90. Essential ESL Teacher Resources: Our Top 5 Must-Haves

Welcome to another episode of the Equipping ELLs

Podcast. I am so thankful and grateful you can join me today. And

I hope that you're really enjoying these back to school. Getting

you set up for a successful school year episodes. We want to make

these as practical and action packed as possible. So last week, I

shared about some reasons why your esl curriculum might not be

working. And today I want to share with you five resources that I

truly believe if you incorporate these types of resources into.

Your lessons. Into Your classroom. You will see success with your

English language learners, so over time. I've seen. I've observed

I've been in multiple different classrooms, both in the US and

abroad. So I've seen different settings. I've seen students from

all around the world and how they engage with the different

materials. And I've seen things that work. And that work really

quickly. And that really support the way that. Our multilingual

learners, brains learn a language. And so that's what we're going

to talk about today. I'm going to dive into five things. And it

really doesn't matter what grade level you're in. These things can

be helpful for you. And I'm going to explain why in a minute. But

let's dive right in. So one of the things that I think. Is

something that's very overlooked, but something that is going to

be so critical and crucial to the development of your students and

their literacy skills. And that is really supporting and spending

time doing phonemic awareness. As I go deeper in research and have

different guests on this show who are experts in science, of

reading and have done. So many different studies and read research

on this this is the topic that seems to continue to come up. Is

the importance of spending significant time developing phonemic

awareness skills. And to me the same thing is happening with

language learning, where we need to spend a significant time

working on listening comprehension. These two to me, go hand in

hand. When we develop. The hearing. Of sounds and the hearing of

words with our multilingual learners. They will have a much easier

time. Doing what comes next. This is the first step, but it is

foundational. It is critical. And I don't think we spend enough

time here. I know I'm guilty. Of jumping over the listening

domain. I know I'm guilty of jumping right into phonics and

decoding and doing those things, but really, the power lies in

strengthening their phonemic awareness. And so if you are someone

who you're really not a reading teacher and. You're not supposed

to go through and do all the interventions and really support them

with reading. But you are helping to boost their comprehension,

boost their reading skills. Then this is something that you

definitely want to have in your classroom. Because. You can

quickly and easily in a matter of five to ten minutes. Play around

with phonemic awareness activities so that your students are

increasing their ability to hear sounds and decipher sounds. And

this is really important for our multilingual learners, regardless

of the age. So if you are working with level ones and twos at any

grade level. Starting with phonemic awareness is the best place to

start when you're ready to move. Into Language Skills When you're

ready to move into Reading skills. Starting with a listening

domain is the first place to start. And now when you're ready to

move into reading skills, start with phonemic awareness. And the

best and easiest way I have found to do this is by using something

called. Hegrdy phonics. And none of these. I'm not an affiliate

for these people. These are just resources that I have seen time

and time again. Work. And these are resources that you can do

quickly and easily without any prep work. So Hagerty phonics to me

is something that you should ask your school to purchase, or if

your school already has a license, use it. Within ten minutes each

day, you can work with your students on building up their phonemic

awareness. And this works playing around with the sounds. Working

on the blending the segmenting. Just moving up the ladder of

phonemic awareness. Is so helpful to your students, and why I love

this for multilingual learners is because. There's not that added

pressure. It's all done orally. And so they're repeating. They're

hearing. They're deciphering. They're applying the sounds they're

hearing. In a fun and quick way. It keeps their attention. I love

that with hagerty phonics, it gets into sentence count. So really,

this is a key scale for our multilingual learners that when they

hear a sentence, they can pick apart and tell you how many words

are in that sentence. That shows that they're beginning to

understand when one word begins and one word ends. If we have not

learned another language, we don't realize how hard this is. But

if you have tried to learn another language and you go and sit and

watch something, you'll quickly see how difficult of a skill this

is. You'll hear something and you don't know when the sentence

starts, when the sentence ends, how many words were in that

sentence? Because it all blends together and so developing. This

skill. Orally. So it removes that pressure. Of having to apply

with their learning. They're just repeating. They're playing

around. They're having fun with the sounds they're using hand

motion. So they're using that whole approach. And for you, as a

teacher. It's all set up for you. You pull out that book, you go

through that day's lesson. And within five to ten minutes. You're

strengthening the phonemic awareness in your students. So spend

the time. This is a resource to me that is a must in every

classroom. Because. You will see the impact it has then when a

couple of weeks or a couple of months later, down the road, when

you're ready to begin. Decoding applying those skills, you're

going to see the difference in those students who have a strong

phonemic awareness. So the first resource that I think is a must

have in any classroom. Is hegry phonics. You can go check them

out. They have a new reading program. Again, I'm not an affiliate.

