It is a crazy power trip to think that the majority of the words my kiddos learn in English come out of my mouth. Sometimes this is great- they learn things like, "I feel mad at you," instead of "F*** you," but sometimes it's also hilariously not great.
I call my students about 1000 different nicknames during the day, sometimes because I can't think of their names fast enough and sometimes because I'm just feeling silly. My whole homeroom has nicknames for one another because we spend 3 hours a day together and it's just happened.
My most common nickname for boy students is "bro". I don't know when it started, but even my coworkers have started saying it because I say it so much- and hilariously, my little accented English learners have started calling each other "bro".
But for girls, I have a whole vocabulary of nicknames, ranging from sweetie to honey to, occasionally, baby. Unfortunately, "baby" is the one my students seem to have latched on to (I really didn't think I said it that much!) and now I'll hear in passing, "Thanks, baby," "No problem, bro."
We're turning into some kind of 90s sitcom.
On the other hand, during guided reading this week we were answering some text dependent questions about the sequence of events in the story. The group couldn't remember what happened next exactly, and one sweet boy piped up, "Let's look back in the story," and started flipping through his book. I have said that exact sentence probably every day since school started, but it was still startling to hear it perfectly echoed out of a student's mouth. They really are listening.
This week was a hard week on a lot of levels, but the kids themselves were not one of them. They're learning and growing (and not saying the F word anymore at all!!) and that's all I ask of them. I have some upcoming blog posts in the works about how I teach sight words (and keep a bijillion sight words flashcards organized), collaboration across content areas, and routines in the middle school classroom. Keep an eye out!
What's the funniest thing your students have repeated from you?
We're three weeks in to the school year and my class is finally settling in to a routine and developing relationships with one another...
... Or they were, until we got three new students this week, nearly doubling our class size.
Don't get me wrong, I knew our class would be growing and I'm excited to have more kids in the class. But the sudden influx has left everyone feeling a little unstable in their friendships and changed the dynamics. It also means I can't overhear every conversation happening in the room at the same time.
And somehow, by Wednesday, every time I looked up, someone was raising their hand to tell me someone had called them stupid, told them to shut up, or (and by far most commonly) had said F*** you to them.
That's right. We struggle to answer the question, "How are you today?" consistently in English, but at this point I'm fairly certain every student in my class has either heard or said the F word.
It was happening in all of their classes, and my coworkers and I were completely flummoxed. Why had this started? How did they even hear this word? And most of all, why on EARTH do they say it so much?!
As we continued to enforce our "We do not say that word- EVER" policy, we didn't want to send them to administration or suspend them, because we knew they didn't understand how bad the word they were saying was. But still, we couldn't let them keep saying that. If nothing else, if they say it to people outside of class, they might get physically harmed.
After 4 days of listening to tattles and asking questions about why that word was used, I came up with a theory. Our kids all knew this was a bad word- a really bad word. They were using it in situations when someone else was annoying them in some way- talking too much when they were supposed to be quiet, making fun of them for some reason, knocking something over or bumping into them.
They wanted to express their annoyance and frustration to the other student in a way they would understand- but the only language they have in common is English, which everyone in the room has low proficiency in. So they say the only word they know the other one will understand and will communicate anger and frustration- F*** you.
So Friday morning, we had an intervention during our SEL time. I sat all of the seventh and eighth graders down on the rug in a circle (and assigned their partners). I explained that we have been having problems with hitting each other (another common way of expressing frustration) and saying bad words and we were going to talk about it.
The Lesson
The first thing we did was identify the emotion we were feeling: we were mad.
We went around the circle and made our best mad face, so I knew everyone was on the same page about what we were talking about. It also loosened up the group, because nothing will get you giggling faster than a good mad face.
Then I asked, "Is it okay to feel mad?"
There was a chorus of dutiful no's, but I cut them off.
"YES! It is okay to feel mad. It is no problem to feel mad. It is a problem to hit or say bad words, but when I feel mad, it is okay."
Most of my students come from incredibly rough backgrounds, and school needs to be a safe place for them to learn how to healthily express their emotions. All of us need to be able to recognize when we are feeling mad and decide on an appropriate way to express our emotion. That starts with feeling mad and knowing that's okay with me.
