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Grades: 1-3
This story is about a young girl who goes to the park with her Spanish-speaking Abuela, and they daydream together about what it would be like to soar over New York City.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140562257?tag=randohouseinc7904-20

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Grades: Preschool-1st
This is a short story about three mice that learn about colors. This is definitely for young children, as it teaches about the basics of colors. It provides integration of the Spanish and English languages, though, which is important to start at a young age.
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780547333328?aff=brightly

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Grades: Kindergarten-3rd
This book allows young children to connect basic words that they already know with the signs for those words.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17659717-signing-in-my-world

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Grades: 1-5
This is a twist on "The Princess and the Frog" that allows Hispanic students to see their heritage a little bit more in the classroom. This book also allows English students to have a different perspective of an already loved story.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/la-princesa-and-the-pea-susan-middleton-elya/1125320217?ean=9780399251566&st=AFF&2sid=Random%20House%20Inc_8373827_NA&sourceId=AFFRandom%20House%20Inc#/

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This is a short story about a girl who goes on a journey to ask many animals if she seems small to them. This is a way to build a basic French structure in English students.
https://www.amazon.com/small-suis-petite-moi-English-French/dp/1493733109/ref=sr_1_4?hvadid=241653055589&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=1026912&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t2&hvqmt=b&hvrand=14634554389832449551&hvtargid=kwd-270915076495&keywords=french+children%27s+books+bilingual&qid=1551116364&s=books&sr=1-4&tag=googhydr-20

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Grades: 9-12
This book allows secondary students to pick from a selection of short stories and be able to access the English and French versions of the stories.
https://www.amazon.fr/gp/product/0486408957/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1642&creative=19458&creativeASIN=0486408957&linkCode=as2&tag=frenchfrance-21

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This article focuses on how teachers can bring a classroom together. It gives a lot of information for teachers to use in order to make sure their students are all involved

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Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Barcelona, 2017

You can download this essay as a pdf here:
MLM_Dealing-with-linguistic-diversity-in-the-classroom-a-challenge-for-teachers
This article is part of a reflection on a model of education whose aim is to familiarize students and teachers with the linguistic and cultural diversity present in our classrooms. Given the notable divergence between the language and culture of the school and the languages and cultures of a growing number of its pupils - the divide between schools and families -we would like to reflect on some educational strategies to bridge this gap. One of the key strategies is to understand the importance of representing the language knowledge of pupils in the classroom and to embrace this linguistic diversity as a learning resource for all classmates.

These ideas stem from a project developed for the Council of Europe's European Centre of Modern Languages involving pupils whose first language is different from the school's. This project, carried out in several primary schools over a period of three years, showed the impact on pupils when first exposed to the existence of other languages and cultures, not as a result of teaching a foreign language to all children, but via direct contact with the large number of languages and cultures specific to some of their classmates. The project provided many positive outcomes, from a sense of inclusion for all class members to the realization of the value of parents' knowledge as a collective resource for the positive visibility of plurilingualism. In addition, the project highlighted enhancements in the bilingualism of some students, and showed how to transform the monolingual and monocultural classroom into a more open, multilingual and multicultural space.
Linguistic diversity should be considered a wealth, not a problem
As teachers, we should to take into account the linguistic and cultural heterogeneity of the pupils, the variety of languages ​​spoken and the multiplicity of their cultural affiliation. In an educational environment often marked by practices anchored in a monolingual system, this is a great challenge for a teacher. The child who leaves the language of her family outside school does not understand why this language is not entitled to be used in the classroom. She often feels that the language of her family is considered to be some kind of problem at school. It is well known that negative representations of bilingualism among children of immigrant origin particularly affect their language skills. Rather than refer to heterogeneity we prefer to speak of diversity, a notion that is both broader and more positive. The latter makes it possible to consider the plurality of languages ​​and cultures as a wealth rather than a problem. Moreover, the notion of diversity has been adopted by the Council of Europe in numerous works in the field of language education policies (Beacco and Byram, 2003).
Making plurilingual children feel welcome at school
As mentioned before, this article intends to provide teachers with pedagogical strategies to avoid language and cultural discrimination of pupils who have a different language from that of the school and seeks to encourage the consideration of diversity as a learning resource.

First, the notion of linguistic variety must be emphasized. Every child experiences this variation even before entering school, since he encounters his "mother" language in exchanges with multiple persons and in various situations. As such, from birth, even the monolingual child hears different ways of speaking. Later, upon entering school, he will have to face new challenges presented by the language of schooling. But at school, the variety of dialects spoken is rarely taken into account. It seems important to us here to insist on the fact that a language is always pluralistic, that no one speaks a language in the same way because no one lives it in the same way. Plurality exists within a single language spoken by the same person, for example a child who speaks with his parents at home or answers a question asked by his teacher is not in the same linguistic context as when he is playing with his classmates in the yard.

What teachers will notice first of all in the bilingual talk of children of immigrant origin will be the deviations from the norm in the language of schooling. The greater the pupil's competence in the language of the school, the less developed his dominance of his native language may appear. However, these deviations are merely traces of an interlanguage, the journey towards mastery of a language. They do not always reveal competence in the other language of the bilingual child, since the latter has no place in the school and, in general, teachers have no knowledge of these languages ​​and rarely have a bilingual or plurilingual experience that could have made them aware of what it means to be bilingual or plurilingual. The lack of training in language varieties, the importance given in the curriculum to the priority of teaching the national language (Young and Helot, 2003), and more recently the introduction of learning a foreign language at the age of six in many European countries, often prevents teachers from thinking about the different languages and learning processes existent at school.

It is generally accepted that the teacher, as the person responsible for the transmission of knowledge and know-how to pupils within the institutional framework of the school, must ensure that the pupil feels comfortable at school, creating a climate of trust in which exchanges are facilitated. It is therefore a question of recognizing the pupil's own linguistic and cultural knowledge, in order to understand his identity.
What can be done to make students benefit from this linguistic diversity?
It is obvious that schools cannot teach all languages ​​to all pupils, even in primary schools, but there are pedagogical approaches that allow the different languages ​​present in a classroom to be taken into account. These models are known as the Awakening to Languages ​​(Candelier, 2003a) or Education and Openness to Languages ​​at School (Perregaux, 1998; Perregaux et al., 2003) and can be considered as a complementary learning model. They make it possible to integrate family languages ​​and cultures as pedagogical resources within a classroom and to legitimize them in the eyes of pupils and teachers.

Key to the integration of languages ​​and family cultures are the parents. Our studies show that it is through the participation of parents that teachers and their students have discovered the linguistic and cultural diversity existing in their school community and have been able to transform this diversity into knowledge.

Parental involvement in the project also contributed to the development of a more global vision of languages ​​and cultures among teachers. Through this experience, they have been able to recognize the value of bilingualism, regardless of the languages ​​of which it is composed, and improve their understanding of the schooling of bilingual children in their classrooms.

We observed how teachers developed a transdisciplinary and inclusive approach in class, enabling them to decompartmentalize languages ​​and create a link between disciplines, thus reducing the usual gap between them. This inclusive approach to education addressed all children in the class, with no one being excluded from the group.

The aim of awakening languages ​​and cultures is not only addressed to bilingual children, but it is opened up to all, monolingual and bilingual, in order to build plurilingualism, a culture common to the whole class. The co-intervention of parents and teachers arouses in children an awareness of the richness of linguistic and cultural plurality which does not remain superficial nor rooted in a stereotyped vision.