I've just seen what works. And this to me is a resource that

works. The second one. And this is not all based on reading, but

this is just kind of a whole approach to your students and seeing

the struggle they have and seeing ways you can boost them. So the

second one is to use Snap words. Now Snap words and we can put

links to these in the show notes. But snap words are really our

high frequency words, and they are done through a visual. So each

word has a visual. And these are fantastic. For our multilingual

Learners for struggling readers, I've seen them work really well

with students with dyslexia.

So I've used these with multilingual learners. I've used them with

students who have dyslexia, and the visual piece is really

powerful for them, for their brains to make sense of the words and

to recall the words quickly. So giving them that visual piece

upfront is really helpful. And this is something again that can be

done in just a few minutes a day. So setting up those routines,

what. Does your block of time look like. I don't think it's wasted

time, even if you're not the one that's necessarily in charge of

teaching reading to your students. But if you are doing pull out

groups, I don't think these are a waste of time to develop and

strengthen these skills because this is foundational to everything

else they're going to do. As they increase in their reading

ability, they're going to be able to engage much greater in the

homeroom content, text and the things that they're being expected

to do. So this is why I do think this is vital and important for

us as esl teachers, to show up and support them. In these areas

that can sometimes be weak, so using snap words with the visual

piece is really helpful for. Just that. Memorization. To high

frequency words. All right. Our next must have for any esl

classroom is to have a digital library. I love having a book in my

hand. I still love that. But. I've also realized that that's not

always possible. Living here in panama, it's hard to get books

here. It's expensive to get books here. So I have learned how to

read books on a digital device. And do I miss having a book in my

hand? Absolutely. But I'm still reading the books so that's the

same thing. We want the accessibility with a digital library. Is

necessary. When we're working on reading with our students, we

want to look for things that engage them that are topics that

interest them. If you can provide a book that's in their native

language and English. That's going to help them go deeper on the

topic. So a digital library is a great way to do that. And there

are some that you can pay for, and some that are free. There's

reading a to Z, which is in my opinion it's worth the money if

your school can pay for that. And the nice thing is they have a

great collection of Spanish books. So that's nice that you have

that bilingual. Books Available right there on a digital device.

Another one that's free is epic. And that's a great one that just

has really high interest books. Some might be above the level of

your students, but we don't want to just be focused on the leveled

readers. There's a lot of research coming out that's showing

that's not what we want to be doing. We want to be able to be

focused on decotables and then really finding books that interest

them. So doing something like Epic having that right there on

their ipads. Or the devices that they have is a great way to have

books available at all times that really your students will be

interested in. And then another free website called Unite for

Literacy. And this one has a variety of different languages

available. So this is sometimes a great place to start with your

newcomers. In providing books for them in their native language so

that they can get some of those vocabulary words. They can have

that sense of belonging and feeling comfortable of getting to read

something in their native language. Instead of just feeling

frustrated about not being able to read in English, especially for

those older students if they are already fluent in their native

language, that's a great opportunity to bring in. Some reading in

their L one. So Unite for Literacy is a fantastic website and

resource to bookmark on your devices so that your students can

have a free digital library at their fingertips and that they have

them available in multiple languages. But having that digital

library is really important. Because if you develop that habit of

them going and looking and knowing they have these books available

to them at all times, finding ones that really interest what they

are excited about using those to extend the lesson that you're

teaching on really bringing that cohesion. So if you're helping

support. Your intermediate students who are learning about. Let's

say.

