Sheltered Lesson

After watching a series of videos about comprehension sheltered lessons for ELL students, I have a few take aways for my own classroom of diverse learners. It is always great to be exposed to best practices in the field for different types of learners because what is good for one student could be beneficial to another (for different reasons). 

1. Expose students to difficult vocabulary prior to reading. A great way of doing this is by taking photos of the vocabulary and making poster sheets for the students to look at. I liked this idea because one photo of a park may not look like a park your student has been to, but if you find 3-4 pictures of different parks it might really help them to understand the word. 

2. Give clear and specific directions to students. Have them written and also show students what you want them to do. This is the sheltering of the lesson, where you are leaving little room for confusion or error for your students. You can also have students repeat the directions to each other. 

3. I loved the idea of having students stop to share their own ideas, traditions and opinions. This helps to build connections in the middle of a story. The teacher in the video made a list of these ideas. I think at the Kindergarten level you could have parents send in a list or picture of a tradition that they have helped students with prior to reading a story about a holiday. 

I am looking forward to bringing these ideas to the diverse learners in my own classroom! I hope you find them helpful!