Minions and Letter Reversals

Wow! It's been a while since I've posted anything. I am now teaching first graders...40 of them! I'm in a Dual Immersion program teaching in Spanish. It's been a whirlwind! But I'm loving it.

Well, first of all, you may be thinking, "What do minions have anything to do with letter reversal?" Let me tell you!

I love connecting things they like with academics. While teaching little ones, I've seen a lot of letter reversing, but especially with b and d. Well, I taught them a strategy to help them keep these straight and IT'S BEEN WORKING!!!!!! The Minions helped me with this! Because they are so popular, kids know a lot of their "words." One of their well-known words is "bedo." This is something they say when there is a fire, as seen below...

I taught my kiddos that if they ever get confused with the b and the d, to simply make two thumbs up and put their fists together, like below, and they'll see a b and a d! To help them remember which is which, they say "bedo" (be for b and do for d). They know that be begins with b and do begins with d. So they are listening for the sounds.

During writing, I have seen them place their fists together and say "bedo" to themselves. It has been amazing to see them using this strategy! Try it out!!

Inclusion & ESL

A new school year has begun, along with new challenges. RTI (Response To Intervention) has added a several time restrictions on English/Language Arts and Math. For example, in first grade, students have to have 90 uninterrupted minutes of English/Language Arts. This "uninterrupted" part means I cannot pull my ESL students during that time. I have found tiny loopholes in grades K-2, but I have found it to be very difficult to pull in the upper grades. As a result, I will be doing inclusion in grades 3-5.

Inclusion...what does that even mean?! To me inclusion is a time where I (the ESL teacher) come into the classroom and help my ELL's with difficulties they are having in that class. I've done research on what that is supposed to look like, and the most effective form of inclusion is called co-teaching. This involves the regular classroom teacher and myself getting together to plan lessons that will benefit all students. Unfortunately, this is not happening at my school but I've had to tell myself that it will be ok. This is the first year inclusion has been done for ESL at my school. So I am going to take this year to learn what will work best for my students and what doesn't. It will also give me a chance to kind of "train" the regular classroom teachers on what inclusion should really look like. I have faith that it will work out because I work with a great group of regular classroom teachers.

I have found some very good benefits to being in the classroom instead of pulling my students out. One example is that they aren't missing anything. In the past, I had to pull some grades out of their science and social studies periods. Now, I won't have to do that and therefore my students are finally getting that information. Secondly, I am seeing what they are actually working on in their classrooms and it helps me plan for what I can help them with to help them be more successful. I have also been asking the teachers to give me things I can work with them on and they have which is great.

One thing I am struggling with is how to incorporate the WIDA standards when I am in the classroom. This is Tennessee's first year with WIDA. As you can see, this is a big year for me in ESL. It has started off a little rocky, but I have to believe it will get better. I've got so much to learn. It has shown me that no teacher ever "arrives," and those who think they have, are not looking out for the best interest of their students. We as teachers need to be very flexible and constantly working on improving ourselves to be more and more effective for our students.

Visualizing

I know it's been a while, but here's a simple (and I think a great) activity regarding visualizing. I taught my fourth graders about visualizing when they read and write. This strategy is very important for ELL's. They usually tend to just write simple sentences so I tried to challenge them with this strategy. After introducing the concept, I wrote two very simple sentences on the board: My cat slept and The man cried. My kiddos had to rewrite the sentences in a way that I could create a mental picture in my head, aka. visualize. I had them write their sentences on dry-erase boards. Here are a few examples:

 This guy wrote two different versions (going above and beyond = love it). 

(The poor man cried because he was poor but someone gave him a home and food to eat so he cried/The poor man cried because he collected money for Takis but there were no more.)

 (The poor man cried because he was a hobo and he lived in a dumpster and he had to eat garbage).

(This one is written very nicely, so no need to translate :)

Compared to what they have been writing, these are pretty good. I know they all still need a lot of work but we're getting there.

We will have a little more practice tomorrow with visualizing. They will each write several sentences and then they will read it to a partner. The partner will then draw a picture of what they are visualizing. We'll see how that goes. :) Good night!

Queen of Questions

Ok...so I know Halloween has come and gone, but that doesn't mean I still can't dress up! Today, I became the Queen of Questions! I used a lot of what I added into my lesson from Mrs. Unger's Unbelievable Elementary Experiences. This is probably one of my most favorite lessons I have taught! It was so good, I wish my supervisor would've chosen today to come in and observe me!

Let me explain...

ELL's, just like other students, have difficulty with punctuation. I noticed that my students would place a period where a question mark should have gone. Or if I asked them to ask me a question they would actually tell me a statement. So, I decided to teach on the topic.

