Accommodating ELLs in project-based learning

This bimester, our school’s 5th grade students will be doing a STEM project in which they look at the nutritional value of sports drinks and design, make, and market a healthier alternative.  

What follows is a brief plan for accommodating our sports drink project for our ELLs at four language phases.

Pre-production

Students at this stage are in what is called the "silent period."  They rarely speak except to repeat what they hear, although they have a working vocabulary of around 500 words.  What's key at this stage are listening comprehension activities and other strategies for vocabulary building.  

Since students will be working in teams for the project, we might group ELLs at the pre-production stage with another student who speaks their L1.  For whole-class lessons, our teachers need to speak slowly and clearly, provide lots of visual support, and check in with ELLs afterward.  ELLs could be given roles that allow them to participate actively even with their limited language proficiency.  For example, in this project, students will design a marketing presentation for their new drink.  The ELL could be put in charge of preparing the visual media for the presentation.

Early production

Students may be in this stage for around 6 months.  They have a vocabulary of around 1000 words.  They are able to use short phrases that they have overheard and memorized, but they might not use the phrases correctly.  

To help these students, teachers can provide simplified readings related to the project, since the student will now understand simple texts.  These students can use pictures to build vocabulary, for example by keeping a picture dictionary.

Speech emergence

Students at this phase have a vocabulary of about 3000 words.  They can communicate with simple phrases and sentences.  They also begin to ask basic questions, although they may not be grammatically correct.  They can understand instructions and basic readings and start up a conversation.

These students are able to understand and ask questions about charts and graphs, so they could help their group with the data component of the project, looking at the percentages of nutrients that are found in a variety of foods.  Even more than students in the early production stage, these students will benefit from simplified texts and subject-area vocabulary lists (e.g. sports and nutrition terms).

Intermediate fluency

Students now have a vocabulary of about 6000 words.  They begin to have more confidence to speak and ask questions in class.

A student at this phase would probably be able to take a speaking role in the presentation.  He or she might be able to do some of the writing for the group as well, likely writing first in L1 and then transferring his or her thoughts to English.  The writing should not be evaluated for grammatical accuracy, however, because students at this stage are still early in the process of mastering grammatical feature.  It is especially helpful for teachers to offer these students language-learning strategies, because they are becoming more independent in their language acquisition.

    

Reference list

Haynes, J. (n.d.). Stages of second language acquisition. Retrieved Oct. 22, 2016, from http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/language_stages.php