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2 Big Shifts I’m Making as an ESL Teacher
If you look up my job description, it says I’m an ESL teacher for a large urban district with a high percentage of multilingual learners. But I don’t really like the title “ESL teacher,” because it gives the impression that I am teaching English as a second language. It’s true, I do teach in English, but it’s very rarely…
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10 Ways ESL Teachers can Plan for the WIDA ACCESS Test
Is your state a part of the WIDA consortium? Whether or not your state has been WIDA-fied, your multilingual students likely participate in some sort of annual language proficiency exam. In my state, our students complete the ACCESS for ELLs test every January-February. We have almost finished up all of our testing and we’re looking…
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Preparing ESL Students for WIDA’s ACCESS for ELLs Test
Winter is almost here, which means that ACCESS testing is coming up soon for students in ESL! We have been busy preparing our students for this annual WIDA test, hoping that they will remember anything once they return from winter break. In our state, the testing window opens as soon as we return in January!…
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Personal Narrative Writing: Support for ESL Students
As a teacher, I am always thinking about how to build background knowledge for my students in order to understand a text or content. But when writing personal narratives, the entire task is centered around the personal experiences and schema that they already have! For this reason, personal narrative writing can be one of the…
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Encouraging Student Self-Advocacy for ESL Students
Back-to-school time is such a whirlwind, and teachers everywhere are establishing their rules and expectations! As an ESL teacher, I’ve spent a few weeks getting into a groove with my schedule and establishing expectations of my own. One large expectation I have of my students is that they rely on their resources, not their teacher,…
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Why I’ll Never Go Back to a Paper Lesson Planner
I love the beautiful, customizable, colorful paper planners that many of my fellow teachers share around Back-to-School time, and sometimes I wish I had one too, but the truth is that I can never go back to a life of using a paper lesson planner. I started using a digital lesson planner well before 2020…
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3 Do’s and Don’ts for Teachers: Multicultural Names
I have a very recognizable name in English, so I don’t feel like a great authority on this topic, but I have worked with hundreds of multicultural students who have beautiful names… and so many of those names have been a challenge for me to say correctly at first! This applies to all learners, but…
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Back to School in ESL
I can’t believe it’s almost time to start school again! I love being in a school that has a team of ESL teachers. Our admin support multilingual learners (MLs) so well, and part of that is ensuring that there are enough language specialists to cover our caseload of students! So this year, we get to…
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That Summer Feeling
Hi! It’s so good to see you in my little corner of the internet. It’s summertime, which means I have time to build a website that will be a space for me to share my thoughts about all things teaching-related, resources that can help you in your work with multilingual learners, and little anecdotes about…
