PEDAGOGICAL PLAN #2
DANA VISSER
GENERAL
CONCEPTS FROM
CLASS THIS
WEEK TO BE
EXPLORED
- Developing class values that
encourage safe and caring learning
environments
- The multiple approaches to
tackling diversity
- Determing when and how to
approach correction and feedback in
the ELL classroom
- How to create culturally responsive
classrooms
- Should we include competitive
aspects in the ELL classroom?
- How to view learning with a
constructivist mentality.
- Fostering culturally responsive
teachers through teacher education
programs
- Encouraging multiliteracy
- Approaches to teaching vocabulary
in ELL
- Different types of vocabulary
instruction  approach diversity. In order for all students
- The frequency of specific words in
English through the New General
Service List
- Should we include explicit
grammar instruction in our
teaching?
- Examples of grammar-based
activities
- Varying teaching focuses in
grammar instruction
- The shift from PPP to Task-Based
Language Teaching
- The various types of tasks
VALUES OF A CARING AND
INCLUSIVE CLASSROOM
I have highlighted the aspects of what I view important in
order to establish a caring and inclusive classroom below.
- Everyone is welcome.
- Celebrate everyone's differences.
- Emphasize inter-cultural understanding.
-Teach and activitely practice empathy.
- Value diversity.
- Encourage collaboration.
- Create a safe and respectful learning environment.
In my own personal practice, I hope to establish a classroom
that is guided by these principles.
VARYING APPROACHES TO DIVERSITY
There are a number of ways one can
Intercultural approaches to diversity
to feel valued and included in a diverse highlight numerous ways of knowing and
classroom, the teacher must encourage being. This approach celebrates difference
the acceptance and celebration of and recognizes each student's own
differences. Assimilation, for example, uniqueness. Lastly, a critical approach,
results in learners that are expected to much like the intercultural approach,
conform to the norms of the dominant celebrates difference but also
group. Approaching diversity through an acknowledges silenced voices and
assimilationalist standpoint does not persepctives, historically and in current
encourage diverse perspectives and times. This approach allows for students to
approaches to learning. A multicultural understand critically the power
approach encourages the tolerance of impbalances between varying cultural
cultural differences, but does not by any groups. 
means celebrate difference.
 CREATING A
CULTURALLY
RESPONSIVE
CLASSROOM
Diversity must be valued and celebrated
in order for every student in a class to
feel safe and wanted. Teachers must go
out of their way to create educational
experiences that promote intercultural

CORRECTING MISTAKES AND GIVING FEEDBACK
It is often a challenge for ELL instructors to
decide whether or not to correct a
student's mistakes. If we decide to provide
a correction, it must be done in a thought-
out manner. Students make three different
types of mistakes: slips, errors, and
attempts. The only area that may need
correction is the category of errors. Errors
occur when students make a mistake that
they cannot correct themselves and
therefore, they are in need of further
explanation.
It is important that students recognize and
actively limit how frequently they are
correcting student's mistakes. Correcting
mistakes too often could result in a
student disengaging or withdrawing from
participating in the lagnuage learning
process. As well, if we correct every little
mistake that students make, there may be
little time left over for actual instruction of
curricular content.
COMPETITION IN AN ELL
respect and understanding. This can be
done in tangible ways:
The feedback we provide our students can
- Encourage students to bring their
be a great tool for them to understand
many aspects of their identities into the
which mistakes they are making and how
classroom.
to fix them. However, feedback cannot just
be a number or a grade to be meaningful.
- Avoid English-only policies. Celebrate
In order to provide meaningful feedback
the native languages of your students
to our students, we must be specific and
and encourage them to use them in the
provide explanations.
classroom to enhance their learning.
Promoting a linguistically rich classroom
Encouraging self editing or peer feedback
allows non-native English speakers to
allows for students to feel like they have an
feel that they can contribute
active role in their learning. Letting the
comfortably.
students in through the form of self
correction can be extremely powerful.
- Ensure that classroom materials and
Allowing for students to participate in peer
literature are representative of diverse
marking creates an environment of
cultures, understandings, experiences,
support in which students monitor each
and backgrounds. Students feel like a
other's progress and help each other grow.
part of the classroom when they can
Partaking in peer feedback can actually
relate to the materials in the classroom.
help students become better at self-
monitoring.
- Acknowledge your own personal
biases and critically analyze the
perspectives you bring to the classroom
as an educator.

