Tips for Developing the Literacy Skills of ELLs:

Made for Teachers

• Provide multiple direct exposure to target words in multiple texts and context so students

could have various opportunities to use the words with personalized meanings.

• Incorporate a balanced variety of cooperative direct, contextualized and repeated

vocabulary instructions into the classroom practice.

• Tap into ELLs’ prior experience and background knowledge before beginning lesson.

This will help to facilitate their comprehension and procession of text in reading or

writing.

• Pre-teach vocabulary that is critical to comprehension of the text being used by using the

seven-step process.

• Incorporate instructional conversations, having students participate in discussions during

the course of all activities.

• Guide ELLs through effective reading strategies by modeling and repeating how to use

reading strategies in practice. Some examples of reading strategies are:

▪ Anticipation Guide
 ▪ Literacy Scaffolds

▪ Semantic Mapping

▪ SQ3R

▪ Advanced Organizers

▪ Think Aloud

▪ Read Aloud

▪ Language Experience Approach

▪ Guided Reading

▪ Silent Sustained Reading

• Incorporate the reading skills (intensive reading, extensive reading, skimming and

scanning) by using a grouping activity called the “take-five model.” Components of the

model are: get ready, read, reread, respond and react.

• Use the reading process in your lessons as much as you would use the writing process.

Reading process models:

▪ Bottom-up reading process

▪ Top-down reading process

▪ Interactive reading process.

• Design collaborative learning activities in order to help ELLs construct meaning in

academic texts.

• Provide access to different genres and modes of text.

• Provide a warm, welcoming, and inclusive classroom where students are provided with

opportunities to use their first language and develop their L2.

 • Encourage students to generate a story orally then write the story – then explore literacy

concepts together like word spacing, punctuation, syntax, etc. The context-embedded

experience deepens literacy learning for students.

Links to Sources:

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1109828.pdf

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/CBS_LiteracyDevelop.pdf

https://d2l.educ.queensu.ca/content/CTE184SPR/CONT539/downloads/ch6.LiteracyAndTheEng

lishLanguageLearner.pp194-209.pdf