All teachers should allow the classroom to move from a monolingual to a plurilingual space, using multilingual signs to decorate the walls, including bilingual books in the library, etc. Languages ​​and cultures should be considered in terms of collective resources and placed on an equal footing. The bilingualism of pupils who speak a language other than that of the school must be valued to allow them to find their place in the classroom.

Scientific research shows that it is easier for a child to become bilingual or plurilingual when all their languages are valued and when making connections between languages is encouraged. It is important that parents keep using their family language(s) with their children and that teachers use family languages to help children establish connections between the language(s) of their environment.

It is easier for children to engage in the languages that are taught at school when their own languages are recognised, because these languages are practised in the family environment and by the children. Placing value on childrens' different languages and cultural backgrounds boosts the self-confidence and self-esteem necessary for educational and professional success.

Parents' participation in school activities establishes a relationship of mutual confidence between schools and families, and helps children to dedicate themselves to their schooling.

We should give future citizens the opportunity to construct positive representations of the multiple identities of their peers and their families so that they can be proud of who they are and so that they feel accepted and understood by those around them. This is a necessity if we want to live together in peace.

To allow everyone to build their own identity based on their family life and relationships within and outside school, it is vital that the school takes up the challenge. For today's school is not only a place where one acquires knowledge, it is also the place where one pools one's skills and one's knowledge and where one learns to live together not by sharing a single language but by embracing several ​​to build common values.
References http://christinehelot.u-strasbg.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/2006-Chap-Young-He%CC%81lot-Diversite%CC%81-ling-et-cult-a%CC%80-le%CC%81cole.pdf
Beacco, J-C. et Byram, M. (2003). Guide pour l'élaboration des politiques linguistiques éducatives en Europe. De la diversité linguistique à l'éducation plurilingüe. Strasbourg, France: Éditions du Conseil de l'Europe.

Candelier, M. (2003) L'éveil aux langues à l'école primaire. Evlang: bilan d'une innovation européenne. Bruxelles: De Boeck.

Perregaux, C. (1998) " Avec les approches d'éveil au langage, l'interculturel est au centre de l'apprentissage scolaire ", Bulletin Suisse deLinguistique Appliquée, 67, p. 101-110.

Perregaux, C. ; De Goumoëns, C. ; Jeannot, D. et De Pietro, J.F. (2003). Education et Ouverture aux langues à l'école: EOLE, vol 1& 2. Neuchâtel : Conférence Intercantonale de l'Instruction Publique de la Suisse Romande et du Tessin.

Young, A. et Hélot, C. (2003) " Language Awareness and/or Language Learning in French Primary Schools Today. " In Language Awareness 12 (3&4), Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, Royaume Uni, p. 234-246

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Dealing with linguistic diversity in the classroom - Make Literacy Meaningful

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Dealing with linguistic diversity in the classroom: a challenge for teachers Dr. Xavier Pascual Calvo Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Barcelona, 2017 You can download this essay as a pdf here: MLM_Dealing-with-linguistic-diversity-in-the-classroom-a-challenge-for-teachers This article is part of a reflection on a model of education whose aim is to familiarize students and teachers with the linguistic and cultural diversity present Continue Reading

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The Role of the Elementary Science Teacher and Linguistic Diversity,  is an article specifically for science teachers, and their role in order to succeed in a bilingual classroom

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Hello, and welcome to the "Make Literacy Meaningful" MOOC. The MOOC seeks to help teachers understand and work with multiliteracies in the classroom, and has been funded by ERASMUS. Project team members from Germany, Spain, England, Ireland and Luxembourg have worked together to share expertise and case studies on a variety of topics, including background information on multilingualism in schools, practical ideas on how to create a welcoming classroom environment, and helping children with vocabulary acquisition.
There is a section on differences between oral and written language acquisition, and a section on "scaffolding", ensuring that learners get the support they need, while still enabling them to work out their own understanding of concepts and tasks. Each section has a combination of material, including videos and texts written specifically for the MOOC.
Further texts are available on the project website. Each section of the MOOC also includes a number of tasks, either for reflection, for discussion with colleagues, or things to try in your classroom, thus tying the MOOC directly to your practice. The first section includes an introduction to the course platform, helping you understand how to navigate the MOOC.
We hope you find the topics and the MOOC of value to your practice, and would love to hear your feedback.

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Hello, and welcome to the "Make Literacy Meaningful" MOOC. The MOOC seeks to help teachers understand and work with multiliteracies in the classroom, and has been funded by ERASMUS.

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This book contains a wealth of information for classroom teachers, enabling them to face a new school year with confidence. It gives information for teachers on how to welcome students who are not in the regular language.

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Welcoming Linguistic Diversity in Early Childhood Classrooms av Edna Murphy (Häftad)

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Teachers in multilingual classrooms have been working for some years to improve their repertoire of ways to address the needs of very young children who enter school not speaking the language of instruction.

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Cultural and Linguistic Diversity and the Special Education Workforce: A Critical Overview, is focusing on the secondary special education teachers. It is harder to teach special education students about diversity, so they talk about the need for more diverse teachers.

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California Department of Education Resources for English Learners. The English Learners Web site at the California Department of Education focuses on the education of English learners-i.e., students with a primary language other than English who are limited-English proficient.

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This book provides strategies and practical advice that teachers can use every day in the classroom to help ESL students understand and get to grips with their subject.

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This concise and informative book provides strategies and practical advice that teachers can use every day in the classroom to help ESL students understand and get to grips with their subject.

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UNESCO promotes the "fruitful diversity of cultures" since the creation of its Constitution in 1945. Its mandate was reaffirmed in the 2001 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Cultural diversity is stated "as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature" (Article 1). This principle should be understood not only in terms of economic growth but also as a means to achieve a more satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual existence (Article 3). It also implies a commitment to Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom, in particular those of Indigenous Peoples. (Article 4). To favor cultural diversity UNESCO has developed various standards that offer spaces to promote indigenous peoples' cultural rights and foster direct engagement with them:

Another domain that is of strategic importance is linguistic diversity and multilingualism that UNESCO promotes in all fields of its mandate, through an interdisciplinary approach involving all programme sectors: education, culture, science, communication and information and social and human sciences.

Languages, with their complex implications for identity, communication, social integration, education and development, are of strategic importance for people and the planet. There is growing awareness that languages play a vital role in development, not only in ensuring cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue, but also in attaining quality education for all and strengthening cooperation, in building inclusive knowledge societies and preserving cultural heritage, and in mobilizing political will for applying the benefits of science and technology to sustainable development.

UNESCO is thus taking urgent action to encourage broad and international commitment to promoting multilingualism and linguistic diversity, including the safeguarding of endangered languages.

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Cultural and Linguistic Diversity | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

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UNESCO promotes the "fruitful diversity of cultures" since the creation of its Constitution in 1945. Its mandate was reaffirmed in the 2001 Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Cultural diversity is stated "as necessary for humankind as biodiversity is for nature" (Article 1).

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Since 1975, the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) has been a non-profit membership organization that works to advocate for educational equity and excellence for bilingual/multilingual students in a global society.

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An exchange of news and views on English Only legislation, bilingual education and other programs for English language learners, the No Child Left Behind Act, endangered languages, and related issues of U.S. language policy.

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Create a new document and edit with others at the same time -- from your computer, phone or tablet. Get stuff done with or without an internet connection. Use Docs to edit Word files. Free from Google.

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This article provides teachers and teacher educators with a philosophical and practical base for developing literacy classrooms that meet the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse learners.

