BEA - Bilingual Education Assessment Instructional Strategies for ELLs Questions and Answers — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A middle school science teacher is preparing a unit on ecosystems for a class that includes several beginner-level English Language Learners (ELLs). To make the content accessible, the teacher plans to use a variety of strategies. Which of the following strategies best exemplifies the principle of providing comprehensible input?
- Assigning the grade-level textbook chapter with a glossary of difficult terms.
- Using simplified language, gestures, and extensive visuals like diagrams and videos during lectures. (Correct answer)
- Requiring students to write a detailed research report on a specific ecosystem.
- Conducting a debate on environmental conservation policies.
Correct answer: Using simplified language, gestures, and extensive visuals like diagrams and videos during lectures.
Comprehensible input involves presenting information in a way that students can understand, even if they don't know every word. Using simplified language, gestures, and visuals makes complex scientific concepts accessible and reduces the cognitive load on ELLs, allowing them to focus on the content. The other options are not appropriate for beginner ELLs as they require high levels of academic language proficiency.
Question 2: Mr. Chen is planning a history lesson on the American Revolution. He wants to ensure his ELLs have the necessary support to understand the key concepts and vocabulary. Which component of the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model is most directly addressed by writing both content and language objectives on the board and discussing them with students at the start of the lesson?
- Interaction
- Building Background
- Lesson Preparation (Correct answer)
- Practice and Application
Correct answer: Lesson Preparation
The SIOP model emphasizes the importance of explicitly planning and stating both content objectives (what students will learn) and language objectives (how students will use language to learn). This practice is a key feature of the 'Lesson Preparation' component, as it clarifies the goals of the lesson for both the teacher and the students before instruction begins.
Question 3: A first-grade teacher is introducing vocabulary related to classroom objects (e.g., 'open the book,' 'close the door,' 'stand up'). She says the command and physically demonstrates the action, then has all the students perform the action as she repeats the command. This technique is known as:
- Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)
- Scaffolding
- Total Physical Response (TPR) (Correct answer)
- Culturally Responsive Teaching
Correct answer: Total Physical Response (TPR)
Total Physical Response (TPR) is a language teaching method where students respond to commands with physical actions. It mimics how children learn their first language by associating words with physical movements, which helps lower anxiety and create a strong memory link. This is especially effective for beginner ELLs and kinesthetic learners.
Question 4: To support her intermediate ELLs in a social studies class, a teacher provides them with sentence starters and paragraph frames for an essay about historical figures. For example, '___ was an important figure because...' and 'One major accomplishment was...'. This is an example of what type of instructional support?
- Comprehensible Input
- Scaffolding (Correct answer)
- Activating Prior Knowledge
- Informal Assessment
Correct answer: Scaffolding
Scaffolding is the temporary support given to students to help them complete a task they cannot yet do independently. Sentence starters and paragraph frames are a form of procedural scaffolding that provides linguistic structure, enabling ELLs to organize their thoughts and produce academic language more effectively. As students' proficiency increases, these supports can be gradually removed.
Question 5: Which of the following activities would be most effective for activating and building upon the prior knowledge of a diverse group of ELLs before starting a unit on community helpers?
- Having students read a chapter from the textbook about different professions.
- Giving a pre-test with vocabulary terms like 'firefighter' and 'paramedic'.
- Asking students to work in small groups to create a web diagram of people who help in their neighborhoods, allowing them to use drawings, their native language, and English. (Correct answer)
- Showing a documentary about the history of public service professions in the United States.
Correct answer: Asking students to work in small groups to create a web diagram of people who help in their neighborhoods, allowing them to use drawings, their native language, and English.
Activating prior knowledge is crucial for ELLs to connect new learning to their own experiences. A collaborative web diagram allows students to tap into their unique backgrounds and knowledge of community roles, which may differ from those in the U.S. Allowing the use of drawings and native languages validates their existing knowledge and provides an accessible entry point to the topic for all proficiency levels.
Question 6: A teacher wants to create a culturally responsive classroom environment for her ELLs. Which of the following practices is LEAST likely to contribute to this goal?
- Incorporating literature and materials that reflect the students' cultural backgrounds.
- Encouraging students to only use English in the classroom to accelerate their language acquisition. (Correct answer)
- Inviting families and community members to share their traditions and expertise.
- Learning and correctly pronouncing students' names and showing genuine interest in their lives.
Correct answer: Encouraging students to only use English in the classroom to accelerate their language acquisition.
A culturally responsive approach values and leverages students' linguistic backgrounds. Insisting on an 'English-only' policy can make students feel that their native language is not valued and can inhibit their learning by preventing them from using their full linguistic repertoire to make sense of new concepts. Effective practices often incorporate students' home languages as a bridge to learning English.
