Writing for the ELL Classroom

These titles include writing activities, research-based strategies, and lots of great prompts and vocabulary lists to help your students become stronger writers!

Academic Language for English Language Learners and Struggling Readers: How to Help Students Succeed Across Content Areas

Product Description: The Freemans provide the information busy secondary teachers need to work effectively with English learners and struggling readers. They examine academic language at different levels: the text level, the paragraph level, the sentence level, and the word level. For each, they provide examples of academic language and specific strategies teachers can use as they teach language arts, science, math, and social studies.

Easy & Effective Writing Lessons for English Language Learners: Scaffolded Writing Assignments That Help ELLs Succeed in the Mainstream Classroom

Drawing on more than fifteen years' experience teaching English language learners, Marilyn Pryle has designed and classroom-tested these ten writing assignments that support the particular needs of ELLs. Each assignment includes whole-class lessons to introduce the topic and teach about genre; leveled mini-lessons that address students' needs at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced language-proficiency levels; reproducible prewriting activities; and a rubric.

From Ideas to Words: Writing Strategies for English Language Learners

Product Description: Professor Tasha Tropp Laman provides insight and practical tips for getting ELL students writing, even if they are at the very beginning stages of English language acquisition. Each chapter is stocked with specific tools and strategies that help writing instruction meet the needs of ELL writers; illustrated classroom vignettes, samples of children's writing, student observations, and planning notes based on the information in that chapter.

Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners

In this must-read guide, experts Nancy Cloud, Fred Genesee, and Else Hamayan lay out a research-based yet practical and accessible approach to reading and writing instruction for ELLs. Designed for ELL teachers, mainstream teachers, and reading specialists, the book offers an excellent foundation on what we know about literacy development in ELLs before offering numerous classroom strategies on topics such as: emergent literacy in a second language; helping ELLs become biliterate; academic language and literacy; connecting reading and writing; and assessment.

Reading, Writing, and Learning in ESL: A Resource Book for K-12 Teachers (4th edition)

This Fourth Edition of Peregoy & Boyle's text continues the strengths of the third with its comprehensiveness and accessibility, providing a wealth of practical strategies for promoting literacy and language development in English language learners (K-12). Unlike many texts in this field, Reading, Writing and Learning In ESL takes a unique approach by exploring contemporary language acquisition theory as it relates to instruction and providing suggestions and methods for motivating and involving ELL students.

Teaching Writing in Mixed-Language Classrooms: Powerful Writing Strategies for All Students (K-5)

In this book, Joanne Yatvin offers a variety of techniques for teaching writing that will motivate all students, while also providing ELLs with the supports they need. The techniques include using patterns — song, rhymes, and playground games; short forms, such as slogans and mottos; frames for scaffolding standard writing forms like letters and invitations; and highly structured genres, such as fairy tales and legends. These engaging structured writing experiences will help all students develop the skills they need to write with confidence.

Teaching Writing With Latino/a Students: Lessons Learned at Hispanic-Serving Institutions

This collection of essays, qualitative studies, and conversations explores the challenges and opportunities of writing instruction at two- and four-year colleges with at least 25% Hispanic enrollments. The authors — all experienced educators — address the geographic and cultural differences among Latino student populations that inform their attitudes toward writing, as well as their identities as learners; the complex relationship between educators and learners; and the challenges of developing a writing pedagogy that supports these learners.

The Common Core Writing Book, K-5: Lessons for a Range of Tasks, Purposes, and Audiences

Product Description: Owocki breaks the writing anchor standards into manageable chunks, emphasizing differentiation, engagement, and writing for authentic purposes. She offers a clear description of what each standard asks from students; instructional decision trees that connect assessment to planning; instructional strategies that gradually release responsibility to students; and suggestions for tailoring support to meet students' individual needs, including ELLs.

The Creative Word Choice Journal for K-2

Tired of reading student papers that describe things as "nice" or "good"? This workbook, highly recommended by educators, helps young students improve their vocabulary, grammar, and spelling. Filled with reproducible worksheets that offer alternative word choices for vague or overused terms, this book will not only help students understand these elements of good writing, but will support students as they produce their own descriptive texts.

The Words Came Down!

Beginning with designing a classroom that welcomes students and creates appropriate conditions for learning, the authors go on to detail a workshop format for reading, writing and content-area studies. Oral language is emphasized in a continuum from teacher modeling to student-to-student communication. This book emphasizes that when children's attempts at communicating are accepted and celebrated, they will learn to communicate with each other comfortably and spontaneously wherever they may be.

Think Write Book: A Sentence Combining Workbook for ELL Students (Student Edition)

By: Ines Mevs

Educator Inés Millin Mevs provide guidance on how to use sentence combining as a writing strategy for ELLs. Students combine two or more short sentences into one longer, more interesting sentence, using conjunctions, relative pronouns, and other function words. In the process, students learn about English grammar and syntax and how to construct paragraphs. The workbook is accompanied by a teacher's edition that includes the research base for all strategies, examples of scoring rubrics, and ideas for incorporating sentence combining into instruction.

When English Language Learners Write: Connecting Research to Practice (K-8)

When English Language Learners Write helps educators connect language acquisition to everyday classroom practices. Samway explains numerous important factors affecting nonnative writers and then she shows educators crucial steps to take for instruction that's responsive to language learners' needs, such as: understanding the literacy practices of non-mainstream cultures; discovering what ELLs can do as writers before they become fluent in English; and providing a print-rich environment to cement the reading—writing connection.

Writing Between Languages: How English Language Learners Make the Transition to Fluency (4-12)

Product Description: Professor Danling Fu draws on her classroom experience with ELLs to share an approach to writing instruction that puts the literacy knowledge students bring from their native language and putting writing at the center of the curriculum. She describes the helpful role native literacy plays in building written English fluency as writers use code-switching and movement between languages to scaffold transitional writing, even in cases where teachers do not know a student's home language.

Writing Instruction & Assessment for English Language Learners K-8

This handbook offers ELL and mainstream teachers a number of tools and strategies they can use to help ELLs become successful writers. Topics include handwriting and spelling for ELLs, facilitating writing fluency, features of various written languages that may appear in ELLs' writing, approaches for teaching different genres of writing, and detailed information on different types of writing assessments. The authors have also included rubrics, graphic organizers, and recommended resources in each chapter.

Writing Instruction for English Learners: A Focus on Genre

Moving beyond the writing process, this useful resource is filled with activities and graphic organizers to help students understand and then produce various types of writing: narrative, expository, persuasive and poetic. Each writing type includes multiple genres-for example, the persuasive form comprises letters, editorials, advertisements, and essays/compositions-and the author does a good job of differentiating the components of these genres, as well as sequencing and scaffolding related classroom exercises.

Writing Sense: Integrated Reading and Writing Lessons for English Language Learners (K-8)

This detailed-yet very readable-guide to literacy instruction for ELLs offers a wealth of instructional information to educators. The writing lessons are aligned to five stages of English proficiency and adjusted for students' ages, and each lesson includes activities to develop the strategies of successful readers, including accessing background knowledge, inference, questioning the text, synthesizing, and monitoring comprehension.