In my class I have 4 ESL students; each one in a different stage of language adquisition.
The first student is on speech emergent stage. He has moved to the country three months ago. He comes from France, so his native language is french. He studied English at school, so his reading comprehension and writing is more advanced than his speaking and listening. At home he speaks french, but he speaks english with friends. He is shy and afraid to make some grammar or speaking errors.
The second student, is on beginning fluency stage. She comes from Mexico, so she has been exposed to English since she was a child, but never speak it for communicate with others. At home she speaks Spanish, but TV and movies are watched in English. She is very talkative and doesn´t worry to make errors, she know that the better way to improve her Enlglish is practising it.
The third student is on intermediate fluency stage. He comes from German, where the English is taught since kindergarden. His parents (which work for an international company) had worked in many countries, so he has studied in several british and american schools. The language spoken at home is German, but he speaks and write emails with friends of his previous schools. He is kind and talkative. He also participate in the classroom.
The last student is on advanced fluency stage. She comes from Norway, and she has been exposed to English since the nursery. She is new in the country, she moved two moths ago. At home she speaks in norwegian with her parents and english with her friends. She also watch TV and read books in English. She was studying in an american school in Norway. She is shy and doesn´t like to participate so much in class, but when the teacher asks her a question she responds in a very accurate English and with a lot of confidence.
Next month I´m planning to teach a ninth grade unit on mitosis. The ESL strategy I am going to follow is:
Before explain the lesson:
- Prepare a specific vocabulary glossary. The student can use it to familiarize with the new concepts. For the explanation of these concepts I will try to simplify the grammar structure and the words in the definition.
- Prepare visuals that can help the students remember the specific vocabulary learnt during the lesson. Some of this visuals can be the differents phases of the mitosis and the cell´s components that participate in this process.
The visuals can be similar to these images
While the explanation:
- Use visuals such posters or videos.
- Introduce new vocabulary making sure that the ESL students know the meaning
- Ask short question to speech emergent and beggining fluency students. The questions could be like "Which are the names of the phases that we could find in this process?" The answer is short and will help them to feel more confident in the classroom. The more advanced students can answer more complex questions like "Can you tell me the most important thing that happens in the metaphase?"
After the lesson:
- All the ESL will have a native english speaker peer to do all the assignments. That will help them to socialize in english and get involve in the english community.
