Visit the site here
This website is full of language rich games that have been submitted by ESL and EFL teachers. They are games that have been played by the teachers and shared because they see them as useful resources. Have a look and you might find a game that would make a good introduction or plenary to your lessons. You might even learn a new game that can be taught as part of small group activities and used to engage students.
Visit the site here I saw this article shared on Facebook last week. It is wonderful to see such excellent results for these students. I love good news stories like this.
Sydney high school achieving remarkable results with asylum seeker children I love watching science programs on TV and I find the science of epigenetics an interesting topic. A few years back I watched a science program that talked about the epigenetics of trauma victims and how, in rats, it had been shown that future generations of rats carried the same traits as the past generation of rats, who experienced the trauma, despite not directly experiencing trauma themselves. This implied that the genes of the rats, who had experienced trauma, had changed and that these gene changes were passed on to future generations. This information is so important to teachers of students who may have experienced trauma, or who are the children or grandchildren of people who have experienced trauma. This would cover many of our refugee students, and students who were born in Australia and who are the children or grandchildren of refugees. I thought I should write about this after I read an article published in the Guardian Newspaper. It is an interesting article discussing the epigenetic changes of the families who suffered during the Holocaust. It has implications for students you may teach, it is an easy read (not too sciencey!) so please take the time to read it and think about if this may affect any students you teach. Here is the article:
Here are the comprehension questions and activities for chapters 25-29
Last year I blogged about the Boy Overboard unit I helped plan for my husband's 4/5 class. It was their class novel and the school were doing the Focus on Reading traning. As a consequence this unit was heavily geared towards the using the super six reading comprehension strategies. I have uploaded a copy of the notebook file we made to go with the first 24 chapters. Please feel free to use it and modify it for your students. I don't think the worksheets for some of the activities are attached so when I get a chance I will upload them as another resource.
The rest of the chapters have been done - just can't locate the notebook file at the moment. When I do I will also put it up, but it is a start. Today is World Humanitarian Day. A Facebook group that I follow - kidz4kidz_Aus have created an important clip to bring attention to the plight of those kids who are currently in detention centres. Please take a look at their clip and even if you don't support their message use the clip to start a conversation with others. The only way these kids will get help is if we make their voices real and heard. https://www.facebook.com/kidz4kidzAUS/videos/691734700958738/ 35 Online Resources to Inspire Inquiry an Inventive Thinking - Click the image above to take you to the resources.
While not exactly ESL related I saw these tasks, activities and websites and thought they looked too good not to share. Better suited for classroom teachers though. These activities look so engaging and collaborative, that they are sure to encourage a rich language source for your students. This will engage your ESL students and have them using a variety of language (social and academic) as they navigate their way through the tasks with their peers. Today I came across Grammarly's post about homophones. For an English language learner they can be a difficult thing to understand and they often slip through the spell checker! Take a look at Grammarly's post by clicking the picture above. Are you on Twitter? If you are one tweeter you might like to follow is @EllaLanguage. "Learning #English? You've come to the right place. Tweets on English language learning. #ESL #ELT" They have interesting 'word of the day' tweets as well as a variety of posters about different words. They also retweet some interesting posts from other tweeters (is this correct? What is the correct name for a person who tweets? If you know then please leave the answer in the comments) who tweet about the English language. I came across one of their posters (see picture) on Pinterest. The website 'K5 Chalkbox' has some fantastic lesson ideas. Here is one below that I am sharing with you to show you an example of the great ideas on this site. There are many other activities that are just as good as this lesson. I encourage you to explore the site and use some of the lessons.
MAKE A SIMPLE SALAD Effective teaching reading strategies can include kinesthetic learning modalities. Try making this simple salad! In French cuisine, a simple salad is made of only lettuce and onion. Your students will make a simple salad while learning what it means to think about thinking/reading (metacognition). Tear up pieces of green and white paper. The green paper is the lettuce, and the white is the onion. Ask the students what they should have more of in their salad, lettuce or onion? Of course, the answer is lettuce. Tell them the lettuce represents your thinking about what you are reading. The onion is when you are just reading the words of a text. Call two students up to stand with you while you read aloud. Tell them that whenever you are just reading the text, one of them is to put some onion into a bowl. When you stop and think aloud about what you have read, the other student must put in some lettuce. This takes some practice, so you may want to work on it ahead of time. Here is an example using The Magic Horns: A South African Cinderella Tale: Once upon a time, long, long ago, there were many large and small kraals on the veldt in South Africa.(white paper) "I wonder what a kraal is. I bet it is home or a village. But what is a veldt? It must be a type of landform."(green papers) In one of the kraals lived a mother and father and their little son/(white paper) "Okay, a kraal is definitely a home or a village."(green paper) One day, the mother became very ill. Her skin become the color of dust, and despite everyone's efforts, she soon died.(white paper) "Why would the author say her skin became the color of dust? That must mean she slowly died and looked very grey or yellowish."(green papers) The final outcome is a very visual way of showing students how good readers think about what they are reading. The salad bowl should have much more green than white in it You could then have the students practice it with each other, and also use it at any time you are observing a student struggling with comprehending a text. What is an interactive read aloud and why is it a useful teaching tool? Click this poster to read all about them.
