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5 Fun Activities
-12 Ways to support ELL in the mainstream classroom
-Translation activities
-10 vocabulary games
-Games to play in ELL classroom book

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People learn to read better when they're having fun. They relax and lose some of the anxiety that often comes with learning to read a new language. Here are five english activities to make learning English a little more fun!

1. Play Trivia

You will likely want to write some questions out ahead of time. Make the questions really easy-it's not the content we're learning, but how to communicate questions and answers. You may vary the difficulty of the questions based on the age and skill level of your students. If you are teaching a diverse group of learners, you may even want to target specific students with specific questions, e.g., give the more advanced students the more difficult questions. You can make it more fun by handing out buzzers or bells-the first person to "ring in" gets to answer the question. Just make sure that everyone gets a turn.

2. Role Play

Set up specific scenarios in your classrooms, scenarios that your students will likely face. Have one student order a pizza from another student. Have a student ask for directions. Or have one student invite another student to a party. Some students will need your help to get through the scene. Other students will be able to get through a scene without assistance. For more advanced learners, there is immense value in being the secondary role player, e.g., the person receiving the pizza order or the party invitation.

3. Turn on the Subtitles!

Find a television program that is appropriate for your class' age and learning level. (Humor is a plus.) Watch the program with closed captioning. The students will hear the words, see the people speaking, and see the text all at the same time!

4. Play Word Association

Have the students sit in a circle. Start the game with a simple word and ask the person to your left to say the first (English) word that comes to mind. Then, the person to his or her left should say the first word that comes to his or her mind. Be sure to stop every so often to debrief and define any mysterious words. A variation of this game is to have each student say a word that begins with the last letter of the previous word, e.g., word, donkey, yodel, loon.

5. Play Word Lottery

Before class, print out dozens of simple nouns and verbs. Cut them into little slips of paper and put them into a hat or bag. Invite each student to draw two words from the hat (you can use more for more advanced students). Give them each a minute to come up with a sentence that uses those two words, and makes sense. Then invite each of them to share their sentence with the class. Collect the words and go again. It's okay to repeat words, as the repetition helps!

Pinterest Reference Guide:

More ESL Teaching Tips:
Teaching Reading Strategies Supporting ESL Students: 10 Tips For Mainstream Teachers The Essential, But Often Forgotten Aspect of Effective ESL Reading Instruction Differentiated Reading Instruction for Multilevel Adult ESL Classrooms - Webinar Q&A Classroom Practices That Accelerate Language Acquisition for ESL Students 4 Key Differences in Teaching ESL to Adults vs. Children Robin Merrill is a children's book author, teacher, and writes for Teacher Certification Degrees, a career site providing teacher interviews and resources for individuals interested in becoming a teacher.

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5 Fun Classroom Reading Activities for Engaging English Language Learners

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People learn to read better when they're having fun. They relax and lose some of the anxiety that often comes with learning to read a new language. Here are five english activities to make learning English a little more fun! You will likely want to write some questions out ahead of time.

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-Invite family and community member into your classroom to do an activity in a student's L1.
-Develop a routine that incorporates L1.
-Communicate important information in both home language and English.
-Make sure materials are culturally respectful and appropriate.
-Offer translation when needed.
-Allow students that speak the same language time to converse in their home language.
-Pair students with higher English proficiency with students who have lower English proficiency.
-Encourage students to do a first draft in L1 and a second draft in English
-Use 1st language or L1 to access English. Meaning, using their L1 as a tool to compare language, patterns and concepts.

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-More Mirrors in the Classroom: Using Urban Children's Literature to Increase Literacy
- The Home Language: An English Language Learners Most Valuable Resource.
-Q & A Teacher ELL Article
-The best resources explaining why we need to support the home language of ELLS
-The best posts on assets and not deficits
-5 things Teachers can do to improve ELL classroom
-Better language teaching
-WGU handout Levels 1-4
-ELL Toolbox Book

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Education Week - Classroom Q&A With Larry Ferlazzo

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I'll begin posting new questions and answers in late August, and during the summer will be sharing thematic posts bringing together responses on similar topics from the past five years. You can see all those collections from the first four years here.

Here are the ones I've posted so far:
This Year's Most Popular Q & A Posts! Classroom Management Advice Student Motivation & Social Emotional Learning
Today's theme is on teaching English Language Learners. You can see the list following this excerpt from one of them:

Wendi Pillars, Paul Boyd-Batstone, Ivannia Soto, Judie Haynes, Diane Mora, Eugenia Mora-Flores, and many readers offer suggestions on how to help English Language Learners develop good pronunciation skills.

Anabel Gonzalez, Katie Brown, Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, David Freeman and Yvonne Freeman, and readers, offer suggestions on how to handle error correction with English Language Learners.

Frank E. Vargo, Cindy Pirro Vargo, Donna DeTommaso - Kleinert, Susan Hillyard and a reader contribute their thoughts on how to support ELLs with special needs.

Maria Montalvo, Beverly Maxwell, Ann Wilson, Jennie Farnell share their suggestions on how to support English Language Learners with special needs.

