Early Production

Speech Emergence

Beginning Fluency

Intermediate Fluency

Advanced Fluency

*Usually lasts 6 weeks or longer.

-Minimal Comprehension

-Silent Period

-Nods 'Yes' or 'No'

-Draws & points rather than speaks

Teacher Prompts:

-Show me..

-Circle the...

-Where is...

-Who has...

Teaching Strategies:

-Gesture, point and show as much as possible.

-Speak slowly and use shorter words, but use correct English phrasing

-Emphasize listening comprehension by using read-alouds and music.

-Avoid excessive error correction. Reinforce learning by modeling correct language usage when students make mistakes.

Student Behavior:

-Limited comprehension

-Produces one or two word responses

-Participates using key words and familiar phrases

-Uses present tense verbs

Teacher Prompts:

-Yes/No questions

-Either/Or questions

-One or two word answers

-Lists

-Labels

Teaching Strategies:

-Ask students to point to pictures and say the new word.

-Have students work in pairs or small groups to discuss a problem. Have literate students write short sentences or words in graphic organizers.

-Avoid excessive error correction. Reinforce learning by modeling correct usage.

Student Behaviors:

-Good comprehension

-Produces simple sentences

-Makes grammar and pronunciation errors

- Vocabulary continues to increase and errors begin to decrease, especially in common or repeated interactions.

Teacher Prompts:

-Why...

-How...

-Explain...

-Phrase or short-sentence answers

Teaching Strategies:

-Ask questions that require a short answer and are fairly literal.

-Introduce new academic vocabulary and model how to use it in a sentence.

-Provide visuals and make connections with student's background knowledge as much as possible.

-Provide minimal error correction. Focus only on correction that directly interferes with meaning. Reinforce learning by modeling the correct usage.

-Speech is fairly fluent in social situations with minimal errors.

-New contexts and academic language are challenging and the individual will struggle to express themselves due to gaps in vocabulary and appropriate phrases.

Teaching Prompts:
-Think/Pair/Share

Teaching Strategies:

-Have students work in pairs and groups to discuss content.

-Re-phrase incorrect statements in correct English, or ask the student if they know another way to say it.

-Continue to provide visual support and vocabulary development.

-Correct errors that interfere with meaning, and pre-identify errors that will be corrected in student writing, such as verb-tense agreement. Only correct the errors agreed upon.

-You may want to assist in improving pronunciation by asking a student to repeat key vocabulary and discussing how different languages have different sounds.

Student Behaviors:

-Excellent comprehension

-Few grammatical errors

Teacher Prompts:

-What would happen if...

-Why do you think...

Teaching Strategies:

-Use graphic organizers and thinking maps and check to make sure the student is filling them in with details. Challenge the student to add more.

-Introduce more academic skills, such as brainstorming, prioritizing, categorization, summarizing and compare and contrast.

-Starting at this level, students need more correction/feedback, even on errors that do not directly affect meaning.

-It may also be helpful to discuss language goals with the student so you can assist in providing modeling and correction in specified areas.

-Near native level of speech

Teacher Prompts:

-Decide if...

-Retell...

Teaching Strategies:

-Offer challenge activities to expand the student's vocabulary knowledge such as identifying antonyms, synonyms and the use of a thesaurus and dictionary.

-Demonstrate effective note-taking and provide a template.

-Offer error correction on academic work and on oral language. Because students at this stage have achieved near-native fluency, they benefit from support in fine-tuning their oral and written language skills.

• words alone cannot convey meaning to ELLs

• Seeing is remembering. Seeing is understanding.

• Doing is knowing

• Words alone cannot convey meaning to ELLs!