How to Develop a Lesson Plan that Includes ELLs

Lesson planning for the ELLs: Step by step

Effective lesson planning requires a number of steps from initial preparation to the final review of material. This blog post on lesson planning with sheltered instruction offers a general roadmap for that process.

Identify standards and objectives

First, identify your goals for the lesson. What are your target standards?  It is helpful to post these clearly so that students know what they will be focused on learning and eliminate unnecessary information that does not meet your objective.

Next, identify your content objectives and language objectives:

• The content objectives focus on the content you will be teaching, such as a math, Science, Social Studies, or language arts objective.
• The language objectives focus on the academic language functions that students need to master in order to access grade-level content.

It is critical to teach language objectives explicitly so that ELLs (and their peers) can learn the content and language they need.

For example, Jennifer Himmel shares the following examples in her popular article about how to write language objectives for content-area lessons:

Build background knowledge

Background knowledge is the hook that students hang new information on. When planning lessons for ELLs, it is important to both:

• access students' existing background knowledge
• build background knowledge that students.

To start this process, you need to:

1. Identify key background knowledge needed for the lesson
2. Identify students' existing background knowledge
3. Build background knowledge students need

Teach key vocabulary

Selecting words to teach

Select key vocabulary that students need to understand the content. Dr. Diane August notes that there are different kinds of vocabulary words that may need to be taught across different content areas:

• words that are critical to the meaning of the lesson or text
• words with multiple meanings ("plot," "table," "key," and "yard")
• homonyms ("son"/"sun")
• general academic words
• academic vocabulary in a particular content area.

You can see additional recommendations on how to choose which vocabulary words to teach in this overview of the ACCELL project that Dr. August led at the American Institutes for Research.

Strategies for instruction

• Write an ELL-friendly definition for each and post them where students can see them throughout the lesson.
• Try different strategies to teach each word. If there are five words to be pre-taught, use different ways of engaging the students to hear and produce each word in context.
• Give students ample opportunities to practice each new word both in oral and written languages.
• Look for cognates, or words from different languages that are related. For example, Spanish and English have many cognates ("information" /"información") and they are particularly common in terms related to academic content. Learning how to use cognates can bolster Spanish-speaking ELLs' comprehension significantly.
• Discuss word families and how different forms of words are used. ELLs may need explicit instruction in which form of a word to use. Help students look for spelling and usage patterns, such as past tense verbs ending in "-ed." Since English has so many exceptions, this isn't always a foolproof strategy, but a basic knowledge of these patterns, rules, and spellings will help.

Related resources

• Tips for Educators of ELLs: Teaching Vocabulary in Grades 4-12
• Supporting ELs with Close Reading: Acquiring Vocabulary (American Institutes for Research Webinar)
• Attaining Core Content for English Language Learners: Key Components for Literacy (AIR)

Support academic language development

Academic language, or the language of schooling, is the language that students need to succeed in their content-area classes. It is important for educators and students alike to understand the differences between social and academic language and why textbooks, tests, assignments, or class presentations may be more challenging for students than social conversations.

There are a number of ways to support academic language development, such as:

• previewing the text
• teaching grammatical structures relevant to a particular content area ("greater than" and "less than" in math class)
• showing how the targeted academic language is used in reading, writing, speaking, and listening in your content area.

For example, what is the difference between the language students use to write a science report vs. the language used in a class message board? Sharing examples and teaching specific phrases or structures, especially when they related to a specific content area, can be a helpful way to help students feel comfortable in multiple settings.

 Dr. August also encourages educators to familiarize themselves with some features of academic language that may present challenges such as the following:

• visual presenations of information, such as graphs, charts, diagrams, maps, and equations
• figurative language
• syntax, such as passive voice and complex sentences
• nominalization, which refers to using a word that is not a noun as a noun or noun phrase (i.e., "the rich").

Collaborating with an ESL specialist can be a helpful way to start identifying areas of academic language where additional support would be helpful.

Related resources

• Academic Language and ELLs: What Teachers Need to Know
• Increasing Academic Language Knowledge for English Language Learner Success
• Academic Language: Everyone's "Second" Language
• Academic Language and ELLs Webcast with Dr. Robin Scarcella
• Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to ELLs in Middle and High School (Institute of Education Sciences Practice Guide)

Video: Instruction of Key Academic Vocabulary with High School ELLs

Video: Pre-teaching concepts and vocabulary before a lesson

ESOL specialist Katy Padilla shares more in-depth information about her "Super Secret Science Club," an informal lunch activity for 5th-grade ELLs where they see a preview of the afternoon's lesson.

Video: Bricks and mortar in language instruction

Dr. Cindy Lundgren discusses the concept of "bricks and mortar" when thinking about effective vocabulary instruction for ELLs.

Learn some additional strategies for scaffolding and differentiating instruction.

