ELL Lesson - Robin Montano

Subject/Grade: Journalism, 9-12

Objective(s):

• Students will understand the importance of including all students with the student body for
coverage throughout the year.

• Students will know appropriate strategies to utilize when communicating with ELL students
for interviews, etc.

Assessment(s):

• Students will complete interview questions including specific techniques or strategies used to
help ensure accuracy and a full understanding is taking place between the interviewer and in-
terviewee.

Teaching activities:

• Students will brainstorm current practices for communicating with sources (email, phones,
text, in-person) and evaluate the effectiveness of each method. Discussion to follow.

• Students will review a condensed list of the instructional strategies and discuss which may be
relevant or useful in communicating with sources.

• An emphasis on pictures or visual cues.

• Sources could point to pictures to vote on survey items.

• Using of charts or graphs to represent ideas to ensure understanding of back-

ground information.

• Simple prompts to help students answer questions.

• Yes/No questions - with appropriate follow-ups

• Agree/Disagree questions

• Knowledge of and obtainment of student interpreters if necessary

Source of information for this plan:

• http://www.colorincolorado.org/article/language-acquisition-overview
***Although this is not a lesson that has been taught or even fully developed, this week made me
think of our ELL student population and how underrepresented they are within our department.
This served as a great reminder that although I am not directly teaching these kids, I’m teaching
kids that should be interacting with them in order to include them in our coverage.

Additionally, I browsed the teaching tolerance lesson plans - a website that I had forgotten about,
and it made me realize how many lessons or topics would fit so well within my content area
based on the work that they are doing. For example, I found a lesson on the language used in the
immigration debate. This would be a perfect fit for my students to review as they continue to
cover DACA, etc. It is important to fully engage their awareness of the connotations that words
carry and understanding the effect they may have on others whether directly or indirectly.

• IMMIGRATION DEBATE LESSON PLAN

So, although my lesson above seemed a bit scattered and not as specific as I’d like, this week has
really helped me think through other ways to stress the importance of being sensitive to these
students regardless of what class they are in.