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Vocabulary folders are a convenient way to organize vocabulary pages. I used illustrated vocabulary sheets to help my English Language Learners speak and write about new vocabulary. They are also helpful for younger students with spelling. Some primary classroom teachers I supported had a set of these folders on student tables or in a writing

If your non-English speaking students aren't ready to do the regular class work, what should you have them do instead? This handy tool can help.

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

Tips to Help Your English Language Learners If you have English language learners in your classroom you already know that teaching reading for this group can be a challenge. Many teachers simply have not had much exposure to the kinds of strategies that can help these kids learn. Just like all other students teachers serve, English language learners have varying abilities and reading levels. What makes it complicated is when students arrive with no language skills other than maybe knowing the words hello and my name is.... Because of this challenge to the homeroom teachers in my building, I created this free resource as a kind of guide to help direct their instruction. I hope it is a help to all the teachers who feel they are helpless with the immigrant students. They need advocates and we, the teachers, are the ones to do it. https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/The-Five-Stages-of-Language-Acquisition-Made-Easy-2402804

Get some helpful ideas on how to decorate your ESL classroom. Check out the top 5 classroom decoration ideas to work on with your students!

Being an international teacher brings on a lot of questions, mostly about language and learning English - what languages do my students speak and how can I teach them if they don't know English (yet). Ultimately, the confusion is about how we do it. However, it's not only international teachers that are adapting their instructional practices - this is today's classroom (and I love it)! Multilingualism, translanguaging, translating and scaffolding - it's all in a teacher's day!

Newcomer students receive some support from an ELD (English Language Development) teacher in most elementary schools. The majority of their time is spent in their grade level classroom. Here are some strategies for supporting a newcomer student both in their grade level classroom and areas to focus on during targeted language development lessons. Create a

English Language Learners (ELLs) often struggle in the mainstream classroom. Learn tips from an ESL teacher to help reach those students' needs better.

