together4els

Helping EL Students Remember Vocab

Contributed by Vivian Simmons Enhancing vocabulary lessons by building all 4 language skills is indeed an essential part of students’ ESL growth. Yet, this should not be an overwhelming task for teachers to tackle. Margarita Calderon is the author of Teaching Reading and Comprehension to English Learners K-5. In this book, she introduces ExC-ELL: ExpeditingContinue reading “Helping EL Students Remember Vocab”

Organizational/Family Literacy Tool

Contributed by Joy Hamm Symbaloo-a free online resource that will take your list of websites and organize them into one space making your links easily accessible for you, your students, other teachers, and EL families. You can also link your symbaloo account to your Google classroom or teacher website for students to access helpful onlineContinue reading “Organizational/Family Literacy Tool”

WIDA Writing Rubric eWorkshop

Contributed by Ambar de Mejia I recently took the WIDA Writing Rubric Series offered by WIDA because this year, our school is focusing on writing. The description on their website states: Using the WIDA Writing Rubric This eWorkshop provides information for educators who work with multilingual learners in their writing development. The series is forContinue reading “WIDA Writing Rubric eWorkshop”

Using Interactive Technologies for Equitable Access

Contributed by Tori Mazur For about a decade, SMART boards have been installed in classrooms and initially a burst of excitement about interacting with that large screen in front of the room. The promise has fallen short, however, as most never purchased anything beyond the 1 person touch board, thereby creating a stand-and-deliver model thatContinue reading “Using Interactive Technologies for Equitable Access”

How To Use Sentence Frames in ESL and Content Classrooms

Contributed by Lisa Sibaja When I first started teaching ESL in 2011, I knew giving sentence frames to students was important for the following reasons. Sentence frames help: build productive language skills in the domains of speaking and writing scaffold information in all content areas develop academic vocabulary support all students, especially struggling learners EvenContinue reading “How To Use Sentence Frames in ESL and Content Classrooms”

Building Bridges

Contributed by Joy Hamm What draws families and builds connections between home and school? Our English Learners (ELs) are engaged in a complex set of relationships and cultural worlds that influence their school experience (Epstein, 1995). Factors outside of school walls affect the achievement taking place in the classroom, therefore our role as English languageContinue reading “Building Bridges”

Beyond the ESL Classroom

Contributed by Christopher Goodnight When I first began last year as an ESL teacher, I only thought of the position as any other teaching role. I would serve my students and teach them what they needed to know. However, after I attended a conference later that fall, I realized an ESL teacher is much moreContinue reading “Beyond the ESL Classroom”

Linguistic Capital Via Translanguaged Books

Contributed by Joy Hamm One culturally responsive method for celebrating our English Learners’ linguistic and cultural capital, specifically those who are native language literate, is by providing translanguaged books. Translanguaging is the fluid interchange between more than one language and encourages English Learners (ELs) to use their native language as a resource (García & Wei,Continue reading “Linguistic Capital Via Translanguaged Books”