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I’ve previously published posts about what happens in a typical day for some of my classes, including:

HERE’S WHAT MY TWO-PERIOD ELL NEWCOMERS CLASS LOOKS LIKE THIS YEAR

WHAT HAPPENS IN A TYPICAL DAY DURING MY ELL NEWCOMERS CLASS

WHAT HAPPENS IN A TYPICAL DAY DURING MY ELL U.S. HISTORY CLASS

As those previous posts indicate, as I learn what works well and what doesn’t work, my lessons and strategies continue to change – even after twenty-two years of teaching!

So, here is what a typical week looks like – for now, at least – in my double period ELL Newcomers class:

 

BACKGROUND

I usually have between thirty-and-thirty-five ELL Newcomer students, though only a portion stay with me for the whole year.   I have probably moved at least twelve-to-fifteen of the students I had at the beginning of the year to our Intermediate level class at different times of the year, have welcomed at least that many at various times during the year (THE BEST WAYS TO WELCOME NEW ELL NEWCOMER STUDENTS THROUGHOUT THE YEAR_), and two-or-three have moved to either another local area or returned to Mexico.

I also have eighteen peer tutors (the Newcomers are in both periods, while nine peer tutors are in each one – each peer tutor is permanently assigned to certain students).  Fortunately, I have two adjacent classrooms, and am able to teach my Newcomers class in one, while I teach my other three periods of IB Theory of Knowledge in the other.  This allows me to keep the Newcomer room permanently set-up in small “pods” of three-to-four desks each, and each student and peer tutor has a marked basket where they keep materials.  So, no time is lost distributing books/papers or setting up desks.

About a half or so of the students also participate in a “zero period” class – a class before the school day officially begins.  The more proficient ones work online, typically on Quill or on Raz-Kids, while others work with peer tutors in very small groups for intensive instruction.

 

FIRST PERIOD

Must of this very first portion of the period is unchanged from what I wrote in my earlier post about this class, so I’m just going to reprint it here:

1.Students start the day by sitting at their pods and working with peer tutors on their leveled True Stories books. Students receive either an A or an F grade depending on if they are sitting at their desks with their books open (though I don’t really keep track – some students were not being very diligent about getting to work on time, and doing this fixed that problem immediately).

Twice a week, a student teacher takes about half the class to the other room to work on English For Everyone books.  Anyone can join that group, but they have to agree to do (a little) homework.  On those days, the students who choose to not be part of that group work with peer tutors on National Geo “Inside Phonics” books.

Things start off slightly differently on Mondays, when students have to first complete a multilingual online Google Forms check-in and respond to a weekly Dialogue Journal our class does with the advanced ELL class.

Things are very different, however, on Fridays, when we always start off with a formative assessment – a test – on what vocabulary and grammar we covered during the week.

Here is where things have changed since the beginning of the year:

The test consists of thirty questions, include one short writing exercise.  They are mainly based on the vocabulary words we learned during the week, along with many “scrambled sentences.”  Those sentences are not new, and come from various activities we have done during the week, and which I’ll discuss later in this post.  Peer tutors immediately score the tests, and every month or every six weeks or so  I try to conference with students on a visualization of their results. After they complete the test, students work on Raz Kids for the rest of the period, though I also sometimes have them work on Quizizz interactive videos or Wordwall activities, too.

Must of this next portion of the period is unchanged from what I wrote in my earlier post about this class, so I’m just going to reprint here:

2. Next, we move on to the thematic focus of that week. It generally is a Picture Word Inductive Model, a text data set, or a related unit in the Inside The USA textbook, or preparing and then presenting a related Google slideshow.  These presentations happen weekly, and I give students a simple written outline they complete first (except for working on Quill on Fridays, games, and these presentations, none of our work is online).  For example, when we were studying food, they needed to make a presentation on their favorite meal.  After their slideshow is complete, we do a round robin presentation with one person moving from group to group, and everyone making the same presentation several times.

Also, every Wednesday peer tutors do a practice test with students to help them prepare for Friday’s “real” one.

Here is where things have changed since the beginning of the year:

Most days, peer tutors also spend a few minutes during this time quizzing students on the vocabulary words, with students writing them on mini-whiteboards.  Peer tutors also have students practice using the vocabulary words in sentences.

This is the same as before:

3. We’ll end the class with a game or two of Quizizz or Blooket reinforcing the theme of the week.

SECOND PERIOD

I’ve probably made more changes to what happens in this period, though the first “Do Now” activity is often the same as before:

1.This period begins with students practicing conversation with their peer tutors. Every few months students are given different packets with sentence starters. If you look at the websites of some of my books, you can download some, and we’ll have a bunch of these in the second edition of the ELL Teacher’s Toolbox next year.

Here are some changes:

To provide students more support on reading comprehension, a need I indentified from what is a generally a less-than-useful and often non-functioning National Geographic online English assessment (but which our district uses, at least for now), peer tutors alternate this conversational practice with groups choosing books to read aloud, paired with a comprehension question asked by the tutor after each page.

2. There are now four activites we always do each week:

Sentences from these activities are the ones that are “scrambled” on that week’s test.

In addition, we periodically do these activities:

  • A short funny dialogue that students first perform for another “pod,” and then some perform in front of the class
  • An activity where students in each pod choose a page they want to learn from the Oxford English dictionary and their peer tutor helps them learn it.
  • A jigsaw or “strip story” (a sequencing activity where students have to put several students in the correct order) related to the theme we’re study.

3. We’ll typically end the class with a Quizizz or Blooket game on the grammar concept we’re studying. I post the games in Google Classroom, and students who complete the grammar activities early have the option of either going to Quill or replaying the games.

Again, Fridays tend to be substantially different – after conversation practice we’ll generally play a very energetic game (like Messenger and Scribe) that reinforces what we’ve been learning.

 

All feedback is welcome!

I’m adding this post to THE BEST RESOURCES TO HELP EDUCATORS TEACH ELL NEWCOMERS.

You might also be interested in Eight Ways We Are “Accelerating Learning” For Our ELL Newcomers This Year.