Unlocking English Learners' Potential
Strategies for Making Content Accessible
- Diane Staehr Fenner - SupportEd
- Sydney Snyder - SupportEd
Foreword by Lydia Breiseth
A once-in-a-generation text for assisting a new generation of students
Content teachers and ESOL teachers, take special note: if you’re looking for a single resource to help your English learners meet the same challenging content standards as their English-proficient peers, your search is complete. Just dip into this toolbox of strategies, examples, templates, and activities from EL authorities Diane Staehr Fenner and Sydney Snyder. The best part? Unlocking English Learners’ Potential supports teachers across all levels of experience.
The question is not if English learners can succeed in today’s more rigorous classrooms, but how. Unlocking English Learners’ Potential is all about the how:
- How to scaffold ELs’ instruction across content and grade levels
- How to promote ELs’ oral language development and academic language
- How to help ELs analyze text through close reading and text-dependent questions
- How to build ELs’ background knowledge
- How to design and use formative assessment with ELs
Along the way, you’ll build the collaboration, advocacy, and leadership skills that we all need if we’re to fully support our English learners. After all, any one of us with at least one student acquiring English is now a teacher of ELs.
—Douglas Fisher, Coauthor of Visible Learning for Literacy
Supplements
"Teachers and administrators often read books that later end up on the shelf covered in dust. Unlocking English Learners' Potential: Strategies for Making Content Accessible is not one of them. It is a practical pedagogical guide that helps all teachers realize their role as a teacher of English learners. Teachers will especially love how it builds their background knowledge as well as provides actual strategies that work for ELs."
"Unlocking English Learners' Potential is a powerful and valuable guide for deepening all educators’ understandings, practices, and beliefs that contribute to the success of English Language Learners. Fenner and Snyder provide a framework for educating ELLs explained with practical tools, helpful examples, scenarios and activities that promote the implementation of best practices with this population of students. A must-have for schools looking to establish a shared school-wide responsibility for educating ELLs."
“For anyone needing a blueprint for how to successfully work with and instruct English language learners, Unlocking English Learners' Potential is a one-stop-shop. This book is a beacon of light for schools and practitioners that are new to ELLs and want to implement exemplary practices.”
"Drs. Staehr Fenner and Snyder compile an impressive number of instructional strategies that work for emerging bilingual students. With clarity and relevant examples, strategies are brought to life for both practitioners and administrators. A very timely work that will help with the education of the fastest growing population in our schools."
Sample Materials & Chapters
How to build ELs’ background knowledge
How to design and use formative assessment with ELs
How to help ELs analyze text through close reading and text-dependent questions
How to promote ELs’ oral language development and academic language
How to scaffold ELs’ instruction across content and grade levels
Chapter 2: Using a Culturally Responsive Framework to Meet the Needs of ELs