense of. Certain subjects (like literacy) I found easier and other subjects I found more difficult (math... I just didn't enjoy it very much). Regardless of how easy or hard I found something, one thing I am so grateful for is that I didn't have the additional struggle of not knowing what was being said around me. 

I can only imagine the frustration and difficulty some English Language Learners face. I've always had the ability to speak up when I didn't understand a lesson and was able to share my ideas. Now as an educator, I have a responsibility to provide my students with ways to communicate their thoughts and to access the reading program that I create for them. They need practical strategies that will help them learn english and become readers as well. It's my job to seek out resources and strategies that will help me to help my ELL students reach their full potential. Between Teacher's College, my AQ's, my teacher friends, my classroom experiences and my own research, I have gained some helpful insight to how to help my ELLs.

Here are some best practice suggestions:  

- be mindful that ELL doesn't mean that a student was born in another country. It could be a student who has spent their whole life in Canada but comes from a home where english is not the first language
- get students talking, the more they participate orally, the more successful they will be
- label items around the classroom and school
- keep instruction simple, pause often
- teach essential first sentences (please repeat, My name is ...., May I go to the washroom)
- correct only once, even if there are multiple mistakes
- encourage the use of the students first language
- use dual language activities/visuals
- pair the students with peers who speak the same language
- use pictures 
- use their prior knowlegde
- avoid the use of expressions or of slang
- use graphic organizers 
- allow students to bring in objects from home

 The following resources have been very  helpful to me in building my knowledge about English Language Learners 

Many Roots
ESL - The Ontario Curriculum
Research Based Best Practices for ELL
Stages of Second Language Acquisition
Ontario - English Language Learners
10 Tips for Teaching ELL students



I also found this clip to be interesting as it contains many important ideas. While it was made in the US, it can be applied to our classrooms here in Canada.