Four Key Classroom Practices That Boost ELLs’ Achievement

“The pervasive educational underachievement of children of immigrant families continues to be a matter of serious concern, both for those families and for the nation at large,” say Mari Haneda (Florida State University) and Gordon Wells (University of California/Santa Cruz) in this article in Theory Into Practice. The authors suggest four pedagogic principles that all teachers can use to help English language learners succeed in school:

• Frequent opportunities to talk and write – “To learn a language, one has to use it,” say Haneda and Wells. “This is the most important principle to help newly arrived ELLs develop language skills… Thus, the challenge lies in making classrooms places in which all students have opportunities to learn and use spoken and written language for a wide variety of purposes, both social and curricular.” 

• Connecting curriculum to students’ lives – The relevance of classroom experiences to students’ interests, aspirations, and funds of knowledge is crucial to getting them involved, talking in class, and further connecting the curriculum to their lives, say Haneda and Wells. 

• Selecting an interesting topic – “Students must be sufficiently interested and enthusiastic about what they are learning to want to share their ideas with their peers and their teacher,” say the authors. It’s helpful to get students working in pairs or small groups on specific topics or inquiries so they can learn from each other. 

• Working toward a tangible outcome – Focusing on a product, especially one that will be shared with others, helps energize students and motivates them to do their best. “In this way, students not only develop confidence in communicating with others, but they also begin to master the linguistic genres of the different curricular disciplines,” say Haneda and Wells. 

They go on to describe how these principles played out in a seventh-grade world history class on ancient Egypt taught to a group of English language learners (of Japanese, Mexican, Indian, and Kurdish extraction) in a diverse suburban school. The teacher began with an explanation of the social hierarchy in ancient Egypt, illustrating it with a pyramid-shaped diagram – pharaoh, priests, artisans, scribes, and slaves. She then asked students to take a position on whether this hierarchy was necessary and explain their positions in writing (some students with limited English proficiency got help from peers). Next, the teacher led a whole-class discussion on this issue and called on students to justify their positions. 

The teacher then distributed a blank diagram and asked students to identify each level of the hierarchy as it might be seen in their own school. In small groups, students eagerly chatted about the role of the principal, teachers, and students, and shared their ideas in a whole-class discussion. What were the similarities and differences between those at the bottom of the hierarchy in ancient Egypt and in their American school? asked the teacher. One student said Egyptian slaves simply lacked the courage to organize themselves to go on strike. The teacher countered that the individual freedoms that Americans take for granted were inconceivable in those times. Toward the end of the unit, students summed up their learning in role plays, readers’ theater, and other products.

“Some Key Pedagogic Principles for Helping ELLs to Succeed in School” by Mari Haneda and Gordon Wells in Theory Into Practice, Fall 2012 (Vol. 51, #4, p. 297-304), 

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/htip20/current; Haneda can be reached at mhaneda@fsu.edu 

From the Marshall Memo #462