ELPS Supports for Emergent Bilingual Learners
How to use these Critical Thinking Online Breakouts with emergent bilingual (EB) students, aligned to the Texas English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS). The ELPS span four language domains — listening, speaking, reading, and writing — and five proficiency levels. These activities are built to be linguistically accommodated across all seven languages.
Linguistic accommodation, built in
The ELPS require instruction that is communicated, sequenced, and scaffolded to each student’s proficiency level. These breakouts do much of that for you: the 🌐 menu displays every clue and lock in the student’s home language beside English; clue cards chunk information into short pieces students can reopen; the word lock accepts spelling variants; and nothing is graded, so students take risks with new language safely. Turn on the home language during a first pass, then invite an English pass for the same puzzle.
The four language domains
Listening receptive
EB students distinguish sounds and intonation, understand content-area vocabulary, follow oral directions, and show comprehension by responding or asking for clarification.
Try this: read a clue aloud while the home-language text is displayed, then ask students to point to the lock it helps. Accept gestures or pointing as a valid response on a first pass.
Speaking expressive
EB students pronounce new vocabulary, speak using content-area terms, use appropriate register, and narrate, describe, or explain with increasing detail.
Try this: give sentence stems — “This clue tells me… so the lock is…” Have each pair explain aloud which clue cracked a lock before moving on. Model the target academic word once, then ask students to use it.
Reading receptive
EB students decode with cognates and word parts, use content-area vocabulary, apply pre-reading strategies, and comprehend text with visual, contextual, and linguistic support.
Try this: preview the breakout’s theme and each grade’s key vocabulary before starting (pre-reading). Point out cognates on the clue cards. Let students reopen clues as often as they need — rereading is a strategy, not a failure.
Writing expressive
EB students spell using conventional patterns, write with high-frequency and content-area vocabulary, and write to narrate, describe, explain, or respond.
Try this: the word lock is low-stakes writing — it accepts spelling variants, so students focus on the idea. Afterward, have students write one or two sentences explaining how they solved a lock, using the target vocabulary and a sentence stem.
Supporting each proficiency level
EB students may be at different levels across the four domains. Match the support to the level; every student can do the cognitively demanding thinking with the right language scaffold.
| Proficiency level | What you may see | How to scaffold the breakout |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-production | Silent period; responses are mostly non-verbal. | Display the home language. Accept pointing and gestures. Pair with a bilingual peer. Let the student show the answer, not say it. |
| Beginning | One word or short two-to-three-word phrases; repeats keywords. | Provide word banks and sentence stems. Ask yes/no or either/or questions about a clue. Celebrate keyword use. |
| Intermediate | Short phrases and simple sentences; literal comprehension. | Ask “which clue and why” questions. Add visual support for abstract language. Have partners compare reasoning. |
| High intermediate | A variety of sentence types; expresses opinions; asks for clarification. | Move to English display with the home language as backup. Ask students to justify and predict the next lock. Fade the stems. |
| Advanced | Engages with little to no linguistic support; uses content-area vocabulary. | Have the student explain their strategy to the group in academic English and mentor a peer. Extend with a transfer question. |