In my experience, when teachers and administrators talk about support and Co-Teaching, they’re almost always referring to classroom teachers. What about supporting our specialist teachers? In P.E, students need to know names of bones and muscles (Tier 3 vocabulary). In order to critique art, students need to be able to form an opinion backed up by evidence. In computer classes, some consider coding a language of its own. Specialists rely on language to convey their content, and students may need additional support to access this.

Below are some ways that teachers can incorporate ELL strategies in to their specialist classes, ideally with an ELL Co-Teacher (but also on their own!). These strategies can help students not only engage in the specialists’ standards, but help them learn language along the way.

P.E

A simple Google search will tell you that there is a tremendous amount of research out there that shows how TPR, or Total Physical Response, can beneficial for all learners, especially those learning a foreign language. P.E classes are a great way to get students engaged physically and with academic content.

Target Games

Loads of P.E games require students to hit targets with a degree of accuracy. Why not attach sight words on to targets? When students hit the target with an object, they can recite a word, spell it, or use it in a sentence. This would be a great way to gamify mundane sight word recall games. This would be a great opportunity for classroom teachers and P.E teachers to work together to reinforce use of content vocabulary in P.E classes.

Gross Motor Coordination Games

These games are common with younger students who are still developing gross motor skills. Movement games can be used in conjunction with verbs and nouns in that students should act out an action (running, swimming, painting, etc.) or use their bodies to create a noun (four students create a car, three students create a table, etc.). This is a great way to get the kids moving while also reviewing English words, verb conjugation, and sentence structure.

Sports Reflections

Keeping journals is common in most ELA classrooms. Journals can also be used in P.E! Students can write about their experiences playing games, competing in sports, or even creating their own sport or game with their own sets of rules. Students can reflect on their experiences in P.E while building on their writing and argument skills, which are easily transferable in the classroom. Teachers can use sentence / paragraph frames and word banks to further support students in their writing.

As teachers, sometimes it’s easy to focus too much on the broad picture of the standards. While these big ideas are important for us to understand and keep in mind, some students need us to meet them where they’re at in that moment. If standards and assessments are the forest, our students are the trees. Some are huge redwoods basking in sunlight and growing taller by the day, others a modest pine or birch, showing steady progress.

Music

Being a piano player, I consider music almost as if it were its own language. Notes are an “alphabet” of sorts that translate into specific sounds. Groups of notes (chords) make entirely different sounds. Musical symbols translate into the “voice” and “feeling” of the piece. Music is a beautiful way of self expression that can bring out the diversity in any classroom.

Music from Different Cultures

Our classrooms are more diverse than ever before. This is a fantastic opportunity to honor the cultures that are represented both in and outside of our classroom. Teachers can even take this a step further and bring in instruments from other cultures to support music in class with realia (you’d be surprised what relics students can bring in from home!). Representing our diverse population in the classroom motivates students to not only learn content, but also language.

Frayer Models

Frayer models are used as a visual way for students to learn vocabulary. Music is filled with Tier 2 vocabulary words like tone, pitch, melody, rhythm, etc. that students may need additional support to understand. Frayer models can be a way for students to visually represent these words using pictures, sentences, examples, and non-examples. These are also designed for students to work on in groups, which can further build upon students’ oral language.

Music Reflection

If you haven’t noticed yet, I love reflecting through writing! Everyone experiences music differently. It elicits unique emotions, experiences, and feelings. Students can take the opportunity to write or talk about what they’re experiencing when listening to a specific song or genre. Teachers can go further with this in analyzing lyrics to find hidden meanings and themes within songs, which tie in directly with upper elementary common core reading standards.

Art

It’s no surprise that art is very visual, using colors and images to convey meaning. Visuals are a perfect way to scaffold language for learners. I co-taught an art unit with the elementary art teacher, focusing on using art language to critique artworks using Feldman’s Art Critique model. You will be able to read about it more on Ready, Set, Co-teach!’s website soon, so stay tuned!

Art Critique

Critiquing art requires specific language to convey opinions while backing it up with factual evidence, which both align with writing Common Core standards across each grade level and the Six Shifts of Literacy. Teaching how to have an argument alongside art can help scaffold the language needed in critiquing for all learners.

Free Writing / Speaking

Like music, art can convey a variety of emotions in young learners. Students can write about the art that they create. Teachers can scaffold this language by using sentence frames and word banks to target specific sentence structures and vocabulary. When I co-taught with the art teacher, we used a word bank with specific Tier 2 words like foreground, background, perspective, and horizon to facilitate vocabulary use in student writing. It helped students use target vocabulary while they were writing about their art pieces. Art Research Research projects about artists is a way for students to learn more about art as well as practice language across all domain areas. Specialists often have limited time and capacity when working with students, but a way around this is to work with classroom teachers so students can be researching both in and out of art class. Research projects align with Common Core standards across all grade levels, and they can be tailored to hit specific art standards as well.

Computers

Students are becoming more and more proficient in tech than ever before. My own students often surpass my knowledge of smart phones, social media, and online gaming! Students are true experts at tech, and teachers can capitalize on this knowledge to facilitate growth in both language and tech know-how.

Primary Sources

I’ve been running into this issue lately with older students; knowing the difference between strong and weak sources. Google searches often provide us with too much information, and for students conducting research may find it difficult to identify legitimate sources. Tech and homeroom teachers can team up during research projects to help students identify and cite primary sources in their research, hitting all content standards as well as tech research / digital responsibility standards. Tech teachers can tap into students’ argumentative skills and even have them explain why certain sources are legitimate or not.

Coding Students are learning to create computer programs and video games younger and younger as the tech becomes more available. Coding programs like SCRATCH or Minecraft  give students the opportunity to create their own mods and games. This can easily facilitate all domains of language as students work with one another to create games, learn coding steps, and write about their creations. It may require a little bit of leg work for the teacher to set up, but in the end it’s worth it!

Pen Pals / Google Docs

Whether it’s with students from a different country, city, or even a different classroom, students can practice their writing skills by drafting emails to one another. Students can learn how to draft a friendly letter, or other writing topics can be integrated into emailing like opinion writing, narrative fiction writing, etc. Students can collaboratively share documents to brainstorm and draft stories together. The options are endless with even the simplest of computer tools!

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At the end of the day, every teacher is responsible for the language development of each and every student. All teachers rely on language to communicate standards and content, so it’s essential that we intentionally facilitate language development in each classroom. Of course, these suggested strategies are only a few of the endless options out there, but I hope that they sparked some creative interest in trying something new in your classes!