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.
Multilingual Resources: Other languages
Dearborn Public Schools in Michigan hosts a webpage that links to other Web sites with resources for Arabic language learners and educators.
Awesome Library: Multilingual Lesson Plans
A listing of lesson plans and multicultural classroom resources offered in many different languages, from Apache to Yiddish. Some languages require special fonts for correct display.
The BBC "Learning English" webpage offers English language-learning multimedia tools such as short courses and quizzes to test grammar and vocabulary. They offer some material in other languages, including Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Casa Notes is designed to allow teachers to quickly make, and customize, typical notes that are sent home to parents or given to the students. Note templates are available both in English and Spanish.
Children First: Developmental Assets
This site outlines the 40 Assets mentioned in the article and offers translations in 9 languages, including Vietnamese and Farsi.
Childtopia offers hundreds of interactive, educational games for kids on a subscription basis, though some games may be tested for free. The Web site, based in Spain, is available in Spanish, Catalan, Basque, English, and French.
Clearinghouse for Multilingual Documents
The California Department of Education promotes the Clearinghouse for Multilingual Documents (CMD), a secure database to assist local educators in both locating and uploading their own free parental notification documents translated into non-English languages. While documents will be most relevant for educators in California, the database serves as a model for other educational systems looking to expand resources in other languages.
Emergency and Community Health Outreach
Multilingual resources on health and safety resources, languages include English, Hmong, Somali, Spanish, Vietnamese and Cambodian.
How to Make the Most of Summer: What Parents Can Do to Keep Kids Sharp Over the Summer
This parent tip sheet from the National Center for Summer Learning offers parents ideas on ways that they can encourage summer learning. In addition to English and Spanish, the sheet is available in 6 other languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Bengali, and Urdu.
International Children's Digital Library
This digital library hosts a collection of books from around the world. Ultimately, this organization hopes to have every culture and language represented so that every child can know and appreciate the riches of children's literature available from the world community.
Make Beliefs Comix, created by acclaimed "Make Beliefs" author Bill Zimmerman, allows kids to create their own comics in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, or Latin.
Minnesota Department of Education: ELL Special Education Website
This site offers translated special education forms written in the following languages: Arabic, Bosnian, Cambodian, Hmong, Lao, Russian, Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese. It also has links to an ELL Special Education manual.
San Diego School District: Parent Resources
The San Diego Unified School District's parent resource page offers general school policy information in multiple languages, along with helpful articles about testing, attendance, and student performance.
Sesame English: DVD for Children
Sesame English produces an ESL DVD series for children in grades pre-K to 4 in five languages: Spanish, Hmong, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, and Vietnamese. The DVDs can be purchased online and shipped to the US and Canada.
Star Bright Books is an independent publishing company dedicated to producing the highest quality books for children. Star Bright Books produces books that embrace children of all colors, nationalities, and abilities, and they currently publish books in 16 languages.
U.S. Citizen and Immigration Service: Information for New Immigrants
Links to a booklet, "Welcome to the United States." The booklet covers basic information about housing, jobs, education and healthcare in the U.S. Downloadable in English, Arabic, Chinese, Haitian/Creole, Korean, French, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Urdu and Vietnamese.
I have been drawn to the unique needs of ELLs and how to make their educational experience worthwhile. Then I came upon your website, filled with advice, family connections, and information in multiple languages. Kudos! I can't wait to tell my colleagues about you.
~ Dana D.
