If you have never taught ESL before, then you might be looking for a comprehensive guidebook to teaching English to young students. Look no further; ESL Activities and Mini-Books for Every Classroom is just the resource you are looking for! Even if you have taught ESL to younger learners before, you will still get a lot out of this book. In fact, ESL Activities and Mini-Books for Every Classroom is one of those books you should always have on hand so that you can continue to refer back to it from time to time.
The book starts by introducing the teacher to the basics of teaching ESL. This book starts with introductory language teaching matters “Terms You Should Know”, “Levels of Language Learning” and “What is Proficiency?” However, even if you’ve been teaching for a while, it’s still a good idea to brush up on these topics. We wouldn’t be surprised if a fair share of ESL teachers lacked a thorough understanding of true language proficiency.
Have you ever wondered how to start a new school year? If so, this book offers material to help ESL teachers with the first few weeks of school. This section includes many helpful tips on how to get your students comfortable in the classroom and how to assess your students’ language level very early on. It also gives you some great activity ideas.
Part 2 is when the book really gets into classroom activities and learning topics. This section covers topics such as “At School”, “ABCs”, “All About Me”, “Colors and Shapes”, “Living in the USA” and more. Each section includes a “reproducible” and a “mini-book” to be used in your classroom. The reproducibles are activities that you can help your students do in the classroom and the mini-books are reading exercises. This book makes lesson planning a whole lot easier! As a teacher, you can supplement each topic with your own activities and games as well, adding to it what your student learns.
"This book is aimed at younger students, but the great thing about it is that you can actually use it for older beginner students, too. It may seem a bit childish, but many junior high and high school students with limited English speaking abilities will enjoy the activities and reading exercises in the book."
The only downfall to this book is the unit “Living in the USA”. As we all know, the USA isn’t the only English speaking country in the world. If you are British or teaching British English, then you may find this topic completely irrelevant. Of course, you can still teach it to your students, but you may also want to supplement the unit with some things about the UK, Australia, or the rest of the English-speaking world so as to more thoroughly educate your young learners. I would highly recommend this to teachers who are just starting out and teachers with plenty of teaching experience as well.
