ELL Resources for Teachers

Oral Language Scaffolds for ELL Students: What This Looks Like on a Tuesday

Research only matters if it reaches the classroom. This page translates the theory into practical ELL reading strategies — routines, protocols, and lesson structures you can use with your high school ELL students starting this week.

5 min is all it takes to pre-teach 3 anchor words before a reading task
4 scaffold types form the Walqui framework for ELL instruction
2 language objectives per lesson — content AND oral language
1 structured conversation before reading measurably raises engagement

The Framework

Walqui's Four-Stage Scaffold Sequence for ELL Students

Walqui & van Lier (2010) identified four types of scaffolding that move ELL students from supported access to independent ownership of academic tasks. Each stage has a distinct purpose — and each one builds oral language as a pathway into print.

1
Contextualizing

Build the World Before the Words

Before students encounter the text, build shared context through images, objects, brief videos, or teacher storytelling. ELL students arrive with rich background knowledge — but it may not match the assumed context of the text. Contextualizing bridges that gap and gives students something real to talk about before they read. Spend 5–8 minutes here. It is not "pre-teaching fluff" — it is the activation of the language comprehension strand of Scarborough's Rope.

Walqui & van Lier (2010); Scarborough (2001)

2
Schema Building

Connect New Knowledge to What They Already Know

Use structured discussion prompts that tie the text's big ideas to students' own lives, languages, or cultures. This is where funds-of-knowledge pedagogy meets structured literacy: students discover they already know something relevant. Ask: "In your home country or language, how would you describe ___?" or "What does this image remind you of? Tell your partner in any language you want." Oral output here primes comprehension during reading.

Moll et al. (1992); Cummins (2000); Gibbons (2015)

3
Bridging

Connect Academic Language to Oral Language

Take what students just said aloud and show them how the text says the same thing — or something different. This is the critical moment: "You said 'he was scared to fail.' The author says he felt 'apprehensive about his prospects.' Same idea — different register." Bridging moves students from BICS to CALP, making academic language feel like a translation rather than a barrier.

Cummins (2000); Beck, McKeown & Kucan (2013)

4
Text Re-presentation

Let Students Own the Text in Their Own Voice

After reading, students re-present the text's ideas in a new form — a summary told to a partner, a visual diagram explained aloud, a written response read aloud to the class. The goal is not just comprehension check — it is a mastery experience that Bandura (1997) identifies as the single strongest source of self-efficacy. When a student hears themselves explain a difficult text accurately, something shifts.

Bandura (1997); Walqui & van Lier (2010); Pajares (2003)

Classroom Routines

Four ELL Reading Strategies You Can Use This Week

These are not programs or curricula — they are low-prep, high-impact oral language routines grounded in the research. Each one can be integrated into an existing lesson.

💬

Academic Conversation Stems

5–7 min · Before or during reading

Structured conversation stems give ELL students the syntax of academic discussion before they have internalized it. Post a set of sentence frames and require students to use them in partner or small-group talk about the text.

  • Post 4–6 stems on the board ("I think the author means… / I agree because… / A different perspective is…")
  • Assign a 3-minute partner conversation about the text or topic
  • Cold-call one partner to share the other's idea — this builds active listening
  • Bridge one student response to academic text language before reading begins
Zwiers & Crawford (2011) · Echevarría, Vogt & Short (2017)
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Vocabulary Warm-Up Protocol

5 min · Before reading

Pre-select 3 Tier 2 words from the upcoming text. Do not define them — instead, activate students' oral encounter with each word before they see it in print.

  • Say each word aloud twice; students repeat and write it
  • Give a student-friendly definition using the word in two contexts
  • Ask: "Turn to your partner — when would you use this word?"
  • After reading, revisit: "Where did you see this word? What did it mean there?"
Beck, McKeown & Kucan (2013) · Carlo et al. (2004)
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Read-Talk-Write Cycle

10–15 min · During reading

Break reading into short segments. After each segment, students talk before they write. This prevents the "blank page" response and gives writing a foundation in oral rehearsal.

