An ELL Bridge to Meaningful Learning Experiences

This article is chock full of great strategies for helping our ELL students increase their science understandings. One of the things the article stresses is the need to help the ELL student... See More

This article is chock full of great strategies for helping our ELL students increase their science understandings. One of the things the article stresses is the need to help the ELL student bridge his/her cultural and foreign experiences to the new content knowledge. To enable the teacher to help her student make connections, the article includes a “Previous Science Learning Survey”. The article further explains that the concept of prior knowledge needs to encompass the “ELL student’s native language, previous science learning, native literacy skills, and native cultural knowledge and life experiences (p. 52). A sample lesson on biomes (with a rubric) is used to help explain ways to better teach ELLs. I was amazed at how much useful information was packed into this article. It is a must read for all teachers with ELL students in their classrooms.