I LOVE highlighting and posting on Twitter and Instagram my students' work. Just like they are proud of their work, I'm proud of it too.  So, last week, right after posting about my newcomers' fantastic writing, I received a question from a follower. She asked: "How are you able to get newcomers to produce that much written language? I am super curious!" 
This question surprised me because I've worked with newcomers for years, and I don't have a problem getting my newcomers to produce written work - unless, the student is a SLIFE (students with limited formal education). -- But even like that, I've figured out ways for newcomers to produce written work that demonstrates their learning...see this lesson here.

Anyway, I thought I'd share here how my newcomers' written work was scaffolded so they demonstrate their full potential.

In my opinion, picture books are the best text we could use with newcomers that will provide the understanding and the language they need to be able to retell the story. 

I started by sharing with my newcomers a list of guiding questions we were to use to help us understand and retell the story. 

Next, I model for students how to complete all guiding questions while answering on chart paper. Reading the book aloud was my favorite part - students were engaged and eager to help me answer all the questions. Together we completed a retell of the picture book "BiblioBurro" 

Last, assigned students their partner or group and they all decided which picture book to work on. I reassured students that perfection was not the expectation. The expectation was fun and language learning. I reassure them that the purpose was not to know every single word in the book but to use background knowledge and the images to make sense of the story.
I told them that the reason they were working in groups or with a partner was so that I could pull groups and work on guided reading.

As an extension to these wonderful posters created in groups, students practiced their speaking skills by presenting their projects in front of their peers. Before they started sharing, we established norms to ensure that all students were feeling safe as they took the risk to read their part out loud.  

After each presentation, students watched me as I took all the information I had on my poster and created a paragraph. It just made it easier to read with more fluency since the information was not all scattered out. 
Then, each student typed the paragraph onto a document to practice their typing skills. Since the ACCESS written component is typed, I have my students type as much as possible. 

I hope you found this information helpful! If you implement any of this, I'd love to hear from you.

Thank yo for reading!!

How much do you appreciate literacy? How do you encourage literacy in your family or with students? How do you demonstrate your love and passion for literacy?

These are questions that I would have not been able to answer during the first 15 years of my life. I attended school while living in Guatemala but I didn't appreciate how much the literacy I was learning in my home country was going to be the core and foundation to everything I have accomplished here in the USA. Read more about my journey here!

From the year I started working as a teacher assistant in 2004 to today -- Literacy has been something I've learned to embrace and enjoy. The foundations of the English language I learned sitting in a first-grade classroom as a teacher's assistance helped me understand how language works to make sense of words and use them to comprehend text and to write our own story. 

As a friend, parent, teacher, sister, and aunt, I'm always looking for ways to encourage young children to read and write. One way I do this is by celebrating literacy on days that are nationally or internationally recognized - For example, there is National Multicultural Books Day (1/29), World Read Aloud (2/3), Library Lovers Day (2/14), National Write Your Story Day (3/14), Childre's Book Day (4/2), Día de los libros (4/30), National Book Lovers Day (8/9), National Read a Book Day (9/6), International Literacy Day (9/9), I Love to Write Day (11/15), etc!! 

That's why tomorrow, September 8th, 2021 we are celebrating literacy in our English as a Second language classroom. 

We will begin our day analyzing this image. We'll be using our Canvas' discussion feature to respond to the image. 
Maybe some brainstorming questions could be...What do you do see? How does this picture or information make you feel? What changes can we do based on the information? 

I am hoping that this image serves as a visual of how important it is to READ EVERY DAY!

I also created a Wakelet with a few online resources for students to read online. All of the platforms I have made available are FREE. Some may require students to sign up for a class I've created but it is super kid-friendly.
Click below to see all the resources to READ ONLINE ? ? ? 

I am also providing students with this calendar with will be updated every month. These calendars are available for download for FREE through EPIC. 
These calendars give students great ideas as to what to read on EPIC and or in general. These are also available in black & white to print out and hand to students. 

EPIC Calendars 

If you want to read more about International Literacy Day, click HERE~
This article is great with ideas to instill the love of reading - read it HERE. 

