Twelve ELA Teaching Strategies

12 Teaching Strategies for English

In addition to general teaching strategies, any English teacher will also need to have strategies aimed specifically at teaching English. With a variety of learning ability levels and unique needs these are a few methods to ensure everyone masters the content.

            1: Vocabulary Building: Virtually any new narrative will come with vocabulary and phrases the students are not familiar with. Vocabulary building involves identifying these unfamiliar words and using interactive vocabulary building strategies to increase the students’ familiarity with the narrative’s new vocabulary before reading it begins ("Five Strategies for Effective English Teachers", 2012). This skill is important for reasons beyond the obvious ones. In addition to helping students understand what they read, increased vocabulary increases their ability to use logic and persuade others. Often, we find ourselves judged on the quality of our speech. Obviously, the more developed the student’s vocabulary, the better impression the student will make ("Top 5 Reasons Learning Vocabulary is Important", 2019). 

            2: Peer Response and Editing: Peer Response and Editing allows students to think critically about each other’s work. It also allows students to see how their classmates tackled the same writing assignment, which may get the students to come up with new approaches they might not have thought of without the peer-editing step ("Five Strategies for Effective English Teachers", 2012). Peer editing is beneficial to students for numerous reasons. Those reasons include that writers need a wide variety of feedback and there are always enough peers in a class to give that wide variety of feedback. Additionally, peer editing helps students accept constructive criticism and gives them deeper insight into their own writing process (News, 2015).

            3: Student-Chosen Texts: When students are given a wide variety of choices of age-appropriate literature they are more likely to remain engaged and become life-long readers. After some time spent reading independently the students might break into groups and discuss what they read. This is usually followed by independent journaling. When this strategy is done well it can result in students understanding the material they read on a much deeper level, which in turn can lead to productive discussions with their classmates ("Five Strategies for Effective English Teachers", 2012). Allowing students to chose texts is beneficial on several levels. In addition to increased engagement, student choice is linked to scholastic achievement. It will also cause students to read more, improve their writing skills, and give the instructor a better idea which narratives will be interesting to their students ("How to Motivate Students by Letting Them Choose Books", 2019).

            4: Writer’s Workshop: Writers workshop allows students to participate in every part of the writing process: drafting, editing, revision, and publishing. ("Five Strategies for Effective English Teachers", 2012). It can be tied back into virtually any subject the students are studying. During writer’s workshop the students practice becoming capable writers. While they may start by choosing the topic, the instructor will become involved in helping students with organizing their writing, choosing their words, editing for mechanics, or expressing their own unique style. Done well, Writers Workshop mixes just enough explicit and implicit instruction that students can take on all the steps of writing in manageable chucks. This can result in becoming capable, confident writers ("Writing Workshop > Overview | LEARN - Children's Literacy Initiative", 2019).

            5: Annotating and Paraphrasing Sources: Annotating and paraphrasing requires students to underline key words, write margin notes, and summarize main ideas as they read a primary or secondary source ("Annotating and Paraphrasing Sources", 2019). Careful annotations will improve both reading comprehension and writing skills. It also gives cues into the authors tone, the narratives mood, and the author’s perspective and potential bias. When done with purpose, annotations keep track of main ideas, prompt thought provoking questions, and help the reader make inferences as well as draw conclusions about the text (Lynch, 2019).

            6: Character Maps/ Plot Diagrams: Character Maps are graphic organizers that use a simple drawing of a person, with questions connected to the characters physical, mental, emotional, and social traits. Character maps can be used with historical or fictional characters ("Character Maps", 2019). Meanwhile, plot diagrams serve to map out the exposition, conflict, rising action, climax, resolution, and falling action of a narrative. Plot diagrams help students pick out major elements of a narrative. They also help the reader understand how dynamic characters change over time. In addition to honing the student’s analytic skills, filling one out also meets several Common Core standards related to literacy (Clever Prototypes, 2019).

            7: Reciprocal Teaching: Within this strategy, teachers challenge students to interact more with the text they are reading. The students are taught strategies like predicting, questioning, making inferences, clarifying, or summarizing before they begin to read. The students practice these skills in groups, as they move towards being comfortable using them on their own. Done well this strategy can boost reading comprehension, engage readers, improve literacy, and help students work more effectively in groups. It also sets a secondary purpose for reading, which gives the students a well-defined direction as they start to read (Juraschka, 2019).

            8: Making Text Connections: Text connections are about making reading more meaningful. They usually come in three forms: text-to-text connections, text-to-world connections, and text-to-self connections. Making these connections as they read also gives students a purpose for reading. And, when students have set a purpose they will be more likely to comprehend the meaning of the text ("Text-to-Text, Text-to-Self, Text-to-World", 2019). Using this strategy helps readers understand a characters motivations. It also keeps readers involved, thus alleviating boredom. Moreover, when using strategies like text-to-text and text-to-world students see the narrative through parallel structure or through the eyes of others who read it before them (Glass & Zygouris-Coe, 2004)

            9: Word Walls: A word wall creates a space in a classroom where relevant vocabulary is prominently displayed. To be effective word walls should be placed where all students can see them. Teachers and students should decide together which words will go on the world wall. New information should be added to the word wall on a regular basis. And the instructor should refer back to the word wall in his or her instruction. Word walls are helpful because they help students identify patterns between the words and their spellings. Additionally, students are able to use them as a reference when engaged in any reading or writing activity ("Word Walls | Classroom Strategy | Reading Rockets", 2019).

            10. Close Reading: Close Reading Protocol asks students to reread smaller portions of the text. During a close read the students may focus on the author’s purpose, the text structure, or what specific words mean in context. Close reads are important as they help students identify text evidence to back up their own claims. Additionally, the attention to the small details of the text ensure that students truly comprehend what they are reading ("Close Reading Protocol", 2019). Using this process students focus on what the text says, how the text says it, and what the underlying meaning is. Close reading is beneficial as it addresses some concerns of Common Core, develops critical thinking, and can be used in a cross-curricular way (Khan, 2019). 

            11: Genre Immersion: Genre Immersion gives the students a few weeks to look at narratives that fall within the same genre. There are numerous benefits to staying on the same genre for a few weeks. First and foremost, that’s the way most ELA texts are set up. Units tend to focus on several stories with similar structure. There may be one unit on fables, followed by a unit on realistic fiction, followed by a unit on expository text (Mansaray, 2013). Immersion exposes students to high-quality examples of a specific genre. In doing so, students internalize the language, structure, form, purpose, and possibilities of each genre. This is critical before expecting students to write within that genre.

            12: Word Analysis: Using this skill students break words down into morphemes, their smallest units of meaning. Each morpheme has a meaning that contributes to the whole word. This helps students build up to the word, even if they have never been exposed to the word they are looking at before. Because much of English is borrowed, there are many words in the lexicon, that it’s critical to understand the prefixes, suffixes, roots, and word origin to keep up. Though word analysis can be tedious, it can certainly help students keep up ("Word Analysis | Power Up What Works", 2019). Word analysis is a foundational reading skill, it is critical for students who are developing their vocabulary, and it also satisfies several literacy-related Common Core Standards (Zorfass, 2019).

* The resource list for both teaching strategies pages can be found HERE.