CLASS - Allow for students to be teachers, too.

Depending on a student's background and previous
Acknowledge the diverse
educational experiences, competition in the classroom
understandings and skills that your
may be intimidating and could potentially result in them
students bring to the classroom and
being reluctant to get involved. Competition should be
allow them to share these with their
used carefully and sparingly in the ELL classroom in order
peers.
to ensure student's feel safe to participate in classroom
activities. Teachers must establish learning environments in
- Include a variety of classroom activities
which all students feel safe to contribute their perspectives
and tasks to ensure that multiple types
and answers and believe that their answers will not be
of learners are able to succeed.
combatted by persecution and humiliation.
A CONSTRUCTIVIST
VIEW OF THE
LEARNING
PROCESS
Learning is a process in which
individuals find meaning when
responding to new-found ideas.
Students use their existing
knowledge and experiences to make
sense of new information and
differing perspectives. Because of
this, their predeveloped knowledge
and cultural and personal
experiences are central aspects of
their learning.
Teachers must help students build
bridges between what they already
know and believe and the newly
introduced ideas. Explicitly teaching
questioning techniques and
exposing students to a vast range of
perspectives and experiences is
essential to them being able to
FOSTERING MULTILITERACY IN THE CLASSROOM
navigate between this knowledge,
new and old.
The diverse backgrounds of students
influences how they react to new
ideas. Because of this, it is important
that a teacher knows the students in
their classes and uses their unique
backgrounds to create and adjust
the way they teach and the concepts
they introduce.
Allowing students to actively seek
differing perspectives through
conversations, class discussions, or
diverse literature is a way to
encourage them to see situations
from multiple perspectives.
Acknowledging biases in our
students and ourselves is also
important in creating open-minded,
constructivist learners.
THE IMPORTANCE OF
NURTURING CULTURALLY
RESPONSIVE TEACHERS
Pre-service teachers need to be exposed to specific ELL
instructional strategies in order to effectively teach
these students. Teachers must have the right tools in
their belts in order to take what they know about a
student's needs and apply the appropriate
pedagogical strategies to meet the perceived need.
Teacher educator programs must include wide-spread
(over the span of multiple courses) instruction with a
focus on ELL students and students from diverse
backgrounds.
- Encourage community members and
Students' native languages have an
parents with other native languages to
important place in their learning and
participate in your classroom activities. If a
therefore in the classroom. It is crucial that
monolingual teacher doesn't feel prepraed
tachers foster multiliteracy and encourage
to conduct specific lessons, why not ask a
multilinguistic learning. Supporting
community member with authentic
linguistic development for students can be
linguistic experiences to act as a teacher?
achieved in several different ways. Even
monolingual teachers who have little or no
- Incorporate literature in multiple
exposure to other languages can actively
languages into your classroom library.
seek ways to cultivate their student's
Allowing students to grow their reading
multiliteracy.
skills in their native language will
subsequently grow their reading skills in
- Encourage students with native
English.
languages other than English to teach
various words to the class in their
- Include multi-language prints around the
language. This not only shows the student
classroom. Translate welcome signs or
that their language is important and
numbers in various languages and place
valued, but it also allows for other students
these physicallly around the classroom.
to be exposed to new vocabulary words in
Make sure that the translations are
multiple languages.
authentic representations.
 VOCABULARY
INSTRUCTION
More often-than-not, students learn
vocabulary through exposure and
experience Reading texts, making
meaning from pictures, and having
conversations are all ways that
students are exposed to new
vocabulary. However, there is a time
and place for explicit vocabulary

TEACHING VOCABULARY IN AN ELL CLASSROOM instruction.

