ELL Instruction - lesson plans

It’s extremely important, when you have ELL students in the classroom, to differentiate and lesson plan for their special requirements. I’m teaching fifth grade this year, so I will use my class as an example. I will be teaching a week-long lesson where I will describe the movement of the sun and how it affects the seasons and the lunar cycles.  

The common core standard

Strand 6, concept 3, PO3- Explain the phases of the Moon, eclipses (lunar and solar), and the interaction of the Sun, Moon, and Earth (tidal effect).

The Objective 

The students will understand the phases of the moon and the vocabulary related to them. The students will understand the integral interplay of Moon, Sun and Earth, and how that interplay affects lunar phases, eclipses, and the tides.

Planning

I believe in using the six strategies mentioned by the Alliance for Excellent Education; vocabulary, guided interaction, metacognition, explicit instruction, meaning-based context, and modeling (The New Teacher Center, n.d.). In my planning stage, I will focus on what I want to teach and the vocabulary words needed to teach it. I will include a few lower level and a few upper level vocabulary words, since my ELL students are on different levels. I might choose solar system, gravity, orbit, lunar, or any of a number of words to fit my students and content. Whatever vocabulary I choose, I will be sure that I define it in simple and easy to understand terms.

                            The Lesson

I will write the words that will be needed for the lesson on the board and directly teach the definitions for each. We will begin with a model of the lesson. The teacher will place a sticker representation of the students on the globe in our location. The teacher will hold a representation of sun, and students will watch as teacher spins the globe. The teacher will ask the students what someone standing where the sticker is might experience and if they can see a reason why the sun would appear to be going around the earth.

The teacher will then add another ball to represent the moon and demonstrate the reasons the moon might change appearance. The teacher will model critical thinking skills in regards to the location of the sun, moon, and earth. Low intermediate ELL students will be encouraged to consider the visuals as demonstrated. The students will come up with hypothesis about what happens when the sun and moon are in certain positions, and what the positions would be for noon, midnight, and other specific times of day. The teacher will discuss gravity and the orbit of the moon, then students will be asked to consider why the tides might be higher at certain times of the day and what positions, as far as the Moon and Earth are concerned, might cause a lunar or solar eclipse.
Students will be allowed to test theories using the representations of the Sun, Moon, and Earth

Then we will begin guided interaction. Students will gather in groups of four to read about and study the lunar cycles. Students will read an article on lunar phases, using buddy reading comprehension strategies. Each low and high intermediate ELL student will be paired with an advanced proficient ELL student or English native of higher comprehension and reading skills to encourage fluency and understanding. The students will then create an infographic about the lunar cycles, working together to show understanding of the content with numbers, images, and words. In this assignment, level 2 student can help find images which represent the learning as they understand it. The level 3 student can add definitions of vocabulary words covered. The level 5 student can look for facts in the text that might be added to the infographic. The level 4 student can enter the text into the infographic. The students can decide together what facts can be used to fill the chart included in the infographic assignment.  

The Assessment

The teacher will view and assess based on the completeness and thoroughness of the infographics. I will expect students to have represented learned vocabulary, lunar phase, gibbous, crescent, new moon, full moon, solar system, and orbit. Also, I would expect each of the labeled lunar phases to be represented on the infographic. Students should also show understanding of tides and eclipses by representing them alongside their facts on the infographic.

I hope you enjoyed my little lesson plan idea and found it helpful. I think my ELL students, as well as the rest, will benefit from this lesson and the visual manner in which it is initially presented.

                                    

                                    Resources

New Teacher Center. (n.d.) Six Key Strategies for Teachers of English-Language Learners. Retrieved from https://www.suu.edu/ed/fso/resources/esl-six-key-strategies.pdf