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Preamble

As public intellectuals and agents of change, we recognize that English teachers and teacher educators are complicit in the reproduction of racial and socioeconomic inequality in schools and society. Through critical, self-reflexive practices embedded in our research and our teaching, we can work against racial, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic inequalities by creating humane classrooms where students and teachers learn to use language and literacy in critical and empowering ways.

Toward these ends, we have assembled a document that states our beliefs and recommendations for action. This document is built upon our values and democratic sensibilities in addition to a generation of literacy research conducted via multiple methods on cultural and linguistic diversity inside and outside of schools.

Structure and Scope of the Document

We intend this document to provide teachers and teacher educators with a philosophical and practical base for developing literacy classrooms that meet the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse learners. Accordingly, we will first briefly enumerate our eight principles and then follow with a more detailed discussion about and expansion of each principle, particularly in terms of what each means for literacy and literacy education classrooms. This expansion includes an unpacking of the belief followed by a chart of suggestions and resources for K-12 teachers, teacher educators, and researchers. Although not comprehensive-given space and time, we could have easily added more ideas and resources-this document represents what we consider to be a minimum philosophical outline for supporting learners whose cultures and language fall outside the boundaries of mainstream power codes. Additionally, all suggestions made for teachers and teacher educators, with some adapting, can work in nearly any classroom.

Eight Beliefs for Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education

We believe that . . .

1. Teachers and teacher educators must respect all learners and themselves as individuals with culturally defined identities.

2. Students bring funds of knowledge to their learning communities, and, recognizing this, teachers and teacher educators must incorporate this knowledge and experience into classroom practice.

3. Socially responsive and responsible teaching and learning requires an anthropologically and ethnographically informed teaching stance; teachers and teacher educators must be introduced to and routinely use the tools of practitioner/teacher research in order to ask difficult questions about their practice.

4. Students have a right to a variety of educational experiences that help them make informed decisions about their role and participation in language, literacy, and life.

5. Educators need to model culturally responsive and socially responsible practices for students.

6. All students need to be taught mainstream power codes/discourses and become critical users of language while also having their home and street codes honored.

7. Teachers and teacher educators must be willing to cross traditional personal and professional boundaries in pursuit of social justice and equity.

8. Teaching is a political act, and in our preparation of future teachers and citizens, teachers and teacher educators need to be advocates for and models of social justice and equity.

The Beliefs Expanded

Belief 1: Respect for All Learners
Teachers and teacher educators must respect all learners and themselves as individuals with culturally defined identities.
We recognize the uniqueness of all cultures, languages and communities. As teachers and teacher educators, we understand the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of our society and that we enter our classrooms with our own social identities and cultural biases. We see all classrooms as multicultural, and we work towards respecting, valuing, and celebrating our own and students' unique strengths in creating equitable classroom communities.

Teacher Education Activities/Assignments

Go into and document our own as well as different cultural communities.

Conduct a critical historical survey of one or more groups.

Interview/research multiple generations (young and old) to gain insights into their dreams and aspirations.

Develop locally and historically situated blueprints for the realization of these dreams.

Have students investigate their cultural privilege as well as ways they have been marginalized.

Relevant References

James and Cherry McGee Banks, Handbook on Research on Multicultural Education, Jossey-Bass.

Bob Fecho, "Is This English?" Race, Language, and Culture in the Classroom, Teachers College Press.

Korina Jocson, "Taking It to the Mic": Pedagogy of June Jordan's Poetry for the People and Partnership with an Urban High School, English Education.

Gloria Ladson-Billings, The Dreamkeepers, Jossey-Bass.

Sonia Nieto, Language, Culture, and Teaching, Lawrence Erlbaum.

Belief 2: Funds of Knowledge
Students bring funds of knowledge to their learning communities, and, recognizing this, teachers and teacher educators must incorporate this knowledge and experience into classroom practice.
Students do not enter school as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge. Rather, they bring with them rich and varied language and cultural experiences. All too often, these experiences remain unrecognized or undervalued as dominant mainstream discourses suppress students' cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1990). Ethnographic research conducted inside and outside of schools reveals rich language and literacy practices that often go unnoticed in classrooms (Dyson, 2005; Fisher, 2003; Heath, 1983; Mahiri, 2004). When teachers successfully incorporate texts and pedagogical strategies that are culturally and linguistically responsive, they have been able to increase student efficacy, motivation, and academic achievement (Lee, 2001; Ladson-Billings, 1994).

For these reasons, we believe that teachers and teacher educators should actively acknowledge, celebrate, and incorporate these funds of knowledge (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1994) into classroom practice. In addition, teachers need spaces to learn about the communities in which they will teach. This includes opportunities to explore and experience the contexts in which students live and form their cultural identities. Educators also need to learn more about sociolinguistics both in teacher preparation programs and in ongoing professional development. Developing this kind of knowledge may help to avoid linguistic racism or language marginalization (Delpit & Kilgour Dowdy, 2003; Gee, 1996; Gutierrez, Asato, Pachco, Moll, Olsen, Horng, Ruiz, Garcia, & McCarty, 2002; Perry & Delpit, 1998; Smitherman, 1999)

K-12 Activities/Assignments

Teacher Education Activities/Assignments

Relevant References

Lisa Delpit, "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people's children," Harvard Educational Review.

Carol Lee, "Is October Brown Chinese? A cultural modeling activity system for underachieving students," American Educational Research Journal.

Luis Moll, et al., "Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and families," Theory into Practice.

Ernest Morrell, Linking Literacy and Popular Culture: Finding connections for lifelong learning, Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.

Belief 3: Inquiring into Practice
Socially responsive and responsible teaching and learning requires an anthropologically and ethnographically informed teaching stance; teachers and teacher educators must be introduced to and routinely use the tools of practitioner/teacher research in order to ask difficult questions about their practice.
To empower students who have been traditionally disenfranchised by public education, teachers and teacher educators must learn about and know their students in more complex ways (e. g., MacGillivray, Rueda, Martinez, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 1994). They must be learners in their own classrooms (Michie, 1999). Using the tools of classroom-based research to develop more complex profiles of their students, teachers and teacher educators can use their growing knowledge of the lives and cultures of these students to design appropriate teaching methodologies and curriculum. Developing these tools would require new ways of collecting and analyzing information about students and their families, and then reflecting upon the appropriateness of their curriculum and practices to be more effective educators. Consequently, such investigation would mean using or creating new lenses to interrogate the impact of one's own teaching and planning. These lenses might involve designing methods for getting ongoing feedback from students and their families and responding to that feedback. Ultimately such reflective work implies that teachers and teacher educators have a right to choose, create, appraise, and critique their own responsive and responsible teaching and learning curriculum.

K-12 Activities/Assignments

Attend and participate in community meetings.

Document the efforts of a student in your classroom through periodic journals.

Form/join a group of colleagues who periodically use inquiry protocols that facilitate looking closely at the work of students.

Talk to parents and students to learn about their linguistic and cultural backgrounds and experiences.

Invite parents into the classroom to speak to all students on family life and cultural traditions, or to share an area of their expertise.

Teacher Education Activities/Assignments

Design action research projects that incorporate socially responsive methods and material.

Have students write a "border crossing" essay about a time when they were the "other."

Expect students to read and critique multiethnic and multicultural children's and YA literature (e. g., House on Mango Street; The Color of Water; Miracle's Boys; Uncle Jed's Barbershop).

Relevant References

JoBeth Allen, Class Actions: Teaching for Social Justice in Elementary and Middle School. Teachers College Press.

Linda Christensen, Reading, Writing, and Rising Up. Rethinking Schools.

Gregory Michie, Holler If You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His Students. Teachers College Press.

