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Essay on SDAIE (Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English)
SDAIE is the teaching of grade-level subject matter content in English to English language learners. SDAIE uses specifically designed strategies to access content for speakers of other languages. SDAIE is appropriate for students who have reached the Intermediate Fluency level of proficiency in English and who posses’ literacy skills in their own language. SDAIE is an approach used by teachers to make input comprehensible to LEP students (Kama, 2001). This instructional approach emphasizes the development of grade-level academic competencies and should be viewed as one component within a comprehensive Bilingual Program. SDAIE is used as a bridge between primary language instruction and placement of students into mainstream English. Within a full bilingual program, SDAIE incorporates a variety of instructional strategies (Ron, 2002). The implementation of SDAIE is important and serves as a means to ensure access to the core curriculum.
Major techniques of S.D.A.I.E. lesson:
They are hands-on activities, visual clues and cooperative learning.
Hands-on activities engage the students in meaningful experiences so that students can comprehend the concepts teachers are trying to convey and make sense of key language components or the content vocabulary. Students learn to link this new vocabulary to the experiential process. Students also acquire the language by understanding their meaning through real experiences rather than artificially looking the word up in a glossary. Realistically, looking words up in a glossary does exactly what we are trying to avoid. It takes language out of context.
Visual clues literally provide a visual way to describe key words and concepts. Teachers may find pictures, models, manipulatives, gestures, and body language ‘realia’ (the real thing), or demonstrations to visually represent the concept. The idea is to take abstract concepts and make them concrete. Uses of these visual clues are as varied as the teacher..............
