enl

Planning for Success with SIOP Components

In my classroom, I want all students to learn. Don’t we all? But I also want my nights and weekends to myself and not to be spent lesson planning. So how does one find the time to plan for all SIOP components within every lesson you teach and still work within contract hours? Well, the truth is… you don’t. At least not yet.  If you are just getting started on the journey to ensuring your lessons are accessible to all, let me be the first to welcome you to our quest. Below I broke down the SIOP components into two...

5 Ideas to Up Your Game with Content and Language Objectives

Looking for ways to change up how you use content and language objectives in your classroom? Below find 5 ideas on how to up your game with content and language objectives. Up Your Game Idea #1: Make it Routine Include a consistent presentation of your content and language objectives at the beginning of your class period. Consider including it with your bell work, including vocabulary that students will need to understand to be successful for the class period, or even reminding students of what they learned in the previous lesson. Want to use these templates as-is? Find them here on...

Making Learning Concrete with Hands-On Activities and Manipulatives

Practice and Application The 6th component of SIOP is Practice and Application. Practice and Application focuses on how will students will practice both the content and language objectives. It is the what and the how of the lesson. When we are thinking about Practice and Application, it’s important to keep three considerations in mind. Provide hands-on materials and/or manipulatives for students to practice using new content knowledge. Provide hands-on activities for students to apply content and language knowledge in the classroom. Use activities that integrate all language skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) In this blog post, we will be focusing...

Building Background with Seesaw

No two students enter our classroom with the same life experiences. This is especially true when you have English language learners as members of your classroom community. To help counter the differences in our students’ diverse backgrounds, we work on the SIOP strategy of Building Background. Building background simply means we prepare our students for what they are about to learn. There are three main considerations for when you are actively working on building background with students:  A student’s own background is important. As teachers, it is important that we recognize that students from culturally diverse backgrounds may struggle with...

Making Learning Accessible on Seesaw: Attaching Voice to ALL Objects

In its most recent update, Seesaw has provided users more functionality with its voice and audio features.  These updates provide a more robust learning experience by offering more flexibility with voice instruction on the Seesaw creative canvas.  By adding these features to its platform, Seesaw has made it easier for teachers to create activities and assignments that are more accessible to more students, thereby increasing student engagement and success.   Object voice support can help students in the following ways: Provide voice support for specific text boxes and other objects on the creative canvas Present multi-tiered instructions for different parts of...

Visual Note Taking: Sketchnotes 101

What are sketchnotes? Sketchnoting is the strategy of mashing together the use of visuals along with words to help aid in student comprehension. They serve not only as an alternative to writing traditional notes, but also as a creative learning assignments with outcomes that are more personal and can act as a really great tool to reflect on the learning that is taking place.  What’s nice about sketchnoting is that it is not a strict format. Instead, it presents students with a variety of tools for them to choose from and create their own customized note-taking process, one that works...

Making the Internet Accessible to All

We know that our students all have different needs, and we are daily making modifications to ensure that we are meeting the needs of all of our learners. But at times, we all fall short. I have found this is especially true when students are utilizing the internet for text. Not only can you not easily adapt the lexile, but you cannot be everywhere for everyone, defining words and reading words out loud. By maybe the 3rd grade, students know this and many just stop asking for help. They skip over the “big words”, pass by words they cannot pronounce. ...

Using Video as a Chunking Tool on Seesaw

The Seesaw video tool is a great way to model and break down or “chunk” your instruction for virtual assignments. Chunking instruction is when you are intentionally pacing instruction to deliver one idea, or step, at a time. This helps simplify instruction for the students, allowing for a more direct route of step by step instructions for one assignment.  Teachers are able to model the assignment as well as demonstrate the expectations. Teachers could chunk their instruction to: Model and complete a sample directly on the assignment for students to watch Break down specific steps in the assignment to demonstrate possible...

Use Google Sheets to Quickly Translate Vocabulary Lists

If you teach Level 1 ENL students, one accommodation you can make is to provide English vocabulary alongside home-language translations. This helps students make mental connections to the new content in a context they already understand. If you need to quickly make a translation of a list of words, you can easily do this using a formula in a Google Sheet.  See this post on other helpful tips for your ENL students. Get Started Create a new Google Sheet in Drive. Type your vocabulary list in a column. In the Column B type =GOOGLETRANSLATE Google Translate will pop up as...

Set ENL Students Up For Success with iPad Settings and Apps

In this post we will show you a variety of features and apps that you can use to customize a student’s iPad to best meet their needs and to scaffold your instruction.