100+ Printable board games and templates for kids and beginner ESL students. Download and use in class today!

Learn three simple things you need to teach your ESL beginners right away. These include variations of introductions, classroom surroundings and basic needs

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,

You’ll learn the 13 rules which help you to teach ESL effectively, together with info on how to become an ESL teacher in no time.

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

Check out the following ESL lesson plans and lesson plan templates to get your teaching on in style! It's English teaching made easy!

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!

What are your methods for teaching vocabulary? Drills? Flashcards? Yuck! Boring! While these can certainly be effective, they can be a quick way to lose your student’s attention if you spend too much…

Empower ELL newcomers with essential classroom English phrases using this resource pack designed for beginners. Perfect for mastering survival English skills.

Check out our top 11 ESL whiteboard games and activities to try out with your students today. Have some fun with these chalkboard games.

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

Are you looking for a resource to give content teachers and/or administrators that easily explains English Language Learners' abilities in speaking, listening, reading, and writing at each level of language proficiency? Look no further! This resource explains the student's approximate abilities in...

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!

How to decorate an ESL Classroom; 8 ESL classroom decorations for a welcoming and inclusive environment for your multilingual students.

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…

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10 ESOL Teacher Must Haves. Check out these items to make your teaching job easier.2

Let's be real, planning weekly lessons in the ESL classroom can be an overwhelming task. Factors include caseloads and the sheer number of students/small groups serviced. Also, heterogenous groupings with a variety of language levels make it difficult to target specific language needs of students. Perhaps you're a new teacher and simply haven't had the guidance yet on planning ESL lessons. Here are a few tips to help make planning less stressful. 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 lessons for our students that build language skills in the four language domains of listening, reading, speaking and writing. That alone can make planning overwhelming. Tie in grade level content and setting language goals, and it's a LOT to consider! Let's start with a few pre-planning tips. These will support successful lesson planning. PRE-PLANNING TIPS 1- Lesson Planner Book It's really important to have a place to keep all things planning in one place. I don't know where I'd be without my lesson plan book. Things I keep in my planner in addition to lesson plans are: 1- Student lists with ELP levels broken down by each domain, 2- The curriculum my students are learning in their gen ed classrooms so that I can integrate my ELD lessons with the grade level content whenever possible, 3- A calendar to keep me on track with events that impact my instructional schedule, such as meetings and testing, 4- Language goals and data collection to track student progress. There are some really awesome print and go planners, as well as digital planners out there. Find one that suits your needs AND brings you joy. :) 2- Know Your Students One of our main goals is to take students from their current language proficiency level to the next level. Knowing students and their needs is critical to planning appropriate lessons. Students have an English Language Proficiency (ELP) level, but what does that mean exactly? So, my student has an ELP level 3, but what can she do in each language domain? I won't know what to teach her if I don't know the starting point for her. Look at the breakdown of all 4 language domains and identify the weaker domains for each student. Keep this information in your plan book, or somewhere easily accessible. This is valuable information, but it's a very small piece of data. More importantly, I need to know what my students can do right now. Their latest scores might be 6 months old, so I want to also gather current data. Assessments I give at the beginning to determine starting points: phonemic awareness (newcomers) phonics writing (give a prompt that students have plenty of background knowledge) reading I need to know what level of reading I can expect from students, not just with decoding, but more importantly comprehending. For writing, if my student is a newcomer with little to no English, I want to see a sample of their writing in their native language. This will give a lot of information about the literacy skills new students bring to the table. Once I know what my students CAN DO, I can then plan targeted ELD lessons to meet their language and literacy needs. Without this information, I'd be trying to hit a target in the dark, and that's not servicing the students or myself. 