Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

Read this web page or download a single sheet of suggestions to make reading together fun and funny for parents and kids together, while encouraging the skills to make a lifelong reader. Teachers can download the tips for first grade in NINE languages in addition to English to print out and send home with your ESL/ELL students. Their parents will appreciate the opportunity to participate in their learning, and everyone wins. Printables require Acrobat Reader.

tag(s): independent reading (82)

Read the tips on this web page or download a single sheet of suggestions to make reading together fun and funny for parents and kids together, while encouraging the skills to make a lifelong reader. Teachers can download the tips for third grade in NINE languages in addition to English to print out and send home with your ESL/ELL students. Their parents will appreciate the opportunity to participate in their learning, and everyone wins. Printables require Acrobat Reader.

tag(s): literacy (123)

Read this web page or download a single sheet of suggestions to make reading together fun and funny for parents and kids together, while encouraging the skills to make a lifelong reader. Teachers can download the tips for th in NINE languages in addition to English to print out and send home with your ESL/ELL students. Their parents will appreciate the opportunity to participate in their learning, and everyone wins. Printables require Acrobat Reader.

Read this web page or download a single sheet of suggestions to make reading together fun and funny, while encouraging the skills to make a lifelong reader. Teachers can download the tips in NINE languages in addition to English to print out and send home with your ESL/ELL students. Their parents will appreciate the opportunity to participate in their learning, and everyone wins. Printable require Acrobat Reader.

Based on the classic ESL textbook for pronunciation, this site offers pronunciation practice, illustrations of mouth and tongue placement for formation of English sounds as well as written explanations of the placement, activities, handouts, and tips for teachers concerned with correcting pronunciation. SOE uses Quick Time for video clips of the pronunciation of all basic sounds. A bonus feature is that this site includes many printable handouts, pronunciation guides, and games.

tag(s): pronunciation (34), speech (69)

This Google feature allows international or ESL/ELL students to search for specifically designated pages (i.e., newspapers) in their own languages (i.e., French or Swahili) produced in specific countries (Ivory Coast or Kenya). Options include setting the interface to any language, getting on-the-spot translation, and also viewing the home country Google interface (i.e., www.google.cg - Republique du Congo) without having to import language scripts for the computer.

tag(s): news (226), newspapers (93)

This translation site provides translations to and from English in 11 commonly spoken languages and offers both traditional and simplified Chinese. A useful site to bookmark on classroom computers for your students who need occasional translations of difficult words and concepts.

tag(s): asia (125), europe (84)

Find excellent multi-skill topical social studies lessons based on current news appropriate for limited English speakers, slow readers, and average students alike! This site offers a new comprehensive lesson plan about breaking news every three days or so. The site is rich with pre-reading and pre-listening activities, oral and written comprehension exercises, assignments, and best of all, the option of selecting the easy or more difficult session and accompanying activities. There are seven levels from which to chooseand use for differention.

tag(s): differentiation (85), listening (93), news (226), reading comprehension (150), reading strategies (96)

This site has games and activities appropriate for beginning ESL students. Since beginners have few language skills and know little vocabulary, any of these games would help their English and would also be fun for the students. Teachers of speech and language or special ed may also find this useful for their language-delayed students.

tag(s): quiz (66), quizzes (90), vocabulary (242)

The fast-loading picture dictionary feature of this page organizes words into commonly-taught language categories such as animals, occupations, and food; as a plus, it offers pronunciation for each word. The large-sized photographs of each term make the unknown word name easy to find. The site requires FLASH. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.

tag(s): pronunciation (34), speech (69), vocabulary (242)

Designed with ESL students in mind, this dictionary allows students to type in phrases and questions. The dictionary comes up with lists of related words, definitions, and a link to other dictionaries. Although the list of definitions is extensive, the tool reminds the user that the first words found are the most useful.

tag(s): synonyms (15)

VOA offers audio and written radio scripts of a wide range of news stories in areas including science, agriculture, culture, health, and education. The language used is simple, and the stories are read more slowly than the average radio broadcast. The site includes its own dictionary ("Word Book") and pronunciation guide, as well as links to many other features. Contains RealAudio and MP3 downloadable audio files. If you have high speed internet, you can also use the streaming option.

