French attention grabbers are words or short sentences that get your students' attention in the classroom. Learn how to use them and how to invent your own.
Do you use rubrics for self-assessment with your students? I developed this rubric based on others I had seen online. I wanted to get my students thinking more about their artwork and writi…
Learn about some of the differences between teaching phonics to ELLs and native English speakers. Also discover some new resources.
This a very effective go-to activity that requires very little prep and gets students moving and using the target language immediately. It’s also a great way to use a set of memory/concentra…
Cooperative learning teaching tips, strategies, freebies, and resources from Laura Candler
Below is a grid from Kathleen Cushman’s Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell us About Motivation and Mastery. It is a clear and concise review of teaching objectives, traditional homework assignm…
How to teach grammar to ESL students? Read about inductive vs. deductive grammar teaching and get ideas for activities and games for your ESL classroom
Create a word wall with these classroom expressions and commands for your ESL classroom! I know that getting my students to speak English aloud is a real challenge for me, especially when most of their classmates speak the same home language. I set up words and expressions around the classroom for them to refer to ... Read More about ESL Common Classroom Expressions
In a performance and proficiency based classroom, students coming from traditional classroom needs some guidance. Musicuento uses an example of a “Talking about a taco” to show the diff…
10 ESOL Teacher Must Haves. Check out these items to make your teaching job easier.2
It is often challenging for students to say or write something when they do not know the correct word (or can’t remember the word) that they want to use. During a conversation or speaking activity…
A FEW WEEKS AGO I SHARED MY REFLECTIONS ON TEACHING 90% IN MY ELEMENTARY SPANISH CLASSES, and one of the things I mentioned was my desire to teach learning strategies to my students right from the beginning of the year which would help and support them. The key to these strategies, in my opinion, is that they constitute a collaboration between my students and me- we each have our responsibilities in order for the strategies to be truly effective. I created an infographic to highlight these two sides, with my students' responsibilities on the left, and mine on the right. I've expanded on the infographic below. *EYES AND EARS ON ME: We all have those little squirrels who play with their shoelaces, braid the girl's hair next to her, roll about on the carpet, etc. Keeping tabs on those kiddos and redirecting them when they aren't focused is crucial to ensuring kids don't miss what is going on- I frequently remind my students that seeing what I am showing and doing is as important as hearing what I am saying for them to understand what is going on. TIP: Do a visual scan to be sure students are paying attention before you start talking, especially when giving instructions or other important communications. This makes a huge difference! *UTILIZING OUR RESOURCES: I make sure there are tons of supports for my students to access at all times, whether that be our contextualized bulletin boards, word banks in their folders, songs that we sing to help us remember vocabulary, etc. It is my responsibility to remind them those supports are available, and explicitly teach how to use them. Little kiddos do not all intuitively utilize these types of supports so regularly reminding them they are available is a huge help! *MAKING THE EFFORT: We as teachers are very used to telling our students that putting forth their best effort is an integral part of their learning. I liken it to being a member on a sports team- you wouldn't just sit out on the sidelines and expect to get better at soccer, would you? Of course not! You need to be in the game to improve, and the same goes for school. For my part, I need to support and celebrate my students' efforts, making it part of "business as usual" in terms of how I interact with my students. At the beginning of the school year, I have the above conversation with my students, and then we come back to it regularly. Letting students know that you are part of a team with them, that you have responsibilities, too, builds community in your classes and tightens the bond you have with your students, and shows them it is a two way street- working together as a partnership makes for a great year of learning! SaveSave
