Classroom Strategies

Classroom Strategies: A Tool Kit for Teaching English Language Learners offers a series of activity templates that form a tool kit for teaching second language learners. The routines and repertoires are useful for teachers of English Language Learners, as well as for regular education teachers who have limited-English speaking students in their classrooms. Activities are based on the premise that young children respond to the familiar and that routines in school are reassuring and comforting. An activity that has a familiar outline is much easier to understand than one that is completely new. The author's approach is to provide the expected, predictable format for a lesson with content that is just a little bit new. Grades K-8. Barbara Muchisky offers a series of activity templates that form a tool kit for teaching second language learners. The routines and repertoires are useful for teachers of English Language Learners, as well as for regular education teachers who have limited-English speaking students in their classrooms. Young children respond to the familiar. Routines in school are reassuring and comforting. Imagine how much more this applies to students coming from another language and culture. An activity that has a familiar outline is much easier to understand than one that is completely new. The author's approach is to provide the expected, the predictable format for a lesson with content that is just a little bit new. An easily understood activity allows content to take center stage. This tool kit is organized into an introduction and five chapters. Each chapter begins with a one-page rationale briefly relating the activity templates to widely held principles in the field of second language teaching. Each activity includes: materials needed, number of participants, a description of the activity template or framework, content variations, and possible extensions for independent learning. Sample lessons demonstrate how language content can be taught or practiced by using the activity templates. Grades K-8.

BARBARA MUCHISKY is a retired ELL (English Language Learners) teacher for the Lincoln, Nebraska Public Schools. She has taught children and adult learners for over 25 years.