I've just finished reading and writing the teaching guide for Amal Unbound, and WOW, what a book! I think ESL students of all ages and language levels will be able to connect with the themes and characters in this book. A truly inspirational and thought-provoking book. If you'd like to know more about the teaching guide, click the link below. Below that is a preview of the first three pages of the 16-page teaching guide.
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I greatly enjoyed A Very Large Expanse of Sea, and think that it would be a successful novel used within the ESL classroom. I may come back later and write out a teaching guide for this book, but for now, please check out the Ten Principles analysis worksheet below. In this worksheet, I have addressed part of my ten principles - mainly the ones that are directly related to classroom instruction. A Very Large Expanse of Sea is about Shirin, an angry and isolated hijabi teenager living in a post 9/11 America. Shirin's anger at her circumstances and the people she's surrounded by are evident throughout the narration. Despite being significantly older than Shirin, I still felt myself connecting deeply with her character and becoming angry on her behalf at all of the injustices that she faces while navigating high school. The author, Tahereh Mafi, has said that this book is a deeply biographical account of her own time in high school, and this fact shines throughout the writing. A Very Large Expanse of Sea is a novel that touches gently on first love, confronting privilege, letting go of anger, and letting people in. The only drawback I can think of is that the majority of the plot takes place in the last 20% of the novel. Before that, most of the novel deals with Shirin's growing relationship with Ocean. This is definitely a character-driven, as opposed to plot-driven. Overall, I would recommend this book for the ESL classroom, and think that many students would connect with the overall themes. Click below for the official reading guide (not mine) for A Very Large Expanse of Sea, as well as my Ten Principles analysis which discusses the themes, audience, scaffolding, and accessibility of this book. P.S. Here's a very cute video of the author Tahereh Mafi and her husband (author Ransom Riggs) doing a FAQ about writing.
The idea of writing up principles of novel selection is something I've been throwing around in my head for the past year or so. I've been teaching ESL for about ten years now, but only in the past five years have I started using novels in my reading classroom (mostly because they weren't required in my previous programs that I've worked in, but they are a required part of the reading curriculum in my current program). However, when it comes to choosing a whole-class novel for the ESL reading class, there are absolutely zero resources on how to do this. So, after about five years of teaching whole-class novels, I've developed this system of principles that I use to assess whether a novel is appropriate or not for my class, and I'd like to share these principles with a larger audience.
I've started with Top Ten Principles for Teaching Extensive Reading by Bamford & Day (2002) as the foundation for my own ten principles. In case you are not familiar with Bamford & Day's principles, take a minute to read through their quick paper here. Bamford & Day's principles are related to the use of reading materials for extensive reading in the classroom. The principles are as follows:
While I actively use these principles in my own classroom when it comes to extensive reading, these principles do not necessarily relate to reading whole-class novels. Bamford & Day's principles are mostly appropriate for when students are able to self-select reading materials (not necessarily novels, but any type of reading materials) for in-class silent sustained reading. I use this approach with lower level reading classes where we have a variety of readers that students can choose from during a period of SSR. However, many ESL programs require reading classes to also have a whole-class novel component. When I began searching out materials for reading and choosing whole-class novels in my reading classes, I found no materials to help instructors choose appropriate novels for their entire class. Luckily, I enjoy reading as a hobby, so it's fairly easy for me to choose a novel that I might want to read with my class, but I worried about teachers and instructors who may not read for fun, or have time to spend exploring current novels. What help could these instructors find when they needed guidance on choosing whole-class novels? In addition to Bamford & Day's 2002 article, I did some other research on the use of novels in the classroom. I did find quite a lot of research supporting the use of novels and literature in the ESL classroom, and the general consensus seems to be that ESL students benefit from reading novels, but again, none of the research advised instructors on choosing appropriate materials. In addition, I was disappointed to find that most research around using novels and literature had been written in the 1980s, and this research has not been revisited since then. When I realized that there was a huge gap in the literature on finding appropriate whole-class novels, I decided that I would write out the guiding principles I use within my own classroom. The gaps in the literature are as follows:
I hope that my Ten Principles of Novel Selection will be helpful to ESL reading teachers in addressing these gaps, and that they will find choosing a whole-class novel to be an easy and enjoyable task. In the upcoming weeks, look for individual posts about each of the ten principles. In the meantime, you can find a basic summary of the ten principles here. This weekend I'm attending a conference where I'm giving my first presentation on my Ten Principles of Novel Selection. One of my main interests as an ESL instructor is how teachers choose whole-class novels, and the experience that students have while reading them. Through the past few years of teaching reading classes, I have developed a series of principles that guide me when choosing novels to share with my class.
