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.
About ELLs
What's Different About Teaching Reading to Students Learning English?
What's Different About Teaching Reading to Students Learning English? by Dorothy Kaufmann provides teacher trainers with a research-based curriculum to guide the professional development of classroom and ESL teachers who teach reading in classes where some or all of the students are English language learners. The curriculum is available for purchase from the Center for Applied Linguistics store.
AFT Position on English Language Learners: Where We Stand*
This document outlines the AFT position on the education of English language learners.
American Federation of Teachers: English Language Learners
The AFT seeks to promote educational excellence and equity for English language learners (ELLs) to ensure they meet the same challenging standards required of all students.
This site by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) offers lots of information about ELL instruction. Although designed to promote instructional materials sold by ASCD, the site has a wide range of resources for ELL teachers, mainstream teachers, and content-area teachers.
Bank Street Literacy Guide: English Language Learners
This section provides guidance to volunteer tutors working with children who are learning English, and for whom English is not their first language.
Best Evidence Encyclopedia: ELLs
The English-language Learners section of the Best Evidence Encyclopedia summarizes the impact of a few online reading programs for English-language learners and other language minority students in the elementary grades.
Center for Applied Linguistics
CAL provides language education products and services to educators, service providers, and businesses.
Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence
CREDE is a federally funded research and development program focused on improving the education of students whose ability to reach their potential is challenged by language or cultural barriers, race, geographic location, or poverty. The site provides access to publications, research, and toolkits for administrators, teachers, and parents.
The ELL Outlook is a bimonthly e-newsletter dedicated to providing the latest research, news, program models, and interviews with ELL researchers, educators, and policymakers.
ESL/Bilingual Resource Guide for Mainstream Teachers
For a quick guide to working with ELL students, check out this resource from the Portland Public Schools (OR). You'll find useful, practical information in an accessible format that you'll return to again and again, including an excellent language acquisition chart and a glossary of ELL terms.
This comprehensive site includes content-based lesson plans, activities, recommendations on classroom materials, and discussion boards for working with minority students.
Everything ESL: Challenges for ELLs in Content Area Learning
This article provides an overview of the challenges ELLs face in their content-area classes, such as math, science, and social studies. Understanding these challenges will help both ELL and content-area teachers adapt instruction for ELL students.
This site has short, helpful tips for the educator in a hurry. It offers an overview of a variety of techniques to improve the ELL student's learning experience.
Everything ESL: Understanding Second Language Terminology
Here are some essential terms that you need to know in order to understand basic second language acquisition theory.
The free hELLo Newsletter, produced by the Big Deal Book, is available by email subscription and online. It specifically targets K-12 and Adult ELL educators, program directors, and media specialists by providing access to imaginative and interactive Web environments and free materials.
Help! They Don't Speak English Starter Kit
"Help! They Don't Speak English!," is an ESL resource developed by a team of teachers. The handbook is available for free and can be downloaded from this site in PDF format.
International Reading Association: ELL Resources
The International Reading Association suggests resources for educators to meet the needs of English-language Learners (ELLs), including recommended reading, lesson plans, and literacy links.
Learning the Language is a blog sponsored by Education Week and written by Mary Ann Zehr. The blog tackles difficult policy questions surrounding English-language learning, explores learning innovations, and shares stories about different cultural groups.
LearningStore is a service shared by Colorín Colorado and our sister sites (Reading Rockets, LD OnLine, and AdLit.org) to provide you the best educational materials, vetted by experts. ELL resources include books, software, interactive learning tools, and DVDs.
Minnesota Department of Education: ELL Companion Manual
This manual is designed to provide assessment and eligibility determination guidelines to special education professionals.
The site looks great and will be really helpful in my teaching the adult and child ELL populations daily.
~ Ruth Y.
