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Fostering Independence While Working with Small Groups
Welcome all-star teachers! As we jump into today’s topic, I would like you to reflect on your wins for the week. Have you ever wanted your students to be more independent in completing their assignments while you are working with a small group? Creating and fostering independence can be a struggle for most teachers. You know exactly what I mean when you can’t work with a student for one minute without being bombarded with questions from your students. I can remember it like it was yesterday. I decided I was going to have independent group work for a lesson. In my mind and on paper I planned an elaborate lesson.…
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Teaching Reading Skills through Read Alouds
Hey everyone! Welcome to My Adventures in ESL! Have you ever done a read aloud in your class and felt the boredom ooze from your students? I honestly wondered what is the benefit of me doing a read aloud when my students are bored out of their minds. Couldn’t I be using this time to teach my ELLs some important reading skills? I would often do read alouds and my students just weren’t into them like I hoped. I knew that there were tons of benefits of students hearing a fluent reader reading a text with expression. It just seemed at the moment that my students weren’t connecting to my…
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Plan Engaging Lessons During Testing
Thank you for joining me today as I share some lesson ideas you can use during testing season. Before we get started I want to hear your wins for the week. If you have small or big win please email me at millie@myadventuresinesl.com. I will share them on the podcast to encourage other teachers. Testing season is upon us and having engaging lessons for your ELLs can be an obstacle. Naturally students may not feel like engaging in a lesson after spending 3 hours testing. That is why it is crucial to make sure your lessons are engaging. Last school year I felt I was on a roller coaster with…
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Maximize your Planning Period with a Simple Strategy
Hello educators! Welcome back and I hope you had an amazing week teaching your ELLs. Before we dive into the topic of the week, I want to encourage you to reflect on the week and write down some of your wins and areas of growth. This week week I am going to share with you how to apply a business strategy to your lesson planning. There is never enough time as educators. If we aren’t making copies, we are doing paperwork. Then, add planning for our students on top of all of that. Some teachers have reported planning can add an additional 10 hours to their work week. Not having…
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Building Background Knowledge through Picture Books
Hey educators! Welcome to today’s training. This week has been amazing. As the year is at the halfway mark, I am starting to see the work and lessons I did at the beginning of the year payoff. For example, I was teaching my students sentence structure. This week they were doing such a great job. This is important because my goal is to have the students write varied sentences. Today I am going to share with you how you can use picture books to teach complex topics. A lot of times our ELLs might not have the background knowledge around topics and events that will help them comprehend complex texts.…
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Refreshing Your Mindset
Hey educators! Welcome to today’s mini training. I hope every one of you has had an amazing week at school and thank you for all your hard work as educators. In today’s mini-training we are going to learn how to refresh our mindset for the second semester. If you are stuck and need to refresh your mindset then I have a FREE mini-training just for you. It will include a guide and videos on how you can refresh and renew your ESL classroom. In this FREE mini-training you will have each video delivered to your inbox. Click here to get your Reflect & Refresh course. During the second semester, school…
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Teaching Grammar & Punctuation without the Guilt
Hey everyone! Welcome and I hope you all had a fantastic week at school. This past week was our first week back at school, and I didn’t realize how much I missed my ELLs. I would love to hear about your 1st week back adventures. Have you ever been confused on how to include grammar in your lessons? While you might not want to do standalone grammar lessons, there are so many engaging ways you can include grammar in your lessons. So try not to shy away from grammar lessons with your ELLs, embrace them. As with many teachers, I usually learn about my student struggles through my “teacher radar”…
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Advocating for the Arts
Welcome everyone! I know everyone is excited to get back to their students and hit the ground running tomorrow. I am personally excited to come back more focused and determined. When I return I plan on reviewing some classroom procedures and refocusing the students. There are a lot of huge events for my students, such as concerts and art shows so I am very excited for them as well. A far to common problem that I am noticing is that ELLs are sometimes denied the opportunity to participate in the Fine Arts or Exploratory classes due to scheduling. It breaks my heart when I hear these stories because ELLs deserve…
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Plan Engaging Winter Lessons
Hey teachers! I hope you had an amazing holiday, and I am so excited that you are here this evening. In today’s blog I will be providing you some ideas for some winter lesson activities that you can use for your ELLs. It’s that’s time of the year and you might be planning for your second semester, and have no idea of what you plan to teach. This can lead to frustration and cause a planning mental block. At the beginning of the second semester, I take time and plan for the new year. Last year as I was planning….I got stuck! I had a mental block and couldn’t come…
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Increasing ELLs Listening Skills
Has there ever been the situation where you have had to repeat yourself over and over again for your ELLs? There have been times when I have been like “I know have said this 5.5 times, and they still are not listening and understanding. If this is you, my fellow teachers you might have a problem in your students listening comprehension. This can affect the students comprehension skills and assignments if they are struggling in this language domain. I always thought the listening domain was the easiest for students to achieve high scores and success. I mean all it is students listening and following directions. This is where my thought…