We reviewed that we know we don't hit and we don't say bad words, but we had some trouble (as I expected) coming up with another way to show our frustration. I had made an anchor chart just for this occasion:
We read it together and practiced saying, "I feel MAD at you!" (with feeling).
Then I had one of my most outgoing students come into the middle of the circle with me. I explained that one thing that makes me feel mad is when students poke me to get my attention (this is a true fact), and I told him to do it as annoyingly as he could. He took great joy in this, let me tell you. The rest of the class laughed as I made my best mad face and turned to him and said, "Please STOP! I feel MAD at you!"
We even modeled what I would do if he didn't stop when I said that (raise my hand and talk to the teacher). Then they practiced with their shoulder partners, poking each other and saying, "I feel mad at you!"
When we'd finished, we read, "How Full is Your Bucket?" and talked about how our words make other people feel.
Finally, we did some yoga to help us manage frustration and relax. GoNoodle has a great series of yoga videos called "Empower Tools" and they have one called "Manage Frustration". My students (all 7th and 8th graders, majority boys) all participated and get excited for yoga time.
The Result
It's only been one day, so we'll have to see how long this lasts, but y'all, I heard the F word ZERO times yesterday. We had 2 small "shut up" incidents, but no one hit anyone else. And even more impessively, I heard "I feel MAD at you!" three times, and one student raised his hand to tell me he had a problem and he had already said, "Please stop."
The only explanation for the incredible success of this lesson is that these kiddos had been looking for other words they knew everyone would understand to express their frustration. They're all going through puberty and the hormone level in my room is currently through the roof. There's a lot of frustration goign around and that's okay. We're learning healthy ways to deal wih it and I'm so proud of these guys. But I'm getting ahead of myself- let's see how Monday goes.
How do you deal with swearing with English learners?
Well friends, I know it's been quiet around here lately, but I've got a good excuse. I've been busily setting up my new cozy learning cottage at my new school (that's right! I'm still outside!). We started back with students about two weeks ago and through some unavoidable delays, my classroom wasn't ready for students on the first day. Electricity is a requirement in my book :)
But we've finally moved in and I'm remembering why this is my favorite part of the year. The kids' antics are still hilarious, and they're not tired of me yet either. But especially with new to English and new to school kiddos, it's also the most exhausting time of the year.
I have spent quite literally every moment of this week teaching procedures, and guys.. they're getting it. They know what the quiet signal is and what to do. They've learned how to raise their hands, where to sit, when to talk and when to listen. But what I'm most proud of- they already know and can independently participate in three literacy centers!
Center One: Read to Yourself
I always teach this one first because they're going to have to be able to do this and it takes a while to build up their stamina. It's also a great one for them to know how to do as an early finishers activity. I set up my library area to be cozy and inviting, so kids always want to go there and settle in with a good book. We do have a 1 pillow and no laying down rule, however (too many kiddos rolling on the rug instead of reading). I give them book bags (gallon size ziplocks) with two appropriately leveled texts and they get to choose one more from my classroom library of any level. During read to self time, they are allowed to read any of those three books, and they can choose one new book when they first sit down, but then they read through what they have.
We start off with a 5 minute increment and they can already do 10+ minutes of silent reading time! Especially because some of my students are pre-readers, it's impressive that they will sit for that long with a text.
Center Two: Writing Center
Because my students are a variety of different levels with regards to their writing ability, I have two activities at the writing center. One is a word wall search, with different themes every day. One day they need to find and write down as many words as they can that have the letter "b" in it, another they have to copy down all the 6 letter words. It's good to keep my lower level students engaging with the words and practicing their letter formation as they copy.
I also have the sentence frame pocket chart. I change out the words and sentences regularly, but students can move the cards around to create a sentence, then copy and illustrate it on a piece of notebook paper.
Center Three: Listening Center
My public library has a decent supply of these bookpacks, and they've been a clutch find this year. They're essentially books on tape with the books included, and my students have already figured out how to turn them on, plug in the headphones, and turn the page when they hear the "bing" sound.
I let the students try the centers without any help from me today with about 10 minutes at each center, and all of my classes were incredibly successful. I'm going to try to start pulling guided reading groups tomorrow!
