The Mitten – Activites, Lesson Plans and Ideas
The Mitten, by Jan Brett is an excellent book to read with your ELL students during the long Winter doldrums that continue on after the return back to school from the long holiday break.
I’d like to give my friend Miss Christie a special shout out for reminding me about what a fabulous resource Jan Brett’s book, The Mitten is for ELL students.
The main reason I like The Mitten is because it’s the perfect Winter themed activity that is great to use during the January/February doldrums.
The sites I’ve included below, contain lots of activities, lesson plans and ideas that you can use in your classroom.
Jan Brett’s Site – Includes some really cute PDF printouts that you can use to have the children retell the story while they “tuck” the animals inside the mittens.
The Animals that you can tuck inside the mitten.
Solve Math Word Problems
Math word problems challenge ELL students to use math and language skills at the same time.
Math 16 Word Problems. Medium – This PPT contains 16 medium word problems. I’ve broken down the equations, so it will be easy to talk your students through the problems.
Vocabulary Director & Word Detective Literature Circle Response Cards
Literature Circle response cards help students focus in on their task without overwhelming them.
I cruised through my little stash of literature circle resources and decided to condense them into a mini version of some of my favorite literature circle worksheets.
It’s a work in progress…
Vocabulary Director and Word Detective Response Cards - This page contains two vocabulary cards.
The first one is for the Vocabulary Director job. The instructions are below.
While you’re reading, write down at least four words that are new to you. Write down the page number, the paragraph and line you found it on. Write the word and the definition that best fits the sentence. Record the information in the space provided on the cart below. Your next task is to come up with a presentation plan. How will you present it to your group? Will you challenge your group mates to a race to see who will find the word first? Be creative!
The second one is for the Word Detective. The instructions are below.
While you’re reading, write down at least four words that are new to you. Write down the word and the word origin. Does the word contain any Greek or Latin root words? What is the meaning of the root word? Find the definition that best fits the sentence. Record the information in the space provided on the chart below.
Unit Spelling Words
What's the scoop? Well, the scoop is that each week the new spelling words will be posted in a PowerPoint that has links to the dictionary for definitions, pronunciation and oh, so much more!
Each week from now on, until the end of the school year, I will post our new unit spelling words. Even if you aren’t part of my class, please feel free to download a copy of the PPT and use it in your classroom to reinforce spelling and vocabulary.
Next to each word will be a “click here” link. The link will take you directly to the dictionary where there will be the definitions, examples and a sound file that students can listen to for the correct pronunciation of the targeted word.
Literature Circle Response Cards
Literature Circle Reading Response Cards divide and chunk down the roles, so English Language Learners (ELL) can participate in Literature Circles in an authentic and meaningful way.
Literature Circles can be overwhelming even for native language speakers, but there is a way to get ESL students interacting with the text without having them freeze up in a panic.
Literature Circle reading response cards chunk down the roles in to manageable bite size pieces. I wish I could take credit for this one, but I happened to stumble upon it while browsing through the teacherspayteachers.com website.
While some of these TPT free worksheets may not be exactly broken down into chunk sized pieces, you can be the judge as to their usefulness in your classroom adapt them to meet your student’s needs.
Non-Fiction Reading Response Cards
Read and Draw Silly Monsters
Students read sentences about silly monsters and then draw them exactly like they are described.
Check out the two worksheets I developed for my first graders. They have to read a sentence about an imaginary animal and then draw it exactly as it is described.
G1 Greeperdorn – This worksheet has two imaginary monsters on it, the greeperdorn and the bumblesnap. I’m going to use it to walk the students through the process and then they can take it home to use it as a study sheet.
G1 Woogle – There are two monsters on this worksheet, the woogle and the wubble. I plan on taking a grade on this one. Be sure everyone knows what a beak is otherwise there maybe some confusion.
Free ESL Simple Sentence Writing Worksheets
Sentence paterns make writing English a breeze.
Below are two free down loadable worksheets I put together for my first grade class. They are a mix of the three sentence patterns we have been working on this unit.
- _______ can ________ , but he/she can’t __________.
- Do you like _________________?
- Can you play________________?
Free First Grade PowerPoint
Students practice writing simple tense sentences using short, tall, fat, thin, young and old.
I’ve created a simple PowerPoint that focuses on constructing simple sentences. Click the link below to download. As always, all my PowerPoints are free.
Conjunction Junction
Using School House Rock's Conjunction Junction is a really clever way to teach your students how to use and, but, or and nor.
Here’s a great little activity you can do with your intermediate level speakers.
Divide the class up into boys and girls. Teach them the lyrics to Conjunction Junction from School House Rock’s classic animated short video. It’s only about 2.14 minutes long, so it is totally doable, especially if you have to fit it into an assembly or some other school production. Since I’ve already divided the script up for you, all you need to do is teach them the song. It is a bit fast in some places and the girls seem to get all the easy parts, but if you closely work with the boys, I’m sure they will catch on quickly.
Be sure to coach them on the subtle intonation and inflection found in the song. Really have them listen carefully to the lyrics and encourage them to mimic the singers. Trust me, you don’t want them singing in a flat monotone voice for this production.
It’s lots of fun, especially when it comes to the part where the boys get to bellow out Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!
You can download the video here.
School House Rock – Grammar – Conjunction Junction – this is the link to the song only.
An alternate source for the video can be found here.
An alternate source for the lyrics can be found here.
Free PowerPoint Templates
Free PowerPoint templates are a fantastic way to spice up your classroom presentations.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I said that I would share with you all the free PowerPoint templates that are out there.
Just a word of advice before you go clicking away – some of the sites will require you to give your email address before you can download anything and they also my limit the number of downloads.
Regarding the free basic PowerPoints – to me, it looks like they are recycled from each other. So the point is, look around and choose only the ones you know you will use. You can always bookmark the site and go back for more later.
Presentation Magazine has a lot of very professional PowerPoint templates. Some of them are even animated!
Fppt.com features several free PowerPoint templates every month so check back often.
Templatewise.com offers some very professional graphics at no charge.
Brainybetty.com is a great resource for basic PowerPont templates.
Poweredtemplates.com offers several pages of free professional PowerPoint templates.
Indezine.com has loads of free basic PowerPoints to choose from.
Sonia Colmean’s Digital Studio offers some basic PowerPoints at no charge.
Freepptemplates.com is another great source for free basic templates.