Teacher Resources

Bilingual Book Lists:

Bilingual & Spanish Language Books

Multilingual Leveled Book Collections

We Both Read Series: Spanish/English Bilingual books designed for parents to read with children

“Translanguaging in Latinx Children’s and YA Books” presentation by En Comunidad Collective 

Learning A-Z ELL Edition

WIDA

Five new learning modules for Educators:

(1) Tending to Multilingual Learners Social Emotional Learning

(2)Considerations for Evaluating Online Resources for Multilingual Learners

(3)Multilingual Learners and Distance Learning

(4)Educational Equity for Multilingual Learners During Covid-19

(5)Connecting Educators to Tools for Oral Language Development

  • The WIDA CanDo Philosophy WIDA designs research-based tools and resources for language development for multilingual learners. Their “Can-Do Philosophy” drives everything they do, including their conduction of research, supporting educational systems, designing products, and promoting empowerment. 
  • Standards in Action This site provides lesson videos that teachers use in their classrooms to create learning opportunities for students to develop social and academic language.

Academic Language Function Toolkit  

A  resource designed by teachers, for teachers, for developing academic language for all students in all content areas.  

Demographics and statistics: 

NCELA– National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition

  •  This site provides demographics on Title III State profiles, including performance reports of educational programs and AMAO Statues, to additional state-specific information. 

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA)

  • Academic Performance and Outcomes for English Learners This site focuses on exploring the academic performance and outcomes for ELs based on two primary key indicators which are their proficiency on a national exam and their high school graduation rate. This data story provides recent data on academic proficiency as well as state-level EL high school graduation rates in order to better assess the dynamic population of ELLs in the United States.
  • The Characteristics of our Nation’s English Learners This site provides statistical data and interactive charts dedicated towards the characteristics of ELLs, which may help inform decisions about the provision of instructional supports and services for these students.
  • Educational Experiences of English Learners There is a large achievement gap between ELLs and their English proficient peers, therefore this site provides a valuable examination of ELs’ access to and enrollment in preschool as well as their access to college preparatory courses and dual credit programs.

IES/ NCES National Center for Education Statistics Fast Facts

  • The International/National Center for Educational Statistics developed a Fast Facts site to provide information on a variety of educational issues, ranging from assessments to post-secondary and beyond.  

ESOL Standards and Indicators: 

  • ESL/ESOL Standards by Level  The ESOL Standards provides educators with goals, through a range of academic levels, on how English Language Learners will comprehend and communicate spoken and written English. 

TESOL International Association Homepage 

  • TESOL Standards TESOL provides various teaching and learning standards that help educators reach their goal of improving English language teaching all around the world.

 ESOL Strategies Homepage  

Colorin Colorado Homepage  

Penn State- College of Education

  • How can I support ELLs in my classroom? This site includes a handbook beneficial for elementary teachers. The handbook consists of various ideas for working effectively towards meeting the learning goals of ELLs.

Cult of Pedagogy

Spanish Playground

  • Free Spanish Readers and Activity Books The Spanish Playground is an extremely resourceful website for ELLs. This site provides many resources such as Spanish readers, for both teachers and parents that can be read online as well as downloaded with a free account. These activities promote language learning in a variety of ways.

EL Education Library

  • Library Resources for EL Education This site includes multiple resources on curriculum that can be used with ELLs. Resources can be filtered according to discipline (math, science, etc.), grade level (pre-K-K5), type (books, models from schools, videos, protocols, etc.), and topic (curriculum, school culture, classroom instruction, assessment, etc.).

American English

  • American English Resources This website focuses on providing resources for teaching the four basic skills of English: reading, writing, speaking, and listening.

British Council- LearnEnglish Kids

  • LearnEnglish Kids is a part of the British Council, which includes a wide array of free online games, songs, stories and activities for children. The website also provides helpful articles for parents,  on supporting children in learning English, videos on using English at home, and information about face-to-face courses around the world.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries

  • ESL/ELL Interactive Websites for Learning This site contains a list of various resources such as websites, instructional videos, including workout videos which are extremely useful for lesson planning or learning new skills for teaching ELLs.

