This article is the second in a two-office series on supporting ELL literacy, sponsored by Middlebury Interactive Languages. Click here to read the get-go post in the serial.

In recent years, many schools take raised the bar on writing educational activity. Nosotros at present look middle and high school students to do the kind of written assay and critique that was once limited to the college classroom.

When you lot teach English-linguistic communication learners (ELLs), the business organisation is that this kind of increased expectation tin atomic number 82 to an fifty-fifty wider achievement gap. That'due south why we recently asked educators in our WeAreTeachers Helpline group to share their best tips for scaffolding writing teaching for ELLs at the secondary level. Hither's what they had to say:

  1. Consider writing in their native languages: If your students are at "entering" or "first" WIDA levels, y'all might consider assuasive them to write in their native languages and and so to use a translator app or tool to translate their work. Be certain to spend some time comparison the ii versions side by side so that students can begin to see what their ideas and thought processes look like in English.
  2. Utilise dictation: "I have students use Dragon Dictation to dictate their responses out loud," says instructor Erin K. "And so I work with the students to teach them to group topics together into paragraphs and to utilise a dictionary and thesaurus to add detail words."
  3. Review writing prompts: "I give ELL students the same writing assignments as the rest of the kids, just I brand certain to define any unfamiliar words in the prompt itself," says Emily B. Exercise a verbal cheque for understanding before students offset writing to avert defoliation and frustration downwardly the road.
  4. Give students sentence stems: It'due south a practiced idea to give students sentence stems and phrases for the different types of writing y'all will be doing all year long. And so provide a narrative-writing word bank, an argumentative word bank and an advisory give-and-take bank, for instance.
  5. Encourage outlining: If writing full sentences is a challenge, encourage outlining as a starting time pace. "I had a pupil who couldn't write a paragraph in 11th form," says Lauren P. "So I gave him the same assignments just had him bullet-point his ideas. We and so worked ane-on-ane to form sentences. We started with just one well-developed paragraph, only as the year progressed, he'd write a little more."
  6. Provide models from literature: "For example," says Erin. M., "if we were writing a reflective piece, I would prove them paragraphs or selections from favorite books or articles that were cogitating to use as examples for structure and fifty-fifty word use."
  7. Attempt the four-foursquare writing method: In this model, students simply divide a piece of paper into four sections to use as a graphic organizer for persuasive or informational writing. They write their topic/argument at the middle and and then one reason or merits with supporting details in each of the iv boxes. As students progress, you lot can encourage them to add together more details and testify to their graphic organizers.
  8. Grade selectively: Choose ane or ii skills that yous desire to target for each writing consignment, and focus the majority of your grading and commentary on those skills. For English language-linguistic communication learners, sometimes those skills might exist nigh language acquisition (e.g., vocabulary, syntax), and other times, y'all might want to focus on a deeper understanding of writing (due east.g., statement building).

Want more back up for your English language-linguistic communication learners? Larn more about Middlebury Interactive Languages' exciting new curriculum focused on closing the ELL achievement gap.

8 Ways to Scaffold Writing Instruction