do you struggle getting your English language learners particularly at the
newcomer or beginning phase of their language journey to speak in class I
have a quick tip that I use in my classroom to help my English language
learners and I want to share that with you today before I get into this week's
video I want to make sure that you know that I post a video every single week on
tips and strategies and resources to help you with your English language
learners in your classroom so that they're more successful and to make you
feel more comfortable in your ability to be able to meet their needs
if you hit that notification bell you will be notified every week when I post
a new video so today's strategy that I want to share
with you that will get your English language learner speaking and I promise
you it will even get your newcomer speaking even if I have a student who
has only been here for less than a year and he was already doing this activity
which was so exciting but what it is is the use of structured sentence frames
with inside outside circles if you're not familiar with sentence frames I will
link up above a video that I did probably about a year ago on sentence
frames particularly for writing but once you watch it you can actually see how
this could be definitely used in a classroom setting where a student needs
to speak and inside outside circle is a strategy that you may have already used
and not realised that that's what it's called and there's so many different
configurations of having students pairing them up and having them talk but
I'm just going to choose that for today because it's something I've use and it's
been really successful and what it is is that an insight outside circle is
exactly what it sounds like you have students who are inside of a circle and
then another group of students who are outside of that circle one of my classes
there are 18 students so what I did is I broke them in half and I had nine
students on the outside nine students in and each student was looking at another
student the outside circle was looking in the inside circle was looking out so
I will briefly show you a picture of what this would look like
so now you have an idea of what that would look like what happens is person a
on the outside of the circle will say something ask a question person B will
then respond and so forth I make it really really clear that outside is a
inside is B so I'll he'll say okay if you are person a raise your hand if
you're person B raise your hand that way they really know what their role is and
when I give them a specific instruction they know what who they are and what
their role is once that's established what you do is you can have the inside
circle move to the right or to the left it is up to you and how you prefer that
and that way they're looking face to face to a new partner and you can
actually have the outside circle move it's up to you or you can have both move
but it's something that I would make sure that you get them familiarized with
moving and just getting that flow before you actually get into the lesson so that
it moves smoothly I've learned from experience because the first time I did
it was a little messy but once we did it the second round they got it but that's
one thing I would definitely suggest is having them practice the flow
and giving them a direction so that they know what that means and that's actually
a great good skill for them because if you're saying inside circle move left to
one person that's those are directions that they have to follow so that those
are listening skills that they're putting into action so how does sentence
frames work with this type of activity well a couple of weeks ago I did a
lesson where I was having them have a conversation about their favorite colors
and I will actually show you a brief picture so you could see what they were
looking at this was the sentence frame that they had so what I did was I said
person a you're going to say what is your favorite color and then person B is
gonna say my favorite color is mind you previous to this lesson we have already
talked about the colors spelling them pronouncing them they wrote them in
their notebooks and so forth and they had an opportunity to already write out
what their favorite color is so they already knew in their mind
I know what I'm going to say so that's tip number one within this strategy is
make sure that your English language learners have had the opportunity to
interact by themselves with that sentence that you want them and you
working with them one-on-one having them pronounce it spell it say it and so
forth because that way when they're actually then using in context in a
conversation and speaking to someone else
they've already feel comfortable and they're prepared so once they did did
that I had person a ask person B what is your favorite color and person B
responded then I had the inside circle moved to the right here's a little clip
of what that looked like in the actual context of my students and look at their
faces so as you can see they were they just felt really comfortable and they
were really at first they were a little hesitant like oh my goodness I have to
speak but it's really interesting because I have to us a little story to
share with you I have one student I won't say her name but she has been in
this country for not alone not for a long time but she will not speak she
does not feel comfortable and sometimes she won't even speak to her friends do
you know that with this activity she actually spoke she spoke to her partner
which was so exciting it was very quiet and not but her partner could
acknowledge that she was speaking to her so that was a win that made and that
actually made her feel more confident and since that activity she's speaking
up more so don't underestimate having your students do structured sentences it
may sound like well they already wrote it and they reset it one on one by
themselves and they read it you know what is the big deal but when you're
getting them to actually practice with another partner it makes a difference
and it carries on to other activities thank you so much for tuning in to this
episode of the language lady I hope this video benefited you if you do try it out
let me know in the comments below how that activity went and if you already do
these type of activities share in what context you use them and what are you
what is your population look like are they beginners intermediate advanced
is it a mixed group I want to know would be really interesting to see all of you
communicating in a comment section below and sharing your strategies and ideas
thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you next week
you