Interactive read alouds are really important ways to orientate students towards different ways of thinking about a text. Infants teachers will think this is a 'no brainer' as they are probably doing great interactive read alouds with their students all the time, however by the time students enter Primary grades teachers tend skip or progress really quickly through the orientating of a text and get right into the reading of a text. All students, but especially EAL/D students, really benefit from a good orientation of a text prior to reading. It is important as taking the time to do this before reading and while reading, allows students to gain the most from the text and the illustrations. It allows for clear explanations of main ideas and themes and also generates conversations that help make connections between text and self and text and the world. Click on the poster above for an excellent explanation of why interactive read alouds are important and how to do an interactive read aloud well using the step by step instructions. Linda Hoyt's website has examples, lesson plans, reader's theatre scripts and a book matrix for each stage that covers the different comprehension strategies. L While searching Pinterest I came across this poster on Busyteacher.org's Pinterest page. Thought I'd try out the Weebly app on my phone by seeing how this post goes. The poster has some interesting language games you might like to try with your students. SBS has a lot of great resources for the EAL/D community. They recently revisited a boy, Noran Zahrooni, after his first year at school in Australia.
"Noran Zahrooni had to overcome a lot on his first day of school in 2014. The six-year-old had just come to Australia with his family after fleeing violence in Syria. Seven years earlier they had fled their home country, Iraq, because they belong to a religious minority group, the Mandeans, and had faced persecution." By clicking the picture of Noran and his family (taken from the SBS website) you will be able to see SBS's story on Noran and read about his first year at school in Australia. This article and video gives a unique insight into the life of a student who has experienced trauma before starting school. I encourage you to read and watch about Noran and his experience, especially if you are teaching refugee students or students who have previously experienced trauma. Click on the picture above to go to SBS's site for the most recent season of Go Back To Where You Came From. This is the third season of the program that challenges Australians to educate themselves and change their points of view on the issue of refugees and asylum seekers.
The website is a fantastic resource for teachers. It has a specific school resources area that is filled with interactive activities. The main page (accessed by clicking the picture above) also has interactive resources, stories, articles and clips from the show. You might find these resources great for your own perusal or to share with your students and teachers who are planning HSIE units of Global Connections and Identity and Values in Stage 3. Sometimes it can be hard as an EAL/D teacher to explain to classroom teachers that their student, who is fantastic at verbally communicating with peers and the teacher, needs ESL assistance. This is where a good understanding of BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) and CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) can come in handy. It will help you to explain the difference between the two separate phases of English language learning and will place an emphasis on improving the EAL/D students' academic English. When I first started this blog I shared a similar post about BICS VS CALP that explains the terms and the differences between them. Click here to visit that post
There is a great Vimeo clip of Dr. Jim Cummins discussing the importance of BICS and CALP. Viewing this clip could be a great addition to any staff meeting or professional learning you might run in your school. You might even share the clip with particular classroom teachers who might need further clarification as to why their EAL/D student, who communicates effectively, still isn't achieving as well with their writing or reading comprehension tasks. I saw this poster the other day and thought what a great way to teach pronouns!
If you click on the picture it will take you to Frog Spot Blog where you can download the poster for free. I saw this the other day, and while it isn't specifically EAL/D related I thought it would be appropriate for the room you teach in (if you are lucky enough to have your own room and not be teaching on the stairs!). It is from the site Lessons with Laughter.
I always keep a large selection of fairy tale books in my cupboard at work. I introduce the world of fairy tales to my students. I feel it is important as these are often the stories that English speaking children grow up hearing, they are often referred to in class and sometimes in books and even in tests (like NAPLAN). They are also a great way of teaching narrative structure to older students. I like to read them the story, discuss the pictures and then have the students retell the story to me in their own words. Sometimes I use their retelling as a speaking and listening assessment.
I was looking for other activities that could be used with ESL students in a fairy tale unit and I came across the following activities on this site: My previous post was about listening games, however the activities were more suited to Stage 2 and 3 students. The games on the above site are suited to younger students - ES1 and S1 students. They could be played with a small EAL/D group, one on one or with the whole class. I hope you find them useful.
As part of the curriculum we need to focus on speaking and listening skill building. I find it is much easier to teach the speaking skills than the listening skills. A focus on practising listening skills can be hard to achieve, however it is really important for all students - but especially our EAL/D students, to have good listening skills.
Here is a site I have found that gives 8 ideas for improving listening skills. I especially like the 'voice blogging' activity. This would be a great one on one or small group activity to do with your students. |
Mrs McNamaraI am an EAL/D teacher currently teaching in a primary school within the Newcastle area of NSW, Australia. Categories
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