When adjusting lessons plans for teaching ESL students with disabilities, instructors must take into consideration the specific needs of the students. After understanding the nature of the disabilities, teachers can begin to incorporate both traditional and innovative techniques into lesson planning. In addition to providing a set structure in every class, instructors can use props and aids to enforce the theory in each lesson. With the rearrangement of curriculum and academic accommodations, students with disabilities can experience equal learning opportunities as other students.

Supported Learning
Instructors can provide supportive learning environments for ESL students. To accommodate the students with disabilities, they can teach at a slower pace, practice flexibility in exam scheduling and extend test times so all students can better comprehend the material. ESL instructors can also reduce the amount of reading done in class and incorporate interactive, kinesthetic learning. Students can benefit from repetition in lessons, charts and explicit rules and expectations for the classroom.

For the Visually Impaired
To better serve the visually impaired students, ESL teachers can stress strong audio and kinesthetic learning in the class. For example, they can pair a sighted student with a visually impaired. The sighted student will get a chance to vocalize the information, which will help the student memorize or further understand the concept, while the visually impaired student can grasp nonverbal actions that occurred in class. Instructors can also adjust the lesson's timing to the use computers and adaptive, electronic notetakers in class. To add creativity to a lesson, they can incorporate audio books, music, radio and newscasts instead of television or movies.

For the Deaf or Hearing Impaired
Strong visual aids and interactive lesson plans work well with teaching hearing impaired ESL students. Instructors can pair students with partners that can hear well so the students can avoid falling behind in lessons. Teachers can also speak in their direction, enunciate and use repetition while speaking. To encourage lip reading, they can use visual emphasis. Instructors can use their hands to motion and lips to stress as they incorporate bright colors and poster board to highlight vocabulary, grammar and language associations with images.

Teaching Styles
Different teaching methods can contribute to productive ESL learning environments for students with disabilities. Teachers have to make the effort by incorporating various teaching styles in one lesson to accommodate the students. For example, they can go over the aim of the lesson by reviewing it out loud as well writing it down on the board. They can also make a conscious effort to spell unfamiliar words, be more specific with instructions and practice being patient. To teach ESL students, teachers must be willing to repeat material several times to reach the students. To provide extra help, they can provide CD-ROMs that contain electronic version of the lesson plans or DVDs that review the concept explained in class.