Emiliano is a fourth grader who speaks Spanish at home and English at school. He’s social and loves to talk. He also loves to draw; he puts lots of detail into his action-packed pictures. But when he is asked to write, Emiliano draws a blank.
Teachers can help English language learners like Emiliano achieve proficiency in writing by teaching them ways to organize their thoughts prior to putting them down on paper and by making sure their students have authentic audiences to write for.
Strategies to Help ESL Students Organize Their Thoughts
Create a Topic Board – Use sticky notes to record topics students talk about during the day. Post the sticky notes where they can be easily seen and accessed.
Provide Time For Peer- to-Peer and Student-to-Teacher Discussion Prior to Writing – Ask students to talk about their topics one-on-one with another student. Or conduct a thorough class discussion, writing key words on the board for reference. This opportunity for extended conversation allows ESL students to try out and rehearse the English needed to express their thoughts.
Encourage Illustrations – Drawing is one means of organizing thoughts. Drawing can also serve as a tool to promote additional conversation between writer and potential audience.
Provide Graphic Organizers – A simple three-part organizer offers writers opportunities to think about their stories in sequence as they draw or write key words. Story webs, storyboards, and chain of events graphics provide other ways to organize for writing. Students should be given an opportunity to experiment with a variety of graphic organizers, then allowed to choose the ones that work best for them.
When Possible, Let Students Write or Dictate Their Stories in Their Native Language – This strategy gives students the opportunity to sequence and to think in greater detail. The stories can then be transcribed into English for study, or students can work with the ESL teacher to do their own translations.
Strategies for Providing ESL Students With Authentic Audiences
Establish a Writers’ Circle - Invite students to read their work or hear their work read to members of the class. Sharing with peers provides a powerful opportunity to reflect on one’s work.
Publish Students’ Work - The teacher or the students can type stories for display on the wall or to make into books for the class library. Students should conference with the teacher prior to publication to edit for language and spelling. This conference offers rich opportunities to correct and extend language in both the spoken and written forms.
Encourage ESL Students to Write Letters to People They Care About – Students can write to other classmates, school staff, or family members. It is most productive if the students have the opportunity to write to individuals who will write back to them.
Engage ESL Students in Dialogue Journals - English language learners can extend their language and read modeled language when they engage in dialogue journals with their teachers. These written exchanges, via a simple spiral notebook, give the teacher the opportunity to structure and scaffold the experience through an intimate experience.
Expose ESL Students to a Wide Variety of Writing Experiences – English language students need experiences with journal writing, letter writing (both formal and informal), persuasive essays, fiction stories, story books, comic strips, non-fiction based on research, and poetry.
Teaching students how to organize their thoughts and providing authentic audiences are strategies that help scaffold ESL students’ writing efforts. Teachers must be explicit when teaching ESL students how to use language for a variety of purposes and in a variety of genres. What it comes down to is that best practices for teaching writing and composition skills to native speakers are also the best practices for English language learners. However, some of these strategies will need to be tweaked or altered depending on the needs of individual students.
For more tips on supporting English Language Learners read:
Margaret M. Williams - Margaret M. Williams (Peggy) has been a teacher for over 25 years. She currently teaches first grade in a classroom that combines native ...
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