Learn from your peers with insights into classroom activities, tips for working with ELLs, product reviews, and more.

SLACK: A Review and Call to Action

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.…

Book Review: Co-Teaching for English Learners

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…

Classroom Community Builders Book Review

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…

Interacting with Americans

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…