Today I'm welcoming Melanie Speros to the Cozy Learning Cottage to tell us about how she uses themes to collaborate between EL teachers and Gen Ed teachers.
I teach kindergarten at an elementary school with a high
population (75%) of English Language Learners (ELL). Many of my students are trying to learn the
academic content and English at the
same time. I support this simultaneous
learning with thematic teaching. If you
are an ESL teacher who provides push-in or pull-out support to students, you
may already be working with themes in your language work. Maybe the general education teachers are
working with themes in their own classrooms.
If we coordinate and use the same themes together, our ELL’s
subject-area learning can reinforce their language development and vice versa.
Using Themes with Beginning
Readers
I realized how useful thematic teaching can be when I was
working with my beginning ELLs. During
guided reading, when I would introduce a new text to my students, I would do a
detailed book introduction. We would
talk about the pictures and practice using the vocabulary and language of the
book, but when it came time to read it, they could not remember the
vocabulary.
One day one of my beginning ELLs was reading a page that
said, “I see the boat.” They stopped at
the word boat and didn’t say
anything. After some prompting (with
some blank stares and no attempts to read the word), I told them “boat.” Then, on the next page, it said “I see the
train.” But again, my student stopped at the word train. With a fluent English
speaker, prompts such as, “Check the picture” or “Make the beginning sound” would
remind students to use all of the information on the page to read the
word. But I realized that prompts like
these are useless if you don’t remember the word train. Even if my student knew to check the picture,
if they could not remember that that thing on the page was called a train in
English, checking the picture would not help them solve the word. Even if my student saw the word train and
knew the /t/ sound, if they didn’t remember the word train the /t/ would not help them.
I started teaching guided reading in themes, particularly
with my beginning ELLs so that my students could use the same vocabulary across
multiple texts. I have seen amazing
progress, lots of confidence, and many smiles as my students now read their
books. Using themes gave them a little
extra support to take on the reading work.
It has been so exciting!
Using Themes
Throughout the School Day
This got me thinking.
What if they saw that same vocabulary during math time when we were
practicing addition story problems? What
if they heard that same vocabulary in our read aloud? What if that was the vocabulary they were
using during our designated ELD time? I
knew that thematic teaching would provide such an important support for my
students.
While vocabulary is only a small piece of ELD, it is the
glue that holds it all together. As an
ESL teacher, if your goal is to work on using prepositional phrases, you would
probably use sentence frames as a scaffold.
But what if the topic you chose was consistent with the read aloud the
students had listened to earlier in the school day, or the same topic in their
guided reading book? What if they had been reading books and solving math word
problems on this topic all week? Your
ELLs would be hearing and practicing the vocabulary all day long! Then, when it came time to practice
prepositional phrases with your sentence frames, your students would be
familiar with the vocabulary, and ready for the new language challenge.
ESL and General
Education Teachers Working Together
Thematic teaching does not need to be complicated or
elaborate. Just collaborate on a
theme. Brainstorm vocabulary (nouns,
verbs, adjectives) and think about areas where the theme may fit into the
curriculum. Don’t worry about fitting it
into every part of your school day. Here
are some ideas for an ocean animal theme:
·Solve math word problems about ocean animals
·Use a survey about favorite ocean animals for
sharing during Morning Meeting
·Read aloud books about ocean animals or use
ocean-themed books in shared reading
·Find guided reading books about ocean animals
for small group instruction
·Use ocean animal examples in word study or word
work (e.g. Correct grammar errors in sentences about ocean animals)
·Write an informational piece about an ocean
animal or write a story with ocean animal characters
What are some themes you have used with your
students? When or how have you
integrated it into the school day?
Melanie Speros is a kindergarten teacher in Southern
California. She believes in the
importance of the home/school connection and using interactive and hands-on
learning to maximize student engagement.
You can find her on labandlibrary.com,
Teachers Pay Teachers, Pinterest, and Periscope.
Today I'm thrilled to be hosting Lindsay Marcaccio on the blog to talk about her experience with ELs and how classroom teachers and EL teachers can work together for student success.
