Five words and two sentence frames: a planning habit for lessons with ELL/EAL students

If you teach multilingual learners, you have watched this happen. A student who is still learning English misses one word, maybe a subject term such as equilibrium or a linking word such as hence. They spend a few seconds working it out, and by the time they look up, the lesson has moved two ideas on. Often they don't ask, because asking means stopping the class.

I'll call these students ELL/EAL students. ELL stands for English language learner, a label US schools use, and EAL for English as an additional language, the label schools in England use.

Before each lesson, I write down the five words a student must understand to follow it, and two sentence frames they will need to talk or write about it. A sentence frame is a sentence with blanks to fill, such as "A plant needs ___ to make ___." The student supplies the content, and the frame supplies the grammar.

Why a short list

Five is my own working number. I haven't found a study that picks it, so adjust it to your class. When I put twenty new terms on the board, students copied all twenty, remembered a few at random, and couldn't tell which ones the lesson depended on. A list of five forces me to decide which words carry the lesson, and it leaves time to use each one several times.

Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown and Linda Kucan, who research vocabulary teaching, sort words into three tiers. Tier One holds the words children pick up from everyday experience, such as clock or happy. Tier Three words stay inside one field, such as chlorophyll or treaty, and Beck and her colleagues tell teachers to build those words alongside the content that needs them. Tier Two words range across many subjects and lean toward writing rather than conversation, so students rarely pick them up from friends. Beck and her colleagues put Tier Two first, because those words give a student the most use across a wide range of texts.

I read Tier One with care, because a student three months into English can need clock as badly as chlorophyll.

How to choose the five

I start with one question: if a student understood every idea in this lesson but only half the words, which words would block them?

1. Write the lesson's main idea in one sentence.
2. Circle the words a student can't skip and still follow that idea.
3. Cross out words that are new to students and can wait, because today's idea doesn't depend on them.
4. Keep at least one Tier Two word, a general academic word such as consequently that students will meet in other subjects.
5. Stop at five, and explain any extras in passing with a gesture or a picture.

Step 3 is the hard one, because a word the lesson depends on can look familiar.

A science example

Here is a list for a lesson on photosynthesis, the process plants use to make sugar from carbon dioxide and water, with energy from light.

• photosynthesis: the name of the process, and the word the topic hangs on
• glucose: the sugar the plant makes
• chlorophyll: the green pigment in leaves that absorbs light
• absorb: to take something in, a Tier Two word students meet again in physics and geography
• limit: to hold something back, another Tier Two word, and the root of limiting factor later on

The frames:

• "A plant needs ___ to make ___."
• "If there is less ___, the plant ___ because ___."

The first frame checks the basic idea: what goes in and what comes out. The second asks for a cause and its effect, and gives students a reason to use absorb. A student might say, "If there is less light, the plant makes less glucose because the chlorophyll has less light to absorb." That answer holds while light is the thing in shortest supply, which sets up limit for the lessons on limiting factors. Plenty of my ELL/EAL students couldn't have built that sentence alone. With the frame, they fill three gaps.

A history example

History lessons often turn on one sentence of cause and effect, such as "The treaty was signed; consequently, trade restrictions were lifted." A student still learning English can lose its meaning at almost any word.

• treaty: a written agreement between countries
• sign: to write your name on an agreement to show you accept it, far from the road signs students know
• restriction: a rule that limits what people can do, here a limit on trade
• lift: to end a rule or a ban, which has little to do with lifting a box
• consequently: as a result, a Tier Two word students also need when they write in science and economics

I count treaty as the Tier Three word here. In my classes, fluent readers skim past sign, lift and consequently, and students still learning English trip on them.

The frames run in both directions:

• "The ___ was signed; consequently, ___."
• "The restrictions were lifted because ___."

The first goes from cause to effect, and the second from effect back to cause, which is the shape of any "why did this happen?" question.

Sentence frames

A student explaining a cause in a second language has two jobs at once: working out the idea, and building an English sentence to hold it. A frame takes over much of the second job, so the student can spend their effort on the first, which is the part a science or history teacher needs to see.

That reasoning and the advice below come from my own classroom, and I haven't tested either against a study.

• Say each frame aloud, write it on the board, and model one full answer before pairs start talking.
• Offer a harder second frame for students who are ready, and let students who don't need frames ignore them.
• Take frames away over a unit, and leave some talk open, so students still practice building sentences of their own.

For further reading, Pauline Gibbons's Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning devotes chapters to classroom talk and to moving students from speaking into writing. Jeff Zwiers's Building Academic Language traces how academic language shifts from subject to subject. Paul Nation's Learning Vocabulary in Another Language covers teaching and explaining vocabulary.

Carry the missed word forward

Most weeks, a word I didn't list trips someone up, so I bring it back.

1. After each lesson, note one word that tripped a student up and wasn't on your list.
2. On Friday, read the week's notes and pick one or two words that repeated, or that next week's lessons need.
3. Put them on Monday's list. They count toward the five, so something else has to make room.
4. On Monday, use each returning word early, and ask students to use it in one of that day's frames.

If you teach with MAMAKO, glance at its live word wall of the lesson's key terms: a term that shows up there and isn't on your five is worth a note.

Try this tomorrow

1. Write tomorrow's main idea in one sentence and circle the words a student can't skip.
2. Cut the list to five, with at least one Tier Two word.
3. Write two frames: one to name or describe, one to explain a cause.
4. Put the five words on the board before students arrive, use each one on purpose in the first ten minutes, and hand out the frames when students turn to a partner.

After the lesson, note one word you didn't list that tripped someone up, and keep the note for Friday.