Boy it’s been awhile since I checked in, huh? I hope any readers out there are doing well 
Before I start on today’s post I just want to point out some of my previous posts that you may find helpful at this time of the year:
One of the things I enjoy about teaching is that there always seems to be a new challenge to tackle. Okay fine, this can be exhausting too! This year one of my big challenges in English Language Learners. For the first time in a couple of years, I started the year with several students who did not speak one single word of English. To make things more complicated, my students never seem to speak a language that I could even attempt myself like Spanish. Instead it’s always Chinese, Korean, Turkish, Norwegian etc. Luckily, I also tend to have lots of students who can speak other languages so at times I have had another child who can help, because my attempt at Korean would definitely be laughable. While I do have several students who are technically ELL, I really have 3 who I had to differentiate basically everything for so far this year. Here are some tips for those students who really don’t know even the basics.The good thing is, most of these things will help ALL your students.
1. Communicate with parents. Of course this only works if the parents speak English! I have had varying help from parents of my ELL students over the years, but when they are willing and able to be helpful, it is so great for me. I always start the year by introducing myself to them via e-mail before the school year even begins. I find the first week of school is the most difficult for students who don’t know a word of English. Therefore I send the parents a schedule (with pictures and words) of what we will do on the first day of school. I ask them to go through this with their child. One year I had a little girl from Norway who was really anxious when she didn’t know what to do and she would cry and cry. I ended up e-mailing her mom a schedule of what we were going to do the next day for MANY months at the beginning of the year. It was time consuming, but worth it in the end. The girl ended up testing out of ELL before the end of kindergarten, she picked up really quick!
2. Create picture directions as much as possible. I make picture directions as much as possible since these tend to help all students and are essential for my ELL students and students with autism. I have attached my morning + end of the day routine visuals. I have also attached the directions for the Kissing Hand art project I do on the first day of school. They are in Word so hopefully you can adapt them for your own classroom.
3. Activate their prior knowledge as much as possible (often with pictures or real objects). Whenever you are planning a lesson for a child with limited English, it is helpful to use things they have experience with and as many words as they may know. For example, only a few weeks into school this year I was teaching positional words like above, next to etc. In order to involve the ELL students, I did most of this teaching using playground words like slide, swings etc. I knew they had a lot of experience with our playground, and I used photos of our actual park in my lessons. In a way, since they were still in the very beginning stages of learning English, I was more focused on them becoming comfortable with the playground words than the positional ones!
I am currently taking an ELL class (Category 4 training in MA, all about ELL Reading and Writing) and we watched a video of a fantastic teacher doing a Guided Reading lesson. In the lesson the kids were reading a book about cranes (the bird). She asked the kids to open up their file on cranes and think of the definitions they know, she even used the word schema with the kids. She then had photos of the different definitions of cranes to help them. This would be above where my newcomer ELL students are, but it would be really useful for a couple of my students who learned English in preschool.
5. Provide repetitive experiences to give your ELL students confidence and allow them to practice some English. The first progress I see from my ELL students every year is during repetitive activities. They pick up on these things quickly, and may even feel confident enough to participate. Here is a list of some of the repetitive things that I do:
*For the first few weeks of school every single day during morning meeting each child goes in a circle and says “My name is _____ and I…” each day it changes. I start really easy with things like my favorite color and with this I can provide a paper with all colors on it so some students may just point to their favorite color. We also do favorite food, thing to do at home, book, animal etc.
*Every single Monday my students share the best part of their weekend. They come to expect it after the first few weeks.
*Every morning my students help me fill in a morning message. At the beginning of the year, I leave out beginning sounds in some of the words. Usually ELL students start to pick up on this pretty quickly and are comfortable participating because they don’t really have to talk
*I use the Fundations program for phonics so I teach 2 letters per week until December break. Every time I teach the kids a new letter I ask them to think of words that begin with that letter. I provide some pictures to help with vocabulary building at this time. My ELL students figured out this year that they could find things in the classroom that start with a letter.
I would love to hear any suggestions in the comments section that you have for working with ELL students, especially “newcomers.”
Also, I’d like to let everyone know that one of my favorite bloggers Heidi from Heidi Songs is offering a free shipping and discount code this weekend. I have bought several of her sight word cds and my kids love them. I also have her rhyming games and sight word worksheets. It takes a lot for me to pay for resources when I could make them myself or get them on free blogs, so I am telling you they are really good. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving!