Colorín Colorado Blog: Helping ELLs Succeed
Welcome to our Colorín Colorado blog! This blog is focused on helping English language learners (ELLs) succeed in the classroom, with a special focus on strategies and tools that that support the use of college- and career-ready standards with ELLs.
The blog includes updates from the ELL field about topics such as language proficiency standards and assessments, as well as practical tips for developing academic language, helping ELLs tackle grade-level content, and collaborating with colleagues.
For related content, see our Common Core and ELLs resource section. You can also browse blog posts by topic.
As you prepare for the new year, we'd like to share some new additions to Colorín Colorado. These include resources on partnering with multilingual families during COVID-19, social-emotional support, and instruction and advocacy for ELLs.
In this post, I’ll highlight some information from Tim Shanahan’s article about background knowledge in American Educator. I’ll then share a table and flow chart adapted from the article that will help you decide how much background knowledge to teach to ELLs.
To help you reflect on the past year, Lydia Breiseth, Director of Colorín Colorado, has put together some reflection questions with the input of a group of veteran educators and teacher leaders, as well as a list of questions and writing prompts for students.
ESL educator Areli Schermerhorn shares ideas for using primary sources with ELLs and a sample 7th-grade Social Studies lesson plan.
This post features examples of text-dependent questions for 2nd grade based on the book "So You Want to Be President?" by Judith St. George.
This article highlights the diverse leadership experiences of ELL educators and shares ideas for identifying and honing your own leadership capacity.
I want to examine some ideas for using text-dependent questions with ELLs. Since I’m a big fan of writing two-part blog posts, first I’ll outline some big picture issues in terms of what TDQs are and some considerations in writing TDQs for ELLs.
We’d like to start off the new year by sharing an example for developing text dependent questions for ELLs in the middle grades. We have selected a 6th-8th grade exemplar text in the category of Informational Texts: Science, Mathematics and Technology titled “The Evolution of the Grocery Bag” by Henry Petroski.
How can school leaders support their English language learner (ELL) and immigrant students and families? Take a look at these resources from Colorín Colorado and other organizations for ideas on how to get started!
How can teachers equitably grade ELLs? Learn more about challenges, related research and resources, and recommendations developed by the Diane Staehr Fenner, Jill Kester, and Sydney Snyder.
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