Project Raíces ESL Domain II Quiz

Which of the following explanations best describes how collaborative activities support EL students' developing English proficiency?

• Simple class activities performed in small group settings allow teachers to assess EL students' language learning in oral language.

• Group activities shift responsibility for L2 learning completely to the EL students through interactive opportunities.

• Using a collaborative approach instead of independent work keeps students from making errors due to limited L2 proficiency because EL students can modulate their participation in group activities.

• Group activities support EL students' social language development by providing opportunities to participate meaningfully with classmates in a variety of learning activities.

A middle school history teacher is having a writing workshop while students generate summaries of the current chapter. The class is a mainstream English class with about one-fourth of it made up of pull-out students. On workshop day, the teacher gives each student three colored pencils and gives them the following directions:

1. 1. Underline the sentence that you are proudest of having written. This may be a sentence that you are proud of because of how you wrote it (the syntactic structure) or because of what it says (the content).

2. 2. With a different color, circle the single word that you are proudest of having included in your essay.

3. 3. With the third color, circle one or more words that you are unsure of (you think perhaps you are misusing them or you're not sure about the meaning of you're not sure if they fit the sentences, etc.).

After the students complete this activity, the teacher has mini-conference with each student, listening to them as they explain what they underlined and circled in their drafts. This teaching activity reflects the teacher's interest in promoting EL students' language proficiency in which of the following ways?

• The teacher is promoting students' independence as writers.

• The teacher is providing students an opportunity to revise their writing.

• The teacher wants to make sure that students use in-class workshopping to correct their sentences and word choices.

• The teacher wants students to understand that every sentence they write must be correctly structured and effectively worded.

Ms. Sahid teaches at a high school that includes The Great Gatsby as mandatory reading in Grade 11 ELA curriculum for all students. Her classes include many intermediate-level EL students.

Which of the following accommodations might best help Ms. Sahid's ESL students understand the novel?

• Showing a film version of the novel before reading it.

• Integrating historical photographs, period music, art, and brief historical overviews to contextualize the themes and events in the novel.

• Handing out a chapter by chapter summary of the novel.

• Listening to a professional recording of the novel as students follow along in their books.

Mr. Christopher, a middle school social studies teacher, has a mainstream class that includes a large number of intermediate EL students. His EL students are having troubles understanding the basic information in each chapter. Ms. Caranza, a colleague who teaches ESL classes, suggests breaking up lectures into mini-lessons and allowing time for students to network after each mini-lesson.

Ms. Caranza's advice to Mr. Christopher reflects which of the following language learning instructional adjustments?

• Scaffolding

• Affective support

• Segmenting

• Authentic assessment

Which of the following statements best explains the value of mini-lessons in helping EL learners acquire content knowledge?

• Mini-lessons are short in order to keep EL students from getting bored when they don't understand.

• Mini-lessons enable the teacher to divide a lesson into manageable "chunks" of information to help students receive comprehensible input.

• In mini-lessons, difficult concepts are simplified, so even beginning learners are able to understand.

• Mini-lessons are delivered very quickly so that the teacher is able to cover a lot more information in a class session. `

In an elementary class that includes beginning-level EL students, which of the following strategies would best promote students' understanding of how the school day is segmented (i. e., reading groups, recess, science time, lunch, etc.)?

• The teacher creates a large chart that displays the time each activity starts and ends.

• The teacher creates a poster for each regular class day segments with pictures that clearly illustrate the activity. Each poster is numbered to indicate the place of each activity in the class events sequence.

• When it's time for a new activity, the teacher sounds a chime and writes the name and time range of the new activity on board (for example, 10:00 - 10:35 - READING).

• The teacher shows a video of students in reading circles, science centers, recess, art, and other school activities,

A Grade 5 teacher wants to promote her intermediate EL students' understanding of content-area lessons. She has a word wall divided into content areas and updates new content vocabulary each week. She also has content cubicles decorated with posters and realia. Which of the following grouping strategies might further promote her students' content-area learning?

• The teacher uses a random grouping approach, creating new groups each Monday morning.

• The teacher creates two types of groups: one set includes only EL students, the other only native English speakers.

• The teacher creates base groups for cooperative learning activities: each group includes native English speakers and EL students.

• The teacher allows students to self-select the groups they want to be in.

EL students in a Grade 3 class are having trouble learning the names of math figures (hexagon, quadrilateral, pentagon, etc.). Which of the following instructional strategies would most effectively promote students' learning in this area of math?

• The teacher devises a quiz in which students have to correctly match the figure to its name. The quiz is administered every day until all the students get 100% correct.

• The teacher draws each figure on the board and has students copy the figures into their notebooks. The teacher asks for volunteers to come to the board to label each figure.

• The teacher creates a poster for each figure. In addition to an illustration of the figure, the name is written in large letters with the root underlined and the corresponding number of sides written in large print on the poster. The poster includes pictures of words with the same root.

• The teacher puts students into groups and assigns a different figure to each group. Their task is to make several models of their figure using a variety of resources such as craft sticks, twigs, pencils, construction paper strips, chenille sticks, and any other material they can think of.

An elementary school teacher gives her beginning EL students the following directions:

1. 1. Form your reading circles in your usual areas.

2. 2. Tell your reading circle partners your birth date (Month, day, and year).

3. 3. Talk with your reading circle partners to figure out who has the earliest birthday in the year.

4. 4. Whoever has the earliest birthday hands out the reading circle books today.

This classroom interaction activity reflects which of the following EL teaching concepts?

• Total Physical Response

• Immersion

• Classroom community

• Pragmatics

For a science lesson, an elementary school teacher is planning to read aloud a short storybook about insects to a class of beginning and intermediate EL students. Which of the following prereading strategies would best enable students to understand new vocabulary in the science book?

• The teacher posts a list of new words and has students look them up prior to the read aloud.

• The teacher posts labeled illustrations of the new words, with each illustration showing the new work in large letters. The teacher explains each new word prior to the read aloud.

• Prior to the read aloud, the teacher has students skim through the book and write down all the words they don' t know.

• The teacher gives the students a short summary of the book prior to the read aloud and tells the students that once she starts the read aloud, they should raise their hands each time they hear a word they don't know.