Laurie, MacGillivray, Robert Rueda, and Anna Martiza Martinez, "Listening to Inner-City Teachers of English Language Learners. " In Boyd, Brock, with Rozendal's Multicultural and Multilingual Literacy and Language: Contexts and Practices. Guilford Press.

Belief 4: Variety of Educational Experience
Students have a right to a wide variety and range of high quality critical educational experiences that help them make informed decisions about their role and participation in language, literacy, and life.
A wide variety and range of high quality critical educational experiences should be centered in learning environments and educational curricula that affirm children's language and rich cultural identities. At the same time, these experiences should lead students to build a deep awareness and understanding for the many forms of language, literacies and varying lifestyles that exist in their communities and in the world. Curricula experiences should serve to empower students, develop their identities and voice, and encourage student agency to improve their life opportunities. A range and variety of high quality critical literacy practices will create opportunities for high student engagement and capitalize on their multiple learning styles and diverse identities and personalities. When contexts for learning resonate with purposeful and meaningful activities that touch learners' emotional wellspring, deep learning occurs, making deficit views of teaching and learning unviable and untenable.

K-12 Activities/Assignments

Teacher Education Activities/Assignments

Relevant References

Linda Darling-Hammond, The Right to Learn: A Blueprint for Creating Schools that Work, Jossey-Bass.

Maisha Fisher, "From the coffee house to the school house: The promise and potential of spoken word poetry in school contexts." English Education.

Rebecca Oxford, "Personality type in the foreign or second language classroom: Theoretical and empirical perspectives." In Horning and Sudol, Understanding Literacy: Personality Preference in Rhetorical and Psycholinguistic Contexts, Hampton.

Ira Shor and Caroline Pari, Critical Literacy in Action: Writing Words, Changing Worlds. Boynton/Cook.

Belief 5: Modeling Practice
Educators need to model culturally responsive and socially responsible practices for students.
When English educators model culturally responsive practices they explicitly acknowledge and incorporate students' funds of knowledge. Modeling effective teaching practices involves building on and consciously referring to the knowledge base of said practices. The process of modeling depends on carefully planned demonstrations, experiences, and activities. As part of this process, educators help students collectively examine experiences in light of their own learning, knowledge, and goals. These discussions may help learners not only develop language for how or if experiences support learning, but also will aid in identifying experiences that help learners examine whose English "counts" and in what contexts.

K-12 Activities/Assignments

Initiate explicit discussions on reading by disclosing your own reading preferences and processes. The discussion may lead to a subsequent discussion on what texts students have read during their formal school careers. Who wrote these texts? Whose texts aren't being read? Does this matter? Why is this problematic?

Invite students to bring in culturally relevant texts (e.g., songs, self-written poetry) and ask them to create a glossary for difficult (for the teacher) to understand language. After this experience, teacher may initiate discussion on being bi-lingual/cultural. In addition, teachers can also bring in texts relevant to the lives of students.

Researcher Stance and Research Questions

Types of research:Participant-observer; ethnographic; action research; self-study.

Sample question: What does modeling in action look like? What sorts of moves do teachers make to initiate it? What sense do students make of these experiences?

Relevant References

Geneva Gay, Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. Teachers College Press.

Carol Lee. "Bridging Home and School Literacies: Models for Culturally Responsive Teaching, A Case for African American English, In Heath and Lapp, A Handbook for Literacy Educators: Research on Teaching the Communicative and Visual Arts, Macmillan.

Ruth Schoenbach, Cynthia Greenleaf, Christine Cziko, and Lori Hurwitz, Reading for Understanding, Jossey-Bass.

Belief 6: Critical Users of Language
All students need to be taught mainstream power codes and become critical users of language while also having their home and street codes honored.
English language arts teachers live a contradiction. We find ourselves charged to teach native speakers and second language learners alike. Yet, according to contemporary research, native speakers know all of the rules of their native dialect (typically by the time they enter public schools at the age of five or six), and second language learners need not so much instruction, but immersion. Ultimately we know both groups and, indeed, all language users have a right to be informed about and practiced in the dialect of the dominant culture, also mythologized as "Standard English." Teachers are responsible for giving all students the tools and resources to access the Language of Wider Communication, both spoken and written. However, it is not enough to just "teach" the mainstream power codes; teachers need to foster ongoing and critical examinations with their students of how particular codes came into power, why linguistic apartheid exists, and how even their own dialectical and slang patterns are often appropriated by the dominant culture. Thus, our dilemma: how do we offer both groups ample opportunities to learn and practice their usage of this "prestige dialect" while at the same time recognizing the communicative equality and linguistic validity of their home dialects and languages? This document seeks to provide an answer, additional resources, and questions in answering that charge.

Relevant References

Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill, Language Myths, Penguin.

David and Yvonne Freeman, Essential Linguistics, Heinemann.

Eva Hoffman, Lost in Translation, Penguin.

Richard Rodriguez, Hunger of Memory, Bantam Books.

Walt Wolfram and Natalie Schilling-Estes, American English, Blackwell.

Belief 7: Crossing Cultural Boundaries
Teachers and teacher educators must be willing to cross traditional, personal and professional boundaries in pursuit of social justice and equity.
While there are discussions about whether "we" can or cannot teach "others," the fact remains that English educators do just that every day. There is and will continue to be a disparity between the racial, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds of English educators and their students. Whereas the percentage of white female English educators-estimated at about 85-90 per cent-in U.S. schools has remained constant (Snyder & Hoffman, 2002), the students with whom they work have and will continue to become increasingly diverse. Teacher candidates will need to understand and acknowledge racial and socioeconomic inequities that exist and that schools perpetuate.

As part of their teacher education, they will need to acknowledge the limits of their personal knowledge as well as experience the privileges afforded them by virtue of their race and class. Part of the curriculum for English educators will involve crossing personal boundaries in order to study, embrace and build understanding of "other." The purpose of boundary crossing is not to simply have an experience with the "other," but to use that experience to advocate for the advancement for all. While the stereotypical demographic teacher population of the white, middle-class, female will often have to cross more distinct boundaries, other preservice teachers who are more linguistically, culturally, racially, and socioeconomically aligned with the growing diverse student population will have to engage in "making the strange familiar, and making the familiar strange."

Ultimately, teacher candidates will need to engage in projects that allow them to study their lives as a way to recognize their limits and to complement the work they will do in crossing personal boundaries. This may involve learning language, studying culture, and visiting with students and their families. In short, we can't do what we've always done because we don't have the same students we had before (Kansas National Education Association, 2003).

Relevant References

Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Owl Books.

Victoria Purcell-Gates, Other People's Words, Harvard University Press.

Shirley Brice Heath, Ways with Words, Cambridge University Press.

Deborah Hicks, Reading Lives: Working-Class Children and Literacy Learning, Teachers College Press.

Mike Rose, Lives on the Boundary, Penguin.

Victor Villanueva, Jr. Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color, NCTE.

Belief 8: Teaching as a Political Act
Teaching is a political act, and in our preparation of future teachers and citizens, teachers and teacher educators need to be advocates for and models of social justice and equity.
We recognize that teachers and teacher educators have the potential to function as change agents in their classrooms, schools, and communities. Social justice-oriented teachers and teacher educators play a significant role in seeking alternative ways to address various forms of official knowledge with their students, especially forms of official knowledge that marginalize certain groups while privileging others. We also believe that effective literacy teachers of diverse students envision their classrooms as sites of struggle and transformative action in the service of academic literacy development and social change.

