The Language Experience Approach
The Language Experience Approach, or LEA, Engages learners at all levels by involving them in learning activities based on their own life experiences. This is an effective way to build the confidence of English Language Learners who may not always feel competent engaging in whole class activities or may be limited by gaps in their learning history, as we see with our S.I.F.E. students (Students with Interrupted Formal Education). The goal behind the LEA is to promote reading and writing by having students practice these skills based on subjects or topics with which they are already familiar. The specific activity could be based on the individual experiences of each learner (time spent over vacation, family traditions, writing about a best friend, etc.) or based on group or whole-class activities (going on a field trip, a project completed by the class, an assembly or guest speaker, etc.). Check out how these four great LPS educators are successfully incorporating the Language Experience Approach into their instruction to support the ELLs in their classrooms:
Artistic Representation
Artistic Representation is a strategy that can be used to support the acquisition of almost any kind of content knowledge or skills. This strategy is particularly effective for multi-sensory or highly visual ELLs, but the re-creation of newly learned knowledge in a format of the student's own creation is beneficial for all learners, for the same reason that a student's ability to teach a skill to another student is a useful way to demonstrate his or her mastery. Check out how kindergarten teacher Heidi DeLucia is using Artistic Representation in her classroom:
Exit Tickets
Exit tickets, exit slips, tickets to leave -- whatever we are calling them, Lawrence teachers know how useful these tools can be to measure a student's understanding of a particular lesson. Most of us are using them in our classrooms in one way or another on a daily basis. Challenge yourself to start differentiating your exit slips to help best ELLs communicate what they learned in a lesson. Perhaps adding a sentence frame, a checklist, or the option of drawing a picture might provide you more accurate information about what a student understands or is able to do based on your instruction. If all students are receiving the same exit slip format, we may find ourselves planning future instruction based on limited data that has better assessed an ELL's inability to meet the requirements of the exit slip than it has his or her ability to perform a skill proficiently or articulate new content knowledge. Exit tickets can also be a great way to incorporate writing across the content areas or challenge students to present knowledge in a new way, meeting specific language objectives for each student. Check out how 5th grade teacher Paul Flanigan used an exit ticket in his Science classroom to challenge students to articulate in writing a procedure they had used in class that day: