How to Teach Women's History to ESL Students in Grades 6-12: Tips and Strategies

You have so many topics to cover. Grammar to teach. WIDA ACCESS to prepare for. How on Earth will you find the time to teach your Multilingual Learners (MLs) about Women's History Month?! I have news! It IS possible to do all of these things simultaneously. Read on to find out!

Incorporate explicit English language instruction INTO the topic of women's history using principles from Second Language Acquisition theory. For example, take a look at the pictures of the Malala Yousafzai resource on the right. This was designed for intermediate to advanced ESL students (don't worry, I will show you one for Newcomers as well!).

In this Malala resource, we include a reading and vocabulary development worksheets (using thesaurus.com to find synonyms), but we also have a grammar practice worksheet on the ending sounds of regular past tense verbs. This is a topic that routinely trips up MLs because all the regular verbs end in -ed in the simple past tense, BUT there are three different ways of pronouncing them. UGH! However, you can put fun into the grammar with an engaging topic like Malala's incredible life story.

So we have already incorporated vocabulary acquisition and a grammar element, now let's get students writing by giving them sentence frames and opinion language (very useful skills to translate to the ELA classroom and/or the WIDA ACCESS test). Inthe next picture you can see the writing prompt I gave the students along with a writing support page. I'm going to tell you something that is critical for ML/ESL teachers to know: it is NOT cheating to give your students sentence frames! They NEED this to get them started both in their thinking and in the grammatical structures of how to start a sentence. Too often I have seen (non-ESL) teachers refuse to provide such supports to second language learners and it's a real shame. Think of it as giving a young child a push on a bike the first time they ride without training wheels. You need some momentum for the bike to stay up straight, but often children are too nervous to make that momentum for themselves. So moms and dads run behind them giving them that much-needed push until...off they go! It's the SAME THING with second language acquisition.

NOW! For those of you with beginner MLs who cannot yet handle this level of text, fret not! Check out how I redesigned this exact lesson for my beginner 5th and 6th grade ESL class. I have used this exact resource with grades 5 through 12 with great success. Students feel safe, relieved, and interested when they have a challenge they can reasonably meet (in this case, a reading passage that is just slightly above their current language level, but provides all kinds of supports).

For the activities for this level of text, I chose to make a True/False worksheet. It still assesses comprehension, but is

much simpler to understand and respond to than an open-ended question like you would find in the advanced level. Secondly, to build out language and start my beginners speaking, I created a modal verb worksheet with sentence strips. Students must match the sentence fragment to the modal phrase that makes sense. Check out the picture to the right to see what this looks like.

You can then extend such an activity by doing a turn and talk or a whole class share out, depending on how many learners you have.

Get creative and have fun! It is TOTALLY possible to incorporate seasonal, timely, and relevant topics into any level of ESL, provided you are willing to sit down and flesh out those language supports. However, if you're like most teachers and you are overworked (and underpaid!), you can also purchase either my Malala Multilevel bundle, or any of my Women's History Month products (see below and simply click on the images to go to my TPT store and purchase). : )