Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Labels Feed our Curious Observers

By now, you've seen that with this blog tried and true resources are gathered to set you in the right direction to help your ELLs. You will always find the link to the originator where you can further delve into the topic.  

When New-to-the-Country students first arrive at our school and begin to settle in, they are on the look-out for anything that can help them understand what is going on around them. If you have the opportunity to display anchor charts, here are a couple of examples of labeling. Like most ESL Strategies, all students can benefit from clear visual clues.  Think about what you want to teach: verbs, nouns, short phrases?  

Effective labels will give vocabulary to the actions and things around them. 
In this blog, among other tips, 
a group of ESL teachers have reflected on what to consider 
when making your own anchor charts. 


Here's another version of the same chart, but this time the parts of the body are emphasized. The labels have been printed on cards that could be introduced with an interactive activity.  By supporting language development through play, the acquisition of new vocabulary will make sense to the child. When you go to the link below, you'll find out how Teacher Amanda made and used this poster. She even shares a link to have your own set of these labels. 

How would you use your poster to be ELL Friendly?  
This 1st Grade site has a wealth of resources that may trigger  ideas to help you become a partner with the mainstream teacher by offering experiences to simulate background knowledge.  



Saturday, March 7, 2015

Words, Words, Words...I'm so sick of words...Show Me!



Just like Liza Doolittle, ELLs, especially Newcomers, 
need to have meaning brought to the words through activities and experiences. 
To gather them into visual reminders, though, 
picture cards can help center the activities. 
Here are some examples, so click on the links to go to their source.


These 75 colorful, hand-drawn flash cards, by Robert Kinney, were one of the first offerings by Kinney Brothers Publishing. 

Question words - English grammar


These cards are designed to target the needs of early primary and ELL students. The cards have direct instruction scripts for you to copy on the back of the illustrations. These scripts give the students a repetitive format to help them internalize the new vocabulary. The scripts allow English fluent students to be peer-teachers to their ELL classmates. They are an excellent resource for teachers and para porfessionlas to use during vocabulary building lessons. There are four cards to a page.

Friday, March 6, 2015

Terrific Tips from Teachers for Newcomers


Having a Newcomers in class can be so exciting, especially 
when you think of the hurdles the child has been through to arrive 
and the avalanche of new words, concepts and information you'll soon be teaching them. 

To help you out, I've gathered together some tips of proven strategies
that other teachers have tried and found to help you get started.
Just click on the links to take you to the source.



What a Treasure-Trove this is! A site within a site that will take you too a library of on-line books.


It may seem obvious, 
but when trying to reach out to students who don't speak your language 
there are some things that are helpful and others that are useless.


Is Your Classroom ELL-friendly?

Laura Candler, blog author, passionate teacher, and creator of the Teaching Resources website has shared this article by Deb Hanson of Crafting Connections
Open this link to find easy, attainable tips that are great for all students!



A picture's worth a 1,000 words!

This section of the blog is dedicated to giving a boost to Newcomers that just arrived in your classroom.  A host of  ideas are gathered here to help you offer them essential vocabulary to bridge  
their past to their new environment. Let's start with Greetings! 
Help them pair these beautiful photos with vocabulary, add "Good" 
and they're ready to meet new friends.


Here are the words!




And so we begin with Newcomers!

New-to-the Country students need simple visuals. 
It doesn't get much easier than this!


Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Creating an MPI (Model Performance Indicator) Strand

Now that you know that an MPI offers a format for writing objectives to help us differentiate within our classroom, we need to practice. A team of teachers from Sullivan has video taped their meeting where they created their first strand of MPIs to meet the needs of all of the different levels of proficiency in a Third Grade classroom. Included in the meeting was the classroom teacher, the PST, the ESL teacher and the Title 1 teacher. Together, they all could offer a different perspective as they brainstormed for various activities that all will meet the same CCSS. We can do the same thing, but to see what that means, you can watch their video by following this path:
Administrative Software
School Shortcuts
DOB Shared Staff Drive
ELL Resources
MPIs
Creating an MPI Strand

Who wants to practice with their next unit of study?