Just like our students, we as teachers are always learning. It was no
surprise to me when I arrived in the UAE that I was about to experience a huge
learning curve. I had never taught ESL students before, and I was excited to
see how they learned differently from native English speaking students. I quickly realized that if you have never
worked with ESL students before, the differences can be overwhelming. The
simplest communication takes time to understand, and it takes a lot of
inferring on the teacher’s part to understand just what a student is trying to
say, especially if they are trying to explain something.
“Miss, he beat me!”
“I don’t cant!”
“Shu hadda?”
Keep in mind, the he referred to above was actually a she. Someone’s being beaten? What is
going on! Boy was I confused. It was
only with the help of my experienced colleagues that I was able to get through
those first few days, weeks and months! “He beat me” really means anything on a
scale of “she grazed my arm” to “she tapped me on the arm a little harder than
expected”. Moving on from the simple
conversational English that was challenging to understand in itself, I found
myself wondering, how on Earth am I
supposed to be teaching these kids words like photosynthesis and quotient?
On a normal day in the
beginning, here’s what happened:
Introduce the activity.
Model the activity. Do the activity together. Give students an independent
task.
Me - “Do you understand
what to do?
*Children shake their
heads, yes.*
Me – “Any questions?”
Silence. *Some children
shake their heads, no.*
Walk around the room. 3
hands up, 6 students looking around the room for answers. All the same question:
“Miss, what I do?”
Teaching ESL students can be challenging but also very rewarding.
As ESL teachers, we are kept on our toes by always trying to find new ways to
help our students understand. Using the right words and speaking at the right
speed when explaining something to these students can make the difference of
whether or not the student will be able to comprehend and complete a task.
Finding the right materials can be a challenge, especially if the student’s
first language is something other than French or Spanish. Most ESL resources
available are made for the other official languages in North America, however
with the increasing number of refugees and immigrants the need for more
resources is also increasing. ESL teachers can be a great support for classroom
teachers. The ESL teacher may better be able to assess the students’ needs and
where to start, ultimately making the classroom teacher’s life a little easier.
A teacher and an ESL teacher together may find or create resources specifically
for a child.
English language learners need to focus on different skills than native
English speakers because they generally take longer to comprehend and retain
this second (or sometimes third) language.
The curriculum was made for students who speak English, and it can be
very challenging to imagine how you will teach the same content, skills and
strategies to students with varying levels of English. There are many simple
accommodations that an ESL teacher could suggest depending on the situation,
such as using extra visual cues and pictures to explain activities or a series
of events. Those who have worked with ESL students before have a better
understanding of how to interact with these students and what strategies might
work best when teaching them. The classroom teacher may also have helpful
strategies that they have used in the past with a struggling reader in English
that could be beneficial to an ESL student. By working together with the
classroom teacher, the students will have the best chance at being successful!
My name is Lindsay Marcaccio. I am a Canadian teacher and traveler living and working in the rural part of Abu Dhabi, UAE. I have been teaching the core subjects to ESL students for 3 years - grade 3 and grade 5.
During the school year, when I thought about this month of June, I assumed I'd be so productive: I'd blog twice a week, work on new products for TPT every day, plan my classroom set up and make materials for the first month of school. Instead...
Oh well. Instead, I've gone to visit family, spent time at the pool, gone to concerts and parties and watched movies and spent good time with people I love. And now I'm getting ready to head on an extravagant three week vacation, where I'll get to see... (first person to name all of these locations in the comments gets a free download from my TPT store of your choosing!)
Should be quite the adventure! While I'm gone, I'll have some guests on the blog sharing about how ESL and classroom teachers can better support one another and collaborate well together. I'll be throwing my two cents into the ring on the topic as well at some point, so keep an eye on this space.
Sorry for my absence this past few weeks... I can't believe it's been so long since I last posted! I haven't been totally silent, though. I've still been fairly active on twitter and I've had the opportunity to guest post on a few blogs, including HoJo's Teaching Adventures, where I shared about using sentence frames with ELLs and CounselorUp, where I shared about working with refugee students! If you haven't checked out their sites yet, you should.
Once I made it through the craziness that was the end of the school year (why do we always pack so many events into May?!), I had the additional project of packing up my entire classroom and moving it into my not-so-large apartment because I decided to move schools for next year!
This is what my living room looks like now. And no, that's not all of it.
