Bahiyyah teaches academic content to ESL middle school students.

Pull up a chair and listen in on my conversation with Bahiyyih Baker. Bahiyyih has her MEd in Teaching English as a Second Language and is currently working with Chinese middle school students teaching academic content in an ESL setting. Bahiyyih shares some some pretty insightful information that you’ll definitely want to hear. Join us.

Episode Two

This student chose to put vocabulary cards in her bag, along with a copy of the book. On the outside of the bag, she illustrated  it with pictures that she printed straight from the internet.

I know many ESL teachers tend to shy away from doing differentiated book report projects, but these type of projects have their merits. I believe differentiated products are a great choice for ESL students because it allows them to:

• chunk it down – Students can chunk down the information into manageable bite size pieces. They don’t have to write long detail oriented reports about the book.
• set boundaries  – Rubrics provide the structure that very clearly spells out what the grading perimeters are. Students know what they need to do in order to earn a good grade.
• have an artistic outlet – Differentiated products allow students to infuse a little bit of art into their project. Incorporating art into their project helps the students to take ownership of it. The art work could be something as simple as arranging a collage made from magazines or printouts taken from the internet. Or it may be as elaborate as creating a hand drawn pop-out style of product . Differentiated products give the students permission to be creative.
• think outside the box – Students are set free from the drudgery of writing a summary style book report. Differentiated products allow the students to creatively express the setting and plot, as well as, giving them the opportunity to focus on highlighting the character traits that make the main character and minor characters come alive.  It also gives them a chance to analyze and comment on the author’s purpose.
• interact with the text – Books in a bag encourage students to interact with the text. Students must thoughtfully consider what things to put inside their bags. They have to ask themselves questions about what things are critical to the story. It gives them the opportunity to choose items that may be related to the setting. Additionally, they may choose objects that are important to the character or have significance in relation to the plot.

This is a nonfiction book in a bag project about rain and lightning. In the bag, the student placed a water bottle, an illustrated poster about the water cycle and a few weather vocabulary cards.

Each layer describes a different aspect of the book.

This book burger poster capitalizes on McDonald’s popular slogan.

I’ve updated and added more resources.

Even though I haven’t updated my home page lately, I have been working hard at updating the resource pages.

In fact, I’ve added quite a few new items to my social studies resource page, including answer keys and new worksheets.

Plus, I’m updating the math resource page, as well…

Check back soon, as I’m in the process of putting a science resource page together.

Use these free printable worksheets to go with Houghton Mifflin’s Iditarod Dream in your 5th grade class.

In reading class, we are using Houghton Mifflin’s text book, level 5. Right now, we are in theme two – Expeditions and we are reading Iditarod Dream by Ted Wood. The worksheets we use in class are posted below.

The worksheet collection is a series of Word documents, so you can tweak it a little (or a lot) to suit your particular needs. Basically, I’ve just taken some of the questions from the teacher’s manual (and added a few little zingers of my own.)

Iditarod Dream Vocabulary – Before we actually start reading the story we always do a vocabulary activity. Usually, I do some sort of foldable booklet. This is the PPT I put together to go with the vocabulary activity.

Iditarod Dream p. 230B-230C – This worksheet includes a comparison and contrast Venn diagram where the students have to compare the Junior Iditarod to the Annual Adult Iditarod and answer a prediction question. (I did additional research on the adult Iditarod and presented to the class, as background information.)

Iditarod Dream p. 230D - This worksheet requires the students to identify if they think Dusty is a good musher or not. They must provide two examples from the story to support their conclusion.  Also, it asks the students to list descriptive words and phrases that the author uses to create a frantic mood during the sled team’s accident.

Itditarod Dream p. 230F-230G – On this worksheet,  students must identify fact from opinion and list three dog chores that Dusty must do in order to keep his dogs healthy and comfortable during the race.

Iditarod Dreams p. 230H – On this worksheet, the students must give two reasons why Dusty decides not to sleep while at Yenta Station and fill in a timeline outlining Dusty’s dog chores.

Iditarod Dream p. 230I- On this worksheet, the students must tell how they think Noah and Andy will feel about Dusty’s victory.  They must use information and details from the story to support what they think was Dusty’s most important racing decision.