Mood and tone are closely connected concepts. Tone is the author’s attitude towards the topic. Mood is the overall feeling the reader gets when they are reading the text. Mood is particularly subjective. The important part is that students are able to defend their reasoning with evidence. Here are some ideas for teaching these topics to your ELLs. Review Feelings A quick review of feelings is a great way to begin a unit on mood or tone. This can help…
Teaching students about facts and opinions helps them to develop critical thinking skills. A fact is a true statement. An opinion is a person’s belief about something. You can include the domains of reading or listening, speaking, and writing in fact and opinion practice activities. Keywords Keywords are one way to support students as they are learning about fact and opinion. Some helpful keywords for stating an opinion are: think, feel, should, good, better, best, bad, worst. It is important to point…
Retelling is an important literacy skill. For English Language Learners retelling a story gives them the opportunity to practice their oral language skills. Here are some ideas for incorporating retelling into your classroom. Retelling Center Create a retelling drama center. This works especially well for younger students. It can be as simple as printing out character pictures and gluing them onto popsicle sticks or a full-blown play center with props. Have one book that you have recently read or create boxes…
I’ve been working with my first grades on using adjectives to describe characters. They did a great job of using evidence from the books to describe their answers. Even my lower language students were able to participate. We read two books: Llama Lama mad at mama & Yoko. First I showed students pictures of character emotions. They shared examples of when they felt various emotions. Then as I read the books they would identify how the…