Teaching ELL Students in the Elementary Grades

This chapter presents information regarding teaching ELL students with high incidence disabilities in the mild to moderate range. Specific disabilities to be discussed are learning disabilities, dyslexia, cognitive impairments, and autism. Identification procedures and implications for the individual education plan are offered. Learning characteristics that are manifested with these disabilities are explored. Instructional strategies that are most effective for children with these disabilities are explained. The impact of ELL on the disability is discussed. Accommodations to instructional strategies for ELL students are suggested. The misidentification of ELL students as having a disability is examined as well as misplacement into special education.

Striving Toward Biliteracy in Mainstream, English as a Second Language, and Bilingual Classrooms

The development of biliteracy among English language learners (ELLs) has been established as a critical issue in education policy and practice. We live in an era of increasing globalization, which results in increased numbers of immigrants in the United States. As a result, significant proportions of students in U.S. schools come from homes where English is not used as the primary language; however, these students, as emergent bilinguals, are required to navigate language and culture in mainstream, English as a Second Language, and bilingual classrooms contexts. This chapter considers the challenges that emergent bilingual students face in elementary school contexts. In addition, specific research-based strategies are outlined for teachers working with ELLs in mainstream, English as a Second Language, or bilingual classrooms. Lastly, the authors explore how multiliteracy approaches and pedagogy might shape ELLs' identity formation.

The Reality of Teaching Young ELLs in a Pull-Out Program

The chapter focuses on the specifics of working with elementary school English language learners in ESOL pull-out programs. The authors, a TESOL professor and two ESOL pull-out teachers in elementary schools, examine the role of the ESOL program instructor in this type of academic setting. To give the readers a better idea of what the job of an ESOL pull-out teacher entails, the chapter presents portions of teacher interviews offering insights from two elementary pull-out programs. It provides first-hand accounts of real life experiences of instructors in established programs. They not only reflect on what it is like to teach ELLs in this type of program, but also offer practical suggestions, as well as comment on additional programs and services, such as summer school and after school academy, available to ELLs in their district. The goal of the chapter is to better familiarize elementary educators currently working in districts with pull-out programs or those considering this option as a career choice, and to better prepare them for the realities of everyday work.

Reaching Rigor for English Learners Through Responsive Interactions of Care

This chapter explores what happens when teacher-student and student-student interactions reflect a higher level of responsiveness to the human beings involved. It describes biography-driven instruction (BDI), a research-based method of instruction that supports all learners to reach high academic standards, while at the same time ensuring that English learners have the scaffolds and tools needed to engage fully in the curriculum. Teachers who implement BDI develop a holistic understanding of students' sociocultural, linguistic, cognitive, and academic dimensions. They use students' background knowledge as a springboard to new learning. To determine the impact of BDI on the education of English learners in elementary classrooms, this chapter explores the perspectives of 16 teachers (Grades 1-6) who received professional development on BDI and then implemented the method with their own communities of learners. Interview data was collected in Spring 2016, transcribed, and qualitatively analyzed. Findings in the form of themes in participant voice are discussed throughout the chapter.

Dimensions of Success Integrating the C3 Framework and ESL Instruction

This chapter provides a theoretical foundation for considering how the four dimensions of the C3 (i.e., college, career, and civic life) framework may be used as a means to provide English language learners (ELLs) with equitable access to academic language and content instruction within the context of an elementary social studies classroom. In addition, this chapter offers insight in preparing students, especially ELLs, for the demands of civic life. The authors approach this discussion by narratively modeling a lesson plan targeting a second grade, ESL, social studies classroom. This chapter seeks to integrate research-based practices within both the social studies and ESL frameworks while illustrating the feasibility of using the C3 framework to serve the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse student populations.

Building Academic Language Through Innovation

Academic language instruction, exposure, and proficiency are increasingly the focus of research, curricula, and pedagogy within the field of English language teaching. Yet, academic language is more than lexicon, encompassing context-specific and content-driven spoken and written discourse in a large range of registers, each with its own quirks, features, and discourse patterns. We must, then, engage students in developing and practicing academic language in authentic communicative experiences—experiences we may have limited time to add to the curriculum. Thus, innovative approaches to these experiences are needed. Consequently, the aim of this chapter is to present one such innovative approach: incorporating making, tinkering, and collaborating into the classroom. Direct connections between communicative language teaching and the theoretical grounding of making in the classroom are highlighted, in addition to specific pedagogical advice and examples that empower language teachers to purposefully teach with a maker's mind.

Elementary English Language Learners

During the last decade, the United States has witnessed an influx of multicultural and multilingual students, especially the dramatically increasing number of students at elementary level, which accounts for 85% of native born (). However, most of teachers still lack professional developments in teaching those increasing population. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to synthesize different studies to address the most common misconceptions on how elementary English language learners learn English as a second language and teachers' pedagogical practices. This chapter ends with some recommendations, solutions, and future directions for researchers to advance teachers' pedagogical practices, so they can best serve this increasing population in the U.S. school system.

Teaching Reading to Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Elementary Students

The number of English language learners is increasing rapidly in U.S schools. The academic success of these students is a national concern since ELLs lag behind their peers in reading and math, and they have high drop-out rate. Reading is one of the hardest topics for ELL students. This chapter analyzes some common reasons why ELLs lag behind their peers in reading classes, provides some solutions to overcome these challenges, and provides some implications to teach ELLs better for elementary teachers.

Using Brain-Based Instruction to Optimize Early Childhood English Language Education

Neuroscience has given educators new insights into how the brain learns at different developmental stages and practical ways to use those findings in the classroom to optimize student learning. Current studies provide a biologically driven framework for planning and implementing effective instruction called brain-based instruction. Brain-based instruction is a comprehensive approach to learning and teaching grounded in cognitive neuroscience research that is concerned with perception, action, memory, language, and selective attention. This chapter introduces brain-based approach to learning and teaching and how it could be incorporated in earl ELL education especially early childhood classroom. It reviews how the brain learns and how this knowledge is important for ELL teachers. In addition, educational implications of brain-based education are provided particularly for language arts instruction, classroom environment, and assessment.

Lost in Comprehension

The reading education of English language learners (ELLs) has been established as a critical issue in education policy and practice. Due to rapid growth of immigration to the United States, significantly increasing numbers of students in U.S. schools come from homes in which English is not the primary language. These students often face challenges in learning to read in school, and data has shown a significant achievement gap between ELLs and non-ELLs. This chapter discusses these difficulties, along with specific research-based strategies that mainstream teachers can utilize to assist ELLs in learning to read. Lastly, the authors explore multimodal learning as a potential support for ELLs learning in the classroom.