How to Make Your Lessons Understandable to ELLs

This is the third in my book study series on Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners.  I have tagged each of these posts "Comprehensible Content" so if you miss a post or two, you can easily find them. 

The third component of the SIOP model is called Comprehensible Input.  Effective teachers match their rate of speech and vocabulary to their students' level of English.  They clearly explain academic tasks with modelling, visuals, and completed sample tasks.  They communicate in many different ways through gestures, anchor charts, and graphic organizers--to name a few.  They use repetition because students need multiple exposures to new vocabulary words.

In the online version of this class, one of the instructors taught a lesson in Mandarin.  She used the techniques in this chapter to emphasize how important rate of speech and gestures are to learning something in a different language.