hello and welcome to another episode of the language lady your one-stop shop for
all things ESL for parents teachers and students I'm your host dr. hem Phil and
today we're going to be talking about writing an essay for your newcomer
students and your beginners obviously off the bat you may think to yourself
well this is not an activity that is appropriate for them because writing an
essay is something that students who are at a higher level of proficiency of
language and writing speaking reading and listening are able to do however you
believe it or not you can introduce your newcomers and your beginners to the
concept if especially if they've already done that in their first language so I'm
going to demonstrate with you step by step how you would differentiate an
activity for writing a an essay for your newcomers and beginners before I go
ahead and dive in I'm curious about your experiences with working with writing
with your Els comment below what are some strengths and weaknesses you have
encountered in the classroom in the areas specifically to writing with their
writing sentences writing paragraphs and essays I do want to preface that if you
have not watched my video about what students are able to do at their level I
strongly suggest you watch that video first before you watch this video so
that this one makes more sense to you but since we're talking about the area
of writing and we're talking about what students can do at their level where
this videos is specifically for students at a level one and a level two so at a
level one level two in writing in level one they can draw in response to oral
directions they're able to label pictures diagrams produce icons symbols
words to convey messages so for the task of writing an essay I'm gonna focus on
this area because this seems more appropriate I'm gonna be able to have
them label and then for a level 2 student who is a beginner but has more
language but they're still not able to write full sentences without substantial
support I know that they can make lists they can prove use drawings phrases
short sentences notes give information from oral or written directions but I
also know that if I look up here they can also sort so for that purpose I'm
gonna have them sort so if we're talking about in writing say that you have a
task where you want your students to come up with an introduction a body
paragraph and a concluding paragraph what I always tell my content teachers
that I work with is think about the end in mind you think about what is the
output what do I want my students to do at the end of the day the the end result
is that they're able to write a cohesive essay but back to the can do I know that
a level one is able to label so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna have the essay
written already for them and I'm going to ask them to color code every section
of the essay in a specific color for this particular essay I have these
options I have the hook I have background information and I have a
thesis statement and by the way I would not introduce the whole thing at one
time first I would just talk about the hook
and I would give examples of what different hooks look like I would give
them examples of background information and then a thesis statement so let's say
that I give all of these a different color like I could give this yellow red
and blue so then when they on a separate piece of paper they have the actual
essay they have this next to them and underneath each one I would have
examples of ones that we have gone over so then what they'll do is they'll look
at the essay and they'll color code each part based on what I'm asking them to
look for that's what I would do for a level one for a level two as I mentioned
before they're able to sort right they're able to sort the information so
in this case I would give them premade sentences that they will have to sort
and I got this off of teachers pay teacher's by the way so I will link that
below so that you can utilize this if this if you're interested in doing this
particular activity so what I would have them do is I would give them mixed up
all the different parts of for example the hook background information and
thesis statement and then I would have again the same support as I had for my
level ones I'm gonna have multiple examples of hooks multiple examples of
background information and multiple examples of thesis statements these are
statements is the easiest because it's always gonna have words like I believe
or my opinion is or I think that and things like that so I think is really
important to teach them these clues so that they're looking for that so once
they look for that they'll know right off the bat which one will go where okay
so if I know that I believe is a cute Accu word okay then I know that that's
gonna be my thesis statement and I already know that this is the order
because this might one of my supports so this is gonna go last
in this paragraph and then I'm left with the hook and background information it's
up to you and how well your students learn these concepts but I have taught
my ELLs that the hook is going to be shorter than the actual background
information and sometimes this will end in an exclamation point and a question
mark when I explain that to them they knew immediately that this was going to
be first that this was their hook and that this is the information because I'm
putting in a lot of background information so this goes second so it's
really important that you spend a lot of time talking about key words so even
before even doing that tivity like this you could even do a graphic organizer
where you have all of the different aspects of an introductory paragraph and
go through each one and they can organize the information like hook
sounds like this background information sounds like this visa statement sounds
like this
moving on to the body paragraph back to our level ones so we know that we have
each si has a pattern there's a topic sentence there's text evidence once text
evidence introducing I'm sorry and then the text evidence and then the
elaboration I would do every single one of these in a different color color code
each one and literally go through an essay and label each parts of the essay
accordingly here is an example of an essay that is already color coded so
here is your hook okay hooks are in this color
and again I would have on the side again this is for your level ones on the side
example multiple examples so they have some sort of idea of what a hook looks
like so that's what I recommend is having a blank version without any color
of this essay and it on the left hand side you're going to include all of the
different categories that we mentioned earlier like the hook background
information thesis statement and etc and then attach a color to each of those
categories and then their job is to label with their highlighter that that
portion for example they would highlight this in pink and then write on the side
this is the hook again I would have an example of this done before you would
have already done this before you have done this together so this is just the I
do part of the lesson I think it's also important that you put the word so I
would have a list of all the different aspects or the different parts of the
essay on the left hand side or wherever you want to put it on the page with the
color corresponding to it so that they know okay pink is hook text evidence one
is blue and so on and so forth so that they're making a connection with
the color and the word in the part of the essay and again you want to make
sure that you include examples of each one
I can't preface that enough examples examples examples in the beginning
because they they don't have in their mind formulated quite yet what is
supposed to look like and you may be asking yourself but in the end are they
actually writing an essay well they're not writing it in the way that your
level fours would be or level five or your students who are already proficient
in English but they're doing at their level and they're participating and
they're learning and that's what's really important at the end of the day
it doesn't make sense to throw something a piece of paper at them and say oh go
ahead and write an essay when it doesn't have any meaning and it's not going to
help them feel like they're are participating and they won't feel good
about themselves when you stay strictly to the can-do district descriptors it
really makes a lot of difference because you're doing meaningful activities and
they feel that they are producing something always keep in mind that you
want to be looking at the level afterwards this is where you're striving
you don't wanna if you have a level one in writing you don't want to live in
this category you're always striving for the next level and I will also link this
below because I've gotten requests for for the can do descriptors thank you so
much for tuning in this week I totally appreciate your support of this channel
if you have any ideas for any future topics please comment below and I'll see
you next week for another episode of the language lady