Multilevel Classes
From LiteracyTentWiki
The discussion thread below, streamlined here, was taken from messages posted to the NIFL-ESL electronic discussion forum [ nifl-esl@nifl.gov ] in January, 2006.
To: nifl-esl@nifl.gov
From: Josh Kildall kildalljt at hotmail.com
Tue Jan 17 03:47:31 EST 2006
Hi everyone,
I teach an adult immigrant ESL class, level high beginner to low advanced, and am looking for general strategies to teach multilevel classes. I have used multilevel cloze activities and pairing lower and higher students together, but what other suggestions do you have?
Thanks for any ideas,
Josh
To: nifl-esl@nifl.gov
From: David Rosen djrosen at comcast.net
Tue Jan 17 08:39:28 EST 2006
Josh, and others,
Here are some ideas for ESOL multilevel classroom teaching, the result of a five minute search of NIFL LINCSearch using the term "multilevel"
http://www.nifl.gov/lincs/search/search.html
LINCS is the National institute for Literacy's "Literacy Information and Communication Service" LINCSearch has four search engines. I used the Materials Search -- "A precise search of human-cataloged research, instructional materials, and curriculum resources available through the LINCS network. Use this search to find videos, books, journals, and web-based materials. Search results include summaries of the resources and other useful information."
Selected results of the search
From SABES:
http://sabes.org/resources/fieldnotes/vol15/f152balliro2.htm
http://hub1.worlded.org/docs/connections/tableofcontents.htm
From NCSALL's Focus on Basics:
From CAELA:
http://www.cal.org/caela/esl%5Fresources/digests/SHANK.html
From TESLJ
http://iteslj.org/Techniques/Salli-Copur-MixedAbility.html
David J. Rosen
djrosen at comcast.net
To: nifl-esl@nifl.gov
From: Karen nancy98ellen at yahoo.com
Tue Jan 17 15:29:20 EST 2006
Josh,
I am a fairly new volunteer teacher ---- also in an adult ESL class--- open enrollment, open ended type class. I may have between 2 - 10 students at a class period which is 2 hours. Some of my students are recent immigrants and know only a few words of English and others are high beginners or intermediates. What a challenge!!
We do follow a workbook and regimented outline "Lifeprints: ESL for Adults" but generally during the two hours we will deviate and go into depth on a certain point for the more advanced students and also back up and review some very basic concepts. I do use a lot of realia and base it on the topic of the chapter we are on or some other relavant topic.
For example, 2 weeks ago we had 2 brand new immigrants to our class so the next week I brought state maps, city maps, tourism brochures of our city and state, post cards and we talked about our town and state. At times in very limited language but I felt it incorporated all the students into the discussion even though the very beginner students mostly looked at the pictures.
Hope this helps,
Kari
To: nifl-esl@nifl.gov
From: DonMcCabe@aol.com DonMcCabe at aol.com
Tue Jan 17 09:29:18 EST 2006
One activity you might try is the daily dictation of two sentences that incorporate what linguists often call sandhi or synoloepha. I just call it the "scrunching up" of words and phrases in speech as in "whutcha wanna do?" (What do you want to do?) Whattaya gonna do tuhmarra? (What are you going to do tomorrow?). This is what I call "Speech to Spelling." To find out more about
this concept which I developed when teaching English to English teachers in Japan, you might want to spend some time on the ***www.spelling.org*** website.
Don McCabe
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