Writing With English Language Learners

More than half of my class (Grades 3 & 4) are in their very first year of academic English.  Many are still in the “silent phase” where they don’t actually have enough language to participate in a conversation.  So if we don’t have enough language to tell a story, how do we get enough language to write a story?  I’ll admit, our first stories were rough, and felt like pulling teeth.  However, my kids have made some great strides in the last 3 months.  Here is a storybird created by one of my first year writing students, called Omar the Alien and the Haunted House.  I love using storybirds in my classroom because it brings out the best writing in all of my students, especially my English Language Learners.  Rather than sitting and trying to think of what to say, they use the pictures, link them to English words they know and build their story around them.

For more ways I get my English Language Learners writing, please stop by and check out my recent post on the subject at my blog – Raki’s Rad Resources.

 

Websites for the Elementary Classroom–Free E-Book

It’s official, I have published a book, an e-book that is.  Every Wednesday I write a Wednesday Website Suggestion on my blog, Raki’s Rad Resources.  This weekend, I compiled these suggestions into an E-Book that is available to you completely free!  This E-Book is a compilation of my “tried and true” favorite websites to use in an elementary classroom.  It has two sections, one sorted by grade level and one sorted by subject.  I hope that this compilation will be of benefit to those teachers who truly want to use websites as teaching tools, but are just not sure what sites to use.

You can download your free copy as a PDF file from Teachers Pay Teacher, or in the format that is best for your e-reader (Kindle, Nook, etc.) at Smashwords.  Either way, feel free to use and share this resource, and don’t forget to stop by Raki’s Rad Resources for next week’s Wednesday Website Suggestion!