Teaching
English
Language
Learners
Kara O’Dell
Collaborative Retell
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Choose an enriched text to read to students.
Copy 4 or more pictures from text.
Mix pictures up and show them to students.
Read story and have students look for
pictures while reading.
Put pictures on board and have students
help sequence them.
With student involvement, write one
sentence per picture.
Have students go up to board and identify
parts of speech for each sentence.
Collaborative Retell Example
Sample Sentence
Finally, the
frog grows
into an adult.
Identify Part of Speech
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Underline each word in the correct color
based on the part of speech.
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Adjectives = Purple
Nouns = Orange
Pronouns = Yellow
Verbs = Blue
Adverbs = Dark Green
Preposition = Lime Green
Conjunction = Pink
Interjection = Brown
Identify Part of Speech
Finally, the
frog grows
into an adult.
Grammar Wall
When collaborative retell is finished, write
the words from each sentence on a
notecard and put under the correct part of
speech.
Grammar Wall Example
Writing
Syntax Surgery
Take sentences from collaborative retell and
cut apart each word. Have students put
sentence back together like a puzzle.
Create new and more complex sentences
as the students progress.
Vocabulary
Vertical Sentences
Using sentence from collaborative retell,
choose a few words and write synonyms
and antonyms of those words to develop
vocabulary.
Vocabulary
Vertical Sentence Example
Vocabulary
 Choose
one word to define from vertical
sentence.
 Collaboratively come up with a definition.
 Students show understanding by using
vocabulary word in a sentence and then
draw a picture that correlates with their
sentence.
Vocabulary Journal Examples
1st Week of School
8th Week of School
Wrap Up
 ELL
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students are taught in a 4 hour block
1 hour of reading
1 hour of oral language/vocabulary
1 hour of Writing
1 hour of Grammar
Reference handouts for more ideas for each
subject.