Rusul Alrubail, Anna Bartosik, Jordan Lanfair, Anabel Gonzalez, Karen Nemeth, and Judie Haynes offer suggestions on how to engage with parents of English Language Learners.

Maria Grant, Diana Lapp, Judy Reinhartz, Lori Fulton, Brian Campbell and Laura Cabrera contribute their ideas on using the Next Generation of Science Standards with English Language Learners.

Alicia Johal, Maria Montalvo-Balbed, Donna Barrett-Williams, Caleb Cheung, Laura Prival , Claudio Vargas and Ariane Huddleston share their suggestions on using the NGSS with English Language Learners.

Mary Cappellini, Ekuwah Moses, Giselle Lundy-Ponce, Pamela Mesta, Olga Reber and Heather Wolpert-Gawron contribute their suggestions about teaching ELLs.

Wendi Pillars, Annie Huynh, Regie Routman, William Himmele, and Pérsida Himmele share their advice on teaching English Language Learners.

Educators Sonia Nieto, Alicia López, Diane Staehr Fenner, Sydney Snyder, Katie Brown, Judie Haynes, and Virginia Rojas share their suggestions on how we can encourage our colleagues to face the challenge of teaching ELLs "face-on."

Diane Mora, John Wolfe, Toby Karten, Armine Spoelstra, Kirke H. Olson and Rick Murry share there thoughts.

Educators Wendi Pillars, Virginia Rojas, Debbie Zacarian, and Maria Montalvo-Balbed contribute their responses.

* Supporting ELLs in The Common Core Era

Kathryn Haydon, Dr. Lindsey Moses, and Lori DiGisi contribute their thoughts. I've also included comments from readers.

This post includes suggestions from Katie Brown, Jane Fung, Marilee Sprenger and Karen Bromley.

This column highlights commentaries from Camille Blachowicz, Charlene Cobb, Katherine S. McKnight, Nicole Zuerblis and Susan Chenelle.

Laura Robb and Amy Benjamin share their thoughts, and I also include readers' comments.

This post shares responses from four experienced educators: Judie Haynes, Mary Ann Zehr, Bárbara C. Cruz and Stephen J. Thornton.

Margo Gottlieb, Maria Montalvo-Balbed, and Tracey Takuhama-Espinosa contribute their ideas. In addition, I've shared responses from readers.

Educators Bill Zahner, Ben Spielberg, Gladis Kersaint, Denisse R. Thompson, Maria Montalvo-Balbed, and Denise Huddlestun share their suggestions for how teachers can best handle this challenge.
* To Help ELLs, We Need to Understand 'How Language Learning Works'
Staff from Stanford's "Understanding Language," Mary Cappellini and Paul Boyd-Batstone share their thoughts in this post. I also include comments from readers.
* 'Respecting Assets That ELLs Bring To A School Community'
Four educators -- Karen Nemeth, Judie Haynes, David Deubelbeiss and Julie Goldman -- provide guest responses here.
* Many Ways To Help Students Develop Academic Vocabulary
Several educator/authors - Marilee Sprenger; Jane Hill and Kirsten Miller; and Maria Gonzalez - provide guest responses.
* Helping Long-Term ELL's & Evaluating ELL Teachers Fairly
Katie Hull Sypnieski, the best teacher I've ever seen in the classroom, and staff from the American Federation of Teachers researching teacher evaluation contribute their responses.
* Ways the "Next Generation" of Standardized Tests Should Treat ELL's
Representatives from the two groups of states preparing the new assessments, the SMARTER Balanced Assessment Consortium, or SBAC, and The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers Consortium, or PARCC, contribute responses.

I hope you've found this summary useful and, again, keep those questions coming!

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Q & A Collections: Teaching English Language Learners

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I'll begin posting new questions and answers in late August, and during the summer will be sharing thematic posts bringing together responses on similar topics from the past five years. You can see all those collections from the first four years here. Here are the ones I've posted so far: This Year's Most Popular Q & A Posts!

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-Adopt and promote the concept that all students  are assets and each student brings unique knowledge and experience to the classroom that others can learn from.
-"According to Frank Genesee, a professor in the Psychology Department at McGill University, Montreal, in his book The Home Language: An English Language Learners Most Valuable Resource, "With respect to ELLs, there is undeniable and growing evidence that the home language of ELLs is of considerable benefit to their overall academic success."'
-Set a day aside to invite students to talk about their own culture, language and bring things from home to show their class or tell their story when they are comfortable.
-Invite mainstream classrooms to learn new things from ELL's as they can be the experts in their language/culture.

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The role of home language in the classroom....

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The role of home language in the classroom....

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*Can be called native language, home language, or heritage language.
-Research has shown that using home language in the classroom can actually help ELL's understand grammar concepts, vocabulary, instructions as well as develop relationships with others in the ELL classroom.
-There has to be a balance. Teachers use "English-Only" time to focus specifically on challenging new growth in English.
-Allow students to become comfortable with their surroundings and their peers before taking the leap to speak in English.
-Remember that each student will learn and grow at their own pace.
-They are adjusting to new school, new faces, new language, perhaps a new home/country (If they recently relocated) or trauma (refugee). It will take time for students to feel comfortable at school.