First, I started the lesson by making an anchor chart (surprised?). I went into detail explaining the two different types of questions: short-answer and long-answer questions. I explained that short-answer questions are simply answered with a yes or no, whereas a long-answered question requires more of an explanation. I also explained how each type of question starts. For example, a short-answer question can begin with do, does, will, was, etc. Sometimes, students just need concepts broken down and explained a little more. And I think this anchor chart helped do just that.

If you look at the top, you can see my crown and wand I used throughout the lesson. :) After I explained the types of questions, I put on my crown and wand and told them that I was now the Queen of Questions. They were only allowed to ask me questions from then on. Now, I wish I had taken a picture of my treasure chest, but I placed a laptop in it and had the students guess what was in it by asking me questions that would help them determine what it was. For example:
Is it red?
Can we play with it?
Where did you get it?
Is it small?

I gave each student a couple of post-its and on each one, they had to write a question mark. Every time they asked me their question, I wrote it on the board and they would "add" the punctuation by placing the post-it where it belonged. This helped them practice speaking correctly and adding punctuation + they were super engaged because they wanted to find out what was in the treasure chest.

As our last activity, they each had to write a question. Then they passed their sheets around and they would each answer each other's questions. This helped with reading and writing. As I went around, I noticed that some had forgotten to add their question marks! How could they forget when we JUST went over this?! I will never know. :) I threatened to turn them into frogs or books if they didn't fix that. :) They loved that. But I loved seeing them work together throughout the activity! Btw, I should mention that I did this with both 2nd and 3rd grade. I think both grades really enjoyed this lesson. I wish I had more pictures, but I was busy being the Queen! lol

Wild Words

For English language learners, the English language is just complicated! Words have letters that when put together make an entirely different sound or no sound at all. This makes spelling extremely difficult for students in ESL.

As a result, I try to work on sight words as much as possible. My students have such a hard time remembering that these are words that they cannot sound out. They always want to sound it out and then get stuck when they can't figure out what letters make a particular sound. They don't like sight words very much.

In order to make sight words a little more interesting, I've reintroduced them, not as sight words, but as "Wild Words." First, I read the story Animal Strike At The Zoo It's True by  Karma Wilson.

After reading it, I explained that just as some animals in the book didn't want to follow the rules, there are words that don't follow the rules either: sight words. So just as the animals went wild, these words are wild.

Then I went over the sight words we are going to work on this week. Afterwards, I had them spell out two sight words using foam letters. When completed, they had to put their words in a cage because they just won't follow the rules. :) (they had to glue the words on construction paper and then glue the cage on top of them). After placing their words in the cage, they grabbed a sentence strip and used each word in a sentence.

They loved putting their words in the cages. I like to think they enjoy writing sentences. :) Here is the final product:

Preposition Fun

Hi!! Just wanted to share an activity I had my second graders do today. They have been having a lot of difficulty with prepositions when writing, which is very common with ELL's. Since this year I am obsessed (yes, obsessed) with anchor charts, I created one that I found on Pinterest! I want to give credit where credit is due, but I could not find the original post, so if anyone knows whose fabulous anchor chart this belongs to, please, let me know! I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE anchor charts because they are perfect for my kiddos. ELL's need billons a lot of visuals, and anchor charts are perfect!

My anticipatory set was giving each student several stickers. They were so excited and couldn't wait to find out what we were going to do! Who knew stickers would cause such curiosity? :) As I went over each preposition, I would pick a student to put their sticker where it belonged. I think it went really great because my kiddos were super engaged the entire time. With this lesson, I focused more on the types of prepositions that tell "where." Here is my version of the anchor chart I found online:

My sweet J.D. was placing her sticker on the anchor chart.

Here is the finished product (I did forget to add the word "prepositions," I think the stickers clouded my thinking :)

  

After we created our anchor chart, I had them sit down and write several sentences using different prepositions. When they finished, they had to underline the preposition that they used. They did so great with this! With every activity I have them do, I always try to add writing. 

Here are the finished products. (I only have 5 second graders in this group) One of them even graded her own work...hmmmm...teacher in the making? :) I think so!!!

Well, that was it! Let me know what you all think and what you would do differently!

Hello there!!! And welcome to Teaching EaSeL! Do you see the word ESL in EaSeL?! I thought it was pretty creative if I do say so myself. As you can guess...this is a blog of all things ESL. This is my second year teaching ESL. I love it but it has not been easy. I got my ESL certificate along with my Bachelor's degree in Early Childhood Education. When I actually started last year, I felt like I had entered a different world. I had NO idea some sort of an idea of what I was doing. I feel like I am still learning. There is no where to go but forward >>. 

I'm super excited to begin this journey. Today was a beautiful fall day...here's a view from my school. 

I love FALL! It is my most favorite season. I also love it because there are tons of great lessons that go along with Fall. Well, my husband just got home and it being Halloween, we are heading out!