How to teach ELL students to read challenging, on-grade level texts through Visible Reading, a differentiated, process-driven reading strategy.
Looking for esl task cards to use with your english language learners? Try these picture cards that are perfect for quick and effective language practice!
Helping K-2 Teachers Like You Save Time, Grow Instructional Skills, and Teach With Confidence!
Whether you’re trying to eliminate tons of prep time, save paper, or support ELL students in distance learning, using digital vocabulary units can be extremely helpful activities for ELL newcomers. These digital units target reading,
Learn how to make vocabulary folders. With a few simple materials you can quickly set up your own. These are great for ELLs...
Some newcomers arrive with no English at all and need to focus on basic classroom English first. This pack will help.
10 ESOL Teacher Must Haves. Check out these items to make your teaching job easier.2
It can be alarming to have a non-English speaking student assigned to your classroom. Our guest blogger shares her top 10 tips for handling this situation.
ELL, ESOL, LEP, ELD. We all have experienced English Language Learners at some point during our teaching careers. Learn some strategies to help both you and them be successful!
Do you have a newcomer student in your classroom? Here are some strategies for supporting newcomer ELLs in their elementary classroom...
Learn about scaffolds you can add to help your ESL students as they are writing about photographs. Photographs offer great insperation for ELLs to write...
Learn about scaffolds you can add to help your ESL students as they are writing about photographs. Photographs offer great insperation for ELLs to write...
Tips, teaching ideas, and resources to help teach academic language to ELLs. Academic language is important for all students.
Playing ESL speaking games offers numerous benefits for language learners. Here are 3 games to get you started!
The start to the school year for newcomer ELLs can be overwhelming and nerve-wracking. It is our job to set them up with tools to help them feel comfortable exploring a new language in a
ELL Bathroom Briefs are one page infographs offering quick, easily accessible ELL strategies that can be used across cross-content areas.
A funds of knowledge approach allows secondary educators to use authentic cultural experiences of ELL students for learning.
Learn about what oral language is, and how to use task cards to increase English Language Learners oral language skills.
What are language functions? LFs are the "reasons" we use language; it's our purpose, or goal, when we express ourselves. Perhaps we want to express our needs or wants, explain a process, describe an experience, or persuade someone to do something. Whatever the purpose, we use language to perform these functions. Examples of Language Functions: -express wants/needs -sequence -compare/contrast -opinion -persuade -inform -describe -analyze -cause/effect -summarize -ask questions Students use language functions in every grade level and across all content areas, so what better way to set English learners up for success than by explicitly teaching the academic language needed to successfully use language functions. Here is how this looks in my ESOL classroom. Planning I like to plan certain LF units during specific times of year. For example, Compare/Contrast is fun in the fall due to apples and pumpkins. Cause/Effect is great in the winter because I like to use the topic of seasonal changes on plants and animals. Opinion/Persuade is great in the spring because I use the topic of plastic pollution, which ties into Earth Day. I sprinkle other LF units throughout the year, but those three I pretty much keep at the same time each year. You could teach any LF at any time of the year; it's very flexible. Each unit, in my classroom, lasts about 3-4 weeks, but again, it's flexible. Which language functions will my students need in order to be successful with the grade level content? When I sit down to plan a unit, I brainstorm science and social studies topics that my students will be learning about during year, then I pick the LF and topic I want to focus on. When we connect LF units with the content our students are, or will be, learning in their general education classrooms, it gives students the language tools and confidence they need to participate and succeed. Language Functions Planning Process This is the tool I use to plan out my language function units. It helps me map out the BIG picture first, then hone in on the details. The main components of my planning are: 1- identify the language function 2- identify content areas topics 3- create learning targets 4- locate activities to support the four language domains 5- determine the scaffolds needed Learning Targets I like to backwards plan by first identifying what I want my students to be able to do by the end of each LF unit. This becomes the learning target(s) for the unit. I have targets for both expressive (speaking and writing) and interpretive (listening and reading) language. A focus on the verb is important because it's what we want students to do, for example: identify, use, label, illustrate, explain, etc. The learning targets are then posted and referenced throughout each unit. Activities Once I've identified the learning targets, I start collecting activities and resources at various proficiency levels to practice viewing, listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. I also think about how I'll build background knowledge for the topic. I love to incorporate videos, so YouTube, BrainPOP Jr. and EPIC Books are places I typically go to first for engaging video resources. Building background knowledge using a short video is highly effective, IMO. It's an engaging way to get students talking about what they already know or think about a topic. This planning phase is all about finding materials that will help facilitate the language function. Since I work with a wide variety of proficiency and grade levels, I need a variety of resources. Here are some of my favorites for the 4 language domains. Listening I primarily