 So how can teachers scaffold learning for English language learners? Ideally in a classroom with English language learners, all students are learning the same thing, but in different ways. The language of the content areas is often too difficult for ELLs to understand. So how can ELLs be included in the classroom if they can't understand the language? Classroom teachers can adapt their teaching methods and materials that would accommodate different levels of proficiency by scaffolding instruction. Teachers need to know where students are at before they can help them move forward, just as a scaffold is used during the building process. It's Vygotsky's theory of proximal development, that place between what students can do by themselves and what students cannot do because it's too difficult. It's that zone where the student can complete a task to help of a teacher or a more knowledgeable other. I'm going to discuss three strategies that help to scaffold learning for ELLs. The first strategy is to provide sentence frames. They are a visual display of the language structure needed for talking and writing about the topic. ELLs can use these to participate in the lesson. It helps them because they become familiar with the vocabulary and the sentence structure needed. So for example, two sentence frames are at the bottom of this slide. This is the it is used for. Sentence frames are created based on what the student is able to do with language now and what they can do with language given support. To create sentence frames, first decide what kind of statements the students will be expected to make during the lesson. Using the example of the water cycle, students would be expected to name and explain the stages of the water cycle and to explain the continuous movement of water in that cycle. Some sample sentence frames could be, if you look at the chart there, the sentence frames for the water cycle. The grammatical structure is there as a support for ELLs to participate in the lesson. The academic language of the science unit can also be made available on a separate word wall chart. In this particular example, the target vocabulary would be evaporation, evaporates, precipitation, and so on. The vocabulary that you're expecting can vary with the proficiency level of your ELLs. Now students can use the sentence frame and the vocabulary to put them together to come up with a response about their understanding of the water cycle. So for example, the teacher could ask what happens when the sun heats the surface of the water and the student could use both to say when the sun heats the surface of the water, the water evaporates. When scaffolding a lesson, the child needs to know that it's okay to make mistakes and that it is a step-by-step process. Students will need instruction on how to use the word wall and the sentence frames, but the other benefit for ELLs is that when teachers model this, students will hear the correct intonation and pronunciation of the English words. Sentence frames can be posted on the classroom walls, much like a word wall, to provide that visual support to participate orally and in writing. And native English speakers would probably benefit from this support as well, especially when writing their responses. Science involves experimentation and inquiry, so there could be a sentence wall with questions so that students could use inquiry questions when they're doing an experiment or watching an investigation. Different levels of proficiency can also be represented in the sentence frames. Students generally move from simple words and phrases to simple sentences to longer sentences and more complex sentences with academic vocabulary. So knowing that can help guide the creation of sentence frames. For example, in the grade four curriculum, the students are learning about the uses of the buffalo and how the stories of the Aboriginal peoples tell us about the relationship between the people and the land. So the students are expected to use descriptive language. Some sentence frames for this activity at different levels of proficiency could be. So at level one, we might just want students to match the pictures with the words. A level two student could create simple sentences such as this is the skin, for instance, it is used for clothing. And they could choose those words from a word bank. Level three students are better able to understand open-ended questions and they should be able to create sentences that are a little more complex. So this kind of a sentence frame or paragraph could be provided depending on where they're at with their proficiency at level three. For levels four and five, students are much better able to create paragraphs and complex language. So we might want to provide a whole paragraph or two for them to use to answer the question what were the uses of the buffalo and what does that tell us about the Aboriginal way of life. So to summarize then, sentence frames are displayed so that ELLs can participate in the content area lessons using grammatically correct utterances. And I'll be expanding on this further in the next video clip when I talk about how to set language and content objectives. The next strategy for scaffolding instruction is to use graphic organizers. Graphic organizers are also referred to as key visuals. Such as a t-chart, a cycle diagram, a flow chart, story maps, timelines, then diagrams. You can see a number of pictures here of different key visuals. Now I know that graphic organizers are often used in the classroom, but they're particularly beneficial for ELLs because they are a visual support that aids with the understanding of texts. They're a non-linguistic representation. They enable students to see what is happening in addition to the words that are being used. In this example of a Venn diagram comparing two kinds of bats, the students who don't understand all of the words can see the concepts that are there and the similarities of the two bats in the overlapping circles. Graphic organizers, or key visuals, are a visual cue to help with meaning and understanding. There's many different uses for graphic organizers in the classroom. Students can take the visual organizer, the graphic organizer, and transfer it to their reading and writing. Here's a sample paragraph comparing the two kinds of bats from this visual to the writing of the paragraph. It also helps ELLs, all students, organize their ideas. It's a way to gather information from different sources. It helps them see relationships among the words. It helps them to summarize their notes. I already mentioned the connection between reading and writing. The graphic organizer can be given to the students partially completed at the beginning of a lesson so that they have that support that the rest of the students might be able to do on their own. The key visual can be used before, during, or after a unit or a lesson. It can also be used as an assessment tool. Talking about assessment, I'm just going to briefly spend a bit of time on that since I haven't talked about that yet. When we're assessing our ELLs, we really want to make sure we assess what it is that we've expected and taught. We want to be able to give them extra time if that's going to help them complete the exercise. Sometimes extra time isn't going to help if they don't understand the language. We can talk to them about their understanding, their understanding of the water cycle or other topics that have been addressed. They could complete the graphic organizer, which I mentioned earlier. They could complete closed sentences where there's blanks, and they need to put in the key word. But again, keeping in mind we don't want to test the language if what we're wanting to assess is the content. A portfolio assessment is always a good idea. You can work so that you can show growth over time. And performance-based assessment. How can you use what you know? Can you apply this to some other context? The last strategy I'm going to talk about for scaffolding instruction is to modify the text. Depending on the proficiency level again of your students, the language and text, reading level of text is often beyond the linguistic abilities of our ELLs. So teachers can make modifications to make the text comprehensible. Try to increase the comprehensibility for the ELLs without watering down the content. So there are many ways that you can do this. You can use excerpts. Just chunk the text and expect the ELLs perhaps to read one paragraph if the rest of the class is reading the whole page or more of it. Reading aloud to the students is a great way to have them all understand the concepts being taught. Teach vocabulary, and I'll be spending more time on this in a later clip. Teach language patterns and structures. I'll be talking about that in the next video clip. Rewrite or reconfigure the text. So change the language so that it's more understandable for your ELLs. Plan interactive activities again so that ELLs benefit from the conversation that's going on with their peers and they can discuss their understandings. Supplement the text with nonverbal supports, pictures, diagrams, real objects, graphic organizers again, and provide various reading levels of the same text. Publishers now are coming out with many resources and you can often find a simpler text at the library or other school library, public library to supplement the text that you're using in the classroom. Thank you.