Blog 2 - Supporting English Language Learners: Small Group Instruction

This week I found a blog post by Education Week that discussed a 2nd grade teacher, Anna Dearlove, and how she prepares her ELL students before a whole class lesson.  There is a video included with the blog that she shares what goes in to preparing the lesson and also how she delivers the content.

I found this very interesting and knowledgeable because I do not teach an ELL/ESL class.  I am in the physical education and health setting.  Being able to watch the video of what a 2nd grade ELL class looks like and how the small group instruction goes was very valuable to me.

When planning the lesson, a focus on the standard was essential.  It gave the focus on what was to be targeted to meet the needs of the students.  Anna selected the important language/words that the students would be using and how she was going to introduce them to these terms.  In the video, the key word was variation and they had other disruptive words they would use to differentiate things like texture, shape, size, color.  She helped use objects they would be more familiar with when they were completing the task.

Each step of this lesson progresses very well.  Anna really provides the students with the tools they need to be successful.  She give them sentence starters to use when displaying their understanding of the term/skill.  The receptions and real life examples they used really helped to reinforce these skills.
I was very impressed with the framing that was provided to the students. Seeing this video, I could see many things.  The execution of the lesson was clearly driven by the planning that went into it.  It gave a lot of positives to try and use in my own teaching.

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/inspired_instruction/2017/05/supporting_english-language_le_2.html 

Comments

  1. David FisherJune 9, 2017 at 3:15 PM

    It really is amazing to see an ESL small group session in action. I am 5th grade teacher and I spent some time observing a kindergarten and first grade ELL small group session. It was a very eye opening experience. The article that you shared followed a similar progression. I too found the videos that were included on some of the articles/ websites that I found to be very useful.

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