use videos for this domain. I tell my students what to listen for and will stop the video in designated places to give them time to process and respond. Again, my top 3 places to find videos in order of preference are YouTube, BrainPOP Jr (paid subscription) and EPIC Books. EPIC has some really great videos, and it's a free resource! ReadWorks.org is another great site. The reading passages there have an audio component, so it's not a video, but it's an article read aloud. You could create your own questions for the article, but comprehension question are already provided for each passage. Nice! Reading For reading materials I look through my school's bookroom first. Then I check out Reading A-Z (a subscription my school pays for), Readworks.org, EPIC books (both are free), another online subscription resource from Benchmark Education, and lastly my own collection of books. Reading Materials for Cause and Effect The picture above shows some of the reading materials I gathered for my cause and effect unit. I searched for resources that demonstrated how changes in climate or weather impact plants and animals. Reading Materials for Opinion/Persuade As you can see, I'm a "spreader outer." By spreading out all of my resources during this planning phase, I can quickly see what I have and what I still need. Speaking I want my students talking everyday, so we do a variety of speaking activities in my ELD groups. This is probably the number one reason why I love the pull-out model of instruction, but that's a blog post for another day. Some activities I use are talking mats, games, class discussions, partner talks and simply sharing our thinking. Oral language is the foundation of language and literacy so I'm intentional about providing structured (and unstructured) opportunities for students to use oral language each time we meet. Talking Mat Activity for Cause and Effect Students chose the cards they wanted to talk about, then used the sentence frame as needed. One of my favorite speaking activities is having students record a Flipgrid video. They always moan about it at first, but then they get into it and enjoy watching and responding to their classmates' videos. It's also a great way to measure progress. You have recorded examples of your students speaking throughout the year! I like to jot down notes while I listen (and re-listen) to their recordings. This helps me target certain areas that my students need additional practice with, then I create or find mini-lessons for those skills. Writing Writing is integrated with listening and reading activities. Students generally have something to respond to each time we meet. (They usually write inside their ELD notebooks.) Similar to speaking, I'll have students writing at each meeting, even if it's a short task. I frequently use graphic organizers for writing responses. I like to reduce the size of the graphic organizer to about 75% and trim the edges, then I'll have students glue it into their notebooks. Opinion Writing At the end of each LF unit, there is a written or oral language component, sometimes both. It's an assessment to demonstrate their ability of applying the language function. Usually it's a prompt written in their ELD notebooks, but it could also be a digital activity. This past spring, at the end of our Opinion/Persuade unit, students had the choice to either create and present a PowerPoint presentation, record a Flipgrid video, or create and present a poster. Google Jamboard is another platform I frequently use for their end of unit writing task. Scaffolds Let's talk scaffolding for a moment. This is where we consider the specific language needs of our students and the appropriate supports for them. Scaffolds will vary from group to group. Some groups/students will need sentence frames, while others may only need sentence stems. Some groups will need more modeling than others. Some will need more visuals. Some will need extra opportunities to practice. Some might need L1 support. All will need explicit vocabulary instruction. We want to challenge our students without frustrating them, so picking appropriate scaffolding is key. Language Function Unit in Action For each unit, I display a "language board." It's a jumping off point and a reference tool that provides what the language function is, gives an example, along with key words. Next, I build some background knowledge so that students can connect to the reason we use the LF. It could be as simple as asking, "What do you already know about..." Then we dive into the plans and activities for listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. They spend the next 10-15 days practicing and using the language for the language function. Language Function Board for Opinion & Persuade Introductory Lesson for Opinion/Persuade Model OREO Opinion Writing Opinion Lesson - real life example to connect students' experiences with learning target Reading Activity- Will students' opinions about plastic bags change? Intermediate ELD group- students gave their opinion about plastic bags prior to reading. In Closing The best part about incorporating language function units into my ESL classroom is that ALL of my ELD groups are learning the same language function. This makes planning so much more manageable. Instead of planning 10 different lessons for ten different groups, all of my groups are learning the language of persuade at their language level. I love it! And more importantly, my students love it too! These units are fun, engaging, flexible and highly effective at building academic language. Do you teach language functions? If so, do you have a favorite? If not, do you want to? Here are links to some of my Language Function resources. Happy LF Teaching,
Students come into our classroom every day with more and challenges. We as teachers want to do all we can to help ALL of our students succeed, no matter where they came from and what language they speak at home. Teaching science to ELL students is a challenge because as ELL students are learning English, […]
Are you looking for ways to make ESL writing activities more encompassing of all language domains and more engaging?
