Sheltered Instruction

What is this? It´s an instructional approach used to make academic instruction in English understandable to English language learners. Teachers need to use physical activities, visual aids, and the environment to teach important new words for concept development in such subjects as Math, science,history, etc. To shelter instruction teachers use different methods as cooperative learning strategies, visuals, props, body language, and very important, use a thematic approach.
Bilingual programs aim to develop both English proficiency and academic competence; in other words, they teach English through content areas. But me should remember that our students are learning the language, so they usually struggle with the content material being taught, especially using ESL textbooks which bring a lot of unknown vocabulary and structures.
Sheltered instruction is effective when teachers are capable of administering and delivering the lessons effectively in such a way that students understand, learn English and learn content.

Best 2009 Posts

Best 2009 Posts

Teaching subjects in English

The course I will have to design is content based learning, which deals with teaching subjects in English to EFL learners. HOw does this work out in our educational setting? We know that bilingual schools in our country believe that teaching History, Science, Math, Biology, etc., etc., etc., in English makes them be called bilingual, but let´s think how much these kids really learn about the content subject. They usually study in ESL textbooks and it´s commonly noticed how frustrating reading in these books becomes to the students. It´s very difficult for them to completely understand what´s going on. Then, here is when teachers need to know about scaffolding techniques to support these learners. I really love to teach this module; I enjoy sharing with the teachers what I have read about the SIOP model, which is perfectly suitable for our schools and students. I´ll be posting more about this !!