Sheltered Lesson

The teacher in this video has many strategies to promote comprehension.

Pre-reading:  She makes connections to background knowledge, or has the student relate it to their own countries.  Then she will preview vocabulary and provide the students with vocabulary cards. She uses questioning to get them thinking about the reading.  She will provide synonyms for words that the students may not know.  Then she may have the students provide vocabulary from their native language, or have them repeat something in the language that they are talking about. 

The teacher makes sure to write everything down or provides examples for the students.  She makes sure the directions are explicit verbally and visually.  It is important that lessons are provided that is the same content that the other students are receiving just that is more accessible.

The students seem very comfortable with their teacher.  One student even sings the birthday song to provide an example of something from their culture.  Students use post it notes to write any questions down, or things they might be confused about.  They do this before the lesson and after.

When the teacher reads aloud she slows down and emphasizes important vocabulary words.  They have been working on inference up to this point so the teacher makes sure to let them know that their guess may not always be right.  The teacher than has them visualize what is happening in the story.  All of this is done with many repetitions and a lot of modeling.  ELL students needs this to process information.  The teacher has the students think about the text, in text-text and text-self, always relating it to their own background.

Students are encouraged to interact with each other, and even talk in their native language.  They can then help each other to make connections in English and Spanish.

The whole lesson concludes with a review of key vocabulary and inferencing. The part I like the most was the post it notes.  Students were able to put their thoughts about the story down and put it on the board.  This way the teacher really understood what they got and did not get.  It was a great interaction between teacher and student.