Short And Sweet Tips For Supporting English Learners Opinion

Bonisiwe Shabane

-Oct 29, 2025, 12:11 PM

short and sweet tips for supporting english learners opinion

The numbers of English-language learners in schools continue to rise. How can we best support them? Here are recommendations from educators on X and Facebook: Thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts! This is the final post in a two-part series. You can see Part One here.

What would you say are the three most important, AND most likely to be used, strategies that general education teachers can use to make their content more accessible to ELLS (and everyone else)? Supporting English learners (ELs) requires more than just great resources—it takes intentional strategies that help students develop language skills in a structured, engaging, and supportive way. This post will explore effective strategies for listening, speaking, reading, and writing, providing detailed explanations and examples you can easily incorporate into your teaching. Listening is a crucial skill for language development, and it can be challenging for ELs to process new sounds, vocabulary, and sentence structures. Using intentional strategies can improve comprehension and retention. What it is: TPR connects language with movement, helping students internalize meaning without translation.Example: When teaching action verbs, say “jump” while jumping.

Have students mimic your actions. For content lessons, act out steps in a process (e.g., the water cycle). What it is: Pictures, diagrams, gestures, and realia (real-life objects) help ELs understand spoken language.Example: When discussing habitats, show images of forests, deserts, and oceans. Use gestures to reinforce key words like “big” (spread arms wide) or “cold” (shiver and hug yourself). What it is: Repeating key phrases in different ways increases exposure and comprehension.Example: If teaching “The sun rises in the east,” restate it as “Every morning, the sun comes up on the east side... Get a year of membership🎃PLUS A FREE BONUS MONTH🎃

Teaching English Language Learners (ELLs) can sometimes feel overwhelming, but with the right strategies, you can create a classroom where every student feels seen or supported. Whether you’re new to working with ELLs or looking to refresh your approach, these seven, simple, effective strategies will help you build a more inclusive and engaging learning environment. Visual aids, like anchor charts and labeled classroom items, help ELLs understand and retain information. Quick Win: Try adding simple labels to classroom objects using both words and pictures. For example, label the door, windows, and supplies with visuals alongside the words in English (and students’ home languages if possible). This small change can make your classroom more language-friendly in minutes!

Provide sentence starters that help guide ELLs to write more complete and detailed responses. Many of us are lucky enough to have a diverse student population in our classrooms these days. Our schools are now filled with a huge variety of cultures, traditions, histories, and languages. While it’s amazing to live in a time when students from such a big variety of cultures are able to learn and grow together, it’s the language piece that we find ourselves puzzling about... It’s extremely difficult when we can barely communicate with our English language learners (ELLs). Even kids from the same country that speak the same language might not be able to understand each other because their dialects are so different.

And that means supporting our English language learners is an added challenge for teachers–a big one. This has been a topic near and dear to my heart for many years, as my schools have primarily had a huge population of English learners. And that population grows bigger and bigger every year. I’m going to share some tips I’ve learned along the way that are specific to literacy. However, I think you’ll quickly find two things to be true: One, these tips transcend literacy; they are applicable to the entire day. And two, many of these tips are helpful to ALL students, not just our English language learners.

Our English learners, and I would absolutely say that all of our learners, benefit from a balanced approach to literacy. These students of course need explicit phonics instruction, and they need exposure to lots of print. They need ample opportunity for writing, and they also need tremendous support with vocabulary and comprehension. They’re going to need a good mix of whole group, small group, and 1:1 instruction, and they’ll benefit tremendously from a gradual release of responsibility model, with feedback all along the way. This is what balanced literacy is (which I say more about here). In their very helpful book Reading and Writing with English Learners, authors Valentina Gonzalez and Melinda Miller explain why a balanced literacy approach is so imperative for English learners.

They say that balanced literacy “combines explicit strategy and skill instruction with meaningful daily reading and writing experiences in order to allow students time to practice orchestrating reading and writing skills.” Something all students... Teachers of any subject can use these tips to help English language learners be more engaged and at ease in class. While we bring the mental health needs of our students into laser focus this year, it’s still crucial that we keep the social and emotional world of our English language learners (ELLs) front and... Just like their peers, ELL students come to our classrooms with the burning need to be seen and acknowledged for their unique personalities, life experiences, and talents. But language challenges can obstruct all these amazing facets of their personalities. Additionally, the social pressures of suddenly being in person again and needing to communicate may make them feel anxious, isolated, and embarrassed.

