“Stretching Language”: Supporting ELLs in Building Academic Vocabulary

“Stretching” language is an essential but underrated way educators can teach academic language to students, especially those who are acquiring English as an additional language.

Incorporating new and infrequently used vocabulary into our linguistic repertoire is not easy – even for adults. As educators, we must often adopt new terminology to align our practice and professional discourse with ever-evolving instructional strategies.

For example, I probably never used the phrase “phonemic awareness” as a middle school teacher. But as foundational literacy or “science of reading” approaches have quickly become part of my day-to-day work, I kept running into the phrase.

But once I encountered the word a few times, and was compelled to use it in conversations with colleagues, it became a term I felt comfortable using. In short, I needed to find ways to “stretch” my language usage to make it a word I could use comfortably.

Students are constantly learning new, infrequently used words every day in Ontario classrooms, particularly in subjects like math, science, and social studies. But in order for them to make those words easy to retrieve and use, they must have opportunities for practice.

The practice of using new academic words is even more challenging for English language learners (ELLs), who may also be learning everyday social language as they learn subject-specific vocabulary. As educators, it is important that we create opportunities for students to “stretch” their linguistic abilities so they build language skills for academic success.

What does it mean to help Students “Stretch” Language?

Stretching language, as Pauline Gibbons points out in her book, Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning, is all about compelling students to step beyond their linguistic comfort zones. It is an essential element for teaching ELLs in the mainstream classroom: pushing students into their zone of proximal development, and encouraging to take risks with words.

We can start by “front loading” new words and phrases when we start a lesson or unit of study. It is important not to overwhelm students too much with too many new words at once. Personally, I find that 2-3 words is great for elementary students including ELLs.

One great way to introduce new words is to use a strategy like picture word inductive model. This might involve projecting a detailed image related to the content on a white board and getting students involved in labelling it, and adding more “academic” versions of more commonly used words. For example, imagine a picture of a tractor plowing through a field of wheat. Students might come up with words like “tractor,” or “crops,” and the teacher might bring in words like “agriculture” or “commercial farming”.

You might also encourage students to notice new vocabulary in a video, information text, or article. Capture those words on a word wall or chart paper. Point out any morphological elements, like prefixes or suffixes to help students create meaning.Next is the fun part – getting students to use the new words in conversation.

“Strive for Five” Conversations: a Strategy for Stretching Language

One resource that explains how to stretch language effectively is Strive for Five Conversations, by Tricia A. Zucker and Sonia Q. Cabell. In this book, the authors focus on how oral comprehension and speaking skills support reading and language acquisition. How? For most people, talking and interacting in a target language is essential to learning how to read and communicate with it. Through hearing words and connecting their sounds with contextual meaning, we learn language. And in the case of English, once those sounds and meanings are learned, we can map them on to alphabetic code.

How does Strive-for-Five work?

Strive for five is a 5-turn conversation a teacher would have with a student while they are engaging in learning tasks, independently or in small groups.

1. Teacher asks an open-ended question
2. Student responds
3. Teacher responds with an upward or downward scaffold depending on whether they need a challenge or support.
4. Student responds
5. Teacher expands, and may incorporate academic vocabulary to help the student build their ability to understand and use more content-specific language.

Of course, there are a number of directions these conversations can go, and the authors do an amazing job of unpacking different scenarios. The main takeaway is that these simple conversations are a high impact way of getting students to stretch their academic language through meaningful talk. The book contains easy to reference scaffolding charts, plus examples of Strive for Five conversations in different contexts.

For example, classroom teacher might have important vocabulary listed on a word wall in the classroom. A sample conversation with an MLL about the water cycle might sound like this.

Teacher: What is happening in that picture? (points at graphic of the water cycle in a student science resource).

Student: The water is drying up, then it makes a cloud.

Teacher: Oh – I see what you mean, it is evaporating. That’s the word for drying in the water cycle. And then the condensation forms a cloud. And then what happens?

Student: The water goes back to the earth as rain from the cloud.

Teacher: Yes! That’s also called precipitation. First there’s evaporation, then condensation, and precipitation. 

