An excerpt from the last Ed. Services English Learner Newsletter

ELL Considerations for Common Core Aligned Tasks in English Language Arts

Adapted from NYC Dept. of Education

Scaffolding: A Tool to Accessibility

Scaffolding is a tool for our English learners to be access the rigor of the Common Core Standards; they need temporary scaffolds to help them access the curriculum. Knowing when to removing them when they are no longer needed is the key to their value for ELL’s.  Because students learn at their own pace one student may no longer need scaffolds, while another might still depend on them. Constant monitoring and evaluation of learning is critical in assuring that scaffolds are successfully used.

Scaffolding types necessary for ELLs to access the core:

1. Modeling: finished products of prior students’ work, teacher-created samples, sentence starters/frames, writing frameworks, shared writing, etc.

2. Text representation: transforming a piece of writing into a pictorial representation, changing one genre into another, etc.

3. Building Schema: bridging prior knowledge and experience to new concepts and ideas, etc.

4. Activating and bridging prior knowledge and/or experiences: using graphic organizers, such as anticipatory guides, extended anticipatory guide, semantic maps, interviews, picture walk discussion

protocols, think-pair-share, KWL, etc.

5. Metacognitive development: self assessment, think alouds, asking clarifying questions, using a rubric for self evaluation, etc.

6. Contextualization: metaphors, realia, pictures, audio and video clips, newspapers, magazines, etc.