1. Vygotsky-- emphasises learning as social, student collaboration, ZPD, and scaffolding from the more learned figure in the ZPD
2. All Teachers Are Language Teachers!!! all content areas should assist EL students in language acquisition, providing aid for content-specific language and academic language needed as well.
3. Resource Accessibility to EL's-- not everyone has the same access to technology, a learning-conducive homework environment, or basic school resources at home. It is important to do what you can to level the resource playing field: providing time in computer labs to work on typed assignments, sending a child home with a few extra pencils and paper, etc.
4. The Importance of Home-Life-- EL's background should be used as a resource when it can be, and is something the classroom teacher needs to be aware of in order to better understand how student success isn't only generated in the classroom: home language, cultural norms, parental support, home environment, etc.
5. Bilingualism-- teachers can use bilingual educational strategies in order to help teach a new language: use the language tools an EL have from their L1 acquisition to build L2!
6. MALP (Mutually Adaptive Learning Paradigm)- DeCapua & Marshall-- MALP involves culturally responsive teaching, which means integrating culture into the classroom in order to help EL's in school acquire new material in culturally familiar ways.
7. Bloom's Taxonomy-- Educational Psychology: different tiers of learning type and ability building to higher order thinking. (new domain: remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, creating)
8. WIDA Language Proficiency Levels-- different amounts of scaffolding will be needed for different proficiency levels, as well as different types of language. Lower levels will need everyday vocabulary and usable academic language with basic semantic aid, and the higher levels need more and more semantic aid with advanced vocabulary.
9. Higher-Order Thinking-- encouraging students to ask "why" and not only "what", helping them to think critically and make connections beyond what is given.
10. Tiered Questions-- different tiers of linguistic ability and educational progress. Teachers should create and tiered questions that align with both a student's Bloom level and WIDA Language Proficiency level in order to properly assess a student based on the levels they are at
11. Cooperative Learning Strategies--classroom scaffolding provided by peers. For EL's, peer group can offer additional support as well as reinforcement of good linguistic learned habits. Having students explain cncepts to one another also helps them grow in their understanding and ability to explain. A few examples are think-pair-share and roundtable discussions.
12. Correction--How you correct student errors is important in building student self efficacy and esteem. Correction models include: explicit, clarification, recast, meta-linguistic, elicitation, and repetition. There are pro's and con's to each of these, meaning the big take-away is to know their uses well enough to situationally decide what type of correction the student needs. (Public explicit correction may not always be best, but may be needed at times if the errors call to be addressed straightforwardly.. Recasting, or restating the student thought with the correct term or usage in your phrase, models correct speech without directly correcting, for example. )
