GENERAL RESOURCESFOR TEACHERS OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS |
Do NOT overlook this one. I highly recommend Dave's ESL Cafe - This is a terrific website maintained by a teacher of English Language Learners. There are many good pages here, as well as a chat room and other resources. My absolute favorite, though, are the activities for getting students to speak in class, because it is an area where I have always had difficulty, both in getting my students to speak and, myself when I am in a group where everyone is speaking Spanish (my second language).
** Explore the world of knowledge on the education of English Language Learners **The National Clearinghouse on English Language Acquisition has so much information it can sometimes be difficult to find specifically what you need. If you are interested in lesson plans and activities for your classroom, grouped by what you intend for students to learn or specific challenges, go to the Toolkit for Effective Instruction of English Language Learners. Objectives and activities are grouped both by grade level and by common teacher questions, such as how to accommodate students with different linguistic levels or from different language groups. There are also a number of activities for students who have had Interrupted Formal Schooling. |
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| I love the PBS website - and I am a person who hates television. My family will tell you, almost every time I walk through a room, I turn the TV off and tell the child who is watching it to read a book, or do homework or go for a walk. This site will give lesson plans, categorized by discipline, aligned with state standards and based on research on effective instruction and often including supplemental materials. Two good examples of lessons relevant to bilingual students are "Almost a woman" and Diego Rivera. There is actually much more at this site relevant to ELLs than would appear at first glance. I think the organizers for students included on many of their lessons will be especially helpful to students who are ELL and other students who may have difficulty reading in English (whether they are ELL or not). |
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The Eduhound ESL and Foreign Language webpage deserves its own mention here. When last checked, there were 57 links to relevant sites. While the vast majority of students who are ELL speak Spanish as their first language, not all do, and here you can find resources for teachers of Japanese students, as well as links from Malta to the United Kingdom. Again, a word of caution. Some links do not work and others come up with an annoying page requiring a specific browser.
The Little Explorers dictionary is a pictorial dictionary available in English and in six bilingual versions (English and Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese, French and Japanese). There are a lot of other resources on this page. I thought the Spanish page would be for teaching students Spanish as a foreign language. I was surprised to see that, although it certainly had plenty of resources for that purpose there was also a lot of other information on explorers, geography and daily life of just about every Spanish-speaking country
The abcteach.com site had a very large number of free resources -worksheets, portfolio covers, flashcards, etc. - primarily for grades K-6. Most of their resources in Spanish were available only through the paid service. We included this site for two reasons. First, although almost all of the free resources are in English only, the flash cards, worksheets and activities are excellent resources for teaching anyone English vocabulary. The 'worksheets' include outlines for creative writing, maps and graphic organizers, to name a few - a far cry from the horrid, mind-numbing fill-in-the-blank type of worksheets some of us were subjected to by the ream when we were younger. Second, it is only $25 a year to join to take advantage of the members-only section, which does include a number of ESL-specific resources.
Intel Education website has extremely well-designed lesson plans that give modifications for English learners, gifted and special needs students. Some of these, like the unit on biomes, are self-contained with everything you need, including worksheets, powerpoint presentations and assessment included. Others, like the lesson on pollywogs (tadpoles) can assume you have resources, e.g., frog eggs, that might not be available. Some, like El misterio de los Mayas, include instructions and materials in Spanish and English. Tip: Be sure you use "English learner" as the search term. If you type in "bilingual" you will only find less than half of the relevant lesson plans.
| Resources for Parents Courtesy of the National PTA All the pages here are reproduced by permission of the PTA. Has a few resources in Korean, Chinese, Spanish and Vietnamese in addition to Spanish.
The PBS Share-a-Story page has 300 tips on based on research on teaching reading. While some, like bath time reading activities, are clearly directed at parents, most can be used anywhere. National Clearinghouse on Bilingual Education page on parent resources. A variety of resources. Their bilingual brochures are good for communication with parents about literacy, relationships, etc. Clicking on the link gives you the brochure in English. Clicking on [español] will give you the same brochure in Spanish. Tell me about your child in 1,000,000 words or less. This is also listed on the Best in Show web page on this site. |
Eduhound Español A great place to find resources in Spanish for research papers or background information for lessons. It includes resources for all disciplines and all age levels. This site, from the Argentina Association of Feline Medicine (Asociacion Argentina de Medicina Felina), for example, includes everything you could possibly ever ask about cats! Under literature, you can find "70 años de Gábriel Márquez" to use as supplementary reading for students reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude" in their high school English classes. Be cautioned, however, that I found many of the links to no longer work. This was annoying, but there is so much here, that if you just keep trying, it is hard to imagine anyone looking for resources in Spanish for K-12 that could not find something useful here.
Eduhound: The English language site has a much larger selection of resources than the Spanish version of Eduhound. Teachers of ELL students may well find the World and Countries section useful, as well, of course, as the Eduhound ESL/EFL page mentioned above.
Technology
The California Technology Assistance Project, Region 10 website provides sample lessons using educational technology and assistance in developing lesson plans. Registration is required for some services, but it is free to register and just takes a few moments. An enormous number of resources are reviewed, including video and CD-ROMs. TIP: A search on 'English Language Development' will yield far more results than 'bilingual' or 'English learners'.