Final Thoughts

“Stretching” language is an easy-to-implement instructional strategy that complements content based instruction for elementary learners, and will support students’ abilities to read and understand texts with increasing amounts of academic language. Using strategies like PWIM and Strive for Five can support ELLs as they work to acquire academic vocabulary as they learn English.

It is pretty typical to wonder how newcomer students who are just starting to learn English acquire the language in a mainstream classroom. Educators often ask: what will the student even learn in the classroom if they cannot understand what I am saying? How can I even assess this student?

Most professional learning about English language learners (ELLs), or multilingual language learners (MLLs) address this topic by focusing on program adaptation and instructional tips. I’m not convinced that those approaches have always been effective, especially since we don’t often think about language acquisition from the perspective of the learner.

This blog will first focus on exactly how students learn English, or the language of instruction, in Ontario. We will then explore practical ways educators can enhance language acquisition through instruction and program adaptations, using a student-centred perspective.

How do We Learn a New Language?

Language learning is something that most Canadian teachers are familiar with to some degree. Even if you haven’t invested time in learning an additional language, you still live in a bilingual country where everything from road signs and toothpaste labels are in at least two different languages. At this point, you have probably learned a handful of French words and phrases, simply by reading and re-reading environmental print.

As someone who has spent a considerable amount of time language learning and travelling in places where English is not typically the first language spoken, I can confidently say that a lot of the best learning I have experienced comes from listening, attempting to decode environmental print, and having to interact with others in practical situations like asking for directions or purchasing something.

Yes, explicit instruction makes a big difference. When you take time to learn a new language in a class, study and complete activities from a language learning activity book, or consult a phrase book or digital translator, you can enter a linguistically foreign context armed with much more background knowledge that helps you to navigate situations more easily.

It is no different for newcomer students (students that have recently arrived to Canada for the first time) that enter a new country, community, school, and classroom. Many students come with some background knowledge of English learned in school or through media exposure. Others may not, and will be exposed to English for the first time during the time they join your classroom.

In either case, you will want to consider the environment you work in and the content you teach  to be two powerful pathways newcomer students can acquire English language skills.

A Quick Note on Content

It is important to note that much of the content you use will not teach English as a second or additional language explicitly, especially if you are teaching older students in the intermediate grades. Because you are teaching curriculum to a large and diverse group of students, it is important to reframe the way you think about how your teaching will land differently with a newcomer student.

One way to understand content based instruction to ELLs is to put yourself in their shoes. Find a piece of content on an academic topic in another language using a search engine. Watch a news report in a language you are completely unfamiliar with.

What information can you actually extract or learn from that text, or piece of content? What would you need to make that content more comprehensible?

We will explore how to reframe the content you teach by making it more comprehensible in the second part of this blog.

Language Acquisition through the Learning Environment

Let’s get back to focusing on the learning environment – how might a newcomer student acquire English by simply being in the classroom?

You have may have heard about the Reggio Emilia philosophy of peers being the “second teacher”, and the classroom being “the third teacher”. When an environment is set up effectively for learners with opportunities to explore and problem-solve, they can be active participants in their own learning.

While this concept has roots in learning in the early years, it can also be incredibly relevant to supporting language development in older, newcomer students that are acquiring English while learning alongside non-ELL peers in a mainstream class environment.

Perhaps more importantly, it leverages an additional teaching resource – the environment; in other words, your classroom is also doing some of the work! Consider “tweaking” your classroom for English language development by taking the following actions:

• Label common objects (ex. Whiteboard, clock, garbage can, computers, bins, etc.). You can even add labels in the home languages of your students if they have literacy skills in those languages.
• Include literacy materials around the class that address a range of different reading levels. For example, display non-fiction texts that have lots of features like subheadings, pictures, and table of contents. Have a selection of graphic novels and picture books that students can explore.
• Make a large scale timetable for students to reference, with visuals or symbols that support the subject being learned during a specific period.
• Provide opportunities for informal, low risk conversations among students in small groups or play games in large groups. Listening is a rich way for ELLs to acquire language, and all students benefit from activities that build community.
• Encourage all students in the class to use translation tools to bridge communication gaps in spontaneous conversation.
• Use the outdoors as much as possible, whether it is time for unstructured play and socializing or a guided walk through nature or the community. Language acquisition is powerful when the learning is experiential, and you are referring to concrete elements. The break from the classroom environment and tech also supports your students well-being.
• Have charts with common sentence starters and frequently used academic language (ex. transition words, mathematical vocabulary) posted around your room and refer to them frequently as you teach.
• Leverage phonics resources like sound walls in the classroom to help students, including ELLs, with their decoding skills.