Scaffolding instruction means to put in place some supports that can help students access grade-level content.  In addition, your students may be at varying levels of English language proficiency, and some differentiation might be necessary. It's ok to start small -- and remember that this is an area where an ESL teacher can provide some helpful ideas!

Some strategies for scaffolding and differentiating include:

• using extra supports such as realia, graphic organizers, and visuals
• pre-teaching key concepts and vocabulary before the lesson
• differentiating through the use of different kinds of activities, such as asking newcomer students to draw a response and more advanced students to write a response.

If students are having trouble with an activity, try to identify whether a new concept, set of directions, vocabulary word, or other element is causing the difficulty. Identify some different ways that you can help students move beyond those obstacles. These might include providing a book about the topic in the student's native language or reviewing new vocabulary words together.

Video: Pre-teaching concepts and vocabulary before a lesson

Video: Using "realia" to build background

Use peer review and cooperative learning strategies

Using peer learning can be a powerful way to help students master content. Here are some ways to get students working together:

• Use graphic organizers. Have students work in collaborative groups and use a graphic organizer as a scaffold for specific tasks, such as identifying main ideas or relationships between information, etc. It gives a purpose while reading while interacting and using the language.
• Assign reading partners. Pair ELLs with friendly fluent readers. Ask partners to read aloud to each other, alternating sentences or pages. After partner reading, ask them to summarize what they read. For variety, use choral reading once in a while. Assign different sections to each team, ask them to rehearse, and then ask teams to read chorally.
• Use Think-Pair-Share (TPS). TPS is a collaborative learning strategy in which students work together to solve a problem or answer a question about an assigned reading. This technique requires students to (1) think individually about a topic or answer to a question; and (2) share ideas with classmates. Discussing an answer with a partner serves to maximize participation, focus attention and engage students in comprehending the reading material. Read more in the following articles:
  1. Increase Student Interaction with "Think-Pair-Shares" and "Circle Chats"
  2. AdLit.org Classroom Strategy: Think-Pair-Share

You may also wish to look for ways to engage students through hands-on learning and project-based learning. Learn about other ways to effectively using cooperative learning strategies in these articles:

• Cooperative Learning Strategies
• Strategy: Peer review and narrative text
• AFT: Working with cooperative small groups

Video: Writing a cooperative paragraph

Consider how to incorporate different language skills into the lesson

When learning a new language, students need to master four key skills:

• speaking
• writing
• reading
• listening

(Drs. Andrea Honigsfeld and Maria Dove note that they like the acronym SWIRL, which includes "interaction" in the list.)

You can learn more about these skills in What Language Skills Do ELLs Need?, as well as ideas for teaching these skills both in person and online in Teaching ELLs Online: How to Develop Students' Language Skills.

For example, you can support ELLs' writing skills by modeling the kinds of writing used frequently in your particular content area, such as lab reports in chemistry class, or a persuasive essay in social studies. Help students understand what the purpose of different kinds of writing are, and review vocabulary that would be typically used in these kinds of assignments. Be sure to provide examples of the different kinds of writing to your students so they can learn and compare models.

Review and assess what students have learned

There are many ways to review and assess content following instruction. For example, graphic organizers are a helpful way for students to demonstrate that they understood the concepts and content, even if they only use a symbol or write one or two words for each category. Graphic organizers can also be used as a pre-teaching or post-teaching strategy for introducing or reinforcing key concepts and how they are related. The more connections ELLs make to the overall content and organization of the content before reading, the easier it will be to focus on and understand what is important. When teachers and/or students use graphic organizers at the end of a lesson, this helps to reinforce and synthesize lesson content.

For example:

Related resources

• Using Informal Assessments for ELLs
• Reading Comprehension Strategies for English Language Learners
• Formative Assessment Choice Board (SupportEd)
• EL Formative Assessment Checklist (SupportEd)

Video: Using informal assessment with ELLs

In this video, Ms. Samantha Kirch demonstrates the ways she uses informal assessment to gauge student understanding, as well as the kinds of support offered to ELLs who need some extra practice with the concept of drawing conclusions.

Examples from the Content Areas

• Using Science to Develop ELL's Language Skills
• Reading and Understanding Written Math Problems
• Preparing an Engaging Social Studies Lesson for English Language Learners
• Pre-teaching vocabulary and content: Vascular plants

Closing Thoughts

Finally, we want to close with some thoughts from expert ELL educator and administrator Kristina Robertson. First, she encourages educators to only introduce one new thing at a time when teaching ELLs. And she reminds educators not to be afraid to go back to the drawing board if it doesn't go well the first time! While your lesson planning process may involve some trial and error, you will start to see positive results when you take ELLs into account in your planning. You will soon be on your way to planning lessons that engage, include, and support the ELLs in your class.

Video: Try one new thing at a time

Video: When new things don't work

Kristina Robertson shares her advice for dealing with strategies that just don't work.