StoryPlace

  • Pre-School Activity Library An award-winning website, StoryPlace is a great place for ELLs to develop their early literacy skills. This website provides children with the virtual experience of going to the library and participating in the same types of activities the library offers at its physical locations. StoryPlace has been newly redesigned to present favorite stories and activities in a format compatible with desktop and mobile devices. The site also includes early literacy information for parents and caregivers.

ESL Games

  • Fun Games For ESL/EFL Lessons This site is dedicated to helping teachers by providing fun ESL games for classrooms, powerpoint game templates, printable board games, interactive games for classrooms, games for ESL kids, grammar games, vocabulary games, and reading games.

Learning Chocolate

  • A Vocabulary Learning Platform This website provides a bunch of activities to enhance the vocabulary skills of ELLs. It can also be translated into different languages which makes it extremely user-friendly.

The U.S. Department of Education, Newcomer tool kit

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

  • Acquiring English as a Second Language This website provides resources on different topics which include the normal phenomena of second language acquisition, benefits of bilingualism, how should students learn, and social and academic language in ELLs.

Weebly

  • UDL for ELL This site is a useful resource that provides various articles on how UDL can be used to improve the learning process of ELLs.

Reading Rockets

  • Academic Language and ELLs The article in this website provides specific evidence-based recommendations and ways to carry them out for use by educators addressing a multifaceted challenge of providing effecting reading instruction to English language learners.

BICS/CALP

ASCD in Service

Paths to Literacy

  • Typical Language Development and Second Language Acquisition This site is very helpful as it provides a variety of information on the background of ELLs, typical development of early language, stages in all language development, BICS and CALPS: Cummins’ Task Difficulty, the principles of second language development, four key principles to language acquisition, and some examples related to appropriate language acquisition stages.

Brown University

  • Teaching Diverse Learners About Oral Language The main focus of the article on this site is to provide valuable information on teaching ELLs about the importance of oral language development. This site also includes various strategies that teachers can incorporate to help ELLs enhance their oral language skills.

University of Maryland

  • Empowering ESL Students with Universal Design This website is dedicated to helping teachers learn about the Universal Design for Learning and providing them with strategies in the development and implementation of the UDL principles into their instruction to help ELL students learn.

Center for American Progress

Teaching Channel

  • The Power of Collaboration for ELLs In this new series, The Power of Collaboration for ELLs, teachers will have a chance to see both teacher and student collaboration in action, supporting the learning of all students. This website contains a set of videos where teachers collaborate with each other creating a learning environment that embraces the social nature of middle schoolers while fostering simultaneous language and content learning for all their students, especially ELLs.

Edutopia

Apps

Storykit

Storykit is a multimedia storytelling free mobile app. It allows its users to create electronic storybooks and share them with others. Storykit is a practical tool for teachers. They can use it to create their own storytelling books and share them with their students. Storykit is compatible with iPod touch, iPhone touch, and iPad.

Toontastic 3D

Toontastic is a free storytelling app for iOS and Android where you can tell your stories through animations. The words are expansive and interactive that ELLs can learn while creating stories!

Helpful Articles

1. “Pair your Newcomers with Buddies” In this article, you will be able to find out how peer buddies, speaking the same language as the newcomer students in your classroom may benefit each other in various ways.

2. “Serving ELLs After School” Here, you will learn about the benefits and impacts of after-school programs for ELLs. Over the years, the number of students from diverse backgrounds in the United States has been increasing drastically. This article provides strategies and possible challenges that may be faced during after-school programs.

3. “The Seal of Biliteracy: Considering Equity and Access for English Learners” The Seal of Biliteracy is a grass-roots language policy initiative that is sweeping across the United States to promote and foster students’ bilingualism and biliteracy in K-12 schools. In this article, you will find 32 state policies, first exploring the policy purpose and logistics and then making policy recommendations to enhance equity and access for English learners.

4. “Preparing Teachers to Serve English Learners With Language- and/or Literacy-Related Difficulties and Disabilities” The purpose of this article is to outline competencies needed by teachers who provide language and literacy instruction to ELs, including LIEP teachers and general and special educators. The competencies suggest a shared knowledge base all teachers of ELs must have to provide linguistically and culturally responsive instruction and intervention that is differentiated to meet students’ language, literacy, and/or disability-related needs.

