Tool: Mentimeter

Teachers can use live polls, word clouds, and quizzes to let students anonymously share opinions and brainstorm ideas related to the lesson.

Benefit for ELLs: Low-pressure participation increases willingness to engage, encourages language use without fear of making mistakes, and visually displays peer ideas.

Tool: Padlet

Students post images, videos, or articles from their cultural background that connect to the unit theme.

Benefit for ELLs: Connects learning to students' lives, validates cultural identity, and fosters collaborative learning.

Tool: Diffit (or MagicSchool)

Use Diffit to adapt or create readings for different reading levels, add vocabulary lists, generate comprehension questions, and integrate visuals.

Benefit for ELLs: Offers text in accessible language, supports vocabulary growth, and reduces the cognitive load of decoding unfamiliar language.

Tool: Google Class Tools translation feature

Post assignments, instructions, and assessments that students can instantly translate into their L1 while still seeing the English version. This tool will be released this summer.

Benefit for ELLs: Immediate access to curriculum meaning builds comprehension, allowing focus on concepts while gradually developing English proficiency.

Tool: Book Creator

Students create bilingual digital books combining text, images, and audio narration. They can draft in their L1 and translate to English.

Benefit for ELLs: Provides creative, flexible and accessible ways to show understanding.

Tool: Google Slides

Provide scaffolded slide templates with prompts, visuals, and sentence starters. Students can respond with images, short captions, or recorded audio.

Benefit for ELLs: Supports organization, allows multimodal expression, and scaffolds the transition to extended English production.