The Learning Environment is Just a Starting Point

Setting up your learning environment to support language development for newcomer ELLs is just a starting point. The main takeaway is that you can support English language acquisition through “implicit” forms of instruction instead of relying solely on program adaptation and explicit instruction – which we will explore in this blog series!

It can seem overwhelming to have emergent speakers of English in your mainstream classroom, especially when you are balancing the needs of the rest of your class. As we have explored in the previous two parts of this blog series, it is critical to leverage the learning environment and student peers as part of your program. The third element involves critically examining and tweaking your direct instruction while always keeping language development in mind.

So what does the instruction you provide as a teacher look like when you have newcomer ELLs in your class who are just starting to learn the language of instruction? While there are many ways to approach this topic, I will focus on how to reframe content based instruction for all learners.

Critically Examine the Content you Plan to Teach

Re-examining the content you are going to teach, especially if you are a teacher of intermediate ELLs, is important. A few key questions to consider are:

• What are the language demands of the content?
• Will an early STEP ELL be able to understand the texts and media resources of the lesson?
• What can be done to make the content more comprehensible?
• What can I do in my teaching to make the content comprehensible?

When the learning is content based (Ex. Science or social studies), and reading is involved, encourage early STEP ELLs to use tools like multilingual dictionaries or translation tools. When students have literacy in their home language, it is an important and critical skill they can leverage to access the curriculum and continue building their literacy skills.

Offer simplified versions of the content when possible, or bring in media resources like videos and audio. Slow the pace of the video or audio, and use subtitles and text forms so that students can follow along as best they can develop phonological awareness in English.

Set Appropriate Learning Expectations to Assess

Setting learning expectations for ELLs that are aligned with STEP will help you be more intentional with your instruction and also provide you with a starting point for assessment. When you have a sense of which learning goals will support and challenge your ELLs, you can design tasks, report and assess with purpose.

To do this, consider where the student is on the STEP continua in the areas of reading, oral communication, and writing. Your school should have this information documented, or you can start by printing out the continua (you can find the different continua with a quick search or check out www.ergo-on.ca).

Then, consider the curriculum expectations you are teaching and plan to assess and develop an appropriate learning goal for the student. Here is an example:

Grade 7: Syntax and Sentence Structure

B3.1 use their knowledge of sentence types and forms to construct sentences that communicate ideas effectively, including using and creating complex sentences that combine phrases and clauses to express relationships among ideas.

Modified for a STEP 1 (Writing) student:

“Student will communicate their ideas using translanguaging tools and scaffolds like models and sentence frames to create simple sentences in English.”

Once you adapt learning expectations a few times, it becomes much easier to understand what you can do to scaffold instruction for ELLs.

Provide Ample Opportunities for ELLs to use Academic Language

ELLs will often acquire social or practical language first through play, conversations, and regular interactions with people in and outside of school. Academic language, or the use of words and vocabulary that are not often heard outside of a school context, can be a challenge for ELLs to acquire because these words are not heard as frequently.

Providing ample opportunities for ELLs (and all the students in your classroom) to speak and write less frequently used words is imperative for their academic success. You can do this by posting word walls or charts, providing sentence frames where they can utilize transition words, or structured group projects and presentations that will get students using academic language with purpose.

Here are some examples of activities that will enable students to use academic language in meaningful ways:

• Create a podcast with an interviewer and “expert”
• Script and perform a news report
• Write a blog post or news article
• Develop a game with science/social studies vocabulary for that unit

Here are a couple of resources that you can use to get ideas for sentence frames and questioning.