I'll be teaching a SIFE class at a middle school much closer to my house. I'm still getting used to the idea of a middle school (and would appreciate any suggestions or pointers anyone has!), but I'm so excited about the new opportunity.
Meanwhile, I've been enjoying a pretty laid back week, resting and cooking and cleaning. I'm planning on working on some new TPT products geared towards the classroom I'll have next year, so keep an eye out for that!
Without a doubt, the hardest part of my job is meeting the needs of all my diverse learners in the short time I have with them. How do I challenge the advanced students without leaving the rest behind? How do I teach the basic vocabulary and sentence structure my newest students so desperately need without boring the rest of my class?
Obviously, differentiation is the answer, but differentiating well day in and day out is tricky and I'll be the first to admit that I don't always do it well. One of the simplest ways I have found to differentiate naturally is to use sentence frames for speaking and writing.
Here's an example. This week, we're learning about parts of the body, and today we compared and contrasted the body parts of humans and animals. We took our vocabulary cards (words and pictures, which you can download for free here) and sorted them onto a Venn Diagram as a group.
Sorry for the blurry photo!
We then used the sentence frames underneath to make sentences together, which I wrote on the board. So far, everyone is doing the same activities and I am modeling what I expect of students.
But then I ask them to write three sentences on their own. And without even having to create different assignments, I am able to differentiate their writing expectations.
My newest students will use the sentence frames to write three sentences, possibly the same three sentences I wrote on the board again. That's all I expect from them. They just need more exposure to these words and text in English with some pictures attached.
My middle students will likely ask if they can write more than three sentences. That's great! That gives them more fluency with the sentence structure and practice writing, reading, and seeing even more parts of the body.
My most advanced students usually ask if they can write different kinds of sentences. They'll write things like, "Humans have hands and most animals do not, except gorillas also do." I expect more than the sentence frames from them, and they usually give it to me. If they don't, after the three sentences I assigned, I ask if they can think of anything else to say from the Venn Diagram that uses a different kind of sentence, and if necessary model a different sentence.
How do you differentiate for different English proficiency levels in your classes?
This week my third graders are reading The Legend of the Indian Paintbrushand discussing characteristics of legends, theme, character traits, and more. I love using this story because it hits on so many different standards. I like to read it at the end of the year as a culminating unit that hits on many different topics. It helps to review and solidify what we've learned this year! And it's a fantastic story that my students consistently enjoy. You can check out my full unit on the text at my TPT store, here (PS- now's a good time to stock up on all of those items on your wishlist from TPT! We're having a sitewide sale!).
There are specific strategies for introducing a new text to ELL students that can set them up for success. In my classroom, we preview vocabulary together, identify what we're looking for in a text (in this case, characteristics of a legend) and do a picture walk of the text and discuss it using the vocabulary words we have focused on.
Vocabulary Instruction
We started this week with our "must know" vocabulary from the story, working together to make motions for the words and then completing a vocabulary four square activity. We reviewed what a legend is with an anchor chart and interactive notebook pages, then quickly added the other vocabulary words and pictures to our word wall to reference later.
**The students I am using this unit with are at an average of level 3 of language development, so the must know words were the most appropriate for them to focus on. With a different group of students, I would have differentiated which words I wanted us to focus on and which ones we could simply identify.
Characteristics of Legends
We have already done a unit on folktales this year, so this is more of a quick review than a full lesson. We read the anchor chart together, then students complete a simple cloze passage in their notebook. We add a "cover flap" so that they can practice answering the question "What is a legend?" and then read underneath to check their answer. This sets students up for success as we read the text and discuss why it is considered a legend.
Picture Walk
Finally, we preview the text by flipping through the pictures and discussing what we see related to the vocabulary we have learned. My students noticed the bow and arrow, the shaman, the sunset and evening, and more. Now they have more background knowledge as well as extra practice with the vocabulary words as we move into reading the text together.
How do your prepare students for success with a new text in your classroom?
If you're not following me on twitter (which you should be, it's my favorite social media platform for teacher ideas!), you may have missed my most recent #ESLtipOfTheDay posts. Here's are some of the most recent ones:
You are welcome to use these however you like: print them out, email them, make them into a presentation, the sky's the limit! The most common complaint I get from elementary classroom teachers is that there just isn't enough time in the day to modify every assignment for their ELs. These are five minute (or less!) modifications that can become a part of any classroom routine. Classroom teachers already have enough to do without spending hours painstakingly adapting every assignment, so I started coming up with these simple strategies to share.
