How to Create an "Ideal" Classroom Environment for ELLs

By Suzanne Irujo, ELL Outlook™ Contributing Writer

I wonder what Christine means by "tried and true methods." If we were to take the expression literally, we would have to assume that these old methods had really been tried and found to be true. In that case, Christine wouldn't need to ask for new ideas. How could the regular education teachers have "exhausted" something that, by her own description, should work well? Could it be that methods that were once considered to be "tried and true" have now been found to come up short? Have we moved beyond simple notions of helping ELLs feel "comfortable" to more complex ideas about how they can be included in the learning that occurs in the classroom? Certainly, in the era of No Child Left Behind, ELLs who spend most of their time in regular education classes need a great deal more than just to feel "comfortable."

I have been collecting tips for regular education teachers who work with ELLs for over a quarter of a century. My reasons for collecting them have changed as my professional roles have changed. Originally, as a transitional bilingual education teacher, I was trying to help regular education teachers work with my partially mainstreamed students. Later, as a university professor and student-teacher supervisor, I wanted to help my students who worked in pull-out teaching settings assist the regular education teachers in their schools. Now, as a freelance consultant, I continue to collect tips as I research ways to help train regular education teachers to work with the increasing numbers of ELLs that they find in their classrooms.

In looking through this substantial pile of handouts from conference presentations, cuttings from newsletters and other print sources, and downloads from the Internet, I don't see much difference in the content of the faded blue ditto master pages that I collected during my first years of teaching and the sheets that I downloaded and printed out last week. There was just as much emphasis in the early tips on ensuring that ELLs understand content instruction as there is now. And there is just as much emphasis now on providing a welcome and comfortable environment as there was back then.

If this is the case, then, why does Christine feel a need for new ideas for teachers in her school? It could be that the regular education teachers are not implementing the tips they were given in the past. Most regular education teachers want to do the best they can with their ELL students and will enthusiastically implement suggestions. Some, however, are reluctant to adapt their instruction for ELLs, either because they believe that "good teaching" is the only thing that ELLs really need, or because they believe they have to treat all their students equally. Another reason Christine feels a need for new ideas might be if the regular education teachers are implementing the suggestions they have received but don't see that the adaptations are making any difference. Language acquisition is a much slower and more difficult process than most people believe it to be. Without a good understanding of the process, regular education teachers may lack the patience needed to go on providing an optimal environment for their ELLs if they can't see that what they're doing makes much difference. This explanation is consistent with the call made by Catherine Snow and Lily Wong Fillmore for all teachers to have a much greater understanding of language and language acquisition than they currently have ^[1].

Although I didn't find any new ideas in my review of all of the tips I have collected over the years, there were three things that struck me as being particularly important. These are general principles rather than specific ideas, because I believe that teachers need to understand why they are doing something. None of them are new, but creative teachers continually come up with new ways to implement them.

The first principle is to create a warm, supportive environment. There are multiple ways to do this, such as encouraging other students to "adopt" a newly arrived ELL, incorporating ELL students' first languages and cultures into the classroom, and ensuring that peer tutoring becomes a two-way process. One idea that I particularly like is to create a "Welcome Book" for newly arrived ELLs that contains names and pictures of classmates and school staff, a map of the school with important locations labeled, basic school vocabulary, and space for additional entries. The book would contain native language translations and reminders, if possible, and would be accompanied by an audiotape. ELLs could work with the book and make individualized additions to it when working with their native English-speaking peers.

The second principle is to create an environment in which ELLs participate in all activities and profit from every minute of the day. Well-intentioned regular education teachers often tend to leave ELLs alone because they don't want to put them on the spot. However, if they recognize that ELLs have to achieve much more each year than their native English-speaking peers do in order to catch up, they will understand the importance of this principle. As a speaker articulated it at a recent conference I attended, "Every moment an ELL spends with any English speaker is a teachable moment" ^[2]. One way to accomplish this type of environment is to "get as much help as possible," as one of my tip sheets put it: classroom aides, volunteer tutors, peer helpers, older students, librarians, parents, community agencies, native language materials, bilingual dictionaries, visuals, and whatever else is available.

The third principle is to create an environment in which ELLs can succeed at the tasks given them. All children become discouraged when they repeatedly find that they can't be successful at an assigned task. Repeated lack of success is especially frustrating for ELLs, because they often know that they could do the task if they could only understand the language needed. There are multiple ways to hep ELLs succeed with language, such as modifying assignments, adapting teaching strategies, using the native language when possible, utilizing a variety of resources, and adapting assessment procedures. The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol ^[3] is a useful resource for teachers who want to modify their teaching to create this kind of environment.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that "fair is not the same as equal" [4, p. 128]. In her study of the acculturation of four elementary school ELLs, Clayton found that some teachers believed that in order to provide equity (equal opportunity), they had to provide equality (equal treatment). If they truly want to provide equal opportunity for ELLs, regular education teachers need to understand why and how to adapt their instruction. As my review of the teaching tips I've collected over the years has shown, we have known the basic principles of doing this for years. Perhaps what Christine wanted was just new ways of implementing these principles.

Postscript:

Christine Nott, who wrote the e-mail message on which this column is based, read this column before publication. Her response has strong implications for where school districts and publishers need to focus their efforts in educating ELLs. She said, "The teachers I work with do well with your principle of supportive environment. Some also do well with including ELLs in all activities, but the area of most frustration is the modification of content-area subjects and making this input comprehensible and meaningful for the ELL student. I must agree that many regular education teachers. .. feel that providing optimal environment is not making any kind of impact on the ELLs in their classes-especially when they are under the pressure of 'you must have 80% of your students pass the state exam in whatever subject or else.'" Christine went on to talk about the pressure created by "the enormity of our responsibilities-we have to know how to do everything, accommodate everyone, and we must gain the knowledge of how to do this immediately!"

If you have comments or specific questions on the need for and difficulty of having regular education teachers modify content-area subjects for ELLs' success, please send them to us. We will try to follow up with a future column addressing this issue in more detail and incorporating your comments and questions.