We cannot simply assume our students
understand the vocabulary needed in
order to function well in a mainstream
English-speaking classroom. Explicit
vocabulary instruction is essential in
ensuring student success. There are a
number of strategies to explicit vocabulary
instruction summarized below:
1) Rich Instruction: High frequency words
are specifically acknowledged through
focused instruction. This type of lesson is
most effective when students have already
been exposed to the word numerous
times in real-life experiences.
2) Word Part Strategy: This form of
instruction allows students to break apart
a word in order to uncover meaning. By
dividing larger words into their smaller
sub-parts, students are more easily able to
decifer the meaning of a specific
vocabulary word.
3) Keyword Technique: This process allows
students to connect similar sounding
words in their native languages to act as
mnemonic clues for remembering harder
target words in English.
4) Chunking Words: The English language
has many instances where two words are
placed together to create new meaning
(collocates). This strategy allows students
to identify different uses of target words.
5)Extensive Reading: The more a student is
exposed to a vocabulary word through
several readings or experiences, the easier
it is to build fluency and understanding.
6) Dictionary Usage: Many students, even
native language speakers, do not
understand how to properly use a
dictionary to find a word's meaning.
Dictionary skills need to be specifically
taught.
.Introducing new vocabulary to our
students can occur in numerous
ways. When students are exposed to
a word for the first time, meaningful
instruction activities can occur that
allow for students to find meaning.
Activities that can occur that involve
introducing new vocabulary could
be through class discussions, naming
parts of a larger image, or
brainstorming associated words.
There are also times in learning
where students are required to
practice their vocabulary that they
already have been exposed to. The
aim of these sorts of activities is for
students to think about word
menaing in various contexts and
conversational circumstances. These
activities could include sorting
relat3ed words, creating word maps,
or analyzing a how a specific word
functions in sentences, collocations,

NEW GENERAL SERVICE LIST

and lexical chunks.

This tool has been developed to provide the frequency of Engaging students in vocabulary
thousands of various words found in everyday conversational learning through games is a
speech. It highlights 2800 common words that we are captivating way for students to
exposed to regularly. By teaching our students these high- practice establishing word
frequency words, we are exposing them to the most common meanings. Games such as charades
vocabulary that they need to understand in order to function or pictionary can be used as a great
day-to-day.Learning these 2800 words facilitates broad way to practice related words.
coverage of the vocabulary students need to know to gain true
understanding.
GRAMMAR PRACTICE WHY GRAMMAR INSTRUCTION?
ACTIVITIES Explicit language instruction is essential to a student's
There are various types of grammar develop in their language acquisition. Without grammar
practice activities that can occur in instruction, there is a risk that a learn's "interlanguage" may
the classroom. dissipate. As well, grammar instruction may allow for
students to organize learned concepts and notice
- Type One emphasizes awareness. commonalities amongst these concepts. Learning the
These activities focus a student's grammatical rules of a language and truly understanding
attention on the form and meaning these rules, and exceptions to these rules, can allow for
of the grammatical concept. student's to have the tools to use language more creatively
and naturally. There are two approaches to grammar
- Type Two activities are controlled teaching: inductive and deductive. Inductive grammar
drills in which learners are required teaching occurs when alike examples are shown and rules
to create examples of the are created as a result. Contrastingly, deductive grammar
grammatical structure. teaching explicitly states the rules and then examples are
created using said rule.
- Type Three is similar, but is called
meaningful drills. The learners have
more limited choices than in type
two.

- Type Four is guided, meaningful

practice. Learners are given free
reign on which vocabulary to use
when demonstrating the
grammatical concepts through
forming sentences.

