Changing the way you learn

ESL Instructional Approaches

Language Experience Approach
1. Originally developed for native English-speaking students as a way of providing support for initial literacy experiences. Based on the notion that students' prior experience needs to be used as a bridge to new ideas and concepts.
2. Students talk about personal experiences while another student or the teacher writes it down. Later the student and other classmates can use the written account as a reading text.
3. Vocabulary and grammatical structures are experienced first within the language base known by students,
Literacy Across The Curriculum
1. Focuses on the language demands of content subjects and seeks to integrate literacy and content instruction.
2. Integrated Instruction
3. All teachers including science, math, history/social studies teachers carry our language-development activites associaled with their individual content areas.
4. Originally developed to native English-speaking students but has potential for addressing needs of ELLs.
Cooperative Learning
1. Students work in carefully selected and organized groups on learning tasks that are structured so all students share in the responsibility for completing the task.
2. Various models provide multiple opportunities for students to engage in active practice of language and content within a social context.
3. Benefits include additional practice of academic English, the use of the first language to draw on prior knowledge, the incorporation of content into ESL classes and the opportunity for students to become more independent learners.
4. Identified as a particular learning strategy that is taught overly so that student understand the value of working collaboratively on academic tasks.
Inquiry Approaches
1. Any activity aimed at extracting meaning from experience.
2. Often linked to science but can be used in any subject area.
3. Based on learner-centered activities in which students are seen as active co-constructors of knowledge.
4. The role of students' prior knowledge is seen as active co-constructors of knowledge.
5. Curriculum calls for fewer topics and greater depth
6. Teacher fosters the development of higher-order thinking skills by asking challenging questions, modeling the learning process, and engaging in interactive dialog with students.
Process Writing
1. Students learn that writing involves thinking, reflection and multiple revisions.
2. Teachers model the writing process by thinking aloud about their ideas, writing them down, asking for comments from students and making revisions.
3. Classroom becomes a writing workshop in which students learn the craft of writing through discussion, sharing and conferencing.
4. Recommended for all types of writing and in all content areas.
5. By teaching students effective learning strategies for planning, accessing prior knowledge, composing, reviewed and editing, students develop both confidence and increased skill in their writing.
Balanced Reading
1. Based on evidence showing that children do not learn to read in only one way, but that individual variation in literacy development is normal.
2. Instruction should be tailored to each child's preferred approach to initial reading.
3. Some children learn best when they experience language as a whole system of communication.
  1. Classroom activities for these learners include: teacher read alouds, journal writing, story writing, sustained silent reading and discussions.
4. Some learners have an analytical approach to reading, especially if they have already learned to read int heir first language through a phonics based approach.
  1. These students may prefer approaching English reading through explicit alphabet instructions, decoding using phonics, grouping word families and analyzing different words.
Standards-Based Instructions
1. Instruction based on national and state standards for each subject content area.
2. Identify what students should know and be able to do in relations to that content subject at each grade level.

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ESL Instructional Approaches

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	Created by Sarah Hines over 7 years ago