Teach Now (Teacher Certification): Planning for English Language Learners

Module 2 Unit 4 Activity 3

Planning for English Language Learners

At the beginning of next semester, I will be teaching my university ELLs a unit about food. In this unit we will learn about different tastes and textures, positive, neutral, and negative adjectives about food, and also explore where different types of dishes come from.  *I have to ask students at the beginning of this class if anyone is allergic to any type of food just to be cautious and safe.

·         Level: University English language Learners

·         Subject: Food

·         Objective: Students will be able to recognize and describe what their food tastes like, if they like what they are eating, and also be able to identify where the dish originates from.

·         Activity: I bring in different types of food i.e. candy, coffee, Tabasco sauce, cream cheese, chips, lemon juice, bread, and a sleeping mask. After teaching my lesson, we always do a blind taste test as it is more authentic, memorable, and students love seeing each other’s reaction.

Stage 1: Pre-Production

This is the period where the students don’t talk too much and they may be parroting. They might have had anywhere from 10 hours to 6 months exposure to English. Their receptive vocabulary is about 500 words but they are not yet talking. These new ELLs respond well to visuals and TPR works well with them. Teachers should focus on building their receptive vocabulary.

1.    Students will be shown different types of slides on a PowerPoint/Prezi with picture of one food item: lemon, limes, oranges, vinegar

2.    I would make a facial expression regarding that taste.

3.    Students will repeat “sour” after me and when I lay out the different types of food I brought, I would have them point at the sour food item (lemon). I would repeat this with all the other food items that I brought.

4.    Then I would put a thumbs up for good, or thumbs down for bad or shake my hand to describe a neutral feeling towards food.

Stage 2: Early Production

In this stage, students increase their receptive and active vocabulary to about 1000 words. They have about 3-6 months – 1 year exposure to English. They can use one or two word phrases and answer simple yes/no questions.

1.    Repeat step 1 and 2 from the pre-production stage.

2.    I would let the students repeat “sour” after me and instead of getting students to point at the sour food item (lemon), I would pick up a different food item and ask them, “Is this sour?”, and they can answer with “Yes/No.”

3.    Instead of with only gestures, I would ask them to use words such as “good”, “bad” or “so-so” to describe what the food tastes like.

Stage 3: Speech Emersion

Students expand their vocabulary to around 3000 words. They may have had 1 - 3 years of exposure to the English language. They can also communicate in simple phrases or sentences though they may make some grammatical errors. They can read and understand short stories and can do some content work with help.

1.    Repeat step 1 from pre-production, but I would also include slides food from different countries so they can identify different types of foods.

2.    I would explain the different tastes with facial expressions and a short simple explanation i.e. “Lemons taste sour.”

3.    We would have the blind taste test and I would ask simple questions like, “ What does it taste like?” and they can answer with “sour” or “It’s sour.”

4.    They I can take the blind fold out and ask my student if they liked it or not and they can answer in a short sentence such as, “ I didn’t like it” or “yes, I liked it”.

Stage 4: Intermediate Fluency

In this stage, the students develop their vocabulary to 6000 words. They may have 3-4 years of exposure to the English language. They are beginning to use more complex sentences and can express their opinions and feelings when speaking. There will be struggles and errors with more complex English grammar and sentence structures but they will also understand more intricate concepts.

Stage 5: Advanced Fluency

In this period, students will be near to near-native in their ability to perform in content area learning and they will be proficient in English. They will have exposure to the English language from 4-10 years. In the beginning of this stage they will still need help from the teacher on content areas such as history and social studies.

1.    At this stage, I describe the different tastes; get my students to come up with a few more that aren’t on my list.

2.    We explore adjectives and modifiers to describe food i.e. “Lemons are very sour and a little salty.”

3.    We talk about different countries’ cuisine and culture.

4.    We do the blind taste test and they have to intricately describe the taste of what they ate, the texture, and the extent to which they liked the food, and their reasons.

5.    I usually show them the Kimchi Chronicles (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymUMMUWToSc) afterwards and have a worksheet prepared for them where they have to explain what they watched, the texture of some of the dishes shown and their opinion on culture and food.

References:

1. Hayes, Judie. "Stages of Second Language Acquisition." . everythingESL.net, 1 Jan. 2005. Web. 10 June 2014. <http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/language_stages.php>.

2. "Second Language Acquisition - ESOL Levels." . Webmaster, 1 Jan. 2005. Web. 10 June 2014. <http://esol.coedu.usf.edu/esolcase/eslevel.htm>.

3. Robertson, Kristina , and Karen Ford. "Language Acquisition: An Overview." . ¡Colorín Colorado!, 1 Jan. 2011. Web. 10 June 2014. <http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/26751/>.