5. “Language Accessibility in the Classroom: How UDL Can Promote Success for Linguistically Diverse Learners” This article emphasizes on the importance and relevance of Universal Design for Learning and provides a set of scenario-based examples of how UDL might help educators to implement effective instruction in an inclusive setting. The paper makes additional suggestions for building on UDL principles to design linguistically accessible instruction for CLD
learners.

6. “Supporting Academic and Affective Learning Processes for English Language Learners with Universal Design for Learning” This article provides a variety of classroom-based examples that can be designed and used to address and engage all learners while simultaneously integrating key language development scaffolds.

7. “The GO TO Strategies: Scaffolding Options for Teachers of English Language Learners, K-12” This article developed under Project EXCELL emphasizes on five core principles that can be used by teachers to ensure the academic success of ELLs.  The strategies described here have been chosen to reflect five research-based principles of scaffolded instruction for English language learners: 1) to focus on academic language, literacy, and vocabulary; 2) to link background knowledge and culture to learning; 3) to increase comprehensible input and language output; 4) to
promote classroom interaction, and 5) to stimulate higher order thinking and the use of
learning strategies.

8. “How Can We Help Students Who Are English Language Learners Succeed?” Here, you will learn about the learning strategies that can be used by  teachers, students, parents, and community members in order to help ELLs achieve and attain their academic success.

9. “Increasing ELL Parental Involvement in Our Schools: Learning From the Parents” The author of this article describes the story of two immigrant families and their differing viewpoints of literacy and how the environment within the home can improve literacy and academic achievement. Furthermore, the article identifies challenges and barriers that may be faced by parents of ELLs and provides strategies that schools and teachers can use to increase parent involvement in order to maximize the learning of ELL students.

10. “Preparing Teachers to Serve English Learners With Language- and/or Literacy-Related Difficulties and Disabilities” The aim of this article is to provide implications for teacher education programs, highlighting the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration in teacher preparation.

11. “Teaching English Language Learners: Strategies for Overcoming Barriers” In this article, you will be able to identify four barriers than new teachers and veteran teachers may face when dealing with ELLs. Through the authors’ personal experiences, strategies are offered to help these teachers overcome the barriers and provide more effective learning instruction to ELLs.

12. “Critical multiculturalism: Supporting early childhood teachers to work with diverse immigrant families” This article applies theoretical perspectives and research findings from literature relating to immigrant families’ parental
practices and expectations to problematize some of the dominant discourses that prevail in New Zealand early
childhood education. Additionally, it discusses the possible application of some theoretical concepts from the domains of critical multiculturalism to assist early childhood teachers to develop better understandings of the needs of immigrant children and families, and to generate critical pedagogies that are culturally sensitive and equitable.

13. “A Guide for Engaging ELL Families: Twenty Strategies for School Leaders” This article by Colorin Colorado provides twenty strategies that can be used by school leaders in order to engage families to be more involved and encourage the growth and success of ELLs in various areas.

14. “Best Practices in Working With Linguistically Diverse Families” This article focuses on a number of best practices and provides examples of how these practices are used in
schools to promote the academic and social success of linguistically diverse children and their families and the many
teachers who support their education.

15. “The importance of hands-on learning and movement for English learners” The article on this website discusses the importance of incorporating hands-on or experiential learning for ELLs. It also provides numerous strategies that can be used to incorporate hands-on materials, manipulatives, and movement in the classroom.

16. “Improving Outcomes for English Learners with High Expectations and Academic Supports” In this article, the author discusses the importance of teachers in shaping the lives of English language learners. According to the author, if ELLs are provided with necessary supports, the academic performance and language proficiencies of English learners improve and can result in fewer students becoming long-term English learners.

Literacy Instruction for ELLs

1. “Fostering Literacy Development in English Language Learners” This article focuses on phonological awareness skills in ELLs. In this article, the author discusses the relationship between L1 phonological awareness and L2 reading success and provides implications for literacy instruction that teachers can use in their classrooms to help ELLs achieve success using phonological awareness skills.

 

 

 

 

 

Back To Top
Skip to toolbar