(I’m republishing my favorite posts from the second half of 2022)

 

 

This year, in my ELL Newcomers class, we began with students spending ten minutes using their laptops to work on various English-learning sites of their choice.

Then, I would display an oral language prompt on the screen (a question and a sentence-starter as a response).  I would model saying it, and then students would write down the question and their response in a notebook.  Next, students would go outside in small groups to share their answers with peer tutors, and each group would choose two students to go up in front of the class once we returned to the classroom.  Then, with a peer tutor holding a hand-held mike and amplifier, the representatives would come up and share, followed by applause, of course.

It was an important and useful part of class.

And here is the downloadable PowerPoint with 160 oral language prompts I used this year.

My focus in this activity was to promote practice and comfort with speaking English.  It was not designed to teach academic vocabulary.

However, academic vocabulary development was the purpose of a similar daily activity we did in my ELL U.S. History class.  I’ll share those prompts in a future post.