Let’s say that in our WL level 1 class we have a class of 30, of whom 20 are ELL kids with limited English. One thing we could do would be to write the targets for a story in their languages with translation and give them that list of translations. Each ELL student would instantly know at the start of class what the three targets mean.
Then, during the establishing meaning/gesturing phase, as long as we stayed in the target language, we could get everyone moving forward into the story at the same pace. The class would stay together. The key would be in our staying in the TL and not going out of bounds. Then the ELL kids would have the same shot as the English speakers in understanding the story.
Another way to do establish meaning for such a group would be to let them look up the three structures on their phones. Either way would work. This idea is from Judy and is a game changer of sorts.
The real benefit here would be that we wouldn’t be nearly as likely as usual to go out of bounds during our lesson. Having all those languages in our classroom would surely keep us in the TL the whole time because we would know that whenever we broke into English we would immediately confuse two thirds of our class. That is major.
So having a bunch of ELL students in our WL classes could be a stroke of good luck, a real incentive to do CI right and not keep sneaking English into our lesson. Those 20 kids would keep us honest, denying us all that nonsense in English.
We all know what Reuben Vyn was able to do in inner city Denver a few years back. Reuben never used English in his French classes and on the district exit exam his inner city poverty kids destroyed the scores of the IB kids in the same building (George Washington High School) who were taking the same level of French.
We need to review why Reuben was so successful. It’s the Rebar image (see category). In the ideal TPRS class, we never use a word whose meaning has not been previously established. We never go out of bounds. We never point and pause to new words other than the target structures. Everything we say they already know. The only new sounds are the target structures.
On those few occasions when we do go out of bounds, since it is so hard not to, we would allow the 20 ELL kids the use of their cell phones to quickly and efficiently keep them in the loop of the story.
The idea that ELL kids could potentially keep a CI teacher in bounds is an exciting one that needs to be studied. The idea of ELL kids thriving in a WL class because the playing field for them is even with the English speaking kids is even more exciting.
Perhaps South High School in Denver Public Schools, with the district’s largest and most varied ELL population, could do some initial studies on this idea.