Inside: Lesson plan ideas – we all need them! Discover details on how to use the gradual release model to structure class time and meet the needs of ELL students. Bonus – meeting their needs will also meet the needs of other learners in your class.
A Note from Mrs. Price:
You’re standing in front of a classroom of 30 children. Five desks have students with special needs, three desks have students with gifted abilities, two of your students are working through dyslexia, eleven of them failed the standardized test last year, and 5 of them speak English as a second language. Work miracles. I mean, that’s the business we’re in, right?
While we may not have magic wands up our sleeve, we can create lesson plans that empower our students – specifically our students who speak English as a second language. Here’s a little secret, that’s not so secret, good teaching strategies for ELL students are good teaching strategies for all students. Ready to get more bang for your lesson-planning buck?
Listen up as Susan Anderson, an expert in ELL education, shares her heart on using the gradual release model to structure your class and lesson plans. At the end I’ll debrief one of my favorite strategies for working with ELL students.
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Enjoy every word and happy reading!
Mrs. Price
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How it Began
Using gradual release as an outline for my lessons started out as a non-negotiable. It’s what our principal looked for during walk-throughs and evaluations, but it really started to grow on me. Honestly, looking back now I don’t even remember how I structured my lessons before learning gradual release! Not only is it good teaching for any classroom, but it’s great for our English language learners.
Teaching ELL Students means we do a lot of scaffolding. I mean, sometimes we scaffold all period long depending on the student and the topic. Gradual release slowly releases those scaffolds to let the students fly on their own, or see if they are able to. Sometimes this may take part in only one class period, and other times gradual release may span several days.
Detailed View of the Gradual Release Model:
Phase 1: I Do
The “I Do” is where we do our explicit and direct instruction. This is so important for language learners. Think back to your Spanish class you may have taken in college. The instructor always spent a while explaining to you the verb tenses and conjugations (this is what I remember at least). This is where we explain the skills we will be teaching that day. We don’t want to lecture because depending on your student’s proficiency level, they just aren’t going to understand you most of the time.
What do you do instead? Take this time to state your objectives very simply. You can state the original objective by your state first, just follow up with a more simple version after. Use simple language that brings your point across, and then supplement with pictures, videos, realia (objects and materials from everyday life), and translations if needed. I like to incorporate any cool Prezis or other power points I may have found at this point too. This is also a great time to introduce your vocabulary for the day. I personally like to use Calderon’s 7 steps.
You’ll find other ideas for poetry analysis strategies to model on one of my previous posts.
Phase 2: We Do
At this point in your lesson, you should be feeling like you’ve explained as much as you can to the point of not losing their attention. This may be a good time to do a quick check for understanding, then move on to some practice together. This will be with your skill or your grammar focus. I like to start with a think-aloud to show my thinking process, and then move to doing the skill together on a SMART board, white board, Recordex, projected iPad with an app like Show Me Interactive Whiteboard, or any other technology that let’s you share processes with your students. Some of us may still be working with a good old chalkboard, and there is nothing wrong with that! As long as you are doing it together.
Phase 3: They Do
Ok, it’s hard to really know if some of our learners “got it”, but if you know for sure that some of them are not getting it (maybe you are seeing that lost or glazed over look in their eye), check for understanding again and re-explain as needed. Involve those students a little more in your “we do” before going to the next step.
For this part, I make sure to project or write on the whiteboard what I want to be hearing from them while working together. I may also do a role-play with a student so they understand that this is what working together should look like from my point of view. I write down for them the accountable talk they should be practicing and the vocabulary words they should using as well. It is always stressed that using these words does not have to be perfect- we are still learning these words! As a teacher, you should be hearing mostly the target language unless their native language is being used for clarifications. This is where most of their speaking and listening practice comes to play.
Phase 4: You Do
This is where you see if you are a good teacher and your lesson went well (just kidding! You are amazing<3). But really, this is where you find out if your learner can fly alone. They may be answering some text-dependent questions about a text you read, or doing some writing with some sentence stems. Whatever they are doing, it is solo. No copying. No talking. It doesn’t have to be for long; it can even be just one or two sentences! But they must show you mastery of your objective for the day.
Phase 5: Back to Whole Group
Done yet? Nope! We need some closure, and this will really solidify the lesson for them. Connect what you did for the period back to the objectives. Discuss with them how they think they feel they did. This may not come in the form of words just yet- have them show you how they did with picture cards, a Fist to Five, or another exit ticket idea. Make sure you reinforce the skill or concept through homework, bell work, and by returning back to it often. Just because you taught them the skill today doesn’t mean it’ll stick!
And above all, if you feel like that lesson just wasn’t effective or your best, or that there were some of your students who still didn’t grasp the concept- you can always come back to it or extend your lesson a day.”
Susan Anderson has been teaching high school ESL since 2010. She enjoys learning about other languages and cultures, and loves sharing ESL strategies to other teachers in the mainstream and ESL classroom.
You can keep up with Susan through her blog, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook
See you guys – good teaching practices really are best for everyone! Gradual Release Model is phenomenal because it can pair with much of what you are already doing. Thinking Through Quality Questioning, Kagen Cooperative Grouping, Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop, Project Based Learning, and many other instructional models work well with gradual release.
By far, the best benefit of the gradual release model is that it allows for continual monitoring and adjusting. You can go in and out of the steps as you see your students need it.
My favorite way to model a story during the “I Do” portion of the gradual release model is a Narrative Input Chart. (You can find additional ways to use this Project Glad strategy here.)
I used this to help teach summary and increase comprehension with my 6th grade ELL and special needs students.This strategy helped them to have access to grade level text.
Narrative Input Chart
To set-up:
- Choose a text and select quotations from the text that represent the most important events.
- Print images that represent the most important events that you previously selected.
- If using a picture book, I usually make colored copies of the pages.
- Add the quotations from step 1 to the back of the image.
- Laminate.
To use:
- Sit students around you at the board or in a semicircle. (Yes, I even do this with 6th grade – they love it)
- Read the quotes that correspond with the images, and as you do, stick the images to the board. They hang in order, and summarize the story. (First draft read)
- ON your second read, print vocabulary or dialogue (speech bubbles) that come from the story. Pass them out before you re-do the chart. After you retell the story, have students decide which picture their word or speech bubble matches, and attach it to the image.
- After the narrative input chart, have students summarize the story or retell it in their own way.
For more ideas on which mentor texts to use with your narrative input chart, see my post on powerful mentor texts.
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