3- Student Placement in Small Groups Each small group, in my opinion, should be homogeneous. I group students according to needs, not necessarily by ELP level, although generally it works out that most level 3 students, for example, have similar needs, but not always. Grouping students with similar needs is key to targeting the skills they need to move from one level to the next. OK, I've got my plan book, my student data and my small groups identified by need. Now what? Tips to Make Lesson Planning Less Stressful 1- Consistent Weekly Activities Incorporate consistent activities that target your students' needs, preferably that don't require planning time, and add them in your plan book every week. For example, I go through my plan book and add "phonics" to certain days for certain groups each week, so that's one less thing I need to plan. I have all the phonics materials on hand, so I simple print out and copy what I need and go. I also do an Idiom of the Week activity and a "Friday Focus on Grammar" for other groups. Those automatically go into my lesson plan book each week as well! Several of my groups have a warm-up activity when they first come into my room. The activity takes about 5-10 minutes, but that's another chunk of time I don't need to plan. My level 1s and 2s have an irregular sight word booklet, and my level 3s and 4s have a Restate the Question writing prompt. Irregular Sight Words - Warm Up Activity Finding consistent and meaningful weekly activities to add to your plan book cuts down on planning time. Other examples of weekly activities: -Grammar lessons (so many possibilities- What do YOUR students need?) -Vocabulary - multiple meaning words, synonyms/antonyms, shades of meaning words, content vocabulary, affixes, thematic monthly vocabulary, etc. -Idiom of the Week -Word Work - Affixes is a great focus area! -Read Alouds -Let's Talk! -oral language activities (purposeful oral language development is so important) One of my favorite "Let's Talk!" activities is projecting a picture and having students talk about what they see happening. It could be content related or simply an interesting photograph. An awesome resource for this is Chuck Dillon's website. He's such a fantastic illustrator! Each picture has tons of action, which means there's never a shortage of things to talk about. Pick a couple of "Weekly Activities" and plug them into your plan book each week. Here's a blog post that shares "3 Weekly Activities that Do Not Require Planning." 2 - "Go-To" Activities These are helpful to have on hand whenever you feel unsure about what to plan next, or you just need a meaningful "filler" lesson. We all need those from time to time. These lessons are still high-quality lessons that target the needs of our students, but they don't require planning time. Some Go-To Activity Examples: PWIM with any picture (picture word inductive model) Inferring using pictures 5 Ws and H using pictures Mind Maps Language Games This Build a Sentence activity uses the PWIM strategy to generate words about a picture. In this activity, we use the words to generate sentences of varying lengths. And on this particular day, I also challenged my students to use position words in their sentences. To start, I ask students to tell me something they see in the picture. The students generate the words and I write them on the board in different colors depending on the part of speech. Students also generate the sentences, and I support with grammar, as needed. It's a great activity to have on hand, as it covers many skills and is easily adaptable. They are "one and done" lesson activities that are meaningful AND build language skills. Having a variety of these resources to pull from definitely makes planning less stressful because I know I have language building lessons that I can plug in whenever needed. 3- Language Function or Thematic Units If you know me at all, you know I LOVE planning and teaching language function units. This truly makes my planning less overwhelming. MOST, if not all, of my students across multiple grade levels work on building language around the same language function, so when I plan, I have one LF in mind for everyone. Whoo-hoo! For example, when I teach the language of Compare and Contrast, I focus on that language with all of my groups. I don't have 10 different groups doing 10 different things; they are ALL learning the language of Compare/Contrast, which makes planning SO much more manageable! Some groups might need more focus on expressive language skills while others need more practice with receptive language skills, but I know that the overarching focus for all is the language of Compare/Contrast. Plus, often times I can reuse lessons with multiple groups. Halleluiah! And by tweaking lessons with some additional scaffolds, I can use them with even more groups. This is a huge time saver! Language Function: Compare/Contrast Language Function: Fact/Opinion Each language function unit lasts about 4 weeks; and once it's planned out, there's not a lot of additional planning that needs to be done during that time period. I don't start a new unit until all my groups are finished, so while I'm finishing up the unit with some groups, I use "filler" lessons with the groups that are already done. To learn more about incorporating language function units in the ESL classroom, check out the blog post links below. 4- Reusing lessons is honestly my #1 tip for making planning more manageable and less stressful. And maybe you can't use an entire lesson with multiple groups, but you can use a portion of the lesson. How many groups can I use this lesson with? How can I tweak this lesson so that I can use it with more groups? Those are questions I ask myself as I plan. RECAP: 1- Incorporate Consistent Weekly Activities (phonics, grammar, vocabulary) and plug them into your plan book each week. 2- Go-To Activities (have a variety of meaningful filler activities on hand) 3- Language Function Units (all groups learning the same Language Function) 4- Reuse Lessons with multiple groups! As I mentioned earlier, sometimes the overwhelming feeling of planning comes from the sheer number of students and groups serviced. Or it could be that our numbers are low, but we service 6-12 grade levels. Many ESL teachers travel between schools. There's a variety of reasons that can make planning stressful. Regardless of the reasons, having these tools in your teacher toolbox can help make planning less stressful. Linked below are some of the blog posts and instructional resources mentioned in this post. Teaching Language Functions with English Learners Language Forms and Functions in the ESL Classroom

Check out the hot potato game, including variations, advice about timers, instructions for play and a whole lot more. Have some fun today!

