I think that to plan for instruction of ELL students in a classroom, the type of planning and instruction would vary greatly depending on the level of English of the student, as well as the age of the students in the classroom. I currently am in two placements- one is a fourth grade classroom which has no ELL students, and one is a second grade classroom that is exclusively made up of ELL students. I think that the biggest thing when working with students in general is to make sure that the lines of communication are open- if they ever feel that they need help it's important that they feel comfortable enough to approach the teacher. I also think that as a teacher it's important to keep an eye on student's work and how it's progressing to catch problems early. I think that when planning lessons for students that include both ELL and non ELL it's important to think about how each set of students will understand the work, and if necessary to spend a little extra time working with the ELL student.
In my own fourth classroom for spelling we do standard worksheets, which though they're boring I do think are effective. Each week the students do one sheet where they copy down the words, one sheet where they fill in sentence blanks with the correct word, and one sheet where they have to find the spelling words spelled incorrectly and then correctly spell them. I think that this activity would work well with an ELL student; it's good practice and since it's a routine each week they would be able to catch on fast. I think that in my own classroom this style of spelling practice could be tweaked to be more fun and interactive however, by utilizing spelling centers. I think it would be cool to have different centers that the students go around to during spelling time to work on learning the words. One center could be a quiz type of center where students give each other words to spell. Another could be a worksheet center where they do worksheets like the ones in my placement. Still another could be a group effort where they have a word and letters that they put one letter down at a time for to spell out the word as a group. I also think it might be cool to have a Scrabble center where they build up their words.
Overall I think that there are a lot of options for how to teach both ELL and non ELL students spelling. I think that as a teacher it's important to observe how students work and then base learning activities off of that so as to work with them and their own learning styles to help them learn their best.
I agree with the fact that you stated about the worksheets being boring but also being good repetition for English speaking students as well as ELL students. This is definitely an option that would work well for both types of students. As far as your idea about the students quizzing each other, it might be conducive to pair an ELL student with an English language speaking student so that the ELL student can hear the words spelled from the English language speaker and see the word at the same time. I believe this will not only give them more confidence but it will help with their sight word vocabulary a lot also.
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