Using Grocery Store Ads In this exercise students will locate information from an ad. In level 1, I want students to be able to identify finding important information in a text. I recommend bringing a variety of ads. Directions: 1. Pull out an example ad and put it on the overhead. 2. Ask questions. What is important information if I need to shop for groceries this month? 3. Have students answer questions from the worksheet. […]
Tag: beginning ESL
Invitations Gap Activity
Students are taught ways to accept invitations, create preinvitations, create invitations, and decline invitations. After these methods are taught, students will perform this activity. The invitations gap activity has various scheduled events in which students are attempting to invite each other to fill up their schedules. Directions: Pass out the schedules. Advise students if they have an event on their schedule, they must invite other students to their event. Model an example with a student. […]
Level 1 Writing about Pictures (Verbal to Writing)
Recently, I have developed a new strategy for level 1 students to write about a picture. The students are asked to separate their ideas into two paragraphs. The first paragraph is a description of the people in the picture (who is it, where are they from, what do they do for a living). The second paragraph is about what is happening in the picture at the moment. The attachments below have additional questions for students […]
Food for Thought
When teaching the names of common foods I like to bring in the actual items. To make it a hands-on learning process I hand, for example, a carrot to a student as I pronounce the name. He or she hands the vegetable back to me and says the word “carrot” while doing so. After running through a dozen or so items / words I will check for understanding by holding up an item and having […]
INS Study Guide
Resource Posting PD.tifI find that students, especially at the lower levels, are curious about the history and politics of the United States. Over the years one of the handouts I have accumulated is the INS Standard 100 Questions for 312 Test at Legalization Offices. The document has questions such as, “What do we call a change to the U.S. Constitution?” Answer, “Amendment.” It serves as a nice break from grammar, writing, etc. and often engenders […]
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 […]
Modals Talking Chart
<<would rather talking chart>> I used this in ESL 235/535: Integrated skills level 3. The week before we had gone over World English 2 “Unit 12” with its introduction to using ‘would rather’ and using comparisons. I used this talking practice as part of a review day about halfway through the semester. We reviewed how and when we use ‘would rather (not)’ and then students moved around to talk with 10 classmates and write complete sentence […]
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 […]
Practice for a Writing Test
<<Practice Midterm>> I used this handout to prepare students for the writing midterm in integrated skills level 3. We began by looking at the prompt together. We focused on noticing verb tenses used in the prompt and what verb tenses they should use responding to the prompt, with me annotating the prompt on the document camera (with students writing it out on the handout to help plan). We then talked about what a topic sentence […]