What to add/change in

your classroom?

Whole Brain Teaching

Labeling

Labeling helps Ell students understand your

classroom and how it operates.
By having the English and Spanish word next
to a picture of the item it is placed next to
gives the ELL student more chances to read
and speak English. They also have a nonlinguistic representation of it.

Hand Gestures
To go along with the labels, hand gestures
assist ELL students because they can visually
see what your are verbally saying. When using
the words labelled and those not labelled,
touch the item that you are talking about.
Example: Class, can I please have you line up
at the door. While you say this, walk over to
the door and touch it.

What is it?

Our goal is to create peaceful classrooms full

of orderly fun. Thousands of teachers believe
we're on the right track. At the root of Whole
Brain Teaching is a large amount of highly
structured, educational tomfoolery. Students
learn the most when they are having fun.
Whole Brain Teaching classrooms are full of
task-focused laughter. Humor and games are
used to increase the number of times students
repeat core information and practice basic
skills. Our classes are highly disciplined and
tightly organized because students have more
fun following our rules, than ignoring them.

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How it works with ELL students

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To learn more:
www.wholebrainteaching.com

By implementing Whole Brain Teaching

techniques in your classroom you can get your
ELL students involved more and talking. Since
the entire class will be talking at once, the ELL
student will feel more comfortable to speak
up. In addition, the grouping method will have
the student interacting with other students
more. This will increase their time talking
which will help them become fluent in English.

Survival Guide
Preparing yourself, your lesson
plans, and your classroom to
accommodate an ELL student

Teach using the Sheltered

Instruction Observational
Protocol (SIOP)

You can find many textbooks online that can assist

you with adapting your classroom and lesson ideas.

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Here are aspects of the SIOP lesson plan that you

need to make sure you add to all of your lessons.
There are examples of how you can edit your lesson
plans so ELL students can understand the content
better. You can look online for more resources and
ideas.

1. Lesson Preparation

Content objectives must be clearly stated,

displayed and reviewed with students. Language
objectives must be clearly stated, displayed and
reviewed with students. Content concepts must
be appropriate for age and educational
background of ELL students. It takes time to
create lesson plans using this method but the
outcome can be eective for ELL students
understanding.

2. Building Background

6. Practice/ Application

Make sure concepts are explicitly linked to the

students background experiences. Provide
background and discuss (orally, video, or read
aloud). Partner reading that includes checking
o a list to indicate what you know, do not
know, or what is confusing. Provide explicit links
between past learning and new concepts.

Students need to have hands on materials

provided so they can practice using new
content knowledge in the classroom. There also
needs to be activities where students can apply
their content and language knowledge. They
need to practice speaking English if they want
to become fluent.

3. Comprehensible Input

7. Lesson Delivery

This involves an eort to make the lesson

understandable through a variety of means. You
need to make sure your speech is appropriate
for the students level of understanding (avoid
idioms). There needs to be clear an explanation
of tasks and models to follow. There also needs
to be a variety of techniques used to make
content concepts clear (gestures, models,
repeated exposures).

The language and content objectives need to

be clearly supported during the lesson delivery.
The students need to be engaged during the
entire lesson or they will not retain the
information. You need to also pace your lesson
appropriately based on the students ability
levels.

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4. Strategies
There needs to be opportunities provided for
students to use learning strategies (previewing a
story, making connections to real life,
highlighting, and taking notes). The goal is that
students will be engaged in these strategies
while they are reading, listening, speaking, and
writing. In addition, the ultimate goal is for them
to develop independence and self monitoring.

5. Interaction
Support language and content objective through
grouping configurations (large, small, and pairs).
Provide sucient wait time for student
responses. Have students elaborate their
responses (not just yes or no answers).

8. Review & Assessment

Make sure you review vocabulary everyday. In
addition, there needs to be regular feedback
provided to the student so they know where
they are improving and where they may need
some help. You need to make sure that you are
assessing students throughout the entire
lesson using the content and language
objectives.