The physical layout of the classroom is an important element in creating an environment conducive to learning. The Classroom Ecological Design Tool can be used as an informal evaluation that focuses on integration of language throughout the classroom and learning stations. Classroom design plays an important role in the success of young ELs. With this tool, teachers and administrators can attend to the critical elements that foster learning. When organizing the ecological design of the classroom and assigning learning stations, educators must consider the following:

• Is the classroom print-rich (i.e. book availability, labeled displays and objects, charts, posters, and
       other printed materials supporting linguistic and cultural backgrounds)?
• Is the classroom a 21st century learning environment (i.e. conducive to problem solving and
       cooperative learning, technology integration, encouraged creativity)?
• How does the physical arrangement of the spaces create an orderly classroom environment?
• What is the goal of each learning station?
• What are the academic and language outcomes to be observed?

Classroom Ecological Design Tool

When creating learning stations in a classroom, an educator must remember that young ELs should have an opportunity to engage in language use in a natural setting. For example, play can be designed so that students demonstrate skills such as listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Students engage in play at the learning station, but the nature of the play enhances and escalates learning.

Classrooms and learning stations that have an abundance of environmental print promote an effective learning atmosphere. An example of how to create a print-rich classroom is to label physical items throughout the room, such as a door, clock, window, desk, and chair.

Providing a language-rich environment by labeling will assist teachers when modeling and allow young ELs to better understand their surroundings.

As stated in the Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines (TEA, 2015), there is a strong consensus in the field of early childhood development that it is important to consider the mutuality of influences between students and their environment—the people they interact with and the characteristics of the activities and physical space they share with others.

Sheltered instruction is a model of instruction that helps students improve their language skills and transition through the levels of language acquisition. Sheltered instruction incorporates strategies to help students access the core curriculum, accelerate English language development, and socially integrate into a classroom (Cantina, 2010). The instructional talk the teacher provides must be understandable for young ELs. Sheltered instruction can also be included in kinesthetic, visual, and auditory learning, which in turn facilitates and increases the English language acquisition process (Peregoy & Boyle, 2005). Refer to the Early Childhood Lesson Plan Template as a guide to incorporate all the key components of lesson planning.

Early Childhood Lesson Plan Template

In the preparation of lesson delivery for young ELs, the importance of “thinking backward” is emphasized by Wiggins and McTighe (2005). Consider what the lesson outcome for young ELs should be, what the students are going to learn, and how it will be assessed. While beneficial for all students, these approaches are most significant for teaching young ELs. Sheltered instruction accommodates a framework for combining and organizing best teaching techniques that are interactive and engaging.

Engagement with functional and environmental print is just one of the important factors to consider in lesson planning and delivery. Educators of young ELs must also take into account the amount of time a student is read to, small-group and one-to-one interaction with the teacher, play experiences, and exposure to well-planned lessons that promote literacy (TEA, 2015).

To create a high-quality learning environment, it is important to include content and language objectives. The objectives must be posted in front of the classroom or at the learning stations with a corresponding visual representation. To meet the needs of young ELs, content and language objectives must be shared verbally and in picture format. For the lesson to be most effective, teachers must ensure activities are directly connected to the objectives, and the pacing should be monitored so young ELs do not become disengaged from learning.

The content objective is what the student will be learning, and the language objective is how the student will produce an outcome of the learned content in English. Here is an example of a lesson topic with a language and content objective:

Lesson activity: Identify common shapes represented by real life objects.

Language Objective: Students will identify and repeat the name of the real object and common shape it represents to a partner. (Example visual: pictures of a pizza slice and triangle and a picture of a speaking icon placed along with objective)

Content Objective: Students will be able to identify common shapes. (Example visual: pictures of the four common shapes and a picture of a speaking icon placed along with objective)

Strategies/Activities

Visuals

Visuals make excellent learning tools for young ELs. When instruction uses visual aids such as anchor charts, illustrations, photographs, graphs, Venn diagrams, and real-life objects, it enables students to make connections and solidify meaning, which supports new language learning. It is important to use visuals for new concepts so that young ELs begin making those connections. This instructional strategy also promotes the recall of new learning.    

The Venn diagram is a visual support that can serve as a meaningful tool for practicing the higher-order thinking skill of analysis through comparing and contrasting.

Using Venn diagrams helps to analyze and distinguish similarities and differences between two items or concepts. During the analysis process, language development occurs as students make connections using the information in the diagram. Providing sentence stems for activities such as these gives young ELs a model for practicing academic vocabulary such as similar and different.

