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BRIDGING

(ACCESS score 5)

Teaching Resources

Overview

 

Students in this stage begin to engage in non-cued conversation and to speak fluently using social and academic language.  It is appropriate to begin to direct students’ attention on grammar, idiomatic expressions, and reading comprehension skills.  Activities should be designed to develop skills in high order thinking, vocabulary development and cognitive processing.  Students in this stage need deliberate instruction on reading and writing skills and frequent opportunities to practice them.

 

Characteristics

 

Students:

  • can interact extensively with native speakers

  • make few grammatical errors

  • participate in English literacy programs

  • have high levels of comprehension but may not understand all of the academic language

  • read and write for a variety of purposes

  • continue to need extensive vocabulary development in the content areas





Adopted from Project Talk Academic Excellence Program and Title VII

Strategies

 

Teachers need to:

 

  • emphasize content area vocabulary

  • begin to provide grammar instruction

  • focus on reading and writing skills

  • have students take on advanced cooperative learning roles (note-taker, reporter)

  • continue to support content area instruction with visuals, realia and active learning strategies
     

Learning/Assessment

 

 

Learning Tasks

 

 

construct                                 debate

hypothesize                             elaborate

justify                                      conclude

analyze                                    influence

defend                                     persuade

 

 

 

 

Assessing Comprehension

 

 

  • How would you explain…?

  • Will you interpret in your own words…?

  • What other way would you…?

  • What ideas justify…?

  • Can you think of an original way for…?

  • What would you cite to defend…?

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