Classroom Teacher’s ESL Survival Kit # 1

A completely reproducible resource that provides insight, strategies, and materials for working with beginning ESL students in a mainstream class, in grades 1 to 8

It's also a unique ESL training manual for ESL teachers who want to provide in-service courses for mainstream teachers.

Section One:

• Helps the classroom teacher understand the obstacles facing the not-yet-English speaking newcomers in her class, with suggestions for providing a fully-challenging academic day for them, even when they can't yet understand what's going on.
• It’s "the Reader's Digest version" of ESL insights, recognizing the limitations and pressures on a< mainstream teacher's time and schedule.
• It's written in non-technical language, with the emphasis on practical ideas for mixed classes.

We explain:

• Culture shock, its symptoms, effects, and cures
• The many stages that English language learners go through in learning to understand, read, write and speak a new language.

There are step-by-step instructions for

• Tapping the energies of mainstream classmates,
• Motivating and guiding peer instruction
• Helping newcomers to make friends and maintain self-esteem during the long period of academic adjustment.

Section Two:

• Reproducible diagnostic tests
• Student observation forms
• Student "self-management" forms

These give the classroom teacher tools for measuring and evaluating new arrivals, a resource for producing anecdotal reports on report cards, and data for parent conferences.

The "self-management" form is a motivating device allowing the ESL student and the busy mainstream teacher to see at a glance the quantity and quality of work the ESL student is accomplishing.

Section Three:

120 reproducible activities for entry-level and beginning ESL students in grades 2 to 8:

• Meaningful activities
• Requiring a minimum of explanation
• Stimulating a maximum productive work

These activities can be done independently by the newcomer and are easily checked by an English-speaking peer.

The 6 full-page pictures of common classroom scenes have many uses, including conversation starters and vocabulary builders.

A 12-page reproducible "Welcome Booklet" helps new students understand basic "survival English" in the mainstream classroom.

There are reproducible pages for:

• Alphabet manipulatives
• Cut-and-paste activities
• Vocabulary activities for classrooms
  • Art class
  • Science class
  • Music class
• Animal riddles
• Simple stories with extension activities
• Get-acquainted activities
• Math vocabulary activities
  • Addition
  • Subtraction
  • Multiplication
  • Division
  • Telling time
• Social studies activities