Lesson Activity:  Venn Diagram of Apples

The Venn diagram serves the purpose of analyzing two apples—one yellow and one green. The left side of the Venn diagram lists characteristics of yellow apples, and the right side lists characteristics of green apples. In the center of the Venn diagram, the similarities of yellow and green apples are listed. The final product illustrates the similarities and differences of yellow and green apples.

As a lesson extension, use the descriptor words from each section of the Venn diagram to build vocabulary understanding. In building vocabulary knowledge, it is necessary to make connections to young ELs’ first language and previous experiences.

Lesson Activity:  Vocabulary Bank

For an activity such as the Venn diagram of apples, it is important that the students understand the meaning of the charted words. In this case, it would be helpful for the students to taste something sweet, juicy, and sour. Students would then work with a partner to add descriptive words to their vocabulary banks, such as the following:

• Sweet
• Juicy
• Sour
• Round
• Taste
• Seeds

The Venn diagram can serve as an anchor chart—a visual that can be used to scaffold instruction. This academic support can be displayed in a convenient location for current and future reference. Some anchor charts are displayed all year long in the classroom, while others are displayed only during the current unit of study.

It is important to note that anchor charts are best utilized when they are cocreated with the students during a lesson or over a series of lessons. Students and teachers can work together to decide which vocabulary terms may be used.

Using an anchor chart can be very beneficial for all content areas. If more than one language is used in the classroom, teachers should use different colors to differentiate the vocabulary. The display time is dependent on the young ELs’ needs.

Example: Anchor Chart

Below is an example of a mathematics lesson anchor chart. The anchor chart supports the literacy representation of the numeral 3 with

• examples of the word,
• the number of tally marks,
• its coin representation,
• a shape with three sides, and
• stories that have titles with three in them.

In the lesson, the teacher uses the anchor chart to introduce a number and its value. The young ELs see the newly introduced number and make visual connections to the meaning of the number, which will also further the development of language and number sense.

According to the Texas Prekindergarten Guidelines (TEA, 2015), young ELs will often acquire content vocabulary in both their primary language and in English. More important, teachers must remember that it is beneficial for young ELs to learn new concepts and vocabulary in the first language, when possible, with practice conducted in both the native language and English.

Concept mapping is a visual that is beneficial to use with young ELs. Concept mapping is a graphic organizer that creates order to the concepts and ideas being learned. Making connections to prior knowledge can assist young ELs in grouping new content so it is more accessible to learning. Concept mapping also helps teachers informally evaluate a student's knowledge of the content.

While building a concept map with students, teachers should

• brainstorm and generate new ideas;
• connect new concepts; and
• communicate ideas, thoughts, and information.

Teachers should be clear and direct throughout the lesson delivery, and provide a wide range of scaffolding strategies to communicate the lesson meaningfully.

Some key components to building a concept map include the following:

• Main idea or topic
• Key concepts related to the topic
• Connection of concepts to phrases or words

Example:  The web describes the dog as it eats food and is a good pet.

Graphic Organizers

Young ELs benefit from multiple experiences to fine arts, such as art, drama, and music. Exploring a wide variety of mediums while discovering color, shape, and texture through fine arts helps young ELs gain control of fine-motor skills and hand-eye coordination practice. Providing multiple opportunities for art exploration, incorporating nature, and asking open-ended questions during informal evaluations are all ways to increase a young ELs’ academic experience. Teachers should model the art processes and avoid correcting a student's artwork with the understanding that there is not a correct or incorrect way to artistically represent knowledge through art (TEA, 2015). Dramatic play and music can also be strategically planned mediums through which ELs can demonstrate and be proud of their culture and heritage.

Strategies/Activities

Lesson Activity:  Art

In this example, students have been learning about groups, and the art activity is to place groups of two fingerprints on the tree. The teacher can observe from the student’s artwork that the student understands the concept of grouping by two.

Lesson Activity:  Drama

Imagine that students have been learning about past events and how those events relate to the students' cultural background. The students choose a past event, and create costumes to represent the characters and share what they have learned with the class.

Young ELs come from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, which influence their understanding of various concepts. It is important to honor and incorporate the students' home languages, communities, and cultures during instruction. Doing so provides students with a comfortable environment for learning about themselves and the world (TEA, 2015).

