Questioning Techniques for ELLs

One key way to get your ELLs talking is to ask high-quality questions. This means we should plan our questions in advance, and ensure that we are asking a variety of questions to ensure students at all levels of proficiency are able to participate.

Check out the chart

With that in mind, I created a document that breaks down some of the types of questions most appropriate for each level. This document is a starting point that can help you plan questions appropriate for various proficiency levels. However, please keep in mind that this is not exhaustive, and with appropriate scaffolds, a particular question can be appropriate for many levels. Click on the pic below to access the document for printing.

Example

Let's take a quick look at one way this chart can be used. Let's say my students and I are talking about recycling and reusing. I want to find a way for each student to demonstrate their understanding of the differences between recycling and reusing in a way that's linguistically appropriate. Using the chart as a guide, here are the questions I created for each proficiency level.

At each level, I'm able to gauge their understanding of reuse v. recycle, but the way in which they demonstrate that knowledge differs. We can give all students visuals of items that can be reused and recycled as support and provide additional scaffolding through sentence frames. 

I hope this helps you to plan more effective questions for your ELLs!