Over the next few weeks I will make separate posts for each of the ten principles, but for now, enjoy the infographic below! And, if you attend my presentation, I'd love to hear your feedback! Does anyone else just have the worst time getting their class motivated during deep winter? At least here in Iowa where the temperatures have been steadily dropping (no warm spring temperatures in sight) and everything is covered with a layer of ice, my students' motivation (and mine, frankly) has dropped to nothing.
So what can we, as teachers do, to reinvigorate our ESL reading classroom while still sticking to the curriculum and making sure students are practicing their reading skills? Here are a few things that I do during February and March to try and drive away the winter blahs. Sometimes we just have to stick our nose in the book and get things accomplished, but other times we have a little flexibility to go off the beaten path with our class activities! (Note: some of these activities are geared towards instructors at university IEPs who have some independence and flexibility on taking their class on outings). 1. Get up and get moving! This seems kind of obvious to me, but I find that a lot of reading classes end up silent and motionless. You would be very surprised at how just moving around the room will add a lot of excitement and vigor to your class. Think about activities you are already doing in the classroom, and figure out ways to have them move around. For example, if you are doing pre-reading discussion questions, have students rotate partners every minute. I do this sometimes as a form of musical chairs...I put on music, let it play for about one minute, and then pause it. When I pause the music, students have to rush to find a new partner! 2. Do a puzzle or word problems! Every so often, just to switch up what we're reading in class, I give students an activity where they have to use their close reading skills to end up with a certain result. This includes doing logic puzzles (where students are given story-like clues and have to figure out the missing information), or following a written instruction to create something. One popular close-reading activity I do is give them instructions for an origami creation, but without pictures. Students have to pay very close attention to the instructions, or their creation will not come out correctly. I usually start everyone with the same origami creation, just to get into the practice, and then after that give each student a random, different one, so they can't look at a partner's work to get help. Afterwards, we all share our creations and talk about what in the directions was easy or difficult to understand. 3. Visit the library! You might be surprised at the number of ESL students who have never visited a library before, but my students always enjoy a nice trip to the local public library. With my lower levels, I usually try to focus our trip on learning how to browse and reading for fun (we visit the city's public library for this, which is luckily a five minute walk from campus). With my higher levels, I focus our library trip on using the online catalog to find resources, and learning about the different services at the library (we visit the university's library for this). Either way, students are usually surprised by all that the library has to offer, and for free! If you contact the library ahead of time, they will probably set up a tour for you. I have been working with one local librarian for about five years now, and she is always excited to give my ESL students tours of the public library, and at the end of the tour she helps them all get library cards. For some fun library activities, check out my lesson plan section for a library visit Bingo and photo scavenger hunt! 4. Read with a local preschool! This is something a colleague started doing a few years ago when their daughter was in preschool. The preschool welcomed outside guests to come read with the kids, and my colleague would often take her reading class to break up the monotony of their weekly routine. Reading students enjoyed it because it was a very low stakes way to practice reading out loud, and they loved answering questions from the kids. The kids liked it because it was new people to talk to, and they love stories! If you can find a local preschool that's not too far away, this might be a fun activity! (Or, check and see if you can help out with a toddler story time at the local library). If some of your students are shy or hesitant about reading to/interacting with children, put the students into groups or pairs to interact with the kids. 5. Bring a guest to class! This is always fun and interesting. Most of the time I try to focus the guess on some aspect of our reading class, but this class period almost always ends up more communication-skills oriented. In the past, we have invited the author of the novel we are reading to class (she was a local author and willing to drive an hour to meet us), and this was met with GREAT success. Students had a nice time, there was lively discussion, and we all took the author out to eat lunch afterwards. Another successful guest speaker I've had is a local musician who teaches ukulele lessons. This started with a summer reading class when we were reading the novel Stargirl, and the main character plays a ukulele. For a fun Friday activity, I invited the local musician to give us a beginners lesson on playing the ukulele, and the activity was SO POPULAR that I've done it every semester since then in at least one of my classes (although it usually works best for a communication skills or listening class). Whoever you want your guest speaker to be, try and find a way to tie it into what your students have been reading in class, or see if you can have them do a pre-reading to prepare. If you think the guest speaker session will be heavy on the listening, have students prepare questions ahead of time so they stay active and interested in the discussion. If you have a more interactive guest speaker, feel free to just jump in! 6. Try some creative writing! I'm always a bit surprised by how often we exclude creative writing from our ESL curriculums. In my IEP (and likely most IEPs) we focus mainly on academic writing, but over my years of teaching many students have requested creative writing activities, and really excel at them. To tie creative writing into reading class, have students do some creative writing activities based on the class novel you're reading. Some examples include:
