Building Background

SIOP Model

Making Content Comprehensible for English Language Learners

Content Objectives

Identify techniques for connecting student’s personal experiences and past learning to lesson concepts

Define the key elements of academic language (content words, process/function words, and words to teach English structure) and tell why it is important to teach them to English Learners (ELs)

Language Objectives

Identify the academic language in a SIOP lesson and select key vocabulary words to emphasize.

Write a lesson plan incorporating activities that build background and provide explicit links to students’ backgrounds, experiences, and past learning

Why is it important to connect learning to student’s personal experiences?

What kinds of activities effectively do this?

4- Corners Vocabularypage 40 in 99 Go to Corner page 32 in 99 Go to Corner As a group create a 4- corners vocabulary

diagram for “Globe”.

Building Background Vocabulary knowledge correlates strongly with

academic achievement and reading comprehension

Limited vocabularies prevent students from comprehending content texts, instructions, directions for completing assignments and overall academic achievement

addition, subtraction, continent, sentence, classify, summarize, identify, beaker, compare, paragraph

Personal Dictionaries: page 35 in 99 Use vocabulary created in first section. Organize the words. Write definitions of words you now know.

Add illustrations or realia. Help your partners.

Building Background

Poor readers read less often because reading may be difficult and frustrating for them. Therefore, they don’t read enough to improve their vocabularies, and continue to find reading difficult.

The Insert Methodpage 33 in 99. With a partner read pages 58-59 in Making Content

Comprehensible. Insert the following codes directly onto the pages.

√ indicates a fact that is already known. ? Indicates a concept or fact that is confusing or not understood. ! Indicates something that is new, unusual, or surprising. +Indicates an idea or concept that is new to the reader.

Share with another set of partners. Change ? to * . The text then will be discussed with me.

“The Matthew Effect”The rich get richer, the poor get poorer

Low comprehension

Less reading

Less vocabulary development

Stanovich, 1986

Building Background

At home kids do not say, “Please pass the beaker.”“Let’s compare and contrast the vegetables.”Teaching specific vocabulary and practicing

it’s usage in the classroom is vital to academic success

Word and word parts are powerful tools of knowledge for learning the English language

Building Background

Taking a few minutes to “jump start” students’ schemata and past learning, to explicitly find out what they know or have experienced about a topic will result in greater understanding and engagement

Sample SIOP lesson plans

Look at the lesson plans provided. Highlight key vocabulary or academic language. Pass lesson to the next person to your right. Highlight key vocabulary or academic language. Continue

Building Background Component & Protocol FeaturesWhen planning lessons, please begin to consider the

Building Background features of the

Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol

Concepts explicitly linked to students’ background experiences

Links explicitly made between past learning and new concepts

Key vocabulary emphasized (e.g., introduced, written, repeated, and highlighted for students to see)

Lesson plans

Find the area of the room that best describes what you teach.

With your group decide on a topic for a lesson plan.

Using the SIOP lesson plan model create a lesson plan.

Share with the class.