Valentine’s Day Activities for English Language Learners

Valentine's Day can offer a fun way to teach students about kindness and helping others. It be used thematically with language activities. Here are some ideas for integrating Valentine's Day themes into lessons for English Language Learners. Kindness cards Have students write about their classmates. They can write one nice fact about each classmate. Set …

Strategies for Teaching Sight Words to English Language Learners

Sight words are one tool for helping students learn how to be fluent readers. The challenge for English Language Learners (and all students) is that the majority of these words do not have visuals that are easily associated with them. This can make it more challenge to give meaning to these words. In summary teaching …

Using Would You Rather Questions with English Language Learners

Would You Rather Questions are fun ways for students to practice speaking and writing. Here are some ideas for using them with your English Language Learners. Speaking Warm Up When meeting with a small group of students read a Would You Rather Question. Each student answers the question.  Students can then tell why, which allows …

Goal Setting with English Language Learners

Goal setting is helpful for students to reflect on their learning. It can be done at any point in the year. This can be done at any point in the year, but can be particularly beneficial at the beginning of the school year, at the beginning of the calendar year, and before beginning WIDA or …

Thanksgiving Tips and Activities for English Language Learners

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time to integrate American culture into lessons. Some ELL learners will have celebrated Thanksgiving their entire life.  These students will be able to share their family's traditions around the holiday. Other students will have never experienced the holiday before and will benefit from a basic overview of what the holiday is. …

Integrating Speaking and Writing

My ESOL students need a large amount of practice with speaking and writing. Writing in particular is often a difficult task for them.  Some of them have a hard time generating ideas, others get bogged down with the mechanics of writing (especially spelling).  We have also been working this year on adding details to their …

Mood and Tone

My 5th graders are studying author's tone, and mood.  These are complex concepts for my ESOL students to understand.  To start off I adapted a great Author's Tone and Mood lesson. Before having student write, they took turns talking about their stories this really helped my lower ones generate ideas, and gave all of them practice …

Describing Characters & a Freebie

I've been working with my first grades on using adjectives to describe characters.  They did a great job of using evidence from the books to describe their answers.  Even my lower language students were able to participate. We read two books: Llama Lama mad at mama & Yoko.           First I showed …

What am I Poems

My second graders are starting a unit on poetry.  As an introduction we read what am I poems.  Each poem described an animal or food. They students enjoyed trying to guess what food/animal it was describing. https://mcdn.teacherspayteachers.com/thumbitem/What-Am-I-Poems-2558976-1463706256/original-2558976-2.jpg For my low language ELL students, I also have vocabulary sheets that they could refer to while guessing. …

Words Words Everywhere for English Language Learners

ESOL students benefit from easy access to sight words and seeing vocabulary words in many places.  Referring to these reference tools and placing them in areas that students have access to are ways to increase their use. Word wall where students can take words with them In my classroom I have a magnetic word wall. …