Fever 1793 by Laurie Anderson is a historical novel with many awards as a young adult book. It takes the reader back to the summer of 1793 in Philadelphia. Events are seen through the eyes of Mattie Cook, who lives with her widowed mother and her grandfather above the coffee shop which is their business. When the fever breaks out, it turns the city and Mattie’s world upside down. This is a novel that is […]
Category: Reading Apprenticeship
Reading Assessment Int
This is a reading assessment based on Reading Apprenticeship ideas. I’ve added a longer writing task to make it a more effective assessment in reading/writing classes. Laura TalleyESL and English Instructor at Yuba College and Butte College <<https://lctalley.wordpress.com/>>
ESL 235 Practice Final
<<ESL 235 annotated practice final>> <<ESL 235 Practice Final>> This is the Practice Final I created for Level 3 Integrated Skills this semester. It’s based on older finals that incorporated more reading, because as a department we decided that (only) writing finals may not be the best assessment of integrated skills. I gave them another practice final with added writing practice to do as homework before this, and then they had an entire class time […]
ESL 235 Homework Practice for Final
<<ESL 235 Homework Practice Final>> This is an assignment I just made, so haven’t tried yet (feel free to suggest improvements). The integrated skill finals will include more reading this semester, so I made up a practice that involved a similar format with a reading and questions, but added some extra writing work. Even though they won’t have (?) a writing task on the final, I thought it’d be good for them to practice, and […]
World English 2 Unit 12 reading handout
<<WE2 un12 Starting a new tradition>> I used this about halfway through a semester in ESL 235/535: level 3 integrated skills. We had already done some practice with reading and finding main ideas in readings (what is a main idea vs supporting detail). I made a handout of the reading from World English 2 “Unit 12” to encourage students to take notes on readings (specifically I modeled highlighting where answers are in the text) and then […]
Learning a Second Language Article with Questions
After students have been introduced to annotating articles with highlighting, asking questions, and writing symbols and comments, this I used in my upper beginning class to reinforce those skills. This reinforces different ways they can increase their own styles of learning the new language. Their comments were extremely positive about what they might try after having read this. >>Learning a Second Language Article<< Annie
Reading Homework – beginning
This is a handout based on a reading from World English 1 second edition, pg.74-75 “The Cradle of the Inca Empire”. I was using it as homework in a high-beginning integrated skills course, earlier in the semester. I took it out of the book to better encourage students to write on the reading, and added tasks to the reading based on what students had been learning (emphatic adjectives and past tense). I wanted them to practice annotating […]
Reading Demonstration – comprehension and vocabulary in context
Reading Demonstration – Importance of Context in Comprehension This reading demonstration was taken from Dimensions of Literacy, by Stephen B. Kucer (page. 142, Table 6.2). The purpose of the exercise is to help students examine their own reading process and strategies used to gain meaning. Use this as an opportunity to discuss and share out reading strategies used by your students and share you own. Distribute the reading to students asking them to […]
Reading Fables Predictions/Story Creation to Reading
In my reading courses I always like to use Fables by Arnold Lobel. He always has one piece of art that encapsulate the entire story. When I teach students about predictions I usually use one of his fables. In the fable attached for this lesson I have the students examine a photo. It is a picture of an interesting bear wearing a frying pan on his head and paper bags for shoes. I sometimes have […]
I Have a Dream by Margaret Davidson
This is material that I used in my low intermediate ESL class. I used this book in addition to other things I was doing in the class. We dedicated part of the class to do activities related to the book, have discussions, and write about the themes. I already wrote about this on my blog, so click here to read more about this material. CLICK HERE to download prereading activities and then activities for […]