Towards these ends, we recognize the importance of employing a critical lens when engaging preservice and inservice teachers, a lens that enables these teachers to understand and value a stance toward literacy teaching that also promotes critical consciousness, social justice, and equity. Through praxis, the combination of active reflection and reflective action (Freire, 1970), teachers and teacher educators are able to build and strengthen collective efforts toward individual and social transformation. Our desire is for teachers and teacher educators to continue to expand relevant course materials, activities, methods, and experience in serving diverse students in the 21st century in the pursuit of equity, achievement, and justice.

K-12 Activities/Assignments

Encourage students to develop critical perspectives through community-based research and action projects.

Increase the shared knowledge base with students, parents, and other local actors; regularly tap into students' funds of knowledge.

Use classroom approaches that empower students socially and academically.

Negotiate roles and go beyond teacher-as-expert and student-as-novice.

Be explicit with students about your own positions as political agents.

Relevant References

Michael Apple, Ideology and Curriculum, Routledge.

John Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum, University of Chicago Press.

Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum.

Henry Giroux, Theory and Resistance in Education: A Pedagogy for the Opposition, Bergin & Garvey.

Bell Hooks, Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, Routledge.

Peter McLaren, Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New Millennium, Westview Press.

References and Additional Recommendations

Allen, J. (Ed.). (1999). Class actions: Teaching for social justice in elementary and middle school. New York: Teachers College Press.

Allington, R. L & Walmsley, S. A. (Eds.). (1995). No quick fix: Rethinking literacy programs in America's elementary schools. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Apple, M. (1990). Ideology and curriculum. New York: Routledge.

Bank, J. & Banks, C. (2003). Handbook on research on multicultural education (2nd Ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bauer, L. & Trudgill, P. (1998). Language myths. New York: Penguin.

Boyd, F., Brock, C. H. with Rozendal, M. S. (Eds.). (2004). Multicultural and multilingual literacy and language: Contexts and practices. New York: Guilford Press.

Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. (R. Nice, Trans). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Christensen, L. (2000). Reading, writing, and rising up. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.

Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). The right to learn. A blueprint for creating schools that work. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Daspit, T. & Weaver, J. A. (1999). Popular culture and critical pedagogy. Reading, constructing, connecting. New York, NY: Garland.

Delpit, L. (1988). The silenced dialogue: Power and pedagogy in educating other people's children. Harvard Educational Review, 58 (3), 280-298.

Delpit, L, & Kilgour Dowdy, J. (Eds.) (2003). The skin that we speak: Thoughts on language and culture in the classroom. New York: The New Press.

Dewey, J. (1932/1990). The child and the curriculum/The school and society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Dyson, A. H. (2005). Crafting "The humble prose of living": Rethinking oral/written relations in the echoes of spoken word. English Education, 37(2), 149-164.

Ehrenreich, B. (2001). Nickel and dimed: On (not) getting by in America. New York: Metropolitan Books.

Fecho, B. (2004). "Is this English?" Race, language, and culture in the classroom. New York: Teachers College Press.

Fisher, M.T. (2003). Open mics and open minds: Spoken word poetry in African Diaspora Participatory Literacy Communities. Harvard Educational Review, 73 (3), 362-389.

Fisher, M T. (2004). "The song is unfinished": The new literate and literary. Written Communication, 21(3), 290-312.

Fisher, M.T. (2005). From the coffee house to the schoolhouse: The promise and potential of spoken word poetry in school contexts. English Education, 37 (2), 115-131.

Freeman, D. & Freeman, Y. (2004). Essential linguistics: What you need to know to teach reading, ESL, spelling, phonics, and grammar. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Continuum.

Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York: Teachers College Press.

Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses. London, UK: Routledge-Falmer.

Giroux, H. (2001). Theory and resistance in education: Towards a pedagogy for the opposition (2nd Ed.). Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey.

Gordon, L. (2000). Existenia Africana: Understanding Africana existential thought. New York: Routledge.

Gutierrez, K., Asato, J., Pacheco, M., Moll, L., Olson, K., Horng, E., Ruiz, R., Garcia, E., & McCarty, T. (2002). "Sounding American": The consequences of new reforms on English language learners. Reading Research Quarterly, 37 (3), 328-343.

Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life, and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hicks, D. (2002). Reading lives: Working-class children and literacy learning. New York: Teachers College Press.

Hoffman, E. (1990). Lost in translation: A life in a new language. New York: Penguin.

Hooks, B. (2003). Teaching community: A pedagogy of hope. New York: Routledge.

Jocson, K.M. (2005). "Taking it to the mic": Pedagogy of June Jordan's Poetry for the People and partnership with an urban high school. English Education, 37(2), 44-60.

Kansas National Education Association (2003). Retrieved September 5, 2005 from http://www.knea.org/news/stories/2003/workteam.pdf

Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities. Children in America's schools. New York, NY: HarperCollins.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Lankshear, C., & McLaren, P.L. (Eds.). (1993). Critical literacy. Politics, praxis, and the postmodern. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Lee, C.D. (1995). A culturally based cognitive apprenticeship: Teaching African American high school students skills in literary interpretation. Reading Research Quarterly, 30(4), 608-631.

Lee, C.D. (2001). Is October Brown Chinese? A cultural modeling activity system for underachieving students. American Educational Research Journal, 38(1), 97-142.

MacGillivray, L., Rueda, R., & Martinez, A.M., Listening to Inner-City Teachers of English Language Learners. In F. Boyd, C. Brock, with M. Rozendal (Eds.). (2004). Multicultural and Multilingual Literacy and Language: Contexts and Practices. (pp. 144-160). New York: Guilford Press.

Many, J. (Ed.) (2001). Handbook of instructional practices for literacy teacher-educators. Examples and reflections from the teaching lives of literacy scholars. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Mahiri, J. (Ed.). (2004). What they don't learn in schools: Literacy in the lives of urban youth. New York: Peter Lang Publishing.

McCarty, T. (2002). A place to be Navajo: Rough Rock and the struggle for self-determination in indigenous schooling. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

McLaren, P. (1997). Revolutionary multiculturalism: Pedagogies of dissent for the new millennium. Boulder, CO: Westview.

Michie, G. (1999). Holler if you hear me: The education of a teacher and his students. New York: Teachers College Press.

Moll, L.C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31, 132 - 141.

Moll, L. C. & Gonzalez, N. (1994). "Lessons from research with Language-Minority children." Journal of Reading Behavior, 26(4), 439-456.

Morrell, E. (2004). Linking literacy and popular culture: Finding connections for lifelong learning. Norwood, Massachusetts: Christopher-Gordon Publishers, Inc.

Morrell, E. (2004). Becoming critical researchers: Literacy and empowerment for urban youth. New York: Peter Lang.

Oxford, R. L. (1997). Personality type in the foreign or second language classroom: Theoretical and empirical perspectives. In A. Horning & R. A. Sudol (Eds.), Understanding literacy. Personality preference in rhetorical and psycholinguistic contexts (pp. 153-179). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.

Nieto, S. (2002). Language, culture, and teaching: Critical perspectives for a new century. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Perry, T., & Delpit, L. (1998.) The real Ebonics debate: Power, language, and the education of African-American children. Boston: Beacon Press.

Purcell-Gates, V. (1995). Other people's words: The cycle of low literacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Rodriguez, R. (1982). Hunger of memory. New York: Bantam.

Rose, M. (1989). Lives on the boundary: The struggles and achievements of America's underprepared. New York: Free Press.