As an ESL teacher, I often hear from classroom teachers that they don't always know where to start when it comes to working with beginning English language learners (ELLs), or newcomers, in small group instruction. In this post I'll share a typical "guided reading" lesson that I would give to my beginning ELLs, as well as a glance of at what a typical week would look like. Let me start by saying, the very first thing I do before I start instructing my newcomers is, I assess what they already know. First, I see if they have literacy skills in their native language...can they read and write? Then, I see if they know alphabet letter names and sounds. Next, I assess their reading level. Since they don't have English literacy skills yet, their reading level typically starts at level "A" (emergent). I can say that most students do have some literacy skills in their home language, and often times, many know some letter names and sounds. So now I've got my starting point! When I first begin working with my newcomers, the main components of reading that I typically focus on are building vocabulary, phonological awareness/phonics and sight words. So a typical week would encompass all three of these skills. Down the road I add comprehension skills, but they are not ready for that yet. Step 1 - Choose an appropriate book. I carefully select books that have relevant vocabulary. For the most part, my main focus is to build their vocabulary. The literacy skills in their native language will transfer to their new language, however, they have an extremely limited vocabulary, so... vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary! I chose this book because I wanted to teach my students the word "big." It's also about animals, and I know that most kids are interested in reading about animals! I used gestures to SHOW them what "big" means. It's important to be mindful of your students' age when picking out books. You don't want to give 4th-6th graders books about bunnies or teddy bears. Try picking age appropriate books; which I know can be a challenge if the selection is limited, but you don't want your students feeling embarrassed. Step 2 - Preview the book. Point to and say each animal's name and have the students repeat the names back to you, keeping in mind to speak clearly and to enunciate the sounds in each word. It's important for them to hear how to pronounce the names. A side thought...Think about "A" level books... they are not created with English language learners in mind. "A" level books have repeated sentences, which are GREAT, but they also have very specific vocabulary that students are expected to decode using picture cues. In the book my students read last week, the repeated sentence was, "We go to the _____." The pictures show the family in different locations like the pool, park, library, soccer game, etc. In one picture the family is standing in front of a large fish tank. If I asked English only students where the family is, some might say a fish store or they might even guess aquarium, depending on their background knowledge. Then they'd cross check their thinking with the word and see that it begins with the letter "a" and hopefully they'd say, "It's an aquarium!" But our newcomers don't know what a big fish tank place is called in English, so it's important for us to support our students by saying the names of each vocabulary word. Step 3 - Choral reading! Newcomers feel more comfortable in a choral reading setting. They need help pronouncing the words. They need to hear YOU pronounce the words. Choral reading helps to keep anxiety levels low. (In a few weeks, the choral reading decreases and I will start focusing on decoding.) Step 4 - After reading, review the animal names. Point to an animal and see if they can remember the name. Perhaps make a matching activity with animal pictures and names. Support as needed. Encourage a LOT! Step 5 - I always provide a guided writing activity based off of the book we just read. I use sentence frames to support their thinking and writing. Sometimes I create my own, like the picture below, and other times I'll use a graphic organizer as a follow up activity. On this day I wanted them to understand the meaning of "big," so their writing supported this goal. As they finish their writing activity, I'll ask each student to read some of their writing to me. Then they'll draw a quick picture, which I always ask them to label. I know that my newcomers don't understand every word in the book, and that's OK! They are being exposed to new words and ideas in a repeating format. I want them to get used to the structure of our lessons so that they know what's expected. So, here is what a typical week of small group work entails for my newcomers. Knowing what the focus is each day helps me to zone in on their learning goals. The variety keeps it fun and interesting, yet it's consistent so they know what's expected. As you can see, on Tuesdays I include direct vocabulary instruction, either using the vocabulary from the book, like the animals, monthly themed vocabulary, or content area vocabulary. October Themed Vocabulary (along with sight words and phonics review) One vocabulary activity I have my students do is called the K.I.M. Strategy. In their notebook they write the key word (K), important information (I), sketch a memory clue (M) and write a sentence (S). For my newcomers, I leave out the (I) portion. They are not ready for adding "information." Right now the goal is for them to learn the names of things and simple sentence structure. My higher ELLS definitely include all components of the K.I.M. Strategy in their notebooks. This is what the K.I.M. Strategy looks like. And this is how it looks modified for my newcomers... On Thursdays, I focus on building sight words. When teaching sight words, it's important to teach them in context. Your beginning ELs need context in order to make meaning of the words. I pull a sight word from our books and I include an extension activity with that word. (A link to this resource is provided at the bottom of this post.) I do teach sight words throughout the week, but on Thursdays we always have an extension activity for one of them. As an "exit ticket" I have them orally use the sight word. Today, I asked each student, "What can you do?" And they responded with "I can _____." Then they get a high five, a sticker (big kids like stickers too!), or some encouraging praise. I also include Word Study activities in my small group work. I like using the sorts from Words Their Way. Each Monday they receive a new spelling pattern. Remember, I assessed my students to see what they already knew. Most already knew initial sounds, so I started them with word families. If they did not know initial sounds, I would've started there. I do have one student in this group who does not know many initials sounds, so I spend a little extra focus with him on initial sounds. This resource is from "Words Their Way." My newcomers use this activity to learn spelling patterns AND vocabulary. They are introduced to their new word list on Mondays, then they have independent activities to do with their word list throughout the week in their gen ed classrooms. (It's so important to set newcomers up with meaningful activities that they can work on independently during Reader's Workshop.) Below is their Word Study Activities list. It gets glued into their Reading Notebook. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays they work on their independent activities. Friday is Word Study Quiz day! FREEBIE - Click Here And that's what small group instruction looks like with my newcomers. To recap, assess what students can do to evaluate your starting point. Focus on building vocabulary, sight words in context, word spelling patterns and choral reading to start. My guided reading lessons usually looks like... preview the book, front load main vocabulary, choral read, and end with a guided writing activity with sentence frames. Here's a TIP: Many times I make my own guided writing activity based on what I want the students to learn from the book. I'll write the activity in my notebook, make copies, cut them to size, then have students glue it into their notebook. Keep this notebook! You may get a newcomer next year, and when you do, many of your guided writing activities will already be made. You'll just need to find the book that goes with the activity. My notebook where I write out the guided writing activities. I know that many school districts lack ESL resources and often times the classroom teacher is the only one providing instruction. Knowing where to start with beginning English learners is probably the biggest challenge. I hope that this post gives you some ideas about where to start and what to focus on with your new students. To read more about the K.I.M. Strategy, click here. Affiliate links below for Sight Words and Word Study.

