NON-LINGUISTIC REPRESENTATIONS
Classroom Example
Below is an example of how you can use a graphic organizer with ELLs.
Subject: Science
Content Objective: To classify organisms based on physical characteristics.
The class reads the following passage:
What are the main characteristics of reptiles?
A reptile (rep՛tīl) is a cold-blooded vertebrate that has lungs and dry skin. Almost all reptiles have scales. Most reptiles live on land and lay eggs. Some give birth to live young. The eggs of reptiles are laid on land. These eggs have a tough covering that prevents the eggs from drying out on land. There are four main groups of reptiles. These are the alligators and crocodiles, the snakes, the lizards, and the turtles.
You can use the graphic organizer in Figure 1 to help students store knowledge about reptiles. Some of the circles can be left empty for a whole-class activity. The graphic organizer actually combines linguistic information (words and phrases) with nonlinguistic information (circles and lines representing relationships). It is called a descriptive pattern organizer because it represents facts that can be organized to describe characteristics of specific people, places, things, or events.
Preproduction
Students need to have pictures associated with the above topic and facts. During the class discussion, you can engage these students by using “Show me” or “Point to the” prompts.
Early Production
Students benefit from the pictures associated with reptiles and need to be encouraged to use the vocabulary. A cloze technique is effective in eliciting one-word responses. For example, you can lead students with phrases like: “A reptile breathes with . . .” or “The reptile’s body is covered with ....”
Speech Emergence
Students will be able to comprehend the passage, particularly given the graphic organizer. They can answer questions requiring a phrase or short sentence, such as “Tell me about reptiles.” Using questions that start with “Why” and “How” works well when eliciting responses at this level.
Intermediate and Advanced Fluency
Students will understand the passage and the graphic organizer, and can therefore be prompted with questions such as “How are they the same/different?” “What would happen if ...?” or “Why do you think ...?”
Once again, we remind you that anytime you use tiered questions, you should always take care to intermingle questions and prompts from your student’s next stage of language acquisition in order to scaffold language development.
