Teachers who work with English as a Second Language learners will find ESL/ESOL/ELL/EFL reading/writing skill-building children's books, stories, activities, ideas, strategies to help PreK-3, 4-8, and 9-12 students learn to read.
Creating Learning Traditions
This holiday season consider adding some new traditions for your family that will make meaningful memories and strengthen foundations for reading and learning success.
Listen, laugh, learn
- Listen to audio books while you're traveling to visit family, wrapping gifts or cooking for the holidays.
- Lyrics to holiday songs are fun to read and sing together. It is also good fun and good collaborative writing practice to make up your own lyrics to familiar tunes.
- Start a story-telling tradition by revisiting holidays of the past. Old family photographs at holiday gatherings will help prompt stories about your own life and family traditions.
Read, relax, respond
- Put reading and writing skills to practical use. Plan holiday meals by reading cookbooks together, writing the shopping lists and finding the needed items at the store by reading signs and labels. Read the recipe and cook together. During the simmering and baking, kids can write and decorate menus or place cards for special holiday meals.
- Set aside time just for reading. Curl up on the couch together and read aloud an old favorite or check out books about another culture's winter celebrations.
- Work on those letters. Improve writing skills with letters to Santa and writing thank you notes for holiday gifts to relatives and friends.
- Download this article as a PDF.*
- Download this article as a Word document.
- View this article in Spanish.
*To view this file, you will need a copy of Acrobat Reader. If it is not already installed on your computer, click here to download.
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I just want to thank you for providing such a comprehensive source of information for educators and parents of English language learners through your website and products. As a teacher educator, I have found Colorín Colorado to be particularly helpful when teaching bilingual methods and assessment courses. Thank you for your commitment to the education of English language learners.
~ Pauline C.
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Colorín Colorado is a free web-based, bilingual service that provides information, activities, and advice for educators and Spanish-speaking families of English language learners (ELLs, also known as students of English as a second language).
Colorín Colorado is produced by Reading Rockets — an educational service of WETA, the flagship public broadcasting station in the nation's capital. Original artwork by Caldecott Award-winning illustrator David Diaz is used with permission.
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Colorín Colorado receives major funding from the American Federation of Teachers. Additional funding is provided by the National Institute for Literacy and the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs.
¡Colorín Colorado! ® is a registered trademark of WETA.
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