ESOL Instructional Strategies

Meeting Students’ Cognitive Academic Needs
The development of higher-order thinking skills and coping strategies is crucial to the academic and personal success of all students. It is especially true for some English Language Learners (ELLs) who have not had complete educational experiences due to social, economic, or political factors that interrupted their education. These students need additional enrichment and cognitive practice to improve their processing and production of content material. In addition, it is important for teachers to identify, build, and enrich those skills and knowledge that students may have already mastered.

Making Instruction Comprehensible
The teachers of ELLs make instruction comprehensible to ELLs through a variety of means, which may include, but are not limited to, the use of gestures, visuals, concrete examples, and through the routines and rituals of the lesson and the school day. Below, you will find the ESOL Instructional Strategies Matrix and Addendum that can be implemented to support language development.

Introduction • Student Behavior • ESE • ESOL • Gifted and Talented