Lesson Activity:  Music 

Use music while integrating movement with the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes." During the song, early childhood students can point to the appropriate body part to match the song words. The key vocabulary words can be written on chart paper with a matching picture to help make connections between the music and text. The song can also be sung in unison until all students are able to follow along.

When teachers include repetition of music, physical movement, and opportunities to explore musical instruments, students experience a positive learning environment and develop increased coordination and creativity (Edwards, Bayless, & Ramsey, 2009).

Music and movement are interactive strategies that support language development for young ELs. Songs have a repetition and pattern that help make connections for learning language. For example, as young ELs engage in singing while learning ordinal numbers or math facts, memory connections are being made simultaneously.

Differentiated instruction is an approach to teaching in which teachers strategically plan to target students’ cognitive and linguistic differences and needs. This approach begins during lesson planning: teachers use their awareness of the individual needs of students to provide them with experiences and tasks to improve learning.

Differentiation means giving students multiple options for taking in information (Tomlinson,1999). Differentiating instruction requires observing and understanding the differences and similarities among diverse learners and applying this information to lesson preparation. A key point in implementing differentiated instruction is observing how young ELs best learn and apply this understanding in the classroom.

Preassessment gauges students' prior knowledge. It is important that teachers take time to observe students daily. It is in these observations that teachers are able to hear students’ oral language skills, see their emerging reading skills, and watch students as they make meaning and communicate in print.

Informal Assessment

Informal assessments are performance-driven, rather than data-driven; they rely more heavily on observations and work samples. Additionally, informal assessments are not always as structured as formal assessments. Informal assessments are essential to measuring students’ learning. They are used to obtain information and make decisions. Teachers should use this information to understand student needs and improve student learning. At this stage of early childhood development, ELs are also acquiring the developmental domains of cognition as well as social and emotional, physical, and oral language development.

Teachers should include anecdotal observations as part of the informal assessment. An appropriate time to conduct anecdotal observations—which can be as simple as jotting observations on an index card—is during literacy and learning stations. The suggested resource Informal Assessment for English Learners is provided in the resource section. The informal assessment is based on the language skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Additionally, the indicators can be adapted to fit your campus assessment requirements.

Some examples of informal assessments include the following:

• Anecdotal records
• Portfolios/journals
• Interviews
• Observations
• Work samples
• Inventories/questionnaires

While data gained from informal assessments should be incorporated into a school’s decision-making process, it should not be the sole source for driving the process. Formal assessments should also be considered to meet student needs appropriately.

Informal Assessment for English Learners

Formal Assessment

Formal assessments have a set of criteria and expectations. Formal assessments measure the knowledge students have learned and retained; formal assessments can also focus on specific skills, such as those required for reading. Formal assessments have specific administration procedures and time limits, are conducted by test administrators who have completed credentialing or training requirements, and have been validated and field-tested on the groups for which the test was designed.

During young ELs’ early language development, it is pivotal to include families in the learning of language and literacy. Positive parental outreach programs that include all stakeholders allow students the opportunity to strengthen, expand, and extend language development and literacy skills. Parental outreach programs should allow for cultural diversity and sharing opportunities in students’ native language. Preserving culture and heritage is vital in maintaining cultural identity.

Henderson and Mapp (2002) concluded there is a positive relationship between family engagement and student’s academic achievement at all ages, regardless of the family’s socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, or educational background. Family engagement has always been a standard in early childhood education programs.

High-quality early childhood education programs create and establish a welcoming environment that develops mutual relationships with families to encourage and support the use of the home language.

Effective practices should be established to encourage positive parental partnerships in supporting student academic success. Effective parental outreach practices create a welcoming environment, develop reciprocal relationships, and encourage and support the home language. It is important for teachers and administrators to be inclusive of the cultural diversity that young ELs bring to the school community. Creating a positive school environment helps students share their individual cultural experiences.

Sharing strategies with young ELs and their families can encourage conversation at home, where they can use the language with which they are most comfortable. The comfort of speaking in the home language is a connecting factor of cognitive development and culture. ELs will feel at communicating their feelings and ideas with their families while building trusting relationships and giving attention to the structure and purpose of language. A stronger foundation of concepts and vocabulary can evolve for ELs when their family members use their home language to share thoughts and ideas. This foundation will foster and support ELs in listening, speaking, reading, and writing while they are developing an additional language.

A list of family involvement and engagement activities in the areas of reading, writing, mathematics, science, and language development is provided. Refer to the Family Engagement Activities resource document for further information.

Family Engagement Activities