Classroom Examples
Here are examples of the kinds of adaptations.
Subject: Literacy
Content Objective: To help students learn the basics of summarization.
A 1st grade teacher is teaching students to summarize using a Big Book version of The Three Little Pigs. She can help her ELLs acquire a better understanding of summarizing by using tiered questions in different ways depending on the stage of the student.
Preproduction
Students can point to a picture in the book as the teacher says or asks: “Show me the wolf. Where is the house?”
Early Production
Students do well with yes/no questions and one- or two-word answers: “Did the brick house fall down? Who blew down the straw house?”
Speech Emergence
Students can answer “why” and “how” questions with phrases or short-sentence answers, and can also explain their answers: “Explain why the third pig built his house out of bricks.”
Intermediate Fluency
Students can answer “What would happen if” and “Why do you think” questions: “Why do you think the pigs were able to outsmart the wolf?”
Advanced Fluency
Students can retell the story, including the main plot elements and leaving out the insignificant details.
In addition to using tiered questions to include all students in a whole-class activity, you can also use these questioning strategies one-on-one with ELLs to check for comprehension.
