20 Strategies to Engaging ELL Families

A Guide for Engaging ELL Families

This is an (extremely lengthy) article that provides many, many different strategies (20 to be exact) to engage ELL families in the classroom. Pick and choose strategies that work best for you in your classroom, and the authors of the article tell you what you need to know about that strategy, offer reflective questions for teachers who want to implement this strategy, ways to implement the strategy, and concrete examples of what it looks like in real schools and classrooms. 

The strategies include:

1. Learn about your ELL population 

2. Integrate cultural traditions of your ELL families throughout the school 

3. Create a welcoming environment for families

4. Make a personal connection with families
5. Show that you value families’ native language

6. Find ways to communicate with ELL parents 

7. Make the enrollment process manageable for ELL parents 

8. Make the enrollment process accessible all year long

9. Provide opportunities for parents to learn more about important topics

10. Look for ways that ELL parents can help with children’s schoolwork 

11. Look for ways for ELL parents to participate and volunteer 

12. Think outside the box about parent involvement

13. Look for the successes
14. Consider scheduling and location alternatives

15. Encourage ELL parents to take on leadership roles 

16. Look for ways to make parent leadership more sustainable

17. Build partnerships with the local community 

18. Get to know your neighbors

19. Solicit ideas 

20. Look for the funding