tag(s): agriculture (52), news (226)

Part of "Interesting Things for ESL Students," this unadorned site changes daily and provides common slang (near the top of the page), idioms, or proverbs and definitions plus daily grammar quizzes. It also features an audio broadcast of a simplified news release backed up with archives (Click on links below Listening). Also available is a multilingual translating dictionary and access to three top search engines.

tag(s): grammar (138), idioms (30), news (226), slang (16), verbs (25)

Are you producing a play that is in need of some accented English speech, or do you teach dialogue? This website offers accents/speech patterns from all over the world. In the "browse" section, you are able to click on an area of the world and hear a paragraph spoken from a native of that country,state, or region. The same paragraph is spoken in each example. The paragraph contains all of the needed vowel/consonant combinations, so that an interested student could easily compare and match a needed sound. You, too, can submit your own English accent recording to this site. It is a perfect site for those who desire some authenticity when it comes to learning about how different cultures speak the English language. Over 553 samples have been recorded for the site, and you can add one of your own. This site requires the Quicktime plug-in. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page

tag(s): patterns (61), speech (69)

Designed especially for the newby limited English speaker, this easy-to-use dictionary contains definitions in pictures and simple words ENL/ESL learners can understand. For example click the word anatomy and find many, many pictures that represent the word, such as an ear, bone, foot, intestines, and so on. Use the site for English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian.

tag(s): dictionaries (48), word study (59)

Practice basic skills in recognizing colors, shapes, numbers, upper/lower case letters, and simple vocabulary words with this interactive, multimedia site. Excellent for early elementary, ESL, and beginning foreign language students. Headphones required. Available in Spanish, German, and French. This site requires FLASH. Get it from the TeachersFirst Toolbox page.

tag(s): colors (63), french (74), german (48), numbers (121), spanish (112)

A Maths Dictionary for Kids is a fantastic interactive online math dictionary for students which explains over 600 common mathematical terms and math words in simple language. Enter the site using the link on the home page and choose (or browse) math terms. Math terms come to life with a click of the mouse! Virtually all terms have an animated or interactive component - for example, choose quadrilateral to view a definition along with an image of a quadrilateral, the next button changes the quadrilateral to a square along with the new definition, choose next again to see the square change to a rhombus, and so on. Virtually all standard math terms are included so users are likely to find anything they want along with some new terms! A link is included at the bottom of each section to print each definition easily.

Another wonderful portion of the site is a new section titled Math Charts. Search this portion by choosing from areas such as numbers, operations, decimals, or much more then choose one of the sub-topics. Each chart includes a visual description of the topic and is specifically created to be printed for classroom use, choose the print button at the bottom of the page and the content will enlarge to fill the most it can in whatever size paper is chosen. Be sure not to miss the blackline masters located at the bottom of this section that contain many printables for classroom use such as fraction strips, hundreds charts, and much more.

tag(s): addition (128), charts and graphs (171), data (150), decimals (85), division (97), fractions (160), measurement (123), money (114), multiplication (121), order of operations (29), percent (59), ratios (47), subtraction (109), time (91)

This visual dictionary is a gem of a site for ENL/ESL or world language students. Visitors can choose a topic, view the associated words and pictures. The words are Interactive (click the word) to see the pronunciation. The audio uses Flash, but there is plenty here to learn with out the audio.

tag(s): spelling (98), vocabulary (242)

Reinforce basic English language vocabulary with this collection of interactive games. Students can select word topics from animals, clothing, insects and bugs, food and drinks, etc.; each topic has 9 words and 7 games like concentration-style memory activities, pairs, matching and more,

tag(s): animals (293), geometric shapes (134), sports (84), verbs (25), vocabulary (242)

Nice collection of teacher-created interactive tests, quizzes, exercises and puzzles, spanning multiple skill levels and topics. Includes crossword puzzles to be done online for all ESL levels and by word-type or subject (Ex. Thanksgiving words).

tag(s): puzzles (149), quiz (66), quizzes (90)