Inside: Conversation Jenga for the language class. When I put my students in a speaking situation, I like to make it low-pressure and fun. We’ve really enjoyed conversation Jenga lately– which is obviously better than a worksheet with questions to ask each other. In a sense, conversation Jenga is an authentic speaking situation because it’s a
Happy Friday! Here I am posting the second part of Anchor Chart Ideas - Plural Nouns Part 1. On Pinterest, there are tons of plural nouns anchor charts, but I rarely (if ever) see an anchor chart for the more uncommon cases of plural forms, e.g. the plural of nouns that come from Latin or from other languages. So here's my take on it: Of course, languages are ever-changing and some of the plural forms in the chart above are becoming less and less used, such as "datum". What happens is that "data" has been more frequently used as a singular noun. Or, some words are taking on other plural form alternatives, such as "indexes" instead of "indices". I don't really see a problem with that. Languages do (and should) transform. That being said, I don't think I'll be able to use "paparazzi" as a singular noun if it ever comes to that! I haven't mastered Italian yet, but I know how to make the plural of nouns in that language. One important case to keep in mind is the use of "alumni". "Alumni" is the plural form of the word "alumnus", which refers to a male student. The female student would be an "alumna" (plural: alumnae). When referring to a group of former students of both genders, the term "alumni" is to be used. A lot of people, though, end up misusing the word "alumni" as a singular noun - "He's a Harvard alumni" (instead of "He's a Harvard alumnus") - or using it to refer to a group of female students only - "The alumni of a prestigious all-girls school" (instead of "The alumnae of a prestigious…") I've recently read and heard some people using "alum" (singular) and "alums" (plural) to avoid the gender issue, but I don't use those terms myself. What about you? If you happen to read my blog, you know that I like to offer some chart ideas for teachers of French. So, allow me to post two anchor chart for French teaching: READ at For French Immersion: 7 Pinterest boards for French teachers Thank you for reading and have a great weekend!
Research based teaching strategies you can use today with a free printable chart.
An InLinkz Link-up To get the ball rolling, here are my Top 10 Classroom Faves (in no particular order)! 1.) Interactive Scie...
This FREE parallel lines cut by a transversal coloring activity doubles as a colorful reference poster or student notebook reference. Now includes a link to an interactive GOOGLE Slides version for online learning and teaching.
This year we are adopting a proficiency-based classroom based on the goal of communication. All of our formal assessments will be done using proficiency-based rubrics and standards. This change in …
Inside: What is comprehensible input? How do students acquire language? In Part 1, we talked about proficiency: where we are going in the language classroom. Here in Part 2, I’ll talk about acquisition: how students take language in. If our goal is students who “rise in proficiency” (World Language Classroom), how do they grow? What do they need? What is the
Je rencontre souvent des élèves qui n'ont pas une lecture assez rapide, assez fluide, pour accéder à la compréhension. Je mets alors en place des groupes de Fluence. (Ça n’empêche pas un travail en pa
