Teaching for ELLs

At the beginning of the school year, I distribute this menu of testing modifications for classroom teachers that have my ESL/ELL students. There are three spots in the chart to work through. First, I put in student names by level, so teachers can reference students WIDA levels quickly. Next is a spot to list students that are eligible for pull outs during testing. Finally, I go through the list of possible testing modifications with the classroom teacher and we highlight which modifications wou

Many history students have learned about the devasting effects that colonization, removal from their lands and forced migration had on Native Americans. This reading explores additional impacts on the way of life, environment, cultivation of plants and European weapons had on Natives, particularly in New England. This is an adapted text appropriate for WIDA level 3 and 4 English Language Learners. Modifications include: simplified sentence structure, vocabulary footnotes, additional visuals, a f

Have a party on Nina! This is a 8.49MB large, high quality .PNG image of Nina from the WIDA ACCESS test. I generated this to print on a cake that we eat the day we get test results back. Students get to see their scores and eat cake--they love it and it gets some smiles. You could also print this on a Tshirt or similar. It's large enough that it should print at around 300dpi on a half sheet cake. There are no large high quality images of Nina on the web, that I could find at least, so I hope t

Using National Geographic/Cengage's ELD Curriculum, Inside, Volume 1, to have students begin using "First", "Next", and "Then" to sequence and organize their writing. I used this with early middle school (6th grade), but could be used with younger or older newcomers if your school uses this text. The high frequency vocabulary (from, home, go, many, there, etc) from the textbook are included to incorporate and consolidate what they learned in Unit 1. Uses a graphic organizer to break the paragrap

Two tasks to help students start preparing for the WIDA ACCESS Speaking test and get students to speak longer. First task is restating the question. Many students are tempted to offer short answers of just a few words to answer a question minimally, but the better strategy is to echo the question, which boosts comprehension and vocabulary usage. After that, the second task is to give at least two reasons and pieces of evidence from a text. This is a basic speaking activity with minimal reading t

Are you students having trouble remembering how to spell irregular past verbs? This ESL hand-out groups a variety of common irregular verbs by their spellings-very helpful to get students engaged in thinking about how the words they hear are spelled. First two pages has verbs listed by category and labelled. Pages three and four have verbs groups, but the categories are missing and students have to deduce category and write in the label. If they see the pattern that verbs with a double "e" los

Part of my work with #FUSERI was around supporting districts through PD on Blended Learning models. This slideshow presents an overviews good for district or school level, to help educators understand types of Blended Learning and begin thinking on how to thoughtfully implement it in schools. Please feel free to use and remix this slideshow!