Learning Chocolate

I love the name and my kids love the website.

 http://www.learningchocolate.com/

It is a site that allows students to practice vocabulary.  It has many categories to choose, from colors and shapes to character traits, European countries, and car parts.  The first page in each section has pictures and allows students to click and hear the word.  Then, they do five activities that allow students to listen and read the words and match them to the picture, and write the words on their own. 

You should check it out. 

Do you use any other interactive vocabulary websites?   Do you know of other websites that have language games for ELL students to play?

A little presentation

I would much rather teach a huge class of children than present to six adults.  I gave a little presentation today to some other teachers and I still have all this adrenaline rushing through my body.  Hence, the blogging.

My district has paired up with the local university and is offering an ESOL endorsement program.  ESOL = English to Speakers of Other Languages.  The lady teaching one of the classes asked me to present.  I'm not good at saying no, so I did it.  Now, I'm left with the feelings and thoughts you get after an interview.  I talked too much.  I talked too fast.  I don't know if I said the right things.  I don't remember what I said and therefore don't know if any of it was meaningful.  I can't stop thinking about the things I don't remember saying.

Here's what I was supposed to talk about:

1. Guided Language Acquisition Design.  I'll blog about this some other time. 

2.  Teaching English Language Development (ELD).  That's what I teach. 
To sum it up,  ELD provides explicit instruction about vocabulary and sentences structure and opportunities for students to practice specific language structures so they internalize it.  

Vocabulary taught to my first graders during my weather and seasons unit 

Sentence frame using comparative and superlative adjectives to talk about sports preferences 

Sentence frames to compare and contrast the needs of athletes 

Subject/verb agreement

  3. The third thing I was supposed to talk about was collaboration between the classroom teacher and the ELD teacher.  The teachers in the class asked what they could do as classroom teachers to help the ELL teacher.  I had never been asked that before.  Usually I'm thinking about what I can do to help the classroom teachers.  I could only think of a few things:  shelter instruction and then hold ELL students accountable, provide appropriate level reading materials especially in subjects like science and social studies, and give me copies of big classroom assessments. 

Any ELL teachers out there? What do classroom teachers at your school do to help you? 

What do I teach?

To get my blog started, I'll share a little about what I teach.

I teach ten ELD groups a day.   I teach two kindergarten groups, two first grade groups, a second grade group, two third grade groups, two fourth grade groups, and a fifth grade group.  All of my groups are 30 minutes long with the exception of my kindergarten groups which are only 15 minutes.

I teach English Language Learners.  So, students whose native language, or first language, is something other than English OR students who are influenced by another language.  Most of my students are Spanish speakers or have Spanish speakers living in their home and are therefore influenced by the Spanish language.  I have one student from China and one student who was adopted from Haiti.   In years past, I worked in schools with many different language populations and, while I love my current students, I miss the diversity.

Here I am. Joining the blog world.