Essential Practices for Teachers
with English Language Learners
David and Yvonne Freeman - The University of Texas at Brownsville
General Session --- Denton Area TAIR
Essentials for ELLs
 Know your students
 Teach language and content
 Organize around units of inquiry
 Draw on students’ primary languages and cultures
 Emphasize meaningful reading and writing
 Develop academic language
Essentials for ELLs - Know Your Students
•English Language Learners
 ELLs come with a rich background of experiences and great potential, but they also face many
challenges.
 The ELL population is rapidly dispersing to states that previously had few ELLs
 1 in 5 students K-12 has at least one parent born outside the United States
 60% of ELLs are from homes with high poverty rates
 The largest number of ELLs are long-term English learners who have attended U.S. schools for 7 or
more years
•Characteristics of ELLs
 Most are Spanish-speaking Latinos (75-79%)
 Most live in households where only the younger generation speaks English
 Half live with parents who have not completed 8 years of schooling
 Half were born in the U.S.
 Half are in elementary school, but the greatest increase is in high schools
Types of English learners
Newly arrived with adequate
schooling
Newly arrived with limited
formal schooling
Long term English learner
• recent arrivals (less than 5 years in U.S. )
• adequate schooling in native country
• soon catch up academically
• may still score low on standardized tests given in English
• recent arrivals ( less than 5 years in U.S. )
• interrupted or limited schooling in native country
• limited native language literacy
• below grade level in math
• poor academic achievement
• 7 or more years in the U.S.
• below grade level in reading and writing
• mismatch between student perception of achievement and
actual grades
• some get adequate grades but score low on tests
• have had ESL or bilingual instruction, but no consistent
program
Essentials for ELLs- Teach language and content
Reasons to Teach Language and Content
 Students get both language and content
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


Language is kept in its natural context
Students have real purposes to use language.
Students learn the academic vocabulary of the content areas
Essentials for ELLs - Organize around units of inquiry
Units of inquiry should provide students with opportunities to investigate big questions
 How does WHERE we live affect HOW we live?
 Teachers can develop text sets around big question units of inquiry
 Text sets are two or more texts or other materials that are conceptually linked to a specific
big question. Text sets can support a range of readers.
•Why Organize Around Big Question Units of Inquiry?
 Through units of inquiry, teachers can connect curriculum to students’ lives and
backgrounds and draw on their language strengths
 Students know what the topic is even when instruction is in the second language.
 Because the same topics are studied across content areas and languages, students build
academic concepts and vocabulary more easily.
 Because the curriculum makes sense, second language students are more fully engaged and
experience more success.
 Teachers can differentiate instruction to accommodate differences in language proficiency.
Essentials for ELLs - Draw on students’ primary languages and cultures
• Preview/View/Review
 This strategy provides ELLs with an advance organizer in their L1 for the lesson they are
about to study in their L2
 The preview in L1 makes the L2 input more comprehensible
Preview- The teacher, a student, or an aide gives an overview of the lesson or activity in the
students’ first language.
 Give an oral summary/ Read a book in the first language/ Ask a key question
 Students can work in same language groups to brainstorm what they know on the topic and
report back in English
View - The teacher teaches the lesson or directs the activity in English
 The teacher uses various techniques to make the input comprehensible
 Visuals/ realia/ Hands on activities/ Collaborative activities
Review - The teacher or the students summarize key ideas and raise questions about the lesson in
their first language. Students can work in same language groups to clarify lesson and then report
back in English.
 Teachers should avoid concurrent translation.
 First language use
 For ELLs, their first language is a rich resource
 A new term for these students is Emergent Bilinguals
 There are times to keep the languages separate (preview/view/review)
 There are times to encourage students to draw on both languages
One way to draw on students’ first languages is to draw on cognates
Cognate Activities
 put book pages on an overhead and point out cognates
 have students work in pairs to find cognates in a text
 create a cognate wall/ create a cognate classroom dictionary
 Have students work together to find and then categorize cognates
 same spelling – colonial
 predictable variation – civilization / civilización
 same root – sport/ deporte
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 fits only one meaning – letter/ letra (of the alphabet)
 website for Spanish/English cognates - www.colorin.colorado
Teachers can draw on students’ cultures by using culturally relevant books
Essentials for ELLs - Emphasize meaningful reading and writing
• Research on Reading - The National Reading Panel conducted a meta-analysis of studies of early
reading. One criticism of the NRP report was that the studies they analyzed did not include
ELLs in the sample populations. In response, a second meta-analysis was conducted by the
National Literacy Panel, which looked at studies of ELL reading . An important finding by
the NLP was that
“Second language readers are more likely to achieve adequate performance … on measures of word
recognition and spelling than on measures of reading vocabulary, comprehension, and
writing.”
Instruction should focus on text level skills to engage ELLs in reading for comprehension. Reading is
a complex process of communication
Reading cannot be broken down into small parts to be taught one at a time.
• Effective instruction follows a sequence in which responsibility for reading gradually shifts from
the teacher to the student.
 Teaching Approaches - Read Aloud/ Shared Reading/ Guided Reading
 Independent Reading
Essentials for ELLs - Develop academic language
Conversational Language
The ability to comprehend, speak, read, or write when there is rich context and the topic is
not cognitively demanding - in casual conversation, in games, when there are visuals, realia
and other nonlinguistic support, when students already know about the topic in their first
language
Academic Language
The ability to comprehend, speak, read, or write when the context is reduced and the topic is
cognitively demanding
 reading textbooks, novels without photos or pictures
 writing long compositions/ understanding a long presentation without visuals
 learning new concepts
• Time to Develop
 Conversational Language- Students need about two years in order to be able to understand,
talk, read and write in context-rich, cognitively undemanding situations
 Academic Language - Students need 4 to 9 years to use the new language in order to learn
and to read, and write in the academic content areas that are context reduced and
cognitively demanding.
students
adequate
schooling ELLs
limited
schooling ELLs
long term
ELLs
conversational language
first language
English
X
academic language
first language
English
(X)
X
X
X
X
Freeman, D., & Freeman, Y. (2007). English language learners: The essential guide. New York:
Scholastic.
Denton Area TAIR -- September, 2010 -- Yvonne & David Freeman
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Freeman, D., & Freeman, Y. (2009). Academic language for English language learners and struggling
readers: How to help students succeed across content areas. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Denton Area TAIR -- September, 2010 -- Yvonne & David Freeman
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