Your Service Center Library

I recently hauled in my personal collection of teaching resources and thought, why not share them with you? I am no longer in the classroom using these materials, they should be working for somebody!

So, if you're interested in "checking out" a resource below, email me and I'll put it in your school's mailbox straight away (takes about a week to get to you I'm told). Want a peek inside the resource to see if it's for you? I can do that too!

I'll record your check out date and a month later you'll start getting gentle reminders to send it back my way! Hopefully this way we can share (what I think) are good materials!

Some Novel Ties, read why I love them here

And some workbooks

And some 'best practices'

The art of asking a question

Have you even had that feeling, either during the middle of teaching or immediately after saying goodbye to a group of kids wearing befuddled looks on their faces, that maybe you are not getting through? This has happened to me more times than I care to admit. But similar to other shortfalls, I feel it is better to know you're missing the mark than to not.

So where to start? How to adjust?

I have found that a little self-reflection can go a long way. We as ELL teachers know we are constantly differentiating instruction. But are we differentiating our questions? Anyone familiar with the Socratic method of teaching and learning will tell you that the great bulk of learning is done through questioning.

The trick to asking questions to a group of multi-level learners is to understand the complexity of the question we are posing. Take a glance at Bloom's pyramid. Think of your questions as a ladder, you should start at the bottom if you don't want to tip over.

Want some more support with creating intentional questions? Take a look at this winner of a diagram!

Any questions? :)

A Living Word Wall

I've had the opportunity to have conversations with many of our ELL departments and a common theme in each of them is, how can we do a better job of addressing basic langauge acquisition while supporting classroom learning?

It's a hard thing to balance, and often the feeling is that we have to do more content support than direct language instruction. This can feel frustrating and worse, like you're really missing the point of being a teacher of English Language Learners.

Happily, many of our colleagues are finding creative ways to balance those two important areas. Instead of just displaying a word wall, they've made it a living, functioning place where students are expected to actively engage with and learn from it. What I love most about these examples is how organized and deliberate they are, and of course the illustrations!

How can we advocate to our classroom teachers the importance of living word walls like these? I believe a good place to start is to take examples from the schools below. Set up a wall in your room/area/cart(!) as a model for other teachers to get inspiration from. Do you have a crafty student? Have them be your illustrator.

*Hamtramck Charter, MI



Ridge Park, MI

Making Vocabulary Comprehensible

Vocabulary is at the heart of learning a language. Here are some ideas for making vocabulary more comprehensible to our students.

The first step is to acknowledge that each content area comes with its own set of vocabulary. Understand that your students might be hearing/reading this vocabulary for the first time. Have a list of vocab that you know is important to the topic. Write it down, keep it posted to refer back to over the course of your teaching. Be prepared with examples, diagrams, pictures, etc. anything that will help connect that vocabulary to the student.

Build a schema, which simply means gradually introduce the new topic with prior knowledge. Ask questions of your group to activate some memories that you can then use to bridge into your topic.

Plan a shared experience like doing an experiment together or do a craft that can be applicable to introducing your topic.

Display your academic vocabulary in an easy to see space in your room. Refer back to it, take the time to review the words. 

Get your class moving with vocab aerobics for your physical learners! Get your kids up and acting out your words with an agreed upon movement. This is especially fun with younger grades.

 

 Thanks to South Pointe and Eagle Crest for these great examples!