Students are more easily able to retain information when they are engaged and having fun. Games are a fun way to do both. Here are some great games to help your ELLs practice vocabulary and other language skills. Check out a few games for ELLs to add to your collection. Disclosure: This post contains affiliate

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

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10 fun and educational ESL activities for busy teachers! Try these games and activities in your classroom (or virtual classroom) today!

Try out these ESL activities for teenagers if you're looking to make your English classes fun, interesting, and engaging.

I remember when I was a new ESL teacher, I really had no clue where to begin. Thank goodness I had an amazing mentor and roommate; without her I would've been completely lost. Each school district is different, so you may be required to do certain tasks at the start of each year, but as a seasoned ESOL teacher, here are my top 5 suggestions for starting off the school year strong. Where to Begin the Year - ESL Edition Teachers in my district head back to school a week prior to students. The week is filled with meetings, professional development, Open House and squeezing in time to set up instructional spaces. During this hectic week it's also important to find out who my English learners are, who the classroom teachers are that I'll be collaborating with, and to think about routines and procedures I want in place for my ELD instruction. Week 1 - Prior to Students Arriving at School Get your hands on a student list. The list should include important information such as grade level, classroom teacher, ELP level and home language. Sometimes I need to ask the registrar at my school for a list, but most of the time I can find it on my district's EL database site. You'll also want a list of ELP scores from last year (preferably from the past two years) so that you can analyze student proficiency levels AND growth in each language domain. This is key in determining strengths and areas of need. Once you have your student lists, you can begin thinking about how you want to group your students. I'm lucky, in my district to have the autonomy of grouping my students the way that best targets their needs. Some schools/districts group students for you AND make your schedule, giving you no control in these two areas. If you are able to group your own students, I like to group based on language need with about 6 students per group. When I have small homogeneous groups, it allows me to really target students' linguistic needs. I usually use something like this to map out my groups. Students and ELD Groupings Once I have my groups, which I try not to have more than 10 in all, I then I create an initial instructional schedule. That's really a whole other post in itself! It's probably one of the most challenging tasks of the year. Considerations include the master instructional schedule, specials, lunch & recess schedules, as well as gen ed classroom focus minilessons because we don't pull students out during their focus lessons. There's a LOT to consider when creating an effective instructional ELD schedule. I use something like this to map out my draft schedule. Weekly Schedule You'll likely need to tweak your schedule at some point, so keep in mind that it might change as the needs of students change. Both of these pages are from my ESL Teacher Planner, linked at the bottom of this post. Recap Week 1 - get student lists that include the information you need to help create homogenous groups, as well as your instructional schedule. Week 2 - Students First Week of School Students arrive, so now what happens? I do not start my pull-out schedule on day one. IMO, It's important for students to stay in their gen ed classrooms and get settled, even for the first few days. They are building a classroom community, learning procedures and getting acquainted with their new setting. My district does kindergarten K-WAPT testing the first week, so I might not start my ELD schedule until the end of the week. I do push-in though the first few days, when I can, and introduce myself to my students, give them resources such as bilingual dictionaries, as well as a vocabulary workbook to my newcomers. And check in on teachers, especially if they have newcomers in the class!💛 Once I start pulling my groups, the focus is all about Getting to Know You. I really take time this week and next to start building relationships with my students. On my first day with students I share a slide that tells about me and my family. I also share things that I like doing outside of school. Then we go around the group and give each student time to share about them. Introduction Slide It's incredibly important to build trust with students, so really take this time to get to know them as individuals. It'll pay off big time. Some of my favorite "Getting to Know You" activities are... Getting to Know You Activities Four Corners Activity Teach Us Your Name - FREEBIE 👉Additional Getting to Know You activities and resources will be listed at the bottom of this post. Recap Week 2 - let students get settled into their general education classrooms, then start meeting with your students/groups. Introduce yourself and focus on getting to know them as individuals. Start building trust. Week 3 - BOY Assessments Once students have been in school a week or so, and we've started getting to know each other, it's now time to get to know them better as learners. What can students do at this point in time? I have their ELP scores from the previous two years, but that data is not recent, and they've been out of school for a couple of months, so where are they now in their language proficiency? The goal - to find their instructional "starting points." The main assessments I do at the beginning of the year are... Newcomer Group/Level 1 Students - a phonics assessment. Do they know their letter sounds? Which sounds do they know? It's also important to know the literacy level of newcomers in their native language. Do they have age appropriate literacy skills or do they have gaps? Have them write in their native language. Find a book in their native language and let them read it to you. Don't have books available? I often write a message using google translate, then have them read it to me. Did they understand the message? Where they able to respond to it? It's important detective work. 