Back to School Lessons for ESL Students

How do you start your year strong for your ESL students / Multilingual Learners (MLs)? First and foremost, you need relevant lessons with language that your students can immediately apply in an authentic context. Secondly, your lessons need to be engaging and fun, because that's how we all learn best. If you're looking for some inspiration for the back to school season and beginning of the year lesson for MLs, read on, friend!

Choose High-Need Topics

All students are a little nervous at the beginning of a new school year, but this is even more true for students learning English as a second language. You may need to address some of their logistical concerns such as paying for lunch, opening a locker, or talking to classmates before you can dive into grammar lessons. Luckily, you can easily make any of these topics into an engaging and practical ESL lesson.

For example, you can teach students how to open their lockers while incorporating vocabulary such as numbers, commands, and directions. Alternately, you could teach key classroom questions that students might need to ask to their teachers or peers.

Be thematic

Students of all ages love to lean into seasonal, themed lessons. Consider making (or purchasing) some Fall-themed activities to support your learners. Depending what kind of activities you choose, you can actually use the students' work to decorate your classroom. Take a look at the Parts of Speech Color by Code activities I made for Fall and Halloween themes. I made these in Canva, and I'll be honest, they are time consuming to make. If you're really savvy with graphic design, give it a go! If not, I recommend spending a few dollars to save yourself time and energy and to give your students an engaging activity.

Boost Confidence with Sentence Frames

A big struggle for MLs is that they lack the confidence to try to speak their new language. Often, they understand much more than they can produce and this is where you can be strategic about boosting confidence right from the start of the school year.

Let's be clear: it's not cheating to provide sentence frames/stems to second language learners. In the beginning of their language acquisition journey, they absolutely need--and benefit--from them. Here is an example of how I support my Newcomer MLs in the first or second week of school. After they complete this mini project, they takes turns reading their sentences to a friend. They feel confident and proud that they can produce some language right off the bat and can start to talk about themselves.

Conclusion

To summarize, choose relevant topics that students can engage with in the real world right away. Next, add some thematic fun to get students excited and interested. Lastly, be strategic about designing confidence-focused activities.