ESL Teacher Must Haves For Your Teaching Space
1. My number one ESL teacher must have is high quality reading materials. It takes time to build up a library of books you turn to again and again, so in the meantime, be sure to take advantage of free reading resources from the library, readworks.org, getepic.com, and Newsela. Low cost reading passages can be found on TPT and Scholastic.
In addition to reading materials, another must have for my ESL teaching space is a whiteboard.
Why is a whiteboard an ESL Teacher Must Have?
2. A whiteboard is needed because ESL students need scaffolds, that is, those things that help them access the grade level material. For me that means visuals, sentence stems, vocabulary, and graphic organizers. I want a place that they can see these, a place where I can do a spontaneous drawing, and a place that they can add their ideas. It’s like my command center for teaching. If you don’t have your own room, be sure to advocate for one that can travel with you to display your teaching materials.
For teachers who don’t have a whiteboard or share a space, I love this tabletop easel by Scholastic. It folds flat for storage and travel. Great for teachers who go into different classrooms and need a place to draw or display visual and scaffolds. This easel, shown below, is magnetic and dry erase on both sides. I’ll put a link at the bottom for you.
Dry erase markers, pocket charts, mini magnets, and shelves to hold things are great extras.
ESL Must Haves for Students
3. With so many students coming in and out each day, I love to have student materials organized, and with a simple system that they can manage. I use plastic folders to hold their class work, simple dictionaries, and a writing journal. Students also need pencils, and younger students may need something to add color such as colored pencils or crayons.
ESL Must Haves for All
4. Dry Erase Sleeves are a game changing supply for me. I use them for so many things. They save time laminating things and they protect things. Here are a few examples of their uses: for games to be printed once and used over and over again, for annotating text that can be used for multiple groups, and for holding teacher materials such as bulletin board pieces, as well as pieces for projects that are hard to store another way.
Games
5. Games make learning more fun! Here are three favorites!
You might also enjoy reading my post on 5 Organization Ideas for your ESL Classroom
to keep it all organized!
You might also like:
Must Have Teaching Resources for the Beginning of the Year
Bonus Must Haves
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