The English Learner Collaborations project has added new lesson plan examples to the Emerging America website that demonstrate the use of scaffolds and supports for English Learners.
A third grade teacher who teaching newly arrived immigrant learners might be able to use the first lesson in the Language Aware Social Studies unit (on daily life in Colonial Massachusetts), but decide that the other lessons needed to wait until the students had gained more language skill. Now there is a group of language-learning lessons on the same topic designed for language acquisition using primary sources. The strategies are all offered as applied examples that can be transferred to other content as needed.
Similarly, the eighth grade group of Social Studies lessons that demonstrate language aware use of primary sources (including the US Constitution, Supreme Court cases, and press coverage) in learning about the First Amendment are now complemented by a group of lessons on the same topic designed to meet language acquisition objectives.
And the high school group of History lessons showing inclusive strategies to support multilingual learners in studying non-violent protest principles now have mirror lessons designed for the ESL classroom that focus on the linguistic features of the tasks asked of students in history classes, allowing history teachers to collaborate with language specialists to support student learning.
