Planning for middle school EL students is different from planning for just about any other class. You may have 20 students or just a few, and you will likely have a wide variety of different proficiency levels all at the same time. In my situation this school year, I am teaching seventh and eighth grade…
So often we hear advice from educators who have been in the classroom, honing their craft for years. While their experience is valuable, I thought it would be refreshing to get a new EL teacher’s perspective for a change. Today, we hear from Kennedy Merriam, my student teacher this semester, who has been so open…
When I say the word grammar, many people roll their eyes. Everyone has an opinion about it. Some had to diagram sentences and hated that. Some had to memorize the rules and loved that. But my question is: how do you teach a language without teaching the grammatical structures that make it what it is? The…
We all know that learning a new language requires vocabulary instruction, but what is the best approach to new vocabulary for ESL students? Which words should we teach? Which words are the most important? And how can we help students retain the academic vocabulary we teach them? I address these questions in today’s episode. People…
One of the most frequently asked questions I get asked as an ESL teacher about teaching newcomers is what do you do when a student doesn’t speak ANY English? This situation can be overwhelming for both the student, who may be adjusting to a whole new culture, and the classroom teacher, who is doing their…
In today’s episode, I am chatting with my friend Carissa Ford about how to teach speaking effectively to our English learners. Speaking is such a personal aspect of language learning, and that is just one of the challenges our multilingual students face. Carissa and I dive into the best practices in teaching speaking. We talk…