If you like these ideas and resources, let me know! I'd live to hear how you use these. I am always looking for ideas to better serve my students.


Thank you so much for reading!

I had two class meeting days left with our newcomers, and I wanted to do something productive. As an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, when I think of rich lessons, I think of activities that will make my students think critically, move around, use all language domains (speaking, listening, reading, and writing), and learn!

At first, I thought about showing movie clips about mystery or suspense movies. I could have had them identify story elements like characters, settings, problems, solutions, and describing the plot - which is what we did using text. But, I didn't want my newcomers to get the idea that I wanted them to watch movies as we end our school year. I also didn't want my colleges to see my newcomers watching movies instead of doing productive work. 

So, what better than End-of-School Year reflection questions?!? Most of my students were face-to-face, but I had four student who were learning virtually. Hybrid teaching is challenging when you are trying to have an interactive and engaging lesson. But, technology comes to the rescue in times like this! I've taught my newcomers how to use google slides, Jamboard, and how to navigate our course Canvas page. 

For the most part, I agree when people say - "don't reinvent the wheel..." - Not reinventing the wheel has saved me so much time. I've learned a lot from other educators. However, when it comes to working with newcomers, you can't just use the wheels you find -- somehow, you must reinvent it to make it fit with the group of students you're teaching. You know - personalizing your lesson for a better outcome.
​So, if I wanted my students to answers great end-of-year reflection questions, I quickly began searching for what other educators have created.
These were the two web pages I found useful to do what I needed.

1. 50 Questions To Ask Middle and High School Students To Check in and Get To Know Them Better (Free Download!)
2. 10 Self-Reflection Questions for the End of the School Year

When looking at all of these questions, I carefully selected and tweaked them a little bit to fit the outcome I wanted to hear from my newcomers. I thought ten questions would be doable. My goal was for them to consider the quality of work versus quantity. 
I created a google slides presentation so it'd look presentable and colorful. Each slide had a question in big font to emphasize its importance.  You can access the slides below!

Two reasons why google slides are useful with this activity:

1. It allows newcomers to copy and paste the questions from the slide onto google translate.
2. Each slide can be downloaded as an image and add to a Jamboard for students' responses.

The slides were made available to all students. If your students have not learned how to take information from slides onto google translate, you want to teach that to them. It's a skill they can use in any class they go to - It's empowerment!
​
My face-to-face students received colorful sticky-note pads to answer each question.They placed their answers on a chart paper that had all the questions. 
My virtual students received a link to a Jamboard where they answered on a sticky note for each question.
​Here is the Jamboard if you'd like to make a copy and use it with your students. 

Students were all engaged. Not only were the questions open-ended so they could share their thoughts openly, but it created a stress-free time for students to share their voices. 

Several of their answers will serve to make some adjustments as the support they need for the next school year. A great educator should ALWAYS make room for improvements - especially when students are giving feedback.
I also learned a few new things about each student - especially the two newcomers who had only been with us for a week or two. The activity outcome made me happy. I almost cried when I saw a few of them mentioning me in their answers.

Needless to say, we wrapped our last day with a group picture and selfies. See pictures HERE.

Thank you for reading! 

As our newcomers' course comes to an end, I began thinking of ways to make time and space for students to demonstrate their full potential. One way students, regardless of their English proficiency, can be by creating something to demonstrate their ability to put together all the skills and elements we've learned for several weeks. 
When I think about students creating something, the first resource & platform that comes to mind is WriteReader. 
I've used WriteReader for years. I've used it with elementary students and now with high school students. It's a student-friendly platform and easy to use for teachers. Once you create your teacher account, you add students to your class list. 
So, as a culminating course project, my newcomers were to write their own mystery/suspense story after reading a couple of  stories from Saddleback - To read about the lessons that lead to this final project. You can read blog post #1 HERE and blog post #2 HERE. 

Students were encouraged to use an electronic translator or write in their home language. As I read each story, I provided feedback edit ideas.  All students published their work in English. I even had a couple of students whose stories were so long - They shared with me how excited they were about publishing their own stories and that once they started writing, they couldn't stop.

It was amazing to see how into writing they all were. Even my virtual students were super engaged!

