This book contains three levels of interactive grammar lessons and reading activities for beginning students of ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages). The grammar section includes a select set of YouTube videos, and the three original readers include short picture or chapter stories. Each lesson is accompanied by self-correcting exercises.
Material Type: Textbook
In this Strategy Guide, you'll learn about a number of specific methods that can help you to gain a fuller picture of the interests of your students as well as what your students understand, know, and can demonstrate by doing. By understanding the varying literacy strengths and habits of our students we can identify what Vygotsky calls their "zone of proximal development" where literacy opportunities are not too hard as to frustrate or too easy to bore but just challenging enough to promote student learning. With a keen eye, we can observe the interests and strengths of our students and, when possible, we can consider these to plan learning opportunities for our students. By providing choice and respectful tasks, we can provide meaningful literacy experiences.
Material Type: Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy
By analyzing Dear Abby's rant about bad grammar usage, students become aware that attitudes about race, social class, moral and ethical character, and "proper" language use are intertwined.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Spark the engagement of English-language learners or reluctant readers with the graphic novel "Maus". The visual information provided by the genre serves as a support for reading and critical engagement.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Unit of Study
By reading and rereading the passage closely and focusing their reading through a series of questions and discussion about the text, students will be equipped to unpack Dillard's essay. When combined with writing about the passage, students will learn to appreciate how Dillard's writing contains a deeper message and derive satisfaction from the struggle to master complex text. This close reading exemplar is intended to model how teachers can support their students as they undergo the kind of careful reading the Common Core State Standards require. Teachers are encouraged to take these exemplars and modify them to suit the needs of their students. Additional teacher background material: http://teachers.sduhsd.k12.ca.us/lcaston/documents/WeaselsEssayAnal.pdf
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Lesson Plan, Reading, Teaching/Learning Strategy
Students make predictions about the stories and analyze story elements, compare and contrast the different stories, distinguish between fact and opinion, and draw conclusions supported by evidence from their readings.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
In this lesson Students use the Cornell notes tool (developed by Walter Pauk from Cornell University) to do close reading of informational text. Students will be able to read closely and analyze the key details of what they read. Students will be able to summarize informational text.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
In this lesson students build their knowledge base and learn to read and summarize informational texts. Students will be able to read and summarize informational text, identify key details from surprising details, and recognize the main ideas/concepts presented in articles. They will also be able to listen, take notes, and discuss the issues presented in informational texts with a small group.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
This recurring lesson encourages students to comprehend their reading through inquiry and collaboration. They choose important quotations from the text and work in groups to formulate "quiz" questions that their peers will answer.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
This writer’s reference condenses and covers everything a beginning writing student needs to successfully compose college-level work, including the basics of composition, grammar, and research. It is broken down into easy-to-tackle sections, while not overloading students with more information than they need. Great for any beginning writing students or as reference for advanced students!
Material Type: Textbook
In this lesson students use the Informational Text Analysis Tool to deconstruct the essential elements of informational text. Informational text is more important to teachers than ever before, especially with the rise of the new Core standards. The Library of Congress is an excellent resource for finding and using texts to build students' reading skills.Through a diverse array of classic and contemporary literature as well as challenging informational and primary source texts, students build knowledge, gain insights, explore possibilities, and broaden their perspective.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
In this lesson Students individually consider a visual text and draw conclusions based on what they see. They write about their conclusions and explain the evidence used to make that determination. Students will be able to analyze a visual text. Students will be able to develop and support a claim about the visual text based on evidence found in the text.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Students review the basic conventions for using quotations from literature or references from a research project, focusing on accurate punctuation and page layout, then apply the conventions to their texts.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
Friendship Day between the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico is a public holiday observed in the United States Virgin Islands on the second Monday of October. The holiday was established in 1964 by Governor Paiewonsky to recognize Puerto Ricans who live in the Virgin Islands or have made significant contributions to the territory. The date was chosen to coincide with Columbus Day, as it was seen as "an ideal day for recognizing Americans' solidarity with the Caribbean.
Material Type: Diagram/Illustration
The day was established by Act 8257, which was signed into law by Gov. Albert Bryan Jr. in January. It commemorates the adoption of the Virgin Islands flag on May 17, 1921.
Material Type: Diagram/Illustration
This 30 minute video features a discussion between NYS Commissioner of Education John B. King Jr., David Coleman (contributing author to the Common Core) and Kate Gerson (a Sr. Fellow with the Regents Research Fund) on the first 20 paragraphs of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail." This conversation represents one of the ways a group of educators might prepare for close reading of text with students. This behind-the-scenes discourse represents the kind of dialogue teachers can have as they build their own fluency and familiarity with a text before diving into it with students. After watching this video, educators might ask themselves: Why are conversations like these important? What role can adult discussions of text play in teacher prep? Participants might also continue the conversation King, Coleman, and Gerson are having by picking up where they left off and engaging deeply around paragraphs 21-30. What happens next in the text? What is King "up to" for those paragraphs?
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
In this lesson students will use the core standards and an academic vocabulary template (adapted from Janet Allen and Robert Marzano) to explicitly learn the academic language they will need to understand, not only in English Language Arts, but in all content areas.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Students in Grades 5 through 12 read and respond to electronic books by using e-book tools and features, including digital note-taking capabilities.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan
An online German grammar reference, featuring zany post-modern Grimm's fairy tale characters, authoritative grammar explanations, self-correcting exercises, online audio and cartoon images.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Homework/Assignment
This is a collection of cumulative units of study for conventional errors common in student writing. It's flexible, functional, and zeroes in problems typically seen in writing of all types, from the eternal "there/they're/their" struggle to correct colon use. Units are organized from most simple to most challenging.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