Games are a great way to keep students engaged. Check out this list of games to use with your ELLs to help them improve their vocabulary.
This 3rd part of ESL ideas (view other parts of the series here: part 1, part 2) features 7 more quick but powerful tips. Some of them will will definitely come in handy one day. Who kn
Regardless of whether you’ve just finished your first quarter parent conferences or they are coming up soon, keeping families informed about how their children are doing is of paramount importance to students’ success in school. I’ve written before about why I so enjoyed working with the parents of my English Language Learners and while communicating with non-native English-speaking parents of ELLs can be a challenge, it is also very rewarding. There are also many more tools available now than when I was in the classroom for keeping ELLs families apprised of how their kids are doing in school. Many of these tech tools have built-in translation capabilities, so there’s really no longer any excuse for not maintaining frequent contact with ELL families. Today I’d like to offer several ways you can keep ELL parents and guardians up-to-date about your classroom activities and their children’s progress in school. Of course, you can also use all these tools with native English speakers, too! Most of these ideas were mentioned in our recent #ELLEdTech Twitter chat about tech tools for communicating with parents. For the websites/apps in the list below, I added explanations from the sites themselves (hence the quotation marks) as well as my own comments. Please note that I have not used any of these apps myself to communicate with parents, other than Google Translate and my own resource mentioned at the end, but I have heard positive things about Remind, Google Voice, and Twitter from other teachers who’ve used them for this purpose. Source: The ESL Nexus Websites, Apps & Resources for Staying In Touch * Bloomz "is a new, free tool designed to help teachers, parents, and PTA members share information and photos through real-time communication and coordination. Built primarily for the K-8 environment…" You can send class updates, share photos and videos, manage events, create student portfolios, and track behavior. * brightwheel (sic) is "Designed specifically to meet the needs of early education – brightwheel was built to be your all-in-one solution." It's a program that offers ways to track enrollment, payments, food consumption, and activities as well as other things that are helpful in daycare settings. It can also send messages, reports, and photos about children's activities. * FreshGrade "is an online portfolio where teachers, students and parents all interact to capture and comment on the student's school work. The program also allows teachers to create and grade custom assignments, which are then tracked in the tool." You can create digital portfolios which can then be shared with families. A free e-book and training are also available. * Google Voice and Google Translate: My #ELLEdTech co-host, Laurah, wrote a blog post on how to use these two programs to communicate with the families of ELLs. There is also a very helpful infographic in her post that outlines the steps to follow. * Parent Hub is a way to "Engage parents with updates about the amazing things happening in your classroom." You create "channels" that group people, such as a class or an after-school club, into communities and then you send messages and attachments to them. Recipients can respond to you, too. It’s based in the European Union so privacy laws are different from those in the U.S. * Remind "is a communication tool that helps teachers connect instantly with students and parents. Send quick, simple messages to any device." You can send a text and have it translated into 70 other languages; you can also schedule when you want a text to be sent. * TalkingPoints is a “multilingual texting platform easily connects teachers and families through text messages." You send a text in English, it's translated into the family's language, they text back in their language, and that gets translated into English. * Twitter: Thanks to S@FloradTeach for recommending Twitter to send messages and photos. Tweets can be sent in real time or scheduled in advance. According to Twitter, tweets can also be translated using Bing’s translation program but they may not be 100% accurate so the original tweet is also included. I’d be curious to know if anyone has used this Twitter function; please leave a comment below if you have and let us know how well it worked. * Weekly Progress Update Forms: A TpT resource with one-page forms in English and Spanish that comes in print and Google Drive versions. Teachers fill out the forms on a weekly basis and send them home. Academic progress, homework completion, attitude, participation and behavior are noted and there is space for comments. Signed forms can be saved in folders to show progress during the course of the school year. How do you stay in touch with your ELL families and keep them up-to-date on how their children are doing in school? Please share the resources you use in the link party below! An InLinkz Link-up
Games are a great way to keep students engaged. Check out this list of games to use with your ELLs to help them improve their vocabulary.
Discover the future of education with the WGU blog.