Maybe they're learning about simple machines. And so you're doing

a lot of research on that. You're talking about that. You're doing

activities about that. And now they get to independently go and

check out their digital library and see if they can find books

that are talking about that. And they can make those connections

independently. So that's why having a. Digital Library available

and gives you so many options. Just like that is really huge. All

right, so that's number three, let's move on to number four, the

fourth resource that I think every esl classroom needs to have. Is

nearpod and vocabulary. I'm going to put those together because

they are made by the same person. Folky goes with nearpod.

But when I say nearpod, it doesn't necessarily have to be near

pod, it could be flipgrid, it could be. Hair deck. It could be

seesaw. But. I think for an esl teacher having some sort of

digital lesson. Is one going to save. You time by putting

everything in a digital space. And two, I think it's really

helpful if you are pushing in if you're a traveling teacher. So

that you don't have to keep track of all your lessons, all your

papers, all of these materials. Oh, you forgot the copies that you

just made in the copy room. Or now you're at a different school,

and you forgot those copies. In your other classroom, that's where

a lot of the stress comes in when you're a traveling teacher or

when you're pushing into multiple classrooms. So you can eliminate

that by having all of your lessons on one digital platform. So

that could be cool Classroom and a lot of these all connect within

each other so you can assign nearpod through Google Classroom all

those types of things. But I have found in my research that

nearpod is a really cool platform to use. Because you can upload

pdfs, you can then create a quiz out of it. You can use an audio

to voice over it. You can make it interactive. Have them respond.

There's so many things that you can do, and you can begin with a

free version and see if that works for you, or you can see if your

school will. Buy you a subscription to that. And that has. A few

more options if you have a paid subscription, but even the free

version is a really awesome way. To store your lessons, keep them

all in one place, easily upload new things and then really make

those things interactive with your students. So it's really

twofold. It's helping you to not have to have all of the

paperwork. When you're pushing in. When you're traveling from

school to school, you keep it all on your computer. So you know,

you just bring your computer with you and you'll have what you

need. And then it really helps you to create that interaction and

that constant check in. That's what we talk a lot about here. Is

working with your multilingual learners. You want to create ways

that you are checking inconsistently, and you want to do it

authentically. We're not going to test them every week, and you

sit down one on one and be assessing them to see where they're at.

That's not realistic. And that's not a great use of your time, but

doing something like nearpod where you can upload an activity, and

then you can have them do a speaking response. So now right away,

you pull out a speaking rubric and you can assess. How their

speaking is. And now you have that stored. So a couple of weeks

from now, you can do another one and you can see the improvement

they've made or the growth that they've had or areas they need to

work on. So when you use a digital platform like this. You now

have stored data that you can come back to. So when it comes to

report writing that reports, you could go back and you can see

where they were at the beginning of the year. You can check in

with how they're doing now. And you can write a report based on

that. We forget so often we think we're going to remember, but

there's so much going on. We don't have that time. So having that.

Recorded right there on the platform is going to help you stay

consistent. It's going to help you see where your students need

help and need more growth in and how you can support them with

that. So that's what I love using something like nearpod or

flipgrid where you can have that piece where they are responding

to you or they're typing in something. And you give them a passage

and then they could type right in there so you can quickly and

easily see. How they're doing this is going to take out a lot of

the stress, a lot of the work. If you put. This in at the

beginning it's going to take some work to get something like this

set up. But once it's set up, you now can have a great way to

streamline your lessons, to keep focus, to have it all on one, and

then to really check in and use that to assess your students

frequently. So that's why I love something like nearpod. They also

have vocabulary, which I think is a fantastic resource for

multilingual learners because it takes vocabulary, and it really

creates it in a way that there's music with it, there's videos,

there's explanations, there's activities that are there playing

with the vocabulary. So if you're really focused on vocabulary.

