| | | | | To help you reflect on the past school year, Colorín Colorado has put together some questions and writing prompts. See additional ideas here: |
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| David Hall is a middle school music teacher at Belle Isle Enterprise Middle School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His students include many ELLs from diverse cultures and backgrounds. In this special article and video from Colorín Colorado, he talks about a teacher who changed the trajectory of his life. |
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| This in-depth article from Dr. Ruslana Westerlund explains why writing is hard for students and walks educators through a teaching and learning cycle that can help students develop writing skills within disciplinary genres across content areas. Dr. Westerlund's other Colorín Colorado articles include:   |
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| Service learning is an excellent way to engage students who are studying English because it provides a meaningful context for language practice. This blog post from the U.S. Department of State's American English project presents a four-step process for implementing service learning with students who are studying English. |
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| Learn how an elementary school serving a high number of newcomer ELLs has succeeded in engaging students with multiple opportunities for hands-on learning through art, STEAM projects, and the school garden. |
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| Realia is a term used for real objects related to learning. Manipulatives are objects such as blocks, plastic figures, or flash cards. Using these types of hands-on tools can support content and language instruction. This strategy is part of Colorín Colorado's ELL Strategy Library and can be used to support academic language development for all students. |
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Using Inquiry with ELLs in Science In this excerpt from Chapter 4 of Becoming Scientists: Inquiry-Based Teaching in Diverse Classrooms, Grades 3-5, Rusty Bresser and Sharon Fargason describe some of the opportunities and challenges that ELLs may face in an inquiry classroom and offer guidelines for identifying important academic language features in a lesson. They also offer ideas for choosing appropriate language support strategies in the science classroom that will match students' proficiency levels. |
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Project-Based Learning for ELLs: Recommended Resources The following resources offer ideas for project-based learning (PBL) with ELLs: |
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 | | 4th-grade teacher Michelle Iadevaia tells the story of her students' efforts to build a cereal dispenser through the Rube Goldberg project. |
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Family Resources and Outreach |
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| Sign up now for Start with a Book's 2024 summer learning tips in English or Spanish! You'll receive three messages per week, featuring hands-on activities to keep kids reading, creating, exploring — and learning — all summer long! |
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| This guide from the Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium is designed for families and caregivers to support and lead English Learners through projects at home. The activities within the guide promote communication, collaboration, creativity, and critical thinking while engaging with a child’s culture, family background, and home languages. Each project includes the following sections: the purpose of the project, suggested materials, questions for children, instruction to complete each section, and additional activities and resources. |
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| New Freedom Park is a Denver community park and garden which opened in 2012, built through a partnership between the Denver Parks and Recreation Department and The Trust for Public Land. What caught our attention is that the local community of refugees from countries such as Nepal, Burma, Somalia, and Afghanistan played a significant role in the park's design and planning.
In this interview with Colorín Colorado, New Freedom Park Project Manager Wade Shelton describes the process of engaging the community in the park's design, overcoming language barriers in meetings and procedural votes, and learning to set assumptions asides when working with newcomer immigrants and refugees. |
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| By: Angela Pham Krans Illustrated by: Thi Bui No one can make Mai laugh like her Papa! She loves playing their favorite game — the crocodile chomp chomp! But then Papa leaves Vietnam in search of a new home for their family in America and Mai misses him very much. Until one day, Mama and Mai pack a small bag and say goodbye to the only home Mai has ever known. And so begins Mai and Mama’s long, perilous journey by foot and by boat, through dangers and darkness, to find Papa. Awards: Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature Honor Book Culture/Community: Vietnamese / Vietnamese American For more great titles, see: |
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| NEA’s 2023-24 Read Across America digital calendar highlights a monthly theme and a related picture book, middle book, and YA book. Each title includes activity suggestions, questions for discussion or reflective writing, related resources, and more titles to try. May’s theme is Focus on Family.   |
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