This resource includes 37 personal anchor charts and 37 full-page anchor charts that are designed to directly align with the 3rd Grade Common Core State Standards for Language. Each page of the personal anchor chart file contains two copies of each anchor chart. Simply cut them in half and each of your students can glue an anchor chart into his or her personal language notebook. Then, students can refer to the anchor charts throughout the school year as needed. Most of the anchor charts contain an interactive element, allowing students to apply the knowledge that is presented on each anchor chart. I designed the full-page color anchor chart file primarily for teacher use. You can place these anchor charts beneath your document camera and guide your students in filling out their personal anchor charts. You may also choose to display this version in your classroom. If you're a fan of anchor charts, but you aren't sure how to keep them on display for the students who need them, here's a very easy solution! Once the anchor charts are glued into an interactive notebook, they are easily accessible for the remainder of the school year! The personal anchor charts are black and white, while the full-page anchor chart uses color clip art. These 37 anchor charts are included: *Nouns *Pronouns *Verbs *Adjectives *Adverbs *Regular Plural Nouns *Irregular Plural Nouns *Abstract Nouns *Simple Verb Tenses *Regular Past-Tense Verbs *Irregular Past-Tense Verbs *Subject-Verb Agreement *Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement *Comparative and Superlative Adjectives & Adverbs *Conjunctions *Simple Sentences (Subjects & Predicates) *Compound Sentences *Complex Sentences *Writing Titles *Commas in Addresses *Writing Dialogue *Singular Possessives *Plural Possessives *Spelling Rules & Generalizations *Dictionary Skills: Guide Words *Word Choice *Spoken English vs. Written English *Context Clues *Prefixes *Suffixes *Using Roots to Identify New Words *Using the Dictionary *Idioms *Real-life Word Connections *Shades of Meaning *Spatial & Temporal Words & Phrases Here's what other teachers and parents say about using these personal anchor charts: ⭐️ Denise W. said, "My students love these anchor charts and so do I!" ⭐️ Eloy H. said, "This was great to use in our interactive journals. They provided great examples and are a great reference." ⭐️ Toni B. said, "Very helpful resource for my students to refer back to when they forget a grammar rule." ⭐️ Kimberly H. said, "This resource is great! I am using this over the course of the year to introduce the concepts to my son and then later individually teach him." ⭐️ Nicole said, "My students were very engaged when using this resource. Great resource for student achievement!" ⭐️ Jenilee T. said, "I love using these anchor charts in my classroom as well as having a matching student anchor chart for their interactive journals!" Many of these personal anchor charts are reflections of the main points that I have highlighted in various language PowerPoints. In my opinion, it is not necessary that you own each of my matching PowerPoints. I believe that the content included on these anchor charts are key elements that most 3rd grade teachers will teach when covering these topics. However, many of the graphic elements are shared between the PowerPoints and the posters. Therefore, if you DO choose to use both the PowerPoints and the posters, your students will be able to easily notice the direct connection between the classroom PowerPoint activity and the matching reference tool that they are gluing in their notebook. CHECK OUT THE PREVIEW to get a good feel for what you will get if you choose to purchase this resource. More than half of the anchor charts are shown in the preview! Also, if you like this resource, you might also be interested in my other sets of personal anchor charts! Click on the links below to check them out! Reading Anchor Charts (grades 3-5) 2nd Grade Language Anchor Charts 4th Grade Language Anchor Charts 5th Grade Language Anchor Charts Copyright by Deb Hanson This item is a paid digital download from my TpT store www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Deb-Hanson As such, it is for use in one classroom only. This item is also bound by copyright laws. Redistributing, editing, selling, or posting this item (or any part thereof) on the Internet are all strictly prohibited without first gaining permission from the author. Violations are subject to the penalties of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Please contact me if you wish to be granted special permissions!
Feeling like you're stuck in a rut with your writing activities? This fun combo makes for great practices with lots of laughter! Students come up with silly sentences using spinners, then illustrate & share with a telephone pictionary game! Check out this post for instructions and FREE resources!
A few years ago, the staff at my school began learning about inquiry research. We used the book, Comprehension & Collaboration: Inqu...
