Welcome! I am so excited to have a format to collaborate with you. In all honesty, sometimes it's difficult for me to quiet my mind until I share my ideas...so I guess I'm not that different from my 1st graders after all...
Currently I am teaching ESL at two schools. My students fall into grades K-6 and represent 16 languages. Their language levels and needs are just as varied as the cultures they represent. I know there are many people who still believe I must be able to speak all of those languages to be able to teach my kiddos, (I still feel bad when I have to answer that question with "no")...but lucky for us, ESL is very different. ESL is a mindset. It is looking at the grade level expectations and having the vision-or savviness- to see the map to be able to get all of your kiddos to the finish line. It might be with an instructional support such as a graphic organizer, using sentence stems, or adding manipulatives, or maybe it is with a shift in your teaching strategies by using oral rehearsal or reciprocal teaching. Being an effective language teacher-with or without ESL certification-requires a keen awareness of where your students are, where they need to go, and what tools you have available to get them there. It is my hope that the strategies we share here in this blog will help to ensure that what we aspire to do becomes our new reality. Wherever your map leads you, the process of differentiating for the unique needs of your students is incredibly rewarding. If you are new to this process, don't get overwhelmed. I want to encourage you to start with one. One language level. One need. One kiddo who needs to feel successful, if only in one area. Doing something feels better than doing nothing...but doing the right thing for even just one feels amazing! As always, let me know what works for you and what you'd like to see on the site! Amber
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AuthorI am an ESL Teacher that firmly believes that the more we learn about the cultures around us, the more we discover about our own. Archives
May 2018
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