Is Your Classroom ELL-Friendly? Deb Hanson shares 8 practical strategies you can implement right away to ensure that your classroom supports English Language Learners.

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!

This resource is #1 for a reason! I almost always use graphic organizers to teach reading comprehension. I find them to be highly effective because they are

Using sentence frames to get ell students writing. Click here for more:

In this worksheet there is a crossword. There is also an activity where the students read and follow the instructions (Ex. Colour the t-shirt red) For lower level students you can read out the instructions instead. - ESL worksheets

Every year in my first year classes (12 year olds) I touch on the principles of perspective, at least in its one point form. We do a little art history, take a look at Masaccio and Mantegna. We mak…

This activity is heavily scaffolded for beginners. Students orally create the word bank and sentences, but I write the words and sentences on the board using

10 ESOL Teacher Must Haves As an ESOL teacher I worked with students in a variety of settings. Here are my 10 ESOL teacher must haves that I have found to be valuable tools for working with students in a wide range of ages and levels. Disclosure: This post contains Amazon affiliate links, which means

By Presto Plans A few years ago I became a part-time student and enrolled in a master's course called Writing Instruction. The professor took a unique approach by having us, a group of English teachers, write our own poetry and fiction. It was an eye-opener. I realized that somewhere between high school and my first teaching job, I forgot the lonely and uneasy feeling of staring at a blank page, not knowing where to begin. When the professor allowed us to work with another teacher on the next writing piece, there was a sense of comfort in that I had someone to discuss, collaborate, and share ideas with. Collaborative writing not only broke down my reserve and hesitation, but also allowed me to foster a relationship of trust and partnership with my co-author. I wanted to bring this experience into my own classroom, so I made a point to allow more opportunities for students to write creatively with a partner or a group. Try 5 of my favorite engaging, low-prep collaborative writing activities that you can use in your class tomorrow. Snowball writing is an activity that your middle and high school students will always remember. It can be used with almost any writing genre and is highly-engaging for even your most reluctant writers. I use this method for narrative, poetry, descriptive, and essay writing. I even use it as an introductory icebreaker activity during back-to-school or a semester change! How It Works: - One student starts the writing process for a timed period decided by the teacher. - When time is up, the teacher tells students to crumple up their work into a “snowball” and throw it somewhere else in the room. Get ready to see lots of confused faces J. - Students retrieve one of the snowballs, smooth out the paper, and continue the writing process! (Tip: have students use a pen to make the writing easier to read for the next student) This process is repeated as needed. When all parts are completed, the paper goes back to the original writer who creates a final copy. If you want to know more about how I use this for narrative writing, read this detailed blog post that gives the step-by-step process in more detail. Have your students write a descriptive paragraph using vivid imagery with an activity called Shared Sensory Writing. How it works: - Put students into groups of three and give them an object to describe. - As a group, they decide which of the 3 senses they will focus on (sight, taste, smell, touch, hearing). Each person is assigned a sense, and they write a short paragraph describing the object based only on the sense they receive. - The group combines elements from each of the paragraphs to create a final descriptive piece. Download this activity for FREE by clicking here: Shared Sensory Writing One of the challenging parts of creative fictional writing is developing the story elements that will form the plot. Use the graffiti fiction brainstorming technique as a way for students to work together to spark fictional writing. How It Works: - Set up 4 chart-paper stations around the room with the following titles: Conflicts, Character Traits, Settings, and Themes. Break the class up into 4 groups and have each group go to one of the stations. - The group members work together to “graffiti” the page with potential conflicts, character traits, settings, and themes that could emerge in a fictional story. I fill in a couple of my own examples to get them started. - Have each group spend 3-4 minutes filling the chart paper up with their ideas. Then, have them all circulate to the next station to repeat the process. - When they are done, have each student select one character trait, conflict, setting, and theme from the graffitied pages to develop a unique narrative. You can choose to have them write independently or with a partner. Tapestry poetry was developed by Avril Meallem (of Israel) and Shernaz Wadia (of India). The two women started writing tapestry poetry collaboratively via email. The form consists of two authors writing a 9-line poem based on the same title, and then working together to meld it into one seamless finished product. How It Works: - Put your students into pairs (or let them choose a partner). - Have one of the students select a title for the poem. This student who selects the title is the only one who has the option of using it in the poem (to avoid repetition). - Both students write a 9-line poem. - When they are done, the pair works together to interlace the poem into one. All 18 lines must be included. Students are permitted to make grammatical changes (singular to plural, verb tenses etc.), and adjustments to adjectives and adverbs, but the majority of the poems should remain the same. Download this activity for FREE by clicking here: Tapestry Poetry Sketch and scribble writing is meant to be used with descriptive/narrative writing and will particularly appeal to those artistic students in your classroom. How It Works: - Have students form a group of three. Give each of the students a picture as a writing prompt. The picture prompts below are the ones I use. The images should allow them to use a narrative voice to describe a scene. They should keep the prompt hidden from the other members of the group. - Once the time is up, each student passes the writing to another student in the group who will read it and draw the scene based on the description (no words allowed). - When the drawings are done, they are given to the final student who must write a paragraph based on the drawing. In the end, have students compare and contrast the drawings to the original picture writing prompt as well as the two pieces of writing. Want even more ideas for collaborative writing? Check out these activities from some of the other Secondary English Coffee Shop bloggers! Tandem Writing from The SuperHERO Teacher Group Writing Challenges from Room 213 Two Truths and a Lie from Secondary Sara Round Robin Writing from Nouvelle ELA Have other ideas for collaborative writing? Click the comment button at the top of the post to join the conversation! SaveSave SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