Blooms Taxonomy for ELLs:

Sentence Frames (created by S. Kim)

Monitor Progress in Language Acquisition

With the learning environment, peers, and direct instruction set up to support English language acquisition, you can monitor for growth and change using the STEP continua.

Keep in mind that language acquisition will vary depending on the student – each student is on their own unique and individual journey.

How will you know if an ELL is progressing? Remember that conversations, observations, and products – also known as triangulated evidence – will give you a sense of where they are. Notice when they respond differently in conversations, take risks in writing and speaking in class, and start socializing more with others.

Summing it Up

We are of course just scratching the surface when it comes to providing instructional support for ELLs in this short blog post. You will find no shortage of ideas on the topic from a number of prolific educators in the field, such as Tan Huynh, Diane Staehr-Fenner, and Oscar Corrigan, and Andrea Honigsfeld just to name a few.

What will you focus on to adapt instruction for the ELLs you are teaching?

Writing has become a hot topic for Ontario educators, with the new language curriculum emphasizing the importance of explicitly teaching specific language conventions to boost the written communication skills of students.

What I fear that has been lost in the race toward implementing structured literacy is the joy that comes with writing creatively. While it is undeniably important to know morphology, complex sentences, conjunctions, and all the different conventions of writing, what has always “hooked” me and many students I have taught is the ways in which we can use writing for artistic self expression.

The team of ESL/ELD educators I work with decided to plan a writing project that would explore the possibilities written expression across languages. Funded by the Council of Ontario Directors of Education (CODE), we selected several classes across the board to participate in a learning cycle that would culminate in an exhibition of student work. For the purpose of gauging impact and effect, we chose middle school classes from French Immersion, mainstream, and English language learner contexts. One group was exclusively students in English language development programs, meaning that they had significant interruptions to their formal schooling.

Learning and Working with Living Hyphen

To lead the workshops, we brought in Living Hyphen, a Toronto-based arts organization dedicated to empowering the voices of diverse communities through writing. Living Hyphen’s website is an exciting place, filled with dates of upcoming sessions and opportunities to purchase their books and magazines.

I first learned about Living Hyphen with the provincial group of educators I work with in the field of language acquisition,  ESL/ELD Resource Group of Ontario (ERGO). At a meeting last year, Justine Abigail Yu, the founder, delivered a presentation and writing workshop on supporting multilingual students in sharing their own lived experiences through creative writing.

We invited her to lead workshops for a project we wanted to organize for several classes in my board. In her relaxed, engaging, and unique workshops, students explored multiple writing prompts that brought out the nuances of their home language, the complexity of their identities, and their personal connections with place.

Some of the writing prompts included:

Tell me where you’re from without telling me where you’re from.

What brings you comfort?

While these prompts seem simple, they were powerful ways to get kids writing. I was actually surprised how engaged kids could be with just a pen and a notebook – a radical shift from the world of technological tools, graphic organizers, and multi-step activities we often work so hard to plan for classes.

Perhaps most importantly, students were excited to write and engaged with the work. While it does always help to have someone new in your classroom, Justine brought her skills of relationship building and her unique perspective as a writer and activist to motivate students toward producing amazing ideas to build upon later.

And yes, every student in the class could participate and find their entry point into the writing. Of course, you may need to provide scaffolds for students – translators, scribing, and additional prompting – but by the end every student produced something new.

By the end of the workshop, students had a notebook full of brainstorms and ideas they could evolve into longer, polished pieces.

After the Workshop

When the workshops were finished, we were tasked with the very “teacherly” task of motivating students to develop their brainstorms into a polished piece of written work and a piece of art. To add a sense of purpose, we decided to create an anthology of student writing just as Living Hyphen had done with their writers.

We also teamed up with our Empowering Modern Learners team, who went to each class and provided a workshop on how to use different tech tools to create video and digital art to compliment their writing. Students were excited to learn about the features of Adobe Express: students can easily make narrated videos with their slides.

Finally, we brought in a variety of art supplies for students to experiment with. Students created paintings and sculptures to display alongside their poems.

The final and most exciting step is to take the students to the Peel Archive and Museum of Art to exhibit their work to their families. There is an existing exhibit that parallels the student’s work, done by adults, so we will be contributing art and work across generations.