  • Read 1–2 paragraphs aloud together (or chunked silently)
  • Pause: "Tell your partner one thing you noticed or a question you have"
  • Students write 2–3 sentences based on what they or their partner said
  • Repeat for each segment — oral language scaffolds written output throughout
Gibbons (2015) · Proctor et al. (2005)
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Reader Identity Check-In

3 min · End of class, weekly

Self-efficacy is built through reflection on mastery. A brief weekly oral or written check-in — not a grade — invites students to name something they did as a reader this week.

  • Prompt: "Name one thing you understood in a text this week that you wouldn't have before"
  • Students share with a partner or write in a reading journal
  • Teacher acknowledges specific student growth publicly — this is "verbal persuasion" in Bandura's model
  • Track student language over time to observe identity shifts
Bandura (1997) · Henk & Melnick (1995) · Guthrie & Wigfield (2000)

Vocabulary Instruction

ELL Vocabulary Instruction: Not All Words Are the Same Problem

Beck, McKeown & Kucan (2013) established the three-tier framework for vocabulary instruction. For ELL students, explicit Tier 2 instruction is the highest-leverage intervention available — but only when paired with oral language rehearsal.

Tier 1

Everyday Words

Basic conversational vocabulary most students acquire through daily life. ELL students may lack some Tier 1 words, but instruction here yields limited academic returns.

happy run house big
Strategy: Build through conversation and context, not direct instruction.
Tier 2 — Highest Priority for ELLs

Academic General Words

High-frequency words across content areas that rarely appear in conversation but dominate academic texts. ELL students often have the concept but lack the English academic label. This is your primary instruction target.

analyze significant contrast perspective consequence
Strategy: Explicit instruction + oral rehearsal + multiple encounters across texts. (Carlo et al., 2004)
Tier 3

Domain-Specific Words

Specialized vocabulary tied to specific content areas. Important for disciplinary literacy but lower frequency. Pre-teach selectively when critical to text comprehension.

photosynthesis amendment soliloquy
Strategy: Brief, direct definition + visual anchor. Don't over-invest instructional time here. (Shanahan & Shanahan, 2008)

Sample Lesson Structure

Sample ELL Lesson Plan: Oral Language Scaffolds for High School Reading (50 Minutes)

This structure integrates the Walqui scaffold sequence, SIOP language objectives, and the Read-Talk-Write cycle into a single class period. Adapt the timing to your block.

Sample Lesson: Structured Oral Language Scaffold

Grades 9–12 ELL / Below Grade Level 50 minutes Any ELA Text
Phase 1
0–8 min

Contextualize & Activate

  • Display an image or short prompt connected to the text's theme
  • Students talk with a partner for 2 minutes using sentence stems
  • Teacher pre-teaches 2–3 Tier 2 vocabulary words orally
  • State both a content objective and a language objective aloud
Phase 2
8–25 min

Read with Oral Scaffolds

  • Read first chunk together (teacher read-aloud or paired)
  • Pause: partner talk — one observation, one question
  • Read second chunk; pause for Read-Talk-Write cycle
  • Teacher circulates, lifts student oral language publicly
Phase 3
25–40 min

Bridge & Deepen

  • Small groups discuss: "What is the author really saying?"
  • Each group assigned one Tier 2 word to use in their discussion
  • Teacher bridges student language to academic register explicitly
  • Groups share out — teacher annotates responses on board
Phase 4
40–50 min

Re-present & Reflect

  • Students write 4–6 sentences summarizing the text's main idea
  • Partner reads their summary aloud — listener gives one specific compliment
  • Reader Identity Check-In: "Name one thing you understood today"
  • Exit ticket: one Tier 2 word used correctly in a sentence

Building Self-Efficacy

Building Reading Self-Efficacy in ELL Students: Bandura's Four Sources

Bandura (1997) identified four sources of self-efficacy. Structured oral language scaffolding activates all four. Here is how each source appears in daily ELL literacy instruction.