A good teacher should try to say as much as possible in a lesson to give as much information as possible… right? WRONG! In this article we will look at why limiting teacher talk time in a class is a…

That’s why in this blog post, we will explore five essential bilingual classroom must haves that every dual language teacher needs to feel set up for success

Whether your students are lethargic or super-charged, adding movement to your lesson plans will help to solve both issues. Not only is it healthy to move throughout the day, but it can also help students focus and become more engaged with the content they are trying to master. Due to the nature of English classes, ELA ... Read More about 10 Ways to Add Movement in the ELA Classroom

Co-Teaching can be one of the most rewarding, yet challenging experiences. The co-teaching partnership is kind of like a marriage and usually it's an arranged one! Often, two teachers are partnered up without knowing much about each other. Administrators dealing with staffing issues may not be able to look at teaching styles and personalities before pairing teachers up. Here are some tips on how to make your co-teaching relationship a successful one! 1. Get to know your co-teaching partner. It takes time to develop a rapport. Get to know your partner over the summer, if possible. Attend trainings together. Go out for lunch and chat about your family, interests, likes, and dislikes. The trust built over the summer will make the entire year run more smoothly. 2. Discuss expectations before the situation arises. Talk about what your expectations are for the year and set boundaries. Do you expect to plan everything together? Do you expect to work before or after school? How will you address grading and report cards? Do you prefer to be contacted at home with a question or would you rather wait until returning to school? Discussing your expectations before the school year starts will make your partnership more cohesive. 3. Be open-minded to your partner's ideas. Think about the general education teacher as the curriculum specialist. Chances are, they are more familiar with the grade-level curriculum and expectations. The special education teacher is the modifications expert. They will have great ideas of how to modify the classroom environment and assignments to fit the various needs of the classroom. Each of you brings great things to the classroom. You each have different experiences and training that has gotten you to this point in your career. You may be used to doing things differently than before you started co-teaching. Just like in a marriage, your co-teaching relationship is a give and take. You will learn a lot and gain a lot if you are open-minded. 4. Share your space. Share your students too! Whether you share one space or you each have your own “home base”, it is important for both of you to truly feel at home in each space. Within the main classroom, you each should have a desk or other personal space. The classroom signs should include each of your names. My classroom signs always include the names of both teachers, all of the teaching assistants, and all of the related service providers that play an active role in our classroom. It is important for everybody to feel a part of the team. To avoid using the terms “my room” and “your room”, I named my assigned room the “Learning Lab” and refer to the co-teaching classroom as just our “Classroom”. When you split up into groups, it might be a good idea alternate which teacher leaves to use the other space. Banish the phrases “your kids” and “my kids” and replace it with our kids. Both of you are equally responsible for the students assigned to your classroom. Your students should not feel a sense of belonging to one teacher over the other. When you split into groups or assist 1:1, alternate which teacher works with the different levels of kids. The same goes for working with parents. Communication should come from both of you. 5. Stand united both in the classroom and out! Just like in a marriage, you need to appear to be united. You might not always agree with the other teacher, but it is important to put on a united front and then speak about those differences in private. You always need to back each other up and also support your paraprofessionals as well. Your students will pick up on any disconnect between you and will try to use that to their advantage. Always speak positively about your partner. You need to work together for at least the entire school year so your relationship needs to be strong. The staff lunch room is not a place to talk about your issues. If you do not have anything nice to say, do not say anything at all. A few years ago, a friend of mine was having some trouble within her classroom. Her team of paraprofessionals were disjointed and often went against each other in front of the students. She reached out for some advice and it inspired me to create a product geared towards helping classrooms with multiple adults to work together collaboratively in harmony. I have found it quite useful in my own classroom which has four paraprofessionals. Whether you are new to co-teaching, new to your partner, or have been paired up for years, I hope you find this these tips helpful. If you want more information about co-teaching, you can find just about everything you need in my Ultimate Co-Teaching Start-Up Kit. Thank you for stopping by today!

