Modeling is an indispensable instructional strategy that empowers teachers to provide clear, explicit guidance, ensuring student understanding and fostering independent learning. By demonstrating tasks, expectations, and processes, modeling minimizes confusion, builds confidence, and significantly enhances classroom management. This comprehensive guide will explore what modeling is, its profound benefits, particularly for English Language Learners (ELLs), and offer practical modeling teaching strategy examples for effective implementation in various learning environments, including online settings.
What is Modeling?
Modeling is an extremely useful teaching method that can be used as an English Language Learners strategy and should be used as often as possible. Fundamentally, modeling is a teaching strategy where a teacher explicitly shows the students how to complete an activity or assignment before the students begin. This direct demonstration serves as a visual and auditory blueprint for success.
Beyond instructional clarity, modeling is also an excellent class management technique. Teachers who model what needs to be done will have much fewer questions or students who do not know how to do the assignment.
Modeling provides a clear picture in a student’s mind as to how to handle the task at hand. Creating this mental picture gives the student confidence in how to complete the assignment.
This type of guidance clearly shows what the teacher expects and gets the students off on the right foot. There is nothing more frustrating for both a teacher and a student when directions have been given but students still do not know how or where to begin. Modeling will eliminate these frustrations and contribute to excellent classroom management.
Why is Modeling Especially Beneficial for English Language Learners (ELLs)?
While all students benefit from modeling, for English Language Learners, modeling is even more advantageous. ELLs face a number of unique barriers to overcome in the classroom.
Speaking, reading, writing, and listening require a multitude of skills, and achieving complete fluency in these areas takes many years. Therefore, finding success in class can be particularly stressful for ELLs.
Teachers must actively help ELLs find success just like their native English-speaking classmates. Every bit of success an ELL experiences will encourage them to continue to learn and grow in the class.
Academic language is often the last type of language that ELLs master, which is precisely why modeling can be so beneficial for them. Teachers who hand out an assignment and expect students to get to work and find success without much guidance are specifically failing ELLs.
Spoken directions, especially those rich in academic vocabulary or complex sentence structures, can be incredibly confusing and overwhelming for them. On the other hand, if a teacher models the directions and gives concrete examples, ELLs will experience less anxiety and confusion when working on the assignment, leading to greater comprehension and successful task completion.
Effective Modeling Teaching Strategy Examples
Incorporating modeling into your daily instruction can take many forms. Here are several practical examples of modeling teaching strategies that can be implemented in any classroom:
“Do the First One Together”
One of the simplest yet most effective examples of teachers using modeling to help students, especially ELLs, is by doing the first problem or step together. The teacher can show step-by-step how to do it, articulating their thought process, and then the students can begin working on the second by themselves.
By doing the first problem together, a teacher can address what to do and what not to do. Immediately, students will know and can actually see the precise steps they should take.
Using Cloze Activities for Guided Reading and Writing
Another powerful way to model for ELLs is by using cloze activities to guide reading and writing. Cloze reading is an instructional strategy where students fill in the blanks within a reading passage.
Depending on the language level of an ELL, cloze activities can significantly reduce confusion and help build sentence and language structures without overwhelming the student. By providing this type of guidance, the assignment models grammar and content vocabulary, which the student can then use throughout the rest of the task, reinforcing correct linguistic patterns.
Modeling Daily Routines and Procedures
Modeling should also be used to show ELLs the daily routines of the class. Explicitly showing where to hang your things, get your notebook, and begin the morning assignments will set an ELL up for a day of success.
Routines are critically important for ELLs, especially for those in the early stages of language learning. Even if they cannot comprehend much English, they will remember the visual cues and sequences of the routines and find pride and confidence by completing them independently.
Leveraging Visuals as a Modeling Tool
Additionally, visuals are an excellent modeling tool. Having an example assignment already completed to show the finished product will create a clear picture in students’ minds so that they know exactly what they are working toward.
Teachers can use these visuals to explicitly show what they are expecting from their students in terms of quality, format, and content. This is particularly effective for project-based learning or multi-step assignments.
Video Explanations for Online Learning
Finally, with many schools utilizing online or hybrid learning models, modeling is even more important and must be intentionally integrated. Providing video explanations for assignments will be much easier for ELLs to understand compared to written directions alone.
Reading directions and attempting an assignment on their own can be very stressful, especially when they lack immediate support. Furthermore, ELLs often do not have parents or other siblings who speak English that can effectively assist them with an assignment while at home.
Therefore, when teachers provide video explanations modeling how to do the task at hand, ELLs will be able to do it, and do it well, fostering greater independence and success in virtual environments.
Conclusion
ELLs have to find success in class. This will build their confidence and in turn significantly improve their language skills across all domains. Modeling is often a forgotten teaching method, but when consistently and strategically used, teachers and students will find enjoyment and great accomplishment in their classes, leading to deeper learning and a more supportive educational environment for all.
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*Updated June 2025