Schoenbach, R., Greenleaf, R., Cziko, C., & Hurvitz, R. (1999). Reading for understanding. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Shor, I. & Pari, C. (Eds.). (1999). Critical literacy in action. Writing words, changing worlds. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Smitherman, G. (1999). Talking that talk: Language, culture, and education in African America. New York: Routledge.

Snyder, T. D., & Hoffman, C. M. (2002). Digest of education statistics 2001 (No. NCES 2000-130). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics.

Villanueva, V. (1993). Bootstraps: From an American academic of color. Urbana, IL: NCTE.

Wolfram, W. & Schilling-Estes, N. (2005). American English (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

This document was created in part as a result of the 2005 Conference on English Education Leadership and Policy Summit, Suzanne Miller, CEE Chair, and Dana L. Fox, CEE Leadership and Policy Summit Chair.

Participants and authors in the "Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education" thematic strand group of the CEE Summit included:

Co-Conveners: Bob Fecho and Fenice Boyd

Mary Ariail, Georgia State University

Fenice Boyd, University at Buffalo, State University of New York

Bob Fecho, University of Georgia

Maisha Fisher, Emory University

Mary K. Healy, University of California, Office of the President (Retired)

Korina Jocson, Stanford University

Kezia McNeal, Georgia State University

Ernest Morrell, Michigan State University

Tom Meyer, State University of New York, New Paltz

Jeanne Smith Muzzillo, Bradley University

Gertrude Tinker Sachs, Georgia State University

Charnita West, Georgia State University

Robert Williams, Radford University

If you wish to send a response to this CEE belief statement, please email cee@ncte.org and specify which statement you are commenting on in the Subject of your email.

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Supporting Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Learners in English Education - NCTE

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As public intellectuals and agents of change, we recognize that English teachers and teacher educators are complicit in the reproduction of racial and socioeconomic inequality in schools and society. Through critical, self-reflexive practices embedded in our research and our teaching, we can work against racial, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic inequalities by creating humane classrooms where students and teachers learn to use language and literacy in critical and empowering ways.

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Grades: 8-10
This is a story about a high school boy named Ramon, who is faced with trying to be recruited into a gang. Although gangs are most prevalent in Hispanic cultures, it is still an issue in America. This is a pretty deep issue, but I think it is important to keep students aware of issues that could possibly face their classmates; as well as expose them to the Spanish language.
https://www.leeandlow.com/books/it-doesn-t-have-to-be-this-way-no-tiene-que-ser-asi/teachers_guide

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Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind

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Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind

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Grades: 10-12
This book discusses the development of sign language throughout the world, and allows those who don't speak sign language to delve into how this more or less uncommon language is used.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1371694.Talking_Hands

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Le Vieil Homme et la mer: The Old Man and the Sea

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Le Vieil Homme et la mer: The Old Man and the Sea

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This is a classic book that contains the English version, as well as the French version of The Old Man and the Sea.
https://www.languages-direct.com/books/parallel-texts/folio-bilingue/le-vieil-homme-et-la-mer-the-old-man-and-the-sea-ernest-hemingway.html

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11 Bilingual Fairy Tales in Spanish and English

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11 Bilingual Fairy Tales in Spanish and English

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Grades: 6-12
This is a great book full of fairy tales that is written in both English and Spanish.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/11-bilingual-fairy-tales-in-spanish-and-english-charles-perrault/1127757502/2679574295617?st=PLA&sid=BNB_Core+Catch-All,+Low&sourceId=PLAGoNA&dpid=tdtve346c&2sid=Google_c&gclid=Cj0KCQiAwc7jBRD8ARIsAKSUBHLg6iJnpV4VZ1zGiATTDo7YSc13YD--5IFbxwO285RiRp-ZM8EVNAUaAvepEALw_wcB

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ATTN: Newbie ESL teachers.

I have a story for you that should sound familiar.

My first six months teaching English in Korea were a disaster.

I had no training, and no idea what I was doing.

A blank sheet of paper had to become 45 minutes of constructive ESL teaching.

After a lot of trial and error, I finally figured out a simple recipe to create ESL lesson plans that work. Now, I'm passing along all those lessons learned to you.

How to Create an (Almost) Perfect ESL Lesson Plan from Scratch

The challenges of ESL lesson planning

While beginning to teach English in Korea, I only kept my job because of my incredibly patient co-teachers.

What made it so hard?

With no educational training, I was expected to teach English to Korean middle school students without a book. That is not easy to do, and I have repressed my horrible memories of the initial results. However, during my three years in Korea I (thankfully) got better. I fell into a formula for creating an ESL lesson plan that actually worked well for my students.

If any of this sounds familiar, then this blog is for you. Lesson planning can be stressful. From the start, remember this golden rule: perfection is not possible. You will never get it completely right, and that's okay. With that truth in mind, let's dive into how to make an ESL lesson plan.

Questions to ask before making a lesson plan

Give these questions some thought before you outline your ESL lesson plan. Knowing the answers will save you time and aggravation down the road.

1. Will you review what the school is teaching the students? Or will you create new learning goals? If the target language will be new, be sure it is appropriate for the students' level.

2. Will you focus on speaking, reading, writing or reading? Or a combination? Your school may have a preference.

3. Will you teach alone or will you have help? The simplest games, for example, can be difficult to teach without translation unless you are very prepared.

The 6 crucial stages of ESL lesson planning
Step 1: Decide on your lesson plan objectives
This is the daunting part, but it is crucial that you know this from the start. Step 1 is the foundation of everything that follows. Your focus could be:

a song or a movie (be sure that your school permits this and that it will not disturb neighboring classrooms). Remember that audio must be played loudly for students to understand it since it is in a different language.
Step 2: How to outline a lesson plan
a specific grammar point such as forming questions or practicing the present progressive. Young or beginning learners might need to focus on the conjugation of only one specific verb such as "to be." More advanced students could practice multiple irregular verb conjugations.

a general exercise such as understanding a short passage from a Harry Potter book.

a vocabulary group. For example, you might teach cooking, colors, medical terminology or animals.

Remember that every lesson plan should include individual work. To keep things organized, my outlines included the estimated time spent on each section. For example, a movie outline could be this:

1. Waiting for students to arrive and for the class to calm down (teenagers never arrive on time) - 1 minute

2. Welcome/quick review of previous week/ask students questions - 3 minutes

3. Pass out movie worksheets - 1 minute

4. Play preview of movie - 2 minutes

5. Introduce vocabulary needed to understand movie scene - 5 minutes

6. Individual practice of the vocabulary on student worksheets - 3 minutes

7. Giving answers to worksheets - 2 minutes

8. Listening exercises with the movie (includes playing the movie scenes several times, then going over the answers and letting the students watch the scenes a third time) - 20 minutes
Step 3: Choose ESL activities to accomplish your lesson plan objectives
9. Free watching of the movie (always a class favorite, but get permission from your head teacher first) - 6 minutes

Use games in the classroom. I believe in games in ESL classrooms. Used correctly, games let students test what they've learned in a relaxed, exciting way. The key is to make sure everyone participates. Without proper management, weaker or lazier students will quietly sit back and do nothing. In a 45 minute class, a game shouldn't be longer than 12 minutes. Watch your motivations. There's a big difference between playing Charades to review animal names vs. playing Hangman to let the teacher relax.
Step 4: Create ESL materials and worksheets
Consider the pros and cons of individual vs. group ESL work. No lesson is complete without individual work. Everyone needs time to practice material on their own. These activities also help shyer students, who can work quietly without the pressure of a spotlight. Group work, on the other hand, is useful too. Students can practice a dialogue with each other and learn from stronger partners. Team activities are often fun and give everyone a chance to relax a little. The drawback of group work, though, is that more advanced students tend to dominate the action. The right mix is essential.

