Classroom Ideas

The Escape Room: Class Version

September 28, 2019

Get your students thinking about the benefits of struggle and mistakes with this engaging activity. It's great for first week community building that will get your students working together, solving...

Acceleration / Activity Ideas / Classroom Ideas / Discussion Game

Gamify Discussion Time

April 20, 2019

For many students, participating in class discussion can be scary and overwhelming. However, I have found that by using sentence frames in a competitive way, students can feel more excited and confident...

Acceleration / Activity Ideas / California Community Colleges / Classroom Ideas / Conference Highlights / Discussion / Reading

Five Interactive Activities to Debrief a Text

February 24, 2019

Reading is an excellent way for students to grow their language skills. Having just the right activity to help students access the text on an even deeper level can not only expand your students’ learning...

Acceleration / Activity Ideas / Classroom Ideas / Community Building / Education / Group Activity / Icebreaker / Slides / Teacher Tips

Building Blocks – A lesson in Active Learning

January 21, 2019

Start your class off on the right foot with this community building activity that doubles as a lesson in how to be a successful language learner. ...

Classroom Ideas / Technology

CATESOL Reflections Part 2: Tech

December 20, 2018

Check out this list of interesting websites/apps I heard about at the CATESOL conference. ...

Acceleration / Activity Ideas / California Community Colleges / Class Routines / Classroom Ideas / Conference Highlights / Critical Thinking / Vocabulary

CATESOL Conference Reflections: Part I

December 9, 2018

The annual CATESOL conference is a professional development event for ESL educators in California and Nevada. I attended this weekend and will summarize some tidbits I learned about critical thinking...

Acceleration / Class Routines / Classroom Ideas / Reading

Participation Stations

November 15, 2018

This activity structure is a great way to get all students in your class engaged and working, even the shy ones. I piloted it in my class today, and my students enjoyed it. I used it for a post-reading...

Acceleration / Advanced Composition / Classroom Ideas / Lessons and Handouts / Slides

A Lesson on Topic Sentences

September 9, 2018

If you teach a class where writing is a focus, then you’ll most likely be covering topic sentences at some point. This post has a slide presentation that can help you introduce and your students learn...

Acceleration / Classroom Ideas / Lessons and Handouts / Reading

Book Group Roles

August 30, 2018

Group work is a wonderful way to get students to collaborate and learn together. The best way to assure that everyone actively participates is to assign everyone in the group a specific task to be responsible...

Acceleration / Activity Ideas / Classroom Ideas / Vocabulary

Vocabulary Knowledge Share

August 22, 2018

Here’s an activity to help you introduce a new topic and get students to grow their vocabulary on it. It will get your students to activate their own schema about the topic and then share what they know...

Activity Ideas / Classroom Ideas / Education / Lessons and Handouts / Slides / Teacher Tips / Technology

Save Time with a Master Google Slide Template

August 12, 2018

Do you use Google Slides to create your lesson plans? If so, you should definitely have a Google Slide document where you keep templates of slides you really like and want to use again. It will cut down...

Acceleration / Activity Ideas / Advanced Composition / Classroom Ideas / Graphic Organizers / Group Activity / Lessons and Handouts / Technology / Video

Collaborative Knowledge Base with Google Sheets

August 10, 2018

Yesterday at my college’s convocation, we did a group discussion activity that had us using Google Sheets as a place to collaborate and create a knowledge base that everyone now has access to. I’ve...

Acceleration / Activity Ideas / Classroom Ideas / Discussion / Graphic Organizers / Group Activity / Lessons and Handouts

Poster Presentations: A Scaffold to Public Speaking

August 8, 2018

Speaking is an essential part of learning a language, and public speaking is a needed skill in school and life. Check out this poster presentation format to help scaffold academic presentations skills...

Acceleration / Activity Ideas / Advanced Composition / Classroom Ideas / Group Activity / Reading / Teacher Tips

Annotating Together: An Activity for Building Reading Strategies

July 13, 2018

Do you have students who are hesitant to write on a text? Use this classroom activity to help emphasize the importance of annotating while reading and help students build a repertoire of annotation strategies....

Class Routines / Classroom Ideas / Conference Highlights / Education / Teacher Tips

The Parking Lot: A Place for Untimely Questions

July 11, 2018

As teachers, we need to stay on task for the sake of the whole class while still making sure all of our students feel that they’re heard and their questions, unrelated as they may be, are important....

Activity Ideas / Class Routines / Classroom Ideas / Community Building / Education / Syllabus / Teacher Tips / Technology

Student Feedback Form: Class Norm

July 5, 2018

Getting feedback from our students during the semester is very helpful. It also gives students a chance to express their feelings or possible concerns about a class. Check out this idea for an open form...

Acceleration / Advanced Composition / California Community Colleges / Classroom Ideas / Conference Highlights / Writing

A Dinner Party: Creative Analysis Activity

June 19, 2018

Help your students build analysis of multiple sources with this engaging activity that uses art to help students draw connections between multiple readings. ...

Acceleration / Advanced Composition / California Community Colleges / Classroom Ideas / Conference Highlights / Education

The Accelerated Instructional Cycle

June 15, 2018

The accelerated instructional cycle is a way to approach an integrated reading and writing course to help students gain a deep understanding of texts and work to write complex and rich writing assignments....

Acceleration / California Community Colleges / Classroom Ideas / Conference Highlights / Education / Teacher Tips

Learning is Confusion Figured Out

June 14, 2018

How can we design ESL curriculum that is relevant and engaging to students? Check out this post for some ideas. ...

Acceleration / Activity Ideas / Advanced Composition / California Community Colleges / Classroom Ideas / Conference Highlights / Discussion / Group Activity / Reading / Writing

5 Collaborative Class Routines

June 12, 2018

Are you looking for some engaging ways to get your ESL students to work collaboratively? Check out these five ways to get students working and talking together....