How to Implement Some PSP Accommodations

Maybe the ESL teacher at your school gave you a PSP (program service plan) to sign, and you do not know what the accommodations mean. Maybe you are an ESL teacher, and you need to explain the accommodations to content teachers. Maybe you have an idea of what the accommodations mean, but you just a vague idea and do not know how to implement them. This article will help you get a better handle on some of these ESL accommodations.

Scaffold Responses

Sometimes a question is beyond a student’s ability, but scaffolds can be provided that will help a student make a response. Those scaffolds are comprehensible input that move the student into the zone of proximal development. These scaffolds are usually provided by the teacher or a more proficient peer. 

Manipulatives

Manipulatives and authentic objects can be used to scaffold. The Recipe for Reading curriculum often makes use of manipulatives to emphasize phonics and vocabulary with tubs of objects that all start with the same letter. For example, the C-tub has a car, carrot, cap, etc. These concrete manipulatives make the abstract concept of phonics more real and approachable. 

Modeling

Another scaffolding method is modeling. The teacher can model how he/she wants the assignment completed and what the finished product should look like. Students can also model the activity. For example, a pair of strong students can model an activity or dialogue to the class. 

Build Background Knowledge

Sometimes students cannot properly engage the class material because they do not have the preliminary background knowledge. Students can also better engage material if they have a better overall view of it. 

Carousel Walk 

A carousel walk can build this big-picture background knowledge of the material. For example, the class may start the Enlightenment. Split students into groups, and give each group a different colored marker. Place poster papers around the class with different key words like philosophy, religion, the United States, economics, etc. Groups write what they know about that topic until the teacher announces “Rotate.” Students then move on to the next poster sheet until they reach their original poster sheet. The teacher can then guide discussion on what the students wrote and can probe for elaboration more easily since the teacher knows what each group wrote. 

Read-Aloud

Read-alouds are books with print and audio. They can provide background knowledge while also improving students’ language skills. Combining both the print and audio is very good for language learning. Read-alouds can be found on an online platform called Epic!.

Discussions that connect content to personal backgrounds 

Other times building background knowledge can relate the content to the students’ personal backgrounds so that the content is more relatable, relevant, and understandable. It is important to remember, though, that you do not surprise students with awkward questions in an attempt to relate material to students’ personal experiences. 

Art that connects content to personal backgrounds

Art can be a good way to connect students’ personal experiences to the topic. Artwork can show different historical events, and students can draw similarities to events that occurred in their countries. Students can tell personal stories related to the studied-content. 

Whole-class Brainstorm

At the start of a unit, the teacher asks the class what they know about the topic. For example, a world history class may start the African kingdoms unit. The teacher can ask the class what they know about Africa. The teacher can write the responses on the board and ask further questions so that students elaborate more. The teacher can also show pictures to elicit brainstorm responses. For example, the world history teacher could show a picture of Africa and can ask questions like “What do you know about this picture?” “What geographic locations do you know on this map?” “What is this location called?” The teacher can also show a video clip of the topic and elicit responses from the class similar to the picture.  

KWL Chart

ELs construct a KWL chart with what I Know about the topic, what I Want to learn about the topic, and what I Learned about the topic. 

Engage in Academic Conversations

Often, ELs don’t feel comfortable or confident to raise their hands in class to participate during whole group discussions.  Therefore, providing interaction opportunities for ELs through peer-assisted learning (PAL) and/or cooperative learning is essential for their oral language development.  In this setting, ELs feel more comfortable and confident to use the English they know to talk with a peer(s), and ELs are exposed to both social and academic English language.  

Academic conversations entail students attempting to discuss the academic content. This means that students will use the relevant vocabulary and concepts pertaining to the content. The ideal is that students can provide rich descriptions of the content and critically think about it. This can be a tough area to build, and it is even tough for native English speakers. Many times students just want to give a quick response to complete the question, and many times the response is just a few words and not even a sentence. However, we are trying to encourage deeper, more well-thought-out academic conversations. This is also what the ACCESS exam (an exam that measures English proficiency for ELs) seeks.

It is, therefore, important to creative iterative processes where students do an activity, get feedback, and then do it again with more elaboration and precision from the feedback. Teachers also want to complete their lessons, so it is easy to just let this “get through the assignment” mentality slide. But if the iterative process is built into the lesson, I think we can confront this mentality better. Below are some iterative processes for encouraging academic conversations.

Think, Pair, Share

This exercise’s process follows its name:

1. Students think about the question individually.

2. Students share their thoughts with a partner.

3. The pair shares their thoughts with the class.

This is an iterative process intended to refine and elaborate on students’ ideas.

Inside/Outside Circles

1. The teacher gives a discussion question to the class.

2. One student-circle is formed on the inside and another student-circle forms around the inside student-circle.

3. Students discuss the question with the person across from them. After the allotted time finishes, students rotate to the next person in the circle. (The inside circle or the outside circle can rotate.)

The teacher in this video uses two lines of desks to implement Inside/Outside Circles:

Class Conversation with Talk Moves

A simple and straightforward strategy is called Talk Moves. The questions can be used by the teacher to encourage a more rich classroom conversation, or they can be used by the students in small-group conversations.

It emphasizes the need to follow these steps when they are engaging in academic conversation:

1.      Revoicing- Revoicing is having the student say what they heard the speaker say.  ("So you're saying...")

2.      Repeating- Repeating is simply having the student repeat what they heard the speaker say (​"Can you repeat what he or she just said in your own words?") 

3.      Reasoning- Reasoning is asking the student to use their own reasoning to another student’s response.  ("Do you agree or disagree? Why?")

4.      Adding on- Adding on is a way to get the students to participate further in the discussions.  This is a great move to get the students engaged by asking for additional input.  ("Would someone like to add something more to this?")

5.      Waiting- Wait time is used to ensure that students have time to think about their response and gather their thoughts before sharing with the class.  ("Take your time... we'll wait...")

This video below provides a good example of how to implement Talk Moves in small group discussions:

Prompting and Cueing

This accommodation can also be seen as a teaching tactic. It is like we are using the Socratic method to get students to the correct answer or an answer. It is much more helpful if we can help students get to the answer themselves than if we just give the answer ourselves.

As a teacher, it is imperative that you know the language level of your student to effectively prompt and cue them. This includes leading questions like: “Think about what we worked on this morning…” or “We can find the answer on the picture…”.

Thank you to my fellow ESL teachers who brainstormed some of these ideas with me.