We’ve all been there. You’re grooving with your newcomers when October rolls around and, all the sudden, another newcomer arrives with zero English. I used to have no plan for this scenario and just flew by the seat of my pants. Now I have a curriculum that newly arrived students can get to work on, no matter what their English language proficiency is at the time. I have been selling this curriculum online for about a year as of this post, and here is how to use it with a student who is not at t
Learn about some of the differences between teaching phonics to ELLs and native English speakers. Also discover some new resources.
A district-wide unit that affirms the experiences of ELLs while teaching content and developing their language skills. ELLs voices were highlighted through this multi-grade, multi-school unit.
Check out our best ESL activities for kindergarten kids to try out in your classes today. Have some fun with English and kindy kids.
Myths are found in cultures around the world. Here are some ideas for teaching myths to ELLs. Include stories from the culture...
There are many folktales from around the world for students to learn about. Come find out about tips for teaching folktales to ELLs.
If we want language to come OUT of our students’ mouths, we must get language IN to their heads. They need INput so that they can produce OUTput. » Input is reading and listening » Output is speaking and writing This is common sense. A learner cannot utter an expression in a new language if…
Check out our top 11 ESL whiteboard games and activities to try out with your students today. Have some fun with these chalkboard games.
Maintain high academic expectations by reducing the language barrier by providing specific language scaffolding for Beginning to Developing ELs.
Learn about some of the differences between teaching phonics to ELLs and native English speakers. Also discover some new resources.
How to teach beginner ESL students is just as important as what to teach them. Here are 7 strategies that will help you out.
What are language functions? LFs are the "reasons" we use language; it's our purpose, or goal, when we express ourselves. Perhaps we want to express our needs or wants, explain a process, describe an experience, or persuade someone to do something. Whatever the purpose, we use language to perform these functions. Examples of Language Functions: -express wants/needs -sequence -compare/contrast -opinion -persuade -inform -describe -analyze -cause/effect -summarize -ask questions Students use language functions in every grade level and across all content areas, so what better way to set English learners up for success than by explicitly teaching the academic language needed to successfully use language functions. Here is how this looks in my ESOL classroom. Planning I like to plan certain LF units during specific times of year. For example, Compare/Contrast is fun in the fall due to apples and pumpkins. Cause/Effect is great in the winter because I like to use the topic of seasonal changes on plants and animals. Opinion/Persuade is great in the spring because I use the topic of plastic pollution, which ties into Earth Day. I sprinkle other LF units throughout the year, but those three I pretty much keep at the same time each year. You could teach any LF at any time of the year; it's very flexible. Each unit, in my classroom, lasts about 3-4 weeks, but again, it's flexible. Which language functions will my students need in order to be successful with the grade level content? When I sit down to plan a unit, I brainstorm science and social studies topics that my students will be learning about during year, then I pick the LF and topic I want to focus on. When we connect LF units with the content our students are, or will be, learning in their general education classrooms, it gives students the language tools and confidence they need to participate and succeed. Language Functions Planning Process This is the tool I use to plan out my language function units. It helps me map out the BIG picture first, then hone in on the details. The main components of my planning are: 1- identify the language function 2- identify content areas topics 3- create learning targets 4- locate activities to support the four language domains 5- determine the scaffolds needed Learning Targets I like to backwards plan by first identifying what I want my students to be able to do by the end of each LF unit. This becomes the learning target(s) for the unit. I have targets for both expressive (speaking and writing) and interpretive (listening and reading) language. A focus on the verb is important because it's what we want students to do, for example: identify, use, label, illustrate, explain, etc. The learning targets are then posted and referenced throughout each unit. Activities Once I've identified the learning targets, I start collecting activities and resources at various proficiency levels to practice viewing, listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. I also think about how I'll build background knowledge for the topic. I love to incorporate videos, so YouTube, BrainPOP Jr. and EPIC Books are places I typically go to first for engaging video resources. Building background knowledge using a short video is highly effective, IMO. It's an engaging way to get students talking about what they already know or think about a topic. This planning phase is all about finding materials that will help facilitate the language function. Since I work with a wide variety of proficiency and grade levels, I need a variety of resources. Here are some of my favorites for the 4 language domains. Listening I primarily use videos for this domain. I tell my students what to listen for and will stop the video in designated places to give them time to process and respond. Again, my top 3 places to find videos in order of preference are YouTube, BrainPOP Jr (paid subscription) and