Capture

Have you ever played the card game "War"? This game is played a lot like that. First, take out all of the face cards. Second, deal out the whole deck. Third, the players put out two cards. Each player adds their two cards. The player with a greater sum wins all four cards. Fourth, if their is a tie put the cards back into your own hand and go again. Fifth, play again and again as time allows. Encourage conversation between the players. You may also want to create sentence frames to encourage complete sentences. These big cards are excellent to model how to play the game.

Word Banks

After developing the vocabulary for a unit post it in your classroom. The words are as new as any formal vocabulary lesson you may have taught in Reading Language Arts. Just because it is in a math setting doesn't make the words any easier to learn. You may also consider printing the word bank on the worksheets that you are requiring the students to complete. These are especially helpful when completing Brief Constructed Response questions. Our ELL students will become more proficient users of the academic language, as well as your English native speakers.

Sentence Frames

When teaching your students a new skill you must also teach the student necessary vocabulary. This must be presented in a formal vocabulary mini lesson. For example if the lesson is about identifying polygons first think of necessary words to support this skill. Vertex, side, angle, square, triangle, etc. These words can be put on sentence strips and introduced whole class one by one. Each word needs to be explained. Allow the students to find examples within the class and talk with their neighbor. Now, this is the new and exciting part... you create "sentence frames". For example, "The ________ is a _______." The green block is a triangle. More advanced students can use a more advanced "sentence frame". For example, "The ___________ is a ________ because ________ and ________." The green block is a triangle because it has three straight sides and three vertexes. You can supply both the basic and advanced sentence frames to all of your students. The theory is that the students will use the highest level they feel comfortable. Also, students who speak English as a first language do not speak academic English as a first language. Finally, always encourage the use of complete sentences.