What would you add? How do you modify instruction for ELLs in simple ways?
We've all been there- just getting into the swing of the school year, finally confident in all your students' names and they're all getting the routines when suddenly you wake up at two in the morning with a violent stomach bug.
Teaching is wonderful for a lot of reasons, but the number of germs swirling around my workplace every day is not one of them.
Sub plans are a pain no matter what you teach. I'd almost always rather be at school than get a sub, but sometimes there's no option. But sub plans can be especially complicated when your students speak very limited English and you're counting on the sub lottery to bring you someone halfway decent this time (we've had a sub drought this year and some of them have been truly terrible).
So what do you do? Here are a few tips and tricks I've found over the years that have made my sick days more productive for my students and less stressful for my subs:
1. Explicitly tell the sub in the plans to let students translate for each other and help each other.
More than once I've come back from being absent to hear my students complain that the sub wouldn't let them talk or explain the directions to one another. I'm not sure why, but some subs seem to be under the impression that the ESL classroom should be silent and assessment-like. I always start my sub plans with "These students are still learning English, so please let them help each other! They are welcome to translate or explain directions to each other, as long as they are respectful to you and trying to listen while you are talking."
2. Have a routine the students could do in their sleep, and have them do it with the sub.
We do calendar and morning work the same way every single day in my lowest English proficient class. In my sub plans, I tell them one of my most helpful and proficient students' names and say "Have [student] lead calendar and sharing time, then pass out the morning work. They will know what to do with it."
3. Have more activities than the sub could possibly get through.
I usually scour TPT for resources and then run off two more than I could get through in a class. I also always include a read aloud on sub days, because the subs like them, they are good instruction in comprehension practice, and they take up a lot of time.
4. When all else fails, have them read.
Lots of research shows that language learners need more time to interact with text in their target language and we're always pressed for time to get through our curriculum and standards, so I don't always give them enough free voluntary reading time. Sub days are a great time to make up for it! Have procedures in place that the students are familiar with beforehand (can they choose any book or only from a certain shelf? Do they have to stick with the same book the whole time, or can they change if they decide they're bored? etc.).
I'm working on finalizing a copy of the sub plans that I used with my students last week when I got to go to the beach (it was great!) to put on TPT, so keep an eye on my store for those.
What other recommendations do you have for subs with low proficiency language learners?
My students, being language learners, tend to read English significantly below grade level. But it can be hard to find engaging books for older children at their grade level! I started writing my own passages for my students to read years ago, but there weren't as many illustrations as I'd like for my English learners to help them with new vocabulary.
Over time, I developed a simple template for making my own printable books, (which is available free from my TpT store here!). I simply copy the template into a new powerpoint, then change the text in the text boxes and add relevant pictures, either clip art or photos if I can find them.
While writing my own stories has definitely helped to make them more fun for my class, this week for the first time we got to do something entirely new: write a book together. My newcomers have been learning action and activity words (see my unit here), and to wrap it up we did a shared writing activity. My students dictated and I wrote on chart paper about our favorite activities to do. They introduced themselves, then told about themselves in the third person.
Yes, that classy wood paneling came standard with my classroom
Now, of course, this is the world's most boring book because just about all of my students' favorite activities is to play soccer. So we went outside and played some soccer, and I took pictures of my students enjoying themselves.
Then we came back in and used those pictures in more descriptive sentences, with words like smile, stand, run, and kick.
I typed up our sentences in my book template and used the photos from our soccer game to illustrate it. Now we have a class book that we wrote together, with actual photos of our class to illustrate it! My students love the book and choose it from the classroom library every day.
I think we'll be doing this with our next unit on plants, too!
If you follow me on facebook or twitter, you know I've kicked off a new series of ESL tips this week! All week long I've been sharing simple modifications that can be implemented in a general classroom to help English learners access the curriculum without hours of extra prep or modified assignments.
Here are the four tips I've shared so far:
Follow the hashtag #ESLtipoftheday to see the new tips I'll post during the rest of this week! What other simple, five minute modifications do you use in your classroom?