Development this year and strengthening your students tier two and

tier three vocabulary words. Then you might want to check out

vocabulary. It's a fantastic resource. Again, I'm not an

affiliate. I'm just sharing what I've seen that works. So we have

hagerty phonics, Snapwards Digital Library nearpod and then the

last resource that I absolutely think you must. Have. Is a

membership to equipping als, and I truly think this is going to

change and transform your year because if we look back at what I

talked about last week, the reasons that many of our resources and

curriculums are not working for our multilingual learners. To me,

one of the biggest reasons is because. You need something. You

need a curriculum that is flexible. Your group of students this

year, even if you're teaching the same grade level, the same

language level. Is going to be different than in your group last

year. We cannot be working with lesson plans that are laminated

that we use year after year. We can take some of those things, but

you're going to see and I'm sure you already know this that you're

going to have to use different scaffolds. They're going to need

different supports. They might have some different strengths that

your group last year didn't have. These students that you're

working with this year might have different areas of weakness that

you are going to have to shift, and you're going to have to work

on strengthening those. And so having a curriculum where you can

choose what is best to meet the needs of your students is how

you're going to be successful this year. And inside equipping. Ll.

Is because we have hundreds of different resources created. For K

through twelve all domains and all language levels available at

your fingertips. I'm confident that you will find what you are

looking for to meet the needs of your students without having to

reinvent the wheel, without having. To take a piece of this and

take a piece of this and pull it all together and then spend more

time because you're trying to force something to work that really

wasn't creative with your students in mind. And so I really do

believe that getting a subscription joining us inside equipping.

Ll's. Is going to transform your year because to know that you

have all of the resources at your fingertips, at your fingertips.

In one platform. Is going to alleviate a lot of your stress. Just

recently, I was talking with my husband about just all the

different ways we're bombarded with noise and attention, trying to

get our attention. And even if we want to go and search out

something and try to find something that we're looking for for our

students, we get distracted with this. Or maybe this will work.

Oh, no, that's not really what I'm looking for. Oh, no. I have to

now change this so it fits. But that we take all that away inside

equipping. Lls. Because we provide you with the resources so that

you can just go right to the platform. You can find what you're

looking for. We have it organized in ways so that you can find

your grade level or your language level or the domain that you

want to strengthen this year. And you can find the resources that

work. And then the other beautiful thing is, if you're not finding

a resource that you're thinking about, that you're looking for,

that you're trying to create. You get to talk right to us and say,

hey, I would love to see our resource. Like, right now, we had

some people reach out, hey, we would love to have some scaffolded,

novel studies for grades. Three through eight because I'm trying

to do the one and only ivan with my fourth graders, and what I

have is not working for them. They need something different so

that they can understand and comprehend this book and enjoy it and

show what they know. And that's what we're working on right now,

because we want to provide you with what you need to do. The best

that you can do to teach. In a very streamline. Streamlined,

stress free way. That's what we're all about. So if that is what

you're looking for, you're looking for a curriculum that's

flexible, that's going to meet your needs, going to meet the

students needs that you're working with. Even if you're working

with five different groups, imagine having all those things at

your fingertips that you can just download. Print and teach that's

what you're going to find inside equipping. Lls. So if you have

all of those resources and you're using those and you're creating

those routines to set up and going through those each week. I

guarantee your language learners will be successful. This year

they will make huge growth. When you're supporting them in those

different ways. And that's what we're all about. We want to help

you figure out what your students need, and then provide them with

what they need. In engaging and interactive ways so that they

enjoy learning. And that they in turn, make huge growth this year.

So check out, go back over the list we have hegronics Snapwords, a

digital library near pod and equipping. Lls see what you have, see

what you don't have, and see if you can ask your administrators to

support you with this and to give you subscriptions to this. If

you want more information about ways that we can help. Talk with

your administrators and see if they will pay for a subscription to

equipping aisles. Reach out. Let us know in the show notes. We'll

add our flyer that gives your administrators more information

about what we're all about and how we can support you. And your

students and how we can help them get set up with a school

license. So please reach out, let us know, but go back through

that list and see. Do you have something that's covering phoneic

awareness? Do you have something that's a visual piece, either for

vocabulary or for sight words. Do you have a device? And do you

have a digital library that you have access to? Do you have an

online digital platform that you're teaching from? Maybe that's

Google Classroom or nearpod or flipgrid or schoology or seesaw.

There's so many options now. Don't flip from one or the other. Use

what's working for you, but to stick with it. And then are you

finding the resources that you need? Do you have them all at your

fingertips for one low price? That's what you'll find in equipping

ells. So check over that list, see what you're missing, see what

you can add in this year, and go and ask your administrators. Ask

them if they can help support you in getting the resources you

need to better support your English language learners.

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