- Type Five is free sentence

composition. Teacher's provide
students with a situational or visual
cue in which they write responses to
ESTABLISHING TEACHING FOCUS IN GRAMMAR
In order for language instruction to be
following the provided structural Fluency is concerned to a student's ability
successful, a teacher must be aware of the
framework. to process and create language with ease.
aspect of grammar that they wish to focus
Activities that practice fluency should
on. These focuses are accuracy, fluency
- Type Six are similar, but this time mimic the language used in real-life
and complexity. A wide range of activities
are titled discourse compositions in experiences and should include aspects of
should be promoted to ensure all aspects
which students either participate in unpredictability.
of grammar are addressed.
discussions or write responses
according to the assigned task using Complexity refers to the process of
Accuracy relates to acknowledging the
the grammatical structure provided. integrating newly learned information into
correct usage of the language. Accuracy
pre-existing information. Activities that
can be practiced through paying close
- Lastly, type seven is called free focus on complexity include
attention to form and by familiarizing
discourse.. These activities provide problematizing situations that require
themselves with the language they are
students with the most freedom as them to reorganize their "mental
trying to use. Accruacy is more effective
they are able to use the grammatical grammar" after experiencing a
when the student's are given time to think
structure in whichever way they communication problem due to the
and given specific feedback on how to
choose.. incorrect use of language.
make improvements.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Freeman, D. & Freeman, Y. (1993).
Strategies for Promoting the Primary
Languages of All Students. The
Reading Teacher. International
Literacy Association and Wiley.

Freedson-Gonzalez, M., Lucas, T. &

Villegas, A. M. (2008). Linguistically

TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING

TBLT is a pedagogical approach that is
heavily supported by second language
acquisition research. This approach creates
learning activities that are based upon the
completion of tasks, rather than
grammatical or vocabulary teaching
points.
There are four principles that guide TBLT:
1) There is a clear distinction between
methodology and curricular content.
2) Tasks are the centre of the lesson and
are a central aspect of planning and
assessing. The task dictates how the
classroom instruction will develop.
3) Communication is the focus through the
emphasis on accuracy and fluency
supported in the task.
4) TBLT is student-centred Students can
influence both the planning process and
how the direction of the resulting lessons..
Willis suggests structuring lessons with
three types of activities in mind: Pre-task(s),
task(s), and post-task(s).
The pre-task phase focuses on introducing
a new topic through.several recall
activities. During the task stage, students
work on the main task either individually
or collaboratively with a focus on
communication. Lastly, the post-task(s) are
language-focused with the purpose being
to develop linguistic accuracy in particular
language forms and uses.
Responsive Teacher Education:
Preparing Classroom Teachers to
Teach English Learners. Journal of
Teacher Education. Sage
Publications.
Lucas, T. & Villegas, A. M. (2002).
Preparing Culturally Responsive
Teachers: Rethinking the Curriculum.
Journal of Teacher Education. Sage
Publications.
Harber, M. & Rao, A. (2019). Response-
able Pedagogy: Fostering a Culturally
and Linguistically Responsive
Educational Environment. The Role
of an Education Assistant:
Supporting Inclusion. Canadian
Scholars.
Haywood, A., Lorenzen, C. &
Schwarzer, D. Fostering Multiliteracy
in a Linguistically Diverse Classroom.
National Council of Teachers of

TYPES OF TASKS
English.

Willis provides a framework of six different categorizations of

Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive
task-based activities:
approach to language
learning. Oxford University Press.
1) Listing (ex. creating mindmaps, brainstorming)
2) Sorting and Ordering (ex. sequencing, list-making)
Thornbury, S. (1999). How to teach
3) Comparing (contrasting, creating a Venn diagram)
grammar. Longman.
4) Problem Solving (logic puzzles, finishing incomplete stories)
5) Sharing Personal Experiences (sharing personal preferences,
Willis, J. (1996). A framework for task-
reflecting on ones feelings)
based learning. Addison Wesley
6) Creative Tasks (writing, doing a science experiment)
Longman.

Tasks may consist of only one particular type or could include

aspects of several types.