Classroom Example
Here is an example from a 3rd grade classroom that shows how you can take a lesson designed for English-speaking students and modify it to set language objectives for ELLs in each stage of language acquisition.
Subject: Social Studies
Content Objective: To help students understand that making choices can be difficult because it often involves trade-offs.
Because money is a limited resource, people must make important choices about how to spend it. These choices often involve trade-offs: People must often give up buying one thing in order to buy some-thing else. To help students understand the concept of trade-offs, ask students to imagine that they are going on a camping trip and have $120 they have saved to spend on camping supplies.
The local camping supply store offers certain types of supplies at the specified prices (see Figure 1). Ask students: “Which supplies will you buy, and why? Which will you choose to go without, and why?” Tell students that they will need to make a list of the supplies they will buy, the prices for each item, the total amount they will spend, and the reasons they have made these particular choices.
When students have completed the activity, initiate a class discussion about the choices that they made. Which items were most commonly chosen by the students? Which items were the least popular choices? What were the factors that influenced the students’ decisions in making trade-offs?
