In 50 Strategies for English Language Learners, I was impressed by the lesson that incorporated academic language scaffolding as an approach that would be extremely useful for educating culturally and linguistically diverse students. The scaffolding concept is one that helps students form a conceptual bridge from one language to another and learn new vocabulary as they go. One of the salient advantages of this approach as opposed to traditional vocabulary memorization techniques is that it teaches the students the vocabulary as it is used in actual practice and then tasks them with completing activities related to the vocabulary, such as listing words with related meanings and forming "possible sentences" from the words. This approach not only helps students relate the new vocabulary to the vocabulary they already know in the target language as well as in their own language, it also provides them with a controlled setting in which to use the new vocabulary, maximizing the possibility of success. In the "List-Group-Label" activity where students developed a list of words based on the reading selection, the activity of grouping the words by the concepts that they go with takes the vocabulary lesson to the next level, where students can look beyond the mere meanings of words to the underlying ideas that unify them.
In my observations of the lesson, I noted that it exemplified the characteristics of effective practices for educating culturally and linguistically diverse students by giving them an opportunity to do more than just associate words with their meanings. In effect, the lesson empowered students to work with the target language in ways that could afford them greater mastery of it. The creation of sentences, for example, is a skill that native learners have and one that this exercise fosters in the ELL learners. Moreover, it reinforces what the students have already learned about the vo
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