Because of the often-obvious communication difficulties, grade-level and subject-area teachers understandably often rely on ESL (English as a Second Language) teachers to step in and help these students. However, even if you aren’t an ESL teacher, there’s a plethora of strategies you can use to help these incredible students feel comfortable sharing their strengths and unique perspectives on the world. 1. Closed captioning isn’t just for the hearing impaired. If you’re showing video content, turning on closed captioning supports ELL students’ comprehension as well as everyone’s literacy skills. According to a 2017 study, the simple act of using closed captioning improves learning, even for students without learning challenges.

2. Voice typing in Google Docs (under the Tools menu) provides students with a voice-to-text option that can help learners who have some oral language but struggle with spelling and writing. By clicking the arrow next to the language, students can even dictate a text in their native language, if need be, and then use Google Translate to translate it. Having worked in Title 1 schools for almost a decade, I had the privilege of being surrounded by language learners in all my classrooms. It proved to be a humbling, eye-opening, and fascinating experience in many different ways. Because state laws required my classrooms to be conducted only in English, I prioritized creating spaces where students of color and from varied cultural backgrounds could share the best of their communities through experiential...

In challenging political and educational climates, educators hold the power to create classrooms which allow students to shine in ways that are true to themselves, their families, and their communities and to support them... Students are the greatest assets to diverse learning environments, and they bring many experiences, cultural backgrounds, and languages to their classrooms. While it is up to the educator to provide space for these students to bloom and grow, one of the greatest and most common challenges in facilitating these spaces is in supporting English language... Providing these students with the tools and resources they need can be daunting, especially when working to personalize learning and differentiate in other ways. While a bilingual classroom is preferable for language learners of all kinds, this blog offers support for teachers delivering instruction in English in classrooms with ELLs. Have you ever learned a new language in an immersive environment?

If not, it might sound like an impossible task that only the most daring person would try. If you have, you know the challenges in this kind of learning - the intimidation to engage with native speakers, fear of making a mistake in what you are saying or writing, and fear... These mentalities are typical for adults when learning languages, but kids generally have a more resilient and brave approach. In my classroom experience, I have come to appreciate that English language learners are masters of learning, taking risks, and maximizing coping strategies. Some ELLs are also shy and fearful of engaging for various reasons. Both those willing to engage and those who are more hesitant can grow their language skills exponentially with the right tools and in a supportive environment.

As an adult, I learned to speak Thai, and because foreigners don’t usually learn the language while they are in Thailand, I was an anomaly in most Thai social circles. I could formally introduce myself, tell jokes, and engage in casual conversation. I became an expert at politely ending a conversation when it reached beyond my comprehension. I would usually leave conversations having impressed Thai people by effectively covering up my language deficits. I used my Thai language toolbox regularly and became fluent with it, but this was only a small fraction of the language that a native speaker uses. Our students can do the same on a regular basis.

Sometimes this leads educators to assume students are fluent and comfortable speaking, reading, writing, and listening, when in reality, English language learners are using the tools they have repeatedly and are not supported in... Students who engage in content using their non-native language demonstrate their brains are capable of highly complex processes, and as their teachers, it is our job to support them in reducing that cognitive load... There are a number of structures that educators can use in their classrooms that not only build out their teaching tool belt and skills, but, more importantly, support students in building confidence and expertise... hbspt.cta._relativeUrls=true;hbspt.cta.load(428371, '7d6c411c-0458-4547-b158-e3360b7e4a03', {"useNewLoader":"true","region":"na1"}); I love teaching English-language learners and I suspect most other educators feel the same way. Nevertheless, teaching anyone comes with all sorts of challenges, and ELLs are no different.

Today’s post begins a series exploring what those unique challenges might be and how we can best rise to them. Marie Moreno, Ed.D., is an educator and administrator with over 30 years of experience specializing in newcomer and second-language acquisition. She is passionate about refugee and immigrant education by focusing on social and emotional needs and newcomer programming: Teaching English-language learners presents several challenges that educators must navigate to ensure effective instruction. These challenges often stem from linguistic, cultural, and academic differences that ELLs bring to the classroom, making it crucial for teachers to adopt strategies that address these diverse needs.

Short And Sweet Tips For Supporting English Learners Opinion

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