Hey all! I hope everyone has been staying warm this week! I'm right in the middle of the polar-vortex and have been experiencing sub-zero temperatures for a few days, and I'm over it! Today I had a group of international ESL instructors visiting my class for an observation. They're here with the US State Department to learn more about ESL instruction in the US. We had a great time, and I hope to write more about the experience soon! One thing we discussed during observation today was a vocab knowledge exercise I do with my class. This exercise is fairly common in my department (all of my students were already familiar with it), but it was new to my international observers, so I thought I'd share it with you! Click below to open the file. When you open it, you see four different categories of vocabulary knowledge, covering how well a student knows a word. The goal of this chart is to have students self-assess their vocabulary knowledge. It's important to stress to students that their chart will always look different from someone else's and that there is no good or bad chart. I also point out that it's totally okay to have never encountered some of the words before! I usually insert the vocabulary words from the chapter we're reading in the textbook, or a selection of Academic Word List vocab and have them complete the chart before we start doing any reading or discussing definitions. After filling out the chart, I let them mingle with each other to share their vocabulary expertise (they always have a lot of fun doing this!). Finally, I have students fill out the chart again at the end of the unit/lesson so see if their comfort with the vocabulary has changed at all. Most students report moving at least one category to the right for each word (increasing their knowledge of those words), and overall have a positive experience with this self-assessment activity.
Welcome to my first teaching guide of 2019! I have just published my ESL guide to the non-fiction book Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World!
I picked up this book on a whim at my local public library and ended up loving it! It's written in English for children (I'd say about grades 4-6), but I learned so much from this book. It's a collection of 50 women who made incredible and lasting impacts to the field of science. It includes a few well-known scientists like Jane Goodall or Katherine Johnson (who was not previously well-known, but is after the movie Hidden Figures came out), and many other female scientists that I had never heard of. The book has beautiful illustrations to accompany each biography and includes fun drawings in the margins offering small tidbits of information about the scientist's life. There's also a wonderful glossary to explain some of the more difficult scientific terms, and a section offering follow-up readings. The first thing I thought of when I read this book was "This is perfect for my ESL classes!" In my department, we don't typically have elementary level students read novels. We tend to introduce novels at the next level up, low-intermediate. But I believe that these elementary level students should be reading SOMETHING that isn't ESL-ified! So I thought this book was a perfect solution - it's easy to break down into parts for weekly reading (each scientist has two pages dedicated towards her). The vocabulary is easy and accessible without adult ESL students feeling like they're being talked down to (which is a problem with many children's books - the language AND the ideas are simplified for children...not so with this book). There is a little something for all students to enjoy in this book - whether it's learning something new, reading about a scientist in their field, or enjoying the beautiful drawings. I also like the idea of using a non-fiction book such as this with elementary level students because the biographies do not build on each other (like in a fictionalized story), so if a student has difficult with the reading one week, that will not affect their understanding of the next week's reading. I've broken down this ESL reading guide into a few different sections, including a pre-reading section, vocabulary and comprehension questions for each scientist, and a post-reading section with some follow-up activities. If you'd like to know more, or download a copy, click the button below! Hello all! Welcome to the new home of ESL Literature Lesson Plans (now ESL Reading Plans). I have migrated over from Wordpress because Weebly is a little more intuitive when it comes to creating and maintaining my website.
In 2019 I'm hoping to release a few new novel reading guides to help out ESL instructors with planning their reading classes. I'm also going to be writing and releasing some stand alone lesson plans (for free!). I hope that you'll check back often to see what new lessons I've created! Thank you for all of your support in 2018 - it was a great year for ESL reading! I hope 2019 brings you some ease and comfort in teaching classes for this upcoming semester! |
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