How to teach vocabulary to ELLs can be one of the biggest concerns for teachers that are new to working with English Language Learners. How do you teach a lesson when some of your students are unfamiliar with the words that you are using? Which words are the most important ones in a story? Which

Beat the overwhelm of teaching an absolute beginner with this downloadable checklist

Academic Sentence Frames help students explain, describe, and clarify what they are thinking. Students who struggle in reading and writing and English Language Learners can strongly benefit from these sentence frames which will help them organize their thinking and be a springboard for their own writing. These sentence frames also offer support for students to formulate sentences orally as well as in their writing. They provide a great scaffold to “frame” students’ thinking! Includes: - Academic Sentence Frames for Inferencing, Predicting, Cause and Effect, Classifying, Collaborative Discussions, Author’s Viewpoint, etc. - 20 printable Academic Sentence Frames which are only a sample of the sentence frames in this package. You can take many of these sentence frames and make your own printables! - Reading Journal topics - Depth of Knowledge questions ✾ ✾ ✾ Please click on the Product Preview! ✾ ✾ ✾ This product is included in the ESL/ENL Speaking & Writing Prompts Bundle! Click here to see! Terms of Use: Copyright © 2016 Three Leaf Clover Teacher Resources. All rights reserved by author. This product is to be used by the original downloader only. Copying for more than one teacher, classroom, department, school, or school system is prohibited. This product may not be distributed or displayed digitally for public view. Failure to comply is a copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Design and elements found in this PDF are copyrighted and cannot be extracted and used outside of this file without permission or license. Intended for classroom and personal use only. If you are interested in my products please look for the follow near the top of any page within my store and click it to follow me! - How to get TPT credit to use on future purchases: - Please go to your My Purchases page (you may need to login). Beside each purchase you'll see a Provide Feedback button. Simply click it and you will be taken to a page where you can give a quick rating and leave a short comment for the product. Thank you for your feedback, I hope that you find my products useful and enjoyable. You can find all of my resources for English Language Learners here: Follow me on Pinterest!

Do you struggle with finding interesting ways to teach ESL listening skills? Maybe you have an activity or two already but you want to be able to mix it up and keep things interesting. By the end of…

Applying Nancy Motley's Talk Read Talk Write (TRTW) strategy in the ELL classroom. Differentiating TRTW for Beginning to Bridging ELs.

ESL instruction is often vague because, in most cases, there's no curriculum to follow or even to guide. We are left to our own devices to plan and provide