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Last month, I wrote 6 CHANGES I WANT TO MAKE NEXT SCHOOL YEAR IN MY ELL NEWCOMERS CLASS (there were actually seven).
Since that time, and upon further reflection that was generally prompted by our finishing up the second edition of The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox, I’ve come up with three more:
To build on what I described in my previous post about changes I want to make in my teaching of grammar, I think I’m going to try a “Sentence Puzzle” listening idea that Gianfranco Conti uses (you can read about it and seen an example here). After teaching a grammar concept, it’s basically a matter of giving students a chart (perhaps one with three columns – noun, verb, object), then the teacher says a sentence (“The boy threw the ball”). Students next have to write the words in the appropriate columns. I think it’s a nice addition to the other lesson elements I’m doing on sentence structure.
As students to write a letter each Friday to their parents/guardians in their home language explaining what we did in the previous week and highlighting key things they learned. I think this could be a good example of translanguaging.
I’ve previously written about Speakable, an AI too to help ELLs with speaking practice. Our district has a good data privacy agreement with them. The site’s free options are okay, but I think I’m going to bite the bullet and pay for a monthly subscription and see if students will benefit as much as I think they can from using it. You can read more about Speakable here.
I’ll keep you posted if I think of anything else, as well as how these changes play out in the classroom next year!
Last month, I wrote 6 CHANGES I WANT TO MAKE NEXT SCHOOL YEAR IN MY ELL NEWCOMERS CLASS (there were actually seven). Since that time, and upon further reflection that was generally prompted by our finishing up the second edition of The ELL Teacher’s Toolbox, I’ve come up with three more: To build on ESL Web Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…
