Culturally Responsive Instruction in the ELL Classroom

Students' Background Knowledge

How to Connect Content to Students' Background Knowledge

Background knowledge is vitally important to good reading comprehension and mastery of content. One way that we can support ELLs' comprehension is by including texts that represent familiar concepts and situations from the students' own cultures. How to Connect Content to Students' Background Knowledge by Kristina Robertson offers a number of tips for helping students make connections between their own experiences and new academic content.

Culturally Responsive Instruction for Holiday and Religious Celebrations

This article by Dr. Cynthia Lundgren (Hamline University) and Giselle Lundy-Ponce (American Federation of Teachers) offers great ideas for bringing cultural content into the classroom in a way that increases all students' knowledge and interest while at the same time being respectful of the culture being featured.

Choosing the Right Books

Culturally Responsive Books in the ELL Classroom

In this excerpt from English Language Learners: The Essential Guide, ELL researchers David and Yvonne Freeman offer a comprehensive set of tips for choosing culturally relevant books and book recommendations.

In addition, the authors provide a rubric that teachers and students can use to determine whether a book is culturally relevant.

Tips for Choosing Culturally Appropriate Books & Resources About Native Americans

Professor Cathy Gutierrez-Gomez from the University of New Mexico has compiled a number of helpful tips for educators on how to choose appropriate classroom books about Native Americans that highlight authentic and meaningful experiences and avoid prevalent stereotypes. She has also included a list of recommended books related to Thanksgiving.

My Life Is Normal, Too: Diversity in Children's Literature

When Jacqueline Jules' young Latino students were frustrated that they couldn't find superhero books they found appealing, the children's author and librarian tackled their frustration head on.

Her new Zapato Power series features Freddie Ramos, a young boy who finds a magical pair of sneakers that allows him to perform heroic deeds around his neighborhood. In My Life Is Normal, Too: Diversity in Children's Literature, Jacqueline explains the reasons she created Freddie as her main character for the series, as well as the importance of children from different backgrounds seeing themselves represented in all kinds of books.

Nikki Grimes: Color Me Perplexed

In this commentary, New York Times bestselling author Nikki Grimes responds to the following comment: "I love your work! I only wish I had more African American students so that I could use your books." In the end, she writes, "A good book is a good book, is a good book. Period."

Classroom Management

Managing Diverse Classrooms: How to Build on Students' Cultural Strengths

This groundbreaking book by researchers Carrie Rothstein-Fisch and Elise Trumbull examines the impact of culture on classroom management. The authors present the results of Bridging Cultures, a longitudinal five-year action research project focused on immigrant students in the U.S. school system.

The result was a transformational approach to classroom management in areas such as instruction, behavior, assessment, and parent relationships. The book shares a number of valuable lessons (particularly for the ELL classroom) learned by the teachers and researchers, as well as clear examples of strategies that did and did not work in specific classroom settings.