Tag Archives: classroom discussion

Celebrating Culture with Picture Books

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The Henry Grube Education Centre Learning Commons has a diverse range of picture books celebrating many of the cultures within SD73. ELL students are generally eager to share their culture with their peers and bringing picture books into the classroom is a great way to do so. Here are some ideas on how to engage both your ELL student and their peers:

  1. Speak to your ELL student ahead of time and see what their comfort level is in regard to sharing out to the whole class. Maybe you could work with them in advance to prepare some ideas of what they could talk about.
  2. Read the story with the ELL student ahead of time (or send it home). The more familiar with the text and contents the student is, the more comforatable they will feel in potentially sharing with the class.
  3. Think of ways to engage all students in the text: Venn diagrams, classroom map of cultures, potluck (post-COVID), think/pair/share, etc…

Below is a list of children’s books that are available at the HGEC, their appropriate grade use, and notes on what they could be used for. If you would like additional information or ideas on how to use these books in your classroom, please connect with your ELL Resource Teacher.

Happy Reading!

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Oral Scaffolding

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ELL students commonly struggle to participate in classroom discussions because they lack confidence in expressing their ideas out loud. Teachers can help support students by providing oral language scaffolds in the form of sentence starters and frames.

The following is a short video that provides examples of how we can scaffold dialogue so all students can participate in academic conversations in a meaningful way.

Given that we are all operating our classrooms in a different format right now, please consider building in these scaffolds for your students before you meet for online classroom sessions. You can do this in the following ways:

  • Provide the topics ahead of time so the student has a chance to formulate their responses
  • Provide students with a vocabulary list or word bank so they can use them to demonstrate their knowledge of the content
  • Provide students with sentence starters/frames that they can use to contribute to the discussion.

It’s important for all students to be given the opportunity to participate, however we want to make sure they feel safe in doing so. By speaking with them prior to the online meeting and giving them the provided supports, you are giving them the tools to feel confident alongside their peers.

Attached is a chart I created that will give you some ideas of sentence starters and frames. This chart is not exhaustive, so if you are looking for something more specific, please connect with your ELL Resource Teacher.

Oral Language Sentence Starters