When spring is in the air, take advantage of the nice weather and integrate seasonal topics into your lessons. Learning about springtime is a fun way to help Multilingual Learners (MLs) learn about the environment around them.  Here are some fun spring teaching ideas for MLs.

Teach about Animals

Animal life cycles are great for teaching transition words. One fun activity is to show students a video of an eagle or other animals with eggs or newborn babies. In the spring there are many live feeds available. Students can make predictions about when the eggs will hatch. You can also find video clips of the hatching process.

Here is one of an eagle hatching in Washington DC. You can also watch live eagle cams from around the US.

Students can practice speaking and writing skills on the topic of animal life cycles. Have students put pictures in order and then describe the stages of the animal’s life cycle They can also read books about how animals change over time.

Students can also practice comparing and contrasting baby animals to the parent animal. Show students photographs of baby and parent animals. For beginners first have help students list what they see in the picture. They have them describe what is the same and different.

The baby and the parent are the same because they both have ________. 

The baby and the parent are different because the baby has ____________ but the parent has/doesn’t have _____________.

Trehugger has photographs of baby animals that look different from their parents

5 baby and parent animals from World Wildlife

Go on a Scavenger Hunt Outside

As the weather gets warmer going outside can be a fun change and a great way to increase student engagement. Have students work on a spring scavenger hunt. Students can look for seasonal items or objects that fit into specified categories such as shape or texture. Check out my blog post on Scavenger Hunts with ELLs for more ideas.

Learn about the environment

Earth Day is during the springtime. The weather is often nice and this makes spring the perfect time to teach students about taking care of the environment. For some more activities about Earth Day read about Celebrating Earth Day with ELLs.

Read books with Spring Topics/Settings

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You can use spring-themed books for read alouds/mentor texts or highlight a section in your classroom library for students to read. If you are able to take students outside to read that is even better. Check out my recommendations of Spring Books for ELLs for more books to read.

Up Down Around is a fun book about plants that would be great for practicing prepositions.

Integrate Spring Themes into Your Content

Here are some ready-made spring teaching ideas you can use with your ELLs. Get all of them as part of a money savings Spring Bundle for ELLs.

Context Clue Task Cards Spring

Practice using context clues with these spring-themed task cards. Each card has a simple sentence and a focus word.

Spring Parts of Speech Color by Code

Practice parts of speech with these color by code sheets. They come with illustrated vocabulary sheets which can also be used for speaking or writing about spring topics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture Writing Prompt Task Cards Spring

Looking for more writing prompts? Each photograph on these task cards is about a spring topic. The cards also come in a digital format.

Would You Rather Opinion Task Cards Spring

Students choose which spring-themed activity they would rather do. Great for speaking or writing practice. The cards also come in a digital format.