We hope you got some rest and respite on your Thanksgiving weekend. 

Three Ways that Fanny and Michelle Can Support You

  1.  Answer your questions:  Email or message us on Teams is the best way to get a response.
  2. Co-plan: You have an idea or a glimmer of an idea and you need a wall to bounce it off. Let us be that wall. We can even do it virtually!
  3. Co-Teach: You want to practice your co-teaching skills or just need another person to pull off your unit.

Every Teacher is a Language Teacher

Using Supplementary Materials to Make Lessons Clear

Remember how your English teachers used to tell you to show, not tell in your writing assignments. It is also true when lesson planning for ELLs. Long oral instructions or long written text are a huge hurdle for someone learning a language (as well as many others). Instead, think about changing it up with some of these adaptations:

  1. Demonstrations provide visual support and model how to be successful at an assignment.
  2. Manipulatives reduce the language demands but every student, including beginning ELs, can participate. Online versions can be interactive activities.
  3. Pictures are on the simplest language adaptations. Teach a new word, show a picture. This is especially true for abstract concepts. What picture would you show for “conundrum” or “antithesis”? Diagrams, charts, graphs are all also very useful.
  4. Videos are the next level of visual scaffolds. Show it in class but then give students the links so they can watch it again at home as many times as they need. Youtube also has options to slow down the speed (very important if you’ve ever shown a Crash Course video), put on subtitles, or even translate.
  5. Chapter summaries often are published by textbook companies. These allow students an overview which is shorter and more easily managed by students than pages and pages of text.