Learn from your peers with insights into classroom activities, tips for working with ELLs, product reviews, and more.
by Summer Peixoto What is SLACK? SLACK, a digital communication platform designed to organize team efforts, helps coordinate conversations, meetings, and general workplace and team collaboration. Slack channels create a space to lift team information and group ideas out of email—allowing for #random channels, or water cooler talk, and #general channels, work-related information and announcements.…
by Betsy Baertlein February is Black History Month, and K-12 teachers often incorporate lessons about Black American history and famous Black Americans into their teaching this month. However, at the college and adult education level, it seems that Black History Month is often overlooked. I teach adult immigrants mainly from African countries, and being seen…
by Jan McClellan Co-Teaching for English Learners: A guide to collaborative planning, instruction, assessment, and reflection by Maria G. Dove and Andrea M. Hongisfeld is literally a playbook for every teacher who is utilizing the co-teaching model for serving English Learners (ELs). With specific guidelines to what planning and collaboration should look like, a chapter given…
How do we get our ELLs to put down their smartphones and embrace all the unique gifts around them? How do we get our ELLs to develop a higher awareness of their host culture while simultaneously developing their writing? The answers to these crucial questions were addressed in an award-winning presentation, “Observation Journals: Inspiring ELLs…
Crystal Bock Thiessen, an ESL instructor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, participated as a U.S. State Department English Language Specialist in a nine-city Trans-Siberian railroad tour across two continents and seven time zones, June 9-28, 2017, in Russia. She was accompanied by the Regional English Language Officer (ELO) in Moscow, Jerrold Frank. The tour kicked…
by Denise Mussman On Halloween in St. Louis and other parts of the Midwest, kids have to tell a joke to get candy when they go trick or treating. I compiled grade school jokes my students could understand and had them go trick or treating. Our administrative building has candy in the offices on Halloween,…
by Jan McClellan Classroom Community Builders – Activities for the First Day & Beyond by Walton Burns is full of differentiated games to include every student within your classroom. These games are easily adaptable to newcomers and mainstream ELLs as well as native or proficient English speakers. This book can instantly be implemented into your…
by Adrienne Johnson How do you advocate for your English language learners? Maybe you speak up at your school or organization when decision makers have not considered the impacts of rules or practices on your language learners. Perhaps you have created a program in the community that meets an unfilled need for ELL parents or…
by Terry Barakat How can we get our international students to interact with Americans and other speakers of English in authentic situations? At the English Language Institute of Missouri State University (ELI of MSU), this is an especially poignant question because the ELI building is located in downtown Springfield, a few blocks from the main…
by Kendall Schuldt One Student’s Writing Journey One high school student who entered the U.S. recently had no background in English and hadn’t been in school for over two years. I found as she adjusted to her new setting in the U.S., she felt pressured to use English. She insisted she write only in English…
