Education

New Book: Teaching Language and Content at the Same Time

By Mary Ann Zehr — February 03, 2010 1 min read
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The ASCD has published a book with practical guidance for how teachers can help English-language learners increase their knowledge of English while they’re also learning content. I’ve skimmed the copy of the book that arrived at my desk here at EdWeek and see it’s not a book that cites the research base for the strategies it promotes. Rather, it gives classroom examples of how various teaching strategies can work with ELLs.

For example, the book tells how in a 5th grade social studies class, when a student didn’t know what a blockade was, the teacher selected a student to wear a sign that said “British ship” and another student to wear one that said “Union ship.” The student with the “British ship” sign stepped outside of the classroom. The teacher then asked the student with the “Union ship” sign to show he was blocking his peer from reentering the classroom and explained that the Union ships created a blockade to keep British ships from bringing food to the Confederate states during the American Civil War.

Hey, whatever works!

Judie Haynes, a teacher of English-as-a-second-language for 29 years and a co-author of the book, put a link on Twitter that permits one to access some of the book’s chapters for free. She’s also written a description of the book here.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Learning the Language blog.