Page 33 - Scaffolding for English Language Learners

Building Vocabulary (AIR New Activity for Vocabulary Preview)
AIR Instructions for Teachers
Use the information below to help students learn more about important words in the text.
AIR Instruction for Students
Listen as your teacher explains some new vocabulary words that you will hear in today’s story.
Purpose for Listening
AIR Additional Supports
Also pre-teach the meanings of other key words selected by CK, including the words reservoir, banks, and trade. Examples of the information that might be used to teach the words banks and trade are provided below. Students are provided with ELL-friendly definitions, examples from the text, and opportunities to answer questions that use the target word. If students have been taught about cognates, the teacher can indicate whether words are cognates with the students’ home language.
Vocabulary Instruction
Word
Translation
English Definition
Example
Pair Share
Picture or Phrase
Cognate?
banks
orilla
One definition of bank is the land on the side of a river. Who can think of another meaning for the word bank? In English, many words have more than one meaning.
The children sat on the banks of the river to eat their lunch, and then they went fishing.
If you went on a picnic on a river bank, what other things could you do? [fish, swim, boat] Use the word bank in your sentence.
no
trade
cambiar
to exchange goods
Aalif’s father went to the city to trade his grain for some cloth.
If you wanted your friend’s toy ____, what do you have that you could trade for it?
Use trade in your sentence.
no
Core Knowledge Teacher and Student Actions
The teacher explains that there were rivers in Mesopotamia that made the land fertile so that plants and animals could grow. The teacher asks students to listen for the names of the rivers and why there were important.
AIR Additional Supports
 Ask students the meaning of fertile soil: Who remembers what fertile soil is? [Anticipated response: Fertile means that the soil, or dirt, in these areas is rich in nutrients. Nutrients are things that plants need to grow.]
 Ask students what it means for “rivers to make the land around them fertile so that plants and animals can grow” and elaborate on student’s answers as necessary.
American Institutes for Research Scaffolding Instruction for ELLs: Resource Guide for ELA–29