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1. Activate Games for Learning English - Guess What?

   Format(s): Text

   Guess What? cards can be used for a variety of games in the classroom to provide an opportunity for students to practice making descriptions in English and to learn English vocabulary.

2. Accommodating Learning Disabilities in the English Language Classroom

   In: American English Webinars Format(s): Text, Video

   This session, "Accommodating Learning Disabilities in the English Language Classroom," examines supportive instructional options, such as the inclusive classroom, universal design for learning, scaffolding, and peer-assisted learning strategies. Participants consider a variety of approaches that are beneficial for students with learning disabilities as well their non-disabled peers.

3. Social-Emotional Learning For Multilingual Learners: Fostering Growth

   In: American English Webinars Format(s): Text, Video

   This session, "Social-Emotional Learning For Multilingual Learners: Fostering Growth," engages participants in a rich dialogue about ways that social-emotional learning (SEL) strategies can help ELLs. The presentation provides background knowledge about SEL frameworks for ELLs and demonstrates a variety of classroom-ready SEL techniques.

4. Rules and Laws

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article presents a lesson that gives students the opportunity to explore aspects of rules and laws. The goal of the lesson is to help students learn vocabulary and concepts associated with the topic, practice their English language skills, and develop an understanding of the role of rules and laws in civil societies. The article shares three activities for a fifty-minute lesson plan, but the authors state that teachers may modify the lesson for their own contexts and student needs.

5. Deep Impact Storytelling

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   The authors discuss the importance of storytelling for giving a course depth. They outline ways to help teachers deepen the impact of storytelling through language and thinking activities that include shadowing, summarizing, student retelling, action logging, and creating newsletters. The authors include a story split into assigned readings and sequenced homework and classroom activities. They found that using these activities increases student comprehension, negotiation of meaning, and feelings of community.

6. An American Poetry Project for Low Intermediate ESL Adults

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the author’s poetry unit, developed to expose her ESL students to American literature. Students wrote journals about poems they read and were assigned a poem about which to write a composition. The author required her students to memorize and perform one poem. While teaching the unit, the author and a colleague kept a dialog journal of their experience and insights. Both the student reactions and their dialog journals yielded positive results, allowing the author to make several recommendations for using poetry in the ESL classroom.

7. Nurturing Emotional Intelligence through Literature

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 1 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the use of literature in a language class as a way to develop emotional intelligence in children. The author suggests that literature can be motivating and can provide a low-anxiety context for children to learn English. Several response activities are suggested to develop language skills and nurture emotional intelligence. These activities include scripting, detecting feelings in text, a feeling hunt, creating a positive language dictionary, diary entries, and letters to characters.

8. A Judicious Lesson: A Whole-learning Reading Activity

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 2 Format(s): Text

   This article discusses the use of whole-reading activities in a university level reading and speaking course. The author used a magazine article about a murder and a trial to develop a four-week unit in which students investigated ideas about crime, punishment, rhetorical strategies, idiomatic language, and the United States' judicial system. Through the use of this unit, the author advocates for readings and activities that challenge students to move beyond comprehension of a text.

9. Information Gap in Communicative Classrooms

   In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 4 Format(s): Text

   The author argues that exchanges in the classroom must go beyond display questions and should be based on the information gap that occurs when one speaker does not know in advance what the other is going to say. The author provides examples of information gap activities to promote a communicative classroom. Activity types include practical situations, guessing games, role plays, opinion gap activities, and reasoning gap activities. The author argues that these activities have real communicative value.

10. Weaving the Web into an EAP Reading Program

    In: English Teaching Forum 2001, Volume 39, Number 2 Format(s): Text

    The authors share their experiences developing Internet reading activities for their students in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program. The authors chose reading material found on the Internet that was authentic, up-to-date, and would increase student interest and motivation to learn English. The authors share practical considerations as well as their experience adapting laboratory activities to increase student autonomy along with other lessons learned in the process of using Internet reading materials.

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