ONE OF THE CHALLENGES I OFTEN HEAR FROM TEACHERS STRIVING FOR 90% IN THE TARGET LANGUAGE, as per ACTFL'S recommendation, is how to make vocabulary more comprehensible for students, especially NOVICE learners. Over the last few years, I've been creating a series of posts and tips in visual form to spark ideas and hopefully help in this process. I've collected many on my Pinterest board here and you can click on my blog category 'Teaching 90% in the Target Language" to see all of my posts. I thought it might also be helpful to create a bulleted list of the prime strategies as a quick reference guide, which you can see below! Underneath, I've expanded on some of them to give a fuller explanation. I've also listed a series of sites and apps I use to help me make visuals at the bottom- hope they are of help, and if you know of others, please share! *VISUALS: As an illustrator myself, I am definitely convinced that visuals, whether they be pictures, photos, or physical props, are a strong support in helping get meaning across. I do think some visuals are better than others- as a very simple example: if the word is 'five' but the visual only shows ONE thing, that can be confusing to a language learner. In my opinion, a visual should clearly ILLUSTRATE (in other words, represent visually the word or concept) the meaning. I wrote a post which expands on this-you can read it here :) *GESTURES: We use a lot of familiar gestures in our day to day communication; utilizing those help get the meaning across without translating. Pointing, cupping your ear, using two fingers to point to your eyes, clapping, thumbs up, ok sign, rubbing your belly, tapping the side of your forehead, holding up your hand for 'stop', putting a finger to your lips, making a heart with your two hands, etc are all familiar gestures we use in the US. Signs from Sign language can also be a great option, especially for us elementary teachers who work in schools where the homeroom teachers use them too. One of my all time favorites is this below: *DEMONSTRATE: I am a huge fan of demonstrating activities! By walking through an activity, even in an abbreviated fashion, provides our students with the overview of what is expected and how the activity is going to go. Some instances where I frequently use demonstrating: using our classroom materials, how to move about the classroom, clean up routine, games, partner activities, crafts, etc. A new strategy I am employing is creating videos of these demonstrations to show students when introducing games and other activities-this has been a great success! *ACT IT OUT: Many words and situations lend themselves to being acted out- be creative! A prime example that almost stumped me last year: my classroom rug was being cleaned, so was out in the hallway. Using a piece of soap, I mimed cleaning it so my students could understand why it was out there and not in my room :) *SIMPLIFY: Pare down what you want to say to the essential message. I think we, as teachers, unintentionally often add in more language than is really needed in the situation, making it more complicated for our students to comprehend. A perfect example I've shared many times before: *COGNATES: Cognates are interesting because they are often more obvious to adults (the teacher) than to our students. And for pre-literate & early literacy students, even more so. I do not rely on utilizing cognates as a verbal strategy-my students rarely 'hear' the similarity. Rather, I write the cognate on the board, and cover a portion of the word to "reveal" the English. *OPPOSITES: Our brains naturally categorize concepts such as opposites...leverage this process for all kinds of vocabulary! *BREAK IT UP: This is another particular favorite of mine, in part because it also supports our students who have challenges with processing, recall, and following multistep instructions or activities. Instead of delivering a series of instructions and/or information in one go, break them up into steps and deliver each step one at a time, pausing after each (and/or making that chunk comprehensible) before moving on to the next. I wrote a post on how to break up instructions this way here :) *LEVERAGE KNOWN SCHEMA: Even little children are already familiar with a host of mental schema related to all kinds of things-when we leverage these, we allow the context to do a lot of the work for us. For example, most biographies contain predictable information: name, date of birth, location of birth and/or where he/she lived, their profession, etc. If you present this information in connection with a famous person, your students will be much quicker to intuit what you are talking about because they have a prior schema in their heads for this type of scenario. Non fiction is a bonanza for this! This also applies to all kinds of other things- known gestures, daily routines & activities, customs, images, etc. If I point to your shoelaces which are untied, and say in the target language 'tie your shoes', it is HIGHLY likely my kiddo will know what I am talking about because it's such a familiar context- there is no need for me to use English in this situation. If I show a heart next to a strawberry and put a big smile on my face, my kids automatically know I love strawberries! *SPEECH & THINKING BUBBLES: I LOVE speech & thinking bubbles! One of the most effective ways I present the first person singular is through these visual supports. Like above, these are known schema-kids automatically know what they are for, so I don't have to explain this. I can then have the bubbles over their head, my head, a character's head, a classmate's head.... by moving the bubbles I can then reference what someone else is saying etc- and we all know that what's in the bubble is in first person. There are many other strategies that work as well; I tried to take some of my most potent ones to share in this post. If you have others, please share in the comments! SITES to help you create visuals for your classroom: *Piktochart *Canva *Powtoon *Picmonkey
Ideas and materials for assessing English Language Learners. Help get an idea throughout the year of your students language level.
Ce document est un exercice qui travaille les notions du nom commun et du nom propre. L’élève doit classer les mots dans le bon tableau. Le corrigé est inclus. Le document comprend 2 pages.
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…
