Help students develop important literary vocabulary skills with the use of puppets. Ask students to create two puppets. Make sure that the students have all of the necessary supplies, such as paper bags, socks, glue, buttons and fabric. Tell students that they should be creative and strive to make each puppet unique. Divide the students into pairs. Tell students that they will work together to make a play. Explain to students that one puppet will say a sentence in English using important vocabulary words. Then another puppet should translate the sentence into Spanish.
Students will have to think about the meaning of various words and how they would describe it in their native language. Monitor students as they create scripts.
English language learners often need help developing their fluency skills. Develop a lesson for students that will help them build confidence in speaking, help them develop their vocabulary skills, understand sentence structure and become fluent readers. Tell students that they will be reading specific lines from a script. However, before you assign parts, practice reading the material several times using a choral reading technique. Then divide the class into groups to practice reading the script with a small group of people. Finally, you may assign parts. Reader's Theater is an excellent literature strategy to use with ESL students because it provides them with a motivation to keep reading the same material over and over.
ESL students will enjoy participating in a book club with other students who are also learning the language. Choose a book that has an appropriate reading and comprehension level for students. Look for a book that will maintain the students' interest and spark interesting discussions. If possible, select a book that has a movie inspired from it. Meet after school or another time in the day to discuss each chapter. If desired, play a portion of the movie to go along with the section the students have already read. ESL students enjoy working with smaller groups in order to build their confidence when speaking in front of others.
Another way to help build the ESL students' fluency skills is to incorporate sing-along songs into the lesson. In order to spark interest, begin by playing multiple high interest sing-along song videos for the students. Students are naturally motivated to start reading to keep up with the songs. After the songs are over hand out copies of several funny song lyrics. Begin by using a choral reading technique to read the songs together as a class. Next take turns reading lines with various students. If students are still struggling, group them into pairs and ask them to partner-read through the songs. For an exciting conclusion, play the song for them and ask them to sing-along.