I appreciate platforms like WriteReader that allow students to discover their love for reading and writing.
I also love having books like Saddleback books that not only helped developed my students' reading skills.

Have you used any of these resources? If so, share with me how you've used it. I'd love to add tools to my toolbox.

I cannot wait to show these books to my students next school year. I'm so proud of their hard work.


Thank you for reading!

This activity gave me a good idea of their text comprehension. By providing text evidence and placing them in the correct box, I can tell that comprehension took place therefore language acquisition happened too!

Be sure to check our next lesson when we create our own stories using the elements we learned in these two stories we read. 
If you have a different way to teach compare and contrast, please, share it in the comments. I'd love to learn from you and add tools to my toolbox.

​Click HERE to read Part 3

​Thank you for reading!

I cannot believe I am sharing our end-of-course lessons and project! This year, though like no other, went by so fast. So, here we are admiring how far our newcomers had come. 

This school year, I had a couple of ESL student teachers so I didn't plan as many lessons for our newcomers as I usually do.
Though there were so many challenges this school year - teaching with masks, social distancing, balancing hybrid teaching and learning, and so much more; I'm glad we made it through successfully. 
                                                                              ~~~~~~~~~~
I started taking over my newcomers class in mid-April and I was so excited to do so. Since one of my student teachers was still teaching my class, I'd one day teach students on campus and another day I'd teach students online.
Of course, my first go-to resource as I began planning was Saddleback books! We read two books that lead to our end-of-year project.

One way to help our students become strong readers and writers is by providing them with books to read. We cannot expect our students to embrace reading and grow academically and linguistically if they do not have the resources to do it.

This is why I am always trying out different ways to get books in my students' hands! Through Donor's Choose, Amazon wish list, and asking for donations, I've obtained books for students to read. And not just books, but compelling books, authentic books, and text that my newcomers CAN access, especially when they are attending school in a hybrid model (synchronous and Asynchronous). 
So, when Saddleback Education Publishing reached out to me and invited me to try out their new digital books platform with my students, I was super excited. Not only because it's material I am familiar with, but because these are books my students are familiar with too. We've used these books pre-COVID, and they knew how helpful this resource can be.
​I knew they were going to be as excited as I was.

Once I was familiar with their easy-to-navigate platform, I began creating our first lessons for my newcomers. I couldn't wait to introduce the Saddleback Digital platform to them as a new resource to read and learn. To get my students comfortable with the platform, before sharing our lesson, I gave them the link to the digital platform and provided them with a class login and code I had created.
Students logged in and clicked around looking at all the books available to read. As students clicked around, I was able to help students who needed a little more guidance getting into the platform. It is not complicated to get in, but if students attend school virtually, this might be a little more challenging to see if they are entering the correct information. Once students were all logged in, we played a game. The game consisted of a scavenger hunt. This was just to get students used to navigating the platform without any issues. 

Our first lesson was all about school language since we had students who had never been to a USA school and or not familiar with a specific USA school structure. 

Since we had students who were new to a USA school and were unfamiliar with our USA school's structure, our first lesson was about school language.

Slide one: To explain the difference between one and the other, I had one slide where I explained how some books are stories made up by the author and how some books are research teaching us about a topic. Using images of books, I had students access the slides and sorted the book covers based on the category we thought they should be placed. 

We used sentences like:
I think the book ___________ is fiction because _______________. 
I think the book ___________ is nonfiction because _____________. 
After modeling one or two books, students were all able to take turns and share a sentence. 

Slide two: I introduced the two books we were focusing on for the following days and had them find each book on their own and scanned the book to get an idea about the content. 

Slide three: I took this idea straight from the teacher's manual but because students were not on campus, I couldn't use the worksheet (and I don't like worksheets). As we read the text, we completed our informational web with all the details from the text. I'd read the text aloud first, then I'd have students read after me a couple of sentences at a time. 
The slides were completed by students with my guidance while sharing my screen and supporting them in finding the information. It was a great way for me to see who was paying attention and who was understanding what the text was teaching us. ​​

WriteReader is a wonderful platform I've used with elementary and High school students. It's student-friendly & teacher-friendly.
In this webinar I share how & why I use it.