EPIC Books. EPIC has some really great videos, and it's a free resource! ReadWorks.org is another great site. The reading passages there have an audio component, so it's not a video, but it's an article read aloud. You could create your own questions for the article, but comprehension question are already provided for each passage. Nice! Reading For reading materials I look through my school's bookroom first. Then I check out Reading A-Z (a subscription my school pays for), Readworks.org, EPIC books (both are free), another online subscription resource from Benchmark Education, and lastly my own collection of books. Reading Materials for Cause and Effect The picture above shows some of the reading materials I gathered for my cause and effect unit. I searched for resources that demonstrated how changes in climate or weather impact plants and animals. Reading Materials for Opinion/Persuade As you can see, I'm a "spreader outer." By spreading out all of my resources during this planning phase, I can quickly see what I have and what I still need. Speaking I want my students talking everyday, so we do a variety of speaking activities in my ELD groups. This is probably the number one reason why I love the pull-out model of instruction, but that's a blog post for another day. Some activities I use are talking mats, games, class discussions, partner talks and simply sharing our thinking. Oral language is the foundation of language and literacy so I'm intentional about providing structured (and unstructured) opportunities for students to use oral language each time we meet. Talking Mat Activity for Cause and Effect Students chose the cards they wanted to talk about, then used the sentence frame as needed. One of my favorite speaking activities is having students record a Flipgrid video. They always moan about it at first, but then they get into it and enjoy watching and responding to their classmates' videos. It's also a great way to measure progress. You have recorded examples of your students speaking throughout the year! I like to jot down notes while I listen (and re-listen) to their recordings. This helps me target certain areas that my students need additional practice with, then I create or find mini-lessons for those skills. Writing Writing is integrated with listening and reading activities. Students generally have something to respond to each time we meet. (They usually write inside their ELD notebooks.) Similar to speaking, I'll have students writing at each meeting, even if it's a short task. I frequently use graphic organizers for writing responses. I like to reduce the size of the graphic organizer to about 75% and trim the edges, then I'll have students glue it into their notebooks. Opinion Writing At the end of each LF unit, there is a written or oral language component, sometimes both. It's an assessment to demonstrate their ability of applying the language function. Usually it's a prompt written in their ELD notebooks, but it could also be a digital activity. This past spring, at the end of our Opinion/Persuade unit, students had the choice to either create and present a PowerPoint presentation, record a Flipgrid video, or create and present a poster. Google Jamboard is another platform I frequently use for their end of unit writing task. Scaffolds Let's talk scaffolding for a moment. This is where we consider the specific language needs of our students and the appropriate supports for them. Scaffolds will vary from group to group. Some groups/students will need sentence frames, while others may only need sentence stems. Some groups will need more modeling than others. Some will need more visuals. Some will need extra opportunities to practice. Some might need L1 support. All will need explicit vocabulary instruction. We want to challenge our students without frustrating them, so picking appropriate scaffolding is key. Language Function Unit in Action For each unit, I display a "language board." It's a jumping off point and a reference tool that provides what the language function is, gives an example, along with key words. Next, I build some background knowledge so that students can connect to the reason we use the LF. It could be as simple as asking, "What do you already know about..." Then we dive into the plans and activities for listening, reading, speaking and writing skills. They spend the next 10-15 days practicing and using the language for the language function. Language Function Board for Opinion & Persuade Introductory Lesson for Opinion/Persuade Model OREO Opinion Writing Opinion Lesson - real life example to connect students' experiences with learning target Reading Activity- Will students' opinions about plastic bags change? Intermediate ELD group- students gave their opinion about plastic bags prior to reading. In Closing The best part about incorporating language function units into my ESL classroom is that ALL of my ELD groups are learning the same language function. This makes planning so much more manageable. Instead of planning 10 different lessons for ten different groups, all of my groups are learning the language of persuade at their language level. I love it! And more importantly, my students love it too! These units are fun, engaging, flexible and highly effective at building academic language. Do you teach language functions? If so, do you have a favorite? If not, do you want to? Here are links to some of my Language Function resources. Happy LF Teaching,
Total physical response, anchor charts and sorts are a great way to help ELL students understand verb tenses!
Check out the top icebreakers and ESL activities for first day of class that will get your students talking and getting to know each other.
Teaching mixed level ESL classes can be quite the challenge, especially speaking classes but it's not impossible. Check out these tips!
Beat the overwhelm of teaching an absolute beginner with this downloadable checklist