Source 1

Mastery Experiences

The most powerful source. Students who successfully explain a text idea aloud — even haltingly — have a mastery experience. It must be genuine, not praise for effort alone.

Tip: Design tasks where partial success is real success. A student who explains one paragraph accurately has mastered something.
Source 2

Vicarious Learning

Students build efficacy watching peers who are similar to them succeed. Pair ELL students with other ELL students who are one step ahead — not with native English speakers.

Tip: Strategic partner pairing matters more than most teachers realize. Proximity of model to learner is the key variable.
Source 3

Verbal Persuasion

Teacher feedback that is specific, honest, and tied to observable behavior — not generic praise. "You used 'significant' correctly in a complex sentence" is persuasion. "Good job!" is not.

Tip: Name the specific skill. Students calibrate their self-assessment to the specificity of teacher feedback.
Source 4

Physiological States

Anxiety, shame, and fear of exposure suppress reading risk-taking. Reducing the affective filter — through low-stakes oral rehearsal before written tasks — directly addresses this source.

Tip: Never cold-call a struggling ELL student to read aloud unprepared. Always provide oral rehearsal first.
"When students hear themselves explain a difficult text — even imperfectly — something shifts. They stop being students who can't read and become students who just did."
— Grounded in Bandura (1997); Henk & Melnick (1995)

Common Questions

Common Questions from Teachers About ELL Reading Strategies

Yes — and that is precisely the point. Cummins (2000) established that students can engage academically through their strongest language while building the second. Allow students to discuss in their home language first, then bridge to English. Gibbons (2015) documents classrooms where students with minimal English proficiency engage in sophisticated academic talk through scaffolded routines. The goal is not grammatically perfect English — it is cognitive engagement with the text. Cummins (2000); Gibbons (2015); Walqui & van Lier (2010)
You don't replace — you layer. Add a 5-minute vocabulary warm-up before your existing reading task. Add a 2-minute partner talk after each text chunk. Add a Reader Identity Check-In at the end of class on Fridays. These insertions do not require a new curriculum — they require a shift in how you structure the first and last 10 minutes of class. The SIOP model was specifically designed to layer language objectives onto existing content instruction without replacing it. Echevarría, Vogt & Short (2017); Zwiers & Crawford (2011)
The Reader Self-Perception Scale (Henk & Melnick, 1995) is a validated instrument you can administer before and after an instructional cycle. It measures how students feel about themselves as readers across four subscales. Beyond formal measurement, listen for language shifts: students who move from "I can't do this" to "I don't know this word yet" are demonstrating a measurable self-efficacy change. Reading journals that accumulate over time also document identity evolution in students' own words. Henk & Melnick (1995); Bandura (1997); Pajares (2003)
This is the most common misconception in secondary literacy. Scarborough's (2001) model shows that language comprehension — including verbal reasoning and vocabulary — continues developing through adulthood and is inseparable from reading comprehension at every level. Shanahan & Shanahan (2008) specifically found that disciplinary literacy at the high school level demands oral language engagement with texts, not despite the complexity of content, but because of it. Talking about hard texts is how students learn to read them. Scarborough (2001); Shanahan & Shanahan (2008); Droop & Verhoeven (2003)
Oral language scaffolding and phonics/decoding intervention are not mutually exclusive — they address different strands of Scarborough's Rope. A student who cannot decode fluently needs targeted phonics intervention alongside oral language support. However, many below-grade-level ELL high schoolers have sufficient decoding skills but fail to comprehend because the academic vocabulary and text structures are inaccessible. Crosson & Lesaux (2010) found that text-reading fluency and comprehension are not strongly correlated for Spanish-speaking ELLs, suggesting that comprehension deficits often exist independent of decoding deficits. Scarborough (2001); Crosson & Lesaux (2010); August & Shanahan (2006)

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