A Teacher’s Journey
Imagine standing in front of 20 English learners (ELs) ranging from 5th to 12th grade. Their  English proficiency levels range between 1–5 and they speak many different native languages. You have no EL curricular materials but you’re being asked to teach these 20 students English for one to seven periods per day. Sound like a nightmare? For me, this situation was an exciting opportunity.

This classroom is the description of my first job right out of college at a private school in San Francisco, California. I had graduated with a Bachelor’s in Chinese and was just starting my Master’s in English, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. I was new to teaching English as a Second language and my class was the first in the school’s new EL program. I was given this multi-level classroom and was tasked with teaching students English as quickly as possible while also giving them enough content to learn science, social studies, and English language arts.

Rather than scare me off, my classroom became my laboratory. I tried different approaches and strategies to connect with my students and help them develop their English language skills. This trial by fire ended up fueling my passion and laying the groundwork for my career. I have taught for 15 years — always secondary and always multi-level — and authored a secondary digital EL program. Today, I train teachers around the world on how to implement Ballard & Tighes’ English language development programs.

Teaching ELs in multi-level, multi-grade classrooms presents some challenges because most EL materials are not developed for multi-level. Therefore, you cannot just follow a curriculum as it is written. From a programmatic point of view, grouping students in same level proficiency groups is sometimes not feasible because of scheduling. Learning to teach multi-level may be daunting at first but once you get the hang of it, it is very rewarding. The whole class can come together, work together, and support each other.

Addressing the Hurdles
The biggest questions about teaching multi-level classes are: Where do I start? What materials do I use? How do I address all my students’ unique needs? And how do I put everything together and still have a life outside of the classroom? I’m not going to sugarcoat it and say the answers are simple but if you can figure out the strengths and weaknesses of your students you can use their strengths to help other students. When you think you need to create something for each student, your first thought should be, how can I get them to do more of the work, instead of me?

Use your students’ first languages as their strength. Consider all their levels, language background, grade levels, and personalities when grouping students. When you can get a class of multiple ages, multiple grades, multiple languages, multiple English proficiency levels all working together for the same goal of learning English, a beautiful synergy happens. Many teaching and learning opportunities naturally arise from whatever resources you use to teach them.

Building a Multi-Level Lesson — First, Find Common Ground
Selecting a theme/topic that you know most of your class will be interested in is the best starting point. For my very first class that I described above, I chose the topic of the World Cup. Most of my students were international and loved soccer, so this was a global, age-appropriate topic. I found an article about how soccer unites the world. I used the article with no modifications with my L4/L5 students. For the L2/3 level, I made paraphrased bullet points for them to use as a reference along with the article. For my L1 students, I gave them simple phrases from the article. I also created a vocabulary list, with different words for the different levels, all coming from that one article. While that may seem like a heavy lift, that preparation turned into one period a day for a whole month. I saved planning time and preparation by having students do much of the work for the learning activities.

Students As Teachers
To start the lesson, we did schema building asking the essential question, “Can soccer unite the world?” I showed students videos about the World Cup and then taught the vocabulary list I had put together to each group of students separately. If I was not directly teaching a group, students would make word lists with translations or pictures of the English vocabulary words. They could also include other words from the article or a bulleted list of things they did not know.
Afterwards, I assigned an activity where students made digital slides for the vocabulary words by finding images to illustrate each word on the internet. The students used their slides to quiz their same-level peers on the vocabulary.

We then did a competitive vocabulary learning activity where students of different levels were put on the same team. They competed against their same-level peers and only needed to know their leveled vocabulary words in order to score points for their multi-leveled teams. Each level was challenged to make sentences with either one vocabulary word, or multiple words, depending on their level. During the game, I took note of grammatical structures that students were struggling with. I addressed those after the game and then did practice with those grammatical structures in the next class period. Next, I assigned a quick writing assignment for them to apply and extend that grammatical structure.

The Power of Group Learning
Pre-reading came next. We discussed the title, images, and captions in the article. We went through the reading as a class, paragraph by paragraph. After one or two paragraphs, I grouped the students into the same language, multi-level groups. The higher levels discussed what the selection was about and then eventually translated it into, for example, Chinese for their lower-level teammates. Together, they then wrote a paraphrase to turn in. Students with higher levels of proficiency needed to understand the paragraph enough to translate it while those with lower levels of proficiency learned about it in their own language. The end result was a paraphrase from the higher levels and notes from the lower levels of what they understood from the reading. This activity took about a week because of the length of the article.

Letting Students Lead, Together
The culminating writing project was for students to work in any level group — single or multi-level — and choose a country to research its involvement in the World Cup. As a group, they conducted research and then wrote about what they learned. The group then created slides and could only use the slides as they presented their findings to the class. Each member of the group had to contribute to the presentation.

It was inspiring to see their teamwork across different levels and language backgrounds. Students were engaged and demonstrated their knowledge of the new vocabulary words as they practiced grammatical structures and demonstrated reading comprehension, all components within their final writing and oral group presentation.

The beauty of multi-level teaching is that it brings the students in a class together; each using their unique strengths and skill sets to create a final presentation. With the use of native languages, students of lower levels of proficiency can still contribute ideas even if they are not yet able to communicate fluently in English. This style of teaching also relieves stress and planning for the teacher, allowing  students to use their own agency to dig deep into vocabulary, readings, and writing projects. Through my experience as a first-year teacher in a multi-level classroom, I discovered that multi-level can actually be fun and motivating for students, encouraging their language development skills through the socialization and team-building aspects of group learning.

Please schedule a time to meet with me if you’d like to discuss strategies for your multi-level class. I love collaborating with fellow EL teachers and look forward to hearing about your students.

Brenda Huey-Rosas, Education Sales Consultant
Brenda spent 15 years teaching in the classroom, mentoring teachers, and developing curriculum, specifically in the field of ESL and language development, prior to joining Ballard & Tighe in 2019. She specialized in teaching multi-level classrooms, blended learning, and creating interactive learning opportunities in the classroom. She understands firsthand the challenges educators face and the wins experienced when learning occurs and how curriculum, assessment, and student diagnostic reports are great tools to help learning occurs and how curriculum, assessment, and student diagnostic reports are great tools to help bridge the gaps on students’ journeys to English fluency.

Brenda has a bachelor’s degree in Chinese, a master’s in English TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), and is currently working on obtaining her Master of Business Administration in Nonprofit Management and Marketing Management. She is passionate about teaching and learning languages (she’s fluent in 5!) and her commitment to both is evident in every conversation she has with educators.