🕵️‍♀️ Phonics Survey for Level 1-2 Students All of my groups, except for maybe my newcomer group, write to a prompt. This allows me to analyze their writing skills. The BOY prompt is usually, "Describe a place you like to visit. Tell what you like to do there." We brainstorm possible places, then I have them write for about 20 minutes. Afterwards, I collect their writing and take anecdotal notes on skills we need to focus on in that group. Beginning of the Year Writing Prompt My school district gives assessments, most of which I'm not a big fan of, that include iReady for reading, PRF for fluency and DSA for spelling. We used to give the DRA2 reading assessment to find the instructional reading level of each student, but we no longer do that, so it's been an adjustment trying to figure out where my kids are in that particular area. The best way, for now, is to listen to them read and check for comprehension. Each data point is a small piece to a much larger puzzle. With all of the assessments listed above, especially my own, I usually have a pretty clear picture of starting points. 👍 Recap Week 3 - take time to assess students so that you know what they can do AND what they need. Finding their starting points will be critical in knowing what to teach them. Week 4 - Routines, Procedures and Planning ELD Lessons It's not until THIS point that I begin planning ELD lessons. Now I know my students better, both as individuals and as students, I've built some trust with getting to know you activities and I've assessed their needs, so NOW I can plan lessons to better suit them. But WAIT! There's one more important item to do before diving into planning! For me, I need to decide which on-going activities I want certain groups to do and then teach them the expectations. What's an on-going activity? It's a skill based weekly activity, such as phonics, grammar, idiom, sight word, writing, etc., that has a procedure needing to be taught or modeled. I definitely don't rush this. This is a big part of routines and procedures! Some of my groups (level 1 & 2 students) have a weekly phonics minilesson and activity, for example. I set this up for success by teaching students the components and expectations of the activity. We set up their ELD Notebooks and I model each expectation. This is really important, IMO, for a successful year. Modeling Expectations for Word Work Weekly Phonics Word Work Activity-Student NotebookPretty soon, the on-going activity becomes a very familiar part of their class time with me. If I want my newcomers doing something in their general education classrooms during independent class time, like a vocabulary workbook activity, I need to take the time to teach them how to do that. Here's a post about planning these types of weekly activities! Once I'm done teaching expectations for on-going activities, THEN I'm ready to plan targeted ELD lessons! 👏 Recap Week 4 - teach routines & procedures- identify on-going activities for groups and model expectations. Start to plan & prepare targeted ELD lessons based on students' linguistic needs. Bottom line... there's a lot to do at the beginning of the year before targeted ELD lessons begin. But at this point, I'm in a MUCH better position to plan lessons that meet the needs of my students. At about 4 weeks into the school year, it's time to plan and prepare materials for my first language function unit... the language of INQUIRY. Here's my post on Language Functions. It explains what a language function is, how to plan a unit and why I love teaching functions. This next post on "Forms and Functions" dives a little deeper into the language forms that accompany language functions. Check them both out! My advice for starting a new school year, do not stress about what you're going to teach the first couple of weeks of school. There are many other priorities that require time and attention. I promise you that spending time getting to know your students both as individuals and as learners before you plan lessons will only enhance your ability to target your instruction, which will ultimately get students to the next level in language proficiency. And that's the goal! 🙌 Additional resources that help get my year started.👇 ESL Teacher Planner Would You Rather My Country Activity "I Like" Activity Vocabulary Workbook for Newcomers - Year-Long Bundle Available! Notebook Covers and Tabs for the ESL Classroom Best of luck to you on a smooth back to school season. Having plans in place for a strong start will set you and your students up for a very successful school year! Take care, Affiliate Links: My Amazon Storefront

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

Teaching Materials and lessons for English teachers. Easy to teach lessons from ESL Teacher 365. Teaching tips and advice.

Do you need English reading comprehension worksheets to supplement your ESL classroom? Check out some of the worksheets and editable documents on this page. Reading comprehension, or the ability to…

Simple, fun and easy game to review vocabulary in a dynamic way. Topics from the cards can easily be changed and adapted to your students needs.Since there is time and competition involved, surely your students will enjoy it! - ESL worksheets

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.

Check out the following ESL lesson plans and lesson plan templates to get your teaching on in style! It's English teaching made easy!

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