2.  This article involved effective strategies for early childhood teachers to use with children who are English Language Learners.  10 teachers from two different districts in Massachusetts which are linguistically and culturally diverse, were interviewed.  Teachers were asked two questions: **What are the effective strategies and Why did they work?**

3.  Language ability is key in a diverse classroom  Many teachers don’t have the resources to help ELL students meet their needs.  These teaching strategies seek to help ELL students make connections between content and language, and support their communication and social interactions.

4.  20% of students speak a language other than English at home.  Challenge: Emerging the language of the children into the teaching environment.  Each student is an individual and may require different accommodations and needs. Not every strategy will work for everyone.

5.  “Natural Approach” : This theory gives a framework for children who are ELLs.  Broken into 4 subcategories: Preproduction Early Production Speech Emergence Intermediate Fluency

6.  Gestures and visual cues  Repetition and opportunities for practicing skills  Use of manipulatives, props, and hands- on materials  Multisensory approaches

7.  Connecting with parents  Personal conversations with their students  Choose stories that have one repetitive phrases or sentence to expand on knowledge of that word or phrase. (Comes through the multisensory approach) › Ex. Short Train, Long Train – they will master the meaning of “long” & short”.