Repeat recent ESL activities. You can repeat activities. How often depends on how popular the activity is. One of my classes insisted on reviewing vocabulary by playing Pictionary every week. For classes that meet once a week, it's best to recycle activities once a month if you can. Otherwise, your students might start to lose interest - and perhaps you will as well.

Reuse workbook materials. Photocopy exercises from a textbook, white-out the answers and let students complete the questions as a review.

If you do make your own materials, remember to include 2 sample questions with answers at the very beginning. Kids and low-level students always need a clear model to look at before doing individual work.
Step 5: Visual aids for ESL lessons
For each grammar point, include 5-7 questions.

Decide: Is a PowerPoint presentation necessary for this lesson? In class, PowerPoint presentations are good time savers. They can show answers to questions, saving you the trouble of using the blackboard. You can also use them to show interesting pictures. Try to minimize using them, however. They take a lot of time to create, and it is possible that your projector will not work that day. What would you do then?

Weigh the pros and cons of using videos in ESL classes. With today's technological world, videos are a must. They quickly gain the attention of the class and are a sure hit. On the flip side, you must be very careful in selecting your videos. Even Disney movies have language that is sometimes too difficult for low-level students. Background music, multiple people talking and jokes that don't transcend cultures are all traps to avoid. You must always have a back-up plan for class in case technology fails and suddenly there is no movie.
Step 6: The final stages of lesson planning
Find creative ways to add visual aids to your ESL class. Newspapers are an interesting prop. Even if the articles are too difficult, students can find the date, place of publication, price and the weather forecast. Jazz up a food vocabulary class by bringing a banana and an apple. For more advanced students, bring a colander, grater, bottle opener and other cooking items. Pass around currency from other countries.

Get advice from other English teachers. Show your coworkers your ESL materials. Especially if you teach in a foreign country, their advice is invaluable. They understand your students better than you do and they will see gaps in logic, things that are too hard and cultural pitfalls. Take their advice and change your materials.

Don't stress about the outcome of the first class. Nobody's perfect, and you won't be either. On the first day, make copies for only that day. You will probably come back to your desk with a few things to change for tomorrow. Save trees by not making copies that will only go in the recycle bin.
My lesson is finished, but there's still time on the clock.
Include pictures on the worksheet. No one likes to look at straight, boring text.

Have review games ready. Depending on the class, five minutes of vocabulary Hangman or Pictionary is legitimate. Let the students draw.
My lesson is too long.
Prepare three or four easy questions for a short conversation with the class. Make the topic similar to your lesson so nothing comes out of left field.
The students aren't interested.
Write a sentence from the lesson on the board. Give the class 15 seconds to memorize it. Erase the sentence and ask students to tell you what it was.

Puzzles of any type are fun and can help to quiet down an energetic class. Boggle, word searches or riddles (make sure they aren't too hard) are always a welcome challenge.

Ignore bad advice from ESL teacher websites and chat rooms. There are some great ESL websites out there. Just as many offer very bad advice. Be careful who you listen to. Some teachers are only concerned with winning popularity contests and so play games at every opportunity. Be sure that you are listening to teachers who take their jobs seriously. Ignore those who only want a party atmosphere in their classes. Focus on advice that helps you structure your classes more while leaving time for fun.

10. Wrap up the class by asking vocabulary review questions - 2 minutes

Perfection will never be possible. That's fine.

Whatever comes out of your imagination will be awesome.

Bells and whistles aren't necessary. It is the content and the thought behind the lesson plan that matters.

When a lesson tanks, shrug it off. Fix what can be fixed. Forget about the rest.

Teaching is a 50/50 relationship between the student and the teacher. You can do everything right, but if the student doesn't do his part you will still have trouble. Do what you can and leave it at that.

It's important to balance classroom organization vs. time for the unexpected. Be ready for the unanticipated questions that can throw off your timing.

Variety is the spice of the ESL classroom. Everyone learns differently. You need activities for visual and audio learners as well as doers.

It is true that the internet has a lot of free worksheets. By all means, use them. Time, however, is your greatest enemy. You first must know where to find quality ESL material. Until you have a few favorite sites, searching for worksheets on the internet will take a lot of your time. You are not done there. You still have to tailor it to your class's level.

Here are some tips that could make things go faster:

Hang onto your ESL materials for future classes. Do it. Especially if you stay at the same school for more than one year, you will be able to reuse your materials. Buy a good binder and stick nice copies of your materials in it. It pays to keep your hard work on your computer as well as a USB disk.

You will need visual aids which add depth and interest to your class. It could be a PowerPoint presentation, a restaurant menu from home or things from your kitchen. Whatever you choose, make sure it enhances your lesson.

Look at your lesson's target language and see if anything already in your home applies. Try not to buy too much. It is not necessary to spend a lot of money on this.
Bring English immersion to your classroom!
You've made it. Believe me, I sincerely congratulate you. Before you head into class, do a few things first:

During class: troubleshooting your ESL lesson plan

Extra time on the clock can mean that your class was too advanced for the lesson, or maybe that you overestimated the time you needed. Either way, go back to your desk and decide what to do differently in the next class.

Know what is a priority. What must you accomplish for the lesson to be a success? Try to focus on that while watching the time. No matter what happens, remember to leave 2 minutes for a quick review. Back at your desk, figure out what went wrong and decide what to change.

There could be a lot of reasons for this. Is the lesson too hard or too easy? Did they just get yelled at by their previous teacher for poor test results? Did three students just have a fight before you arrived and everyone got in trouble? Are you speaking too fast? Did your materials make sense?

The solution requires some reflection on what happened in order to fix it.

Final encouragement to ESL teachers

As an ESL teacher, you have a hard job that most people can't do. Making an exciting lesson out of a blank piece of paper is a real challenge. Even seasoned teachers who only use a book have trouble. To save your sanity, remember these points:

The ESL classroom is an incredibly fun and exciting place. It can also be aggravating at times. But, hey, you'll never be bored!

Teaching non-English speakers your language is an exciting privilege that you will never forget. Best of luck.

Oh, and One More Thing...

If you liked these lesson tips, you'll love using FluentU in your classroom. FluentU takes real-world videos-like music videos, cartoons, documentaries and more-and turns them into personalized language learning lessons for you and your students.

It's got a huge collection of authentic English videos that people in the English-speaking world actually watch on the regular. There are tons of great choices there when you're looking for songs for in-class activities.

You'll find music videos, musical numbers from cinema and theater, kids' singalongs, commercial jingles and much, much more.

On FluentU, all the videos are sorted by skill level and are carefully annotated for students. Words come with example sentences and definitions. Students will be able to add them to their own vocabulary lists, and even see how the words are used in other videos.

For example, if a student taps on the word "brought," they'll see this:

Plus, these great videos are all accompanied by interactive features and active learning tools for students, like multimedia flashcards and fun games like "fill in the blank."

It's perfect for in-class activities, group projects and solo homework assignments. Not to mention, it's guaranteed to get your students excited about English!

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to teach English with real-world videos.

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A Simple Recipe to Create an (Almost) Perfect ESL Lesson Plan from Scratch

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ATTN: Newbie ESL teachers.I have a story for you that should sound familiar.My first six months teaching English in Korea were a disaster.I had no training, and no idea what I was doing.A blank sheet of paper had to become 45 minutes of constructive ESL teaching.After a lot of tr

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foreign languages and english language learning

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In the Leaves, as well as Huy Voun Lee's other books, is a wonderful way to introduce students to Chinese characters.

