ELL instructors can adapt almost any lesson or activity to meet the needs of their students. Use this list of sample ELL-friendly strategies to spark creativity. Implement them alone, combine them or integrate them into
Daniel Osborn, Ed.D. is a history instructor at Dean College. He is a Returned Peace Corps volunteer who served in Jordan. His scholarly background is in Middle Eastern and Jewish History and his research explores the relationship between historical narrative construction, collective identity formation, and the portrayal of subaltern communities in social studies textbooks and classroom discourse. He is the author of Representing the Middle East and Africa in Social Studies Education: Teacher Discourse and Otherness.
Kevin Cordi is a professional storyteller, assistant professor at Ohio University Lancaster, author, and past advisor for Secret Kindness Agents and “The Wonder Team,” based on the book Wonder. He serves on the Teaching Tolerance Advisory Board. He is the author of You Don’t Know Jack: Storyteller Goes to School (March 2019) and Playing With Stories: Story Crafting for Writers, Teachers, and other Imaginative Thinkers (2014). You can reach him at kevincordi.com or kcteller@sbcglobal.net.
I used to tell my art students that some of the best art comes from mistakes. It seems the same is true for teaching. If we can be flexible enough to recognize the lesson in mistakes, we can go a long way with our students.