Page 9 - Scaffolding for English Language Learners

home language; bilingual homework activities; and routines that pair ELLs who are at emerging levels of language proficiency with bilingual partners so that discussions can occur in students’ home language and in English. In addition, teachers teach students who speak a cognate language to use home-language cognate knowledge to figure out the meanings of unknown words in English.
In the lessons that follow, the scaffolds that capitalize on home language knowledge and skills are modeled in Spanish. These models can be used to develop similar scaffolds for students from other home-language backgrounds. The cognate activities will be helpful, however, only for ELLs whose home language shares cognates with English.
Differentiate Instruction for Students at Diverse Levels of English Proficiency
The New York State New Language Arts Progressions specify four levels of proficiency and literacy for ELLs—entering, emerging, transitioning, expanding—and one level of proficiency for ELLs that have just become proficient in English—commanding. In the prototypes that follow we describe and demonstrate scaffolding for ELLs at the four levels of proficiency. Scaffolds are not included for students at the commanding level because students at that level may not need additional support. ELLs at all levels of proficiency have access to scaffolds that provide multiple means of representation, action and expression, and engagement. ELLs at the entering and emerging levels of proficiency have access to text and instructions in their home language as well as in English. In addition, they have sentence frames to help them respond to text-dependent questions posed throughout the lesson. ELLs at the transitioning levels of proficiency have access to sentence starters. All students at these levels, as well as ELLs at the expanding level of proficiency, have access to word banks to help them engage in partner conversation and answer text-dependent questions. Teachers can differentiate further to meet the needs of students in their classrooms. For example, for students at transitioning and expanding levels of proficiency, teachers might reduce the background knowledge provided, vocabulary taught, and supplementary questions asked and their use of other scaffolds such as graphic organizers that make content presented in a second languages more accessible. For students at the transitioning and expanding levels of proficiency, teachers might provide students with text in their home language prior to reading the text in English even if the goal of instruction is English literacy.
The prototyped lesson activities labeled “[ALL]” indicate methods used for ELLs at all levels of proficiency; those labeled “[EN]” are for students at entering levels of proficiency; those labeled “[EM]” are for students at emerging levels of proficiency; those labeled “[TR]” are for students at transitioning levels of proficiency; and those labeled “[EX]” are for students at expanding levels of proficiency.
Conventions Used to Describe AIR Scaffolding
The original lessons are posted on the EngageNY website, and AIR provides links to these lessons. The conventions that follow describe how the AIR scaffolds have been superimposed on these lessons. An example follows the description of these conventions.
American Institutes for Research Scaffolding Instruction for ELLs: Resource Guide for ELA–5