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This is actually just a bunch of different lesson plans for teaching french to elementary kids

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Share My Lesson is a destination for educators who dedicate their time and professional expertise to provide the best education for students everywhere. Share My Lesson members contribute content, share ideas, get educated on the topics that matter, online, 24/7. We issue Creative Commons licenses, and we do not share our members' private data with anyone.

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World Language (Foreign Language) Lesson Plans for Grades 9-12

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The Foreign Language Teaching Forum is an integrated service for FL teachers including this WWW Page, the email (FLTEACH@listserv.buffalo.edu) LISTSERV Academic Discussion List, archives, and the FLNews server at the State University of New York College at Cortland. Our topic is foreign language teaching methods including school/college articulation, training of student teachers, classroom activities, curriculum, and syllabus design.

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Do you remember being a student, walking into your classroom and seeing the VCR or DVD player at the front of the room?

You felt so excited and happy. Movie day!

Today, the technology has changed but the excitement remains. Even with their limited attention spans, modern language students still love watching videos!

Not only is it fun, but it gives them an opportunity to experience a foreign language in a unique, authentic way.

Before you start making the popcorn, here are some things you need to know about teaching a foreign language with videos.

First, besides being fun, how do they actually benefit your students?

Why We Love Teaching Foreign Languages with Videos

Videos help students become active learners. Frequent opportunities to pause, interpret, discuss and replay allow for maximum engagement. It's almost like having a conversation with a native speaker. What a great alternative to traditional lecturing and note-taking.

They simulate real-life situations. Quality foreign language videos represent authentic interactions, similar to what your students might encounter if they were living abroad and fully immersed in the target language.

Students have the chance to analyze gestures and facial expressions along with the verbal/auditory input. As a language teacher, you know that verbal communication is only one part of a larger picture. Non-verbal communication is a huge piece of how people of all cultures communicate. Foreign language videos offer a unique opportunity to analyze this key element of language not afforded in worksheets or textbooks.

They appeal to visual learners. Did you know that 65% of your students are visual learners? It's tough to find or create materials that appeal to this large segment of the population. But videos are a convenient way to provide the visualization that most of your students need.

They're fun and motivating for students. There's just something about watching a video in class that gives students a sense of excitement. It's a change in the predictable routine of the classroom.

Having said that, not all classroom video experiences are successful. If they're not implemented correctly, videos can feel purposeless and even (gasp!) boring. As the teacher, you have a key role in making sure this doesn't happen. Here's how.

1. Choose a high-quality video.

Your students' enthusiasm will disappear faster than a good gelato on a hot day if they encounter scratchy, garbled sound or blurry images in your video. Don't waste time on poor quality.

2. Choose an authentic video.

Undoubtedly, there's a time and place for instructional videos. But whenever possible, avoid videos that were created for language learners. These are likely to include simulations that seem obviously artificial and contrived. Instructional videos are more meaningful if they're balanced with authentic movies and clips intended for native speakers.

3. Have a collection of "just for fun" videos to use as rewards or celebrations.

Not all video is created equal! Some are useful mainly for instructional purposes, such as the ever-popular Mr. Duncan series for learning English. Others are pure fun, like the French children's film "Un monstre à Paris" (A Monster in Paris). If you have some of these fun videos at your disposal, rewards and celebrations can become much more meaningful.

4. Download videos ahead of time.

The internet is one of the greatest resources available to teachers, but it can also be the most unreliable! Don't allow your plans to be foiled by faulty technology or a sketchy internet connection. Download video onto your laptop or a flash drive so that you'll have it ready as a necessary plan B. Some educational apps, like FluentU, allow you to download learning materials for offline use.

5. Have the class watch for non-verbal communication first.

During the first viewing, turn off the sound and ask students to make predictions based on movements and facial expressions. This will get them in the habit of interpreting communication in all its forms. The second time, pause it frequently for discussion and clarification. Finally, play the video again all the way through without stopping.

6. Try a "cloze" fill-in-the-blank worksheet.

Want to foster active learning during the video showing? Give students a brief script with blanks replacing some of the words, and ask them to fill it in as they watch. You can find a few video-based cloze exercises here.

It's also very easy to create your own! Download the script or transcript, blank out some key words with white-out or a black marker, then make copies.

7. Show a brief video clip each day.

Once you've built a good collection and developed some strategies, try showing the class a brief video clip each day. You can choose videos that relate to topics you're covering in class, and it's a great way to warm up or wind down as a class. Starting or ending the lesson with a brief clip will add some sparkle to topics that might otherwise be dry.

8. Assign videos as homework.

Are you getting tired of hearing your students complain about homework, or maybe not even do it? Boost their motivation by posting short videos to be viewed as homework assignments. This is a great way for them to practice their skills outside of class without making it a chore.

9. Flip your classroom.

A flipped classroom is one where lessons are learned by students independently, at home rather than the classroom. They come to class prepared for activities and practice assignments, where the teacher can answer questions and help them put their new knowledge into practice.

This works perfectly with foreign language videos, as you can send students home with instructional videos to teach them complete lessons-then they can each watch the lessons at their own pace, pausing and rewinding to take notes as needed. There's a full guide here, in case you'd like to learn more about the flipped classroom model.

10. Assign a project in which students give an oral presentation about a video.

FluentU. The selection of videos at FluentU is ideal for your classroom needs. Here you'll find a selection of authentic, high-quality videos for any level, including meaningful activities to accompany them. As an added plus, these videos are downloadable.

The Annenberg Learner Video Library. This collection features a variety of language learning videos, including the classic "Destinos" telenovela series for Spanish learners and the popular "French in Action" series. There are also videos for you to watch to help you hone your craft as a language teacher.

Spanish for Proficiency. The University of Texas has compiled a vast array of interviews with native Spanish speakers. These brief video clips span a range from "Beginning" (identifying objects) all the way up to "Superior" (life without electricity). This is a great resource for pointing out linguistic and cultural differences among the many Spanish-speaking countries around the world.

Chinese with Mike. Chinese teacher Mike Laoshi brings his own brand of humor and fun to weekly Chinese lessons on his YouTube channel.

Innovative Language. This video and audio series presents engaging lessons on useful topics such as agreeing/disagreeing, finding lost items and different ways to say "I love you." There's a separate program for each different language offered, including SpanishPod101, ChineseClass101, GermanPod101, FrenchPod101, RussianPod101, JapanesePod101, ItalianPod101, ArabicPod101, PortuguesePod101 and EnglishClass101.
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or Any of these popular streaming sites allow you to search for movies and TV shows in the target language. (For example, just click the "International" genre in Netflix to pull up an array of intriguing options!) Some of my favorites: the Russian film "Solaris" available on Amazon Prime, and the German movie "Downfall" on Netflix.

If you're looking for some creative project ideas, this is a great way to empower students in their learning. Give students a list of videos from which to choose and ask them each to present one video to the class, showcasing their own understanding.

Now you have the strategies. What else do you need? To find the right videos, of course.

Building Your Foreign Language Video Library

Before starting to use your new repertoire of foreign language video activities, you'll need to build a library of videos from which to choose. Here are a few resources to get you started.

Foreign language videos offer limitless opportunity to add authenticity and sparkle to your daily classroom routine.

It just takes a little planning and finesse to transform a movie clip or YouTube video into a valuable and engaging language lesson.

Now that you're prepared to start teaching with videos, it's time to go to class and press play!

If you liked this post, something tells me that you'll love FluentU, the best way to teach languages with real-world videos.

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Press Play! How to Teach Foreign Languages with Videos

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