It's All About the Visuals
Plus, with a couple of holidays coming up it would be a great time to explore culture with amazing visuals and added resources that can really fill in the gaps for our ELLs and broaden horizons for all. Start with stunning photos and take it from there! Hope you'll be able to use some of these timely resources!
Diwali
Larry Ferlazzo has reminded us that Diwali is coming up. The five day Diwali festival begins on November 5th in some places and on the 6th in others, but the pinnacle is on the 7th. Here's an excellent primer on Diwali from NDTV.
This beautiful celebration of lights gives us a great opportunity to explore culture with rich visuals such as these stunning photos. If you need ideas about how to use photos for ELL activities, see Ferlazzo's August 30 post The Best of the Week: Using Photos in Lessons! Also be sure to check out ESL Holiday Lessons to complement your visual tour with audio listening activities! Maybe you'd like to extend your cultural exploration and have your ELLs learn about and compare and contrast more festivals of lights from around the world? No problem, Judie Haynes has provided an amazing lesson ready to go on EverythingESL.net.
What better way to hook the students than through photos of brightly colored and glowing festivities!
What better way to hook the students than through photos of brightly colored and glowing festivities!
Check out Ferlazzo's post for more resources and videos on the celebration like this one from NatGeo:
Halloween
Halloween
Halloween is also a fun holiday to bring visuals into the classroom, maybe even carve a pumpkin. Take a visual tour of pumpkin carving--I know that will get the kids talking! Pinterest is a great place to start, like this gallery of Incredible Pumpkin Carvings. What are these pumpkins saying? What would you carve? Students can describe the pumpkins, or the process of carving or they may compare and contrast or use them to tell a story. Starting with the visuals, there is so much to talk or write about. Download some cool Pixaby photos of pumpkins and get the kids talking.
And thanks again to Ferlazzo for his October 15 post, New Video "The Origins of Halloween." This video also has intriguing visuals to invite ELL students into cultural learning and discussion. Be sure to link to his prior Halloween posts at the bottom of the page for a ton more resources!
Halloween can be a good time to do a cultural exploration of folk and fairy tales from around the world. Because such tales are so fantastical and often have unusual elements, try these animated tales for scaffolding for ELLs. Link it to Halloween and Diwali and you have a whole unit for ELLs to see, hear, write and discuss. Extend studies in to Thanksgiving! In no time at all the students will be telling of their holidays, traditions and hopefully creating! Certainly, you will have created an engaged multicultural community.
If you decide to go down the folk and fairy tale path, you must use this fabulous infographic at Morph Costumes Blog. While you're at it, have a look at some of the costume ideas at the site and let your students discuss and have a laugh.
... and extras
Speaking of visualization, Ferlazzo writes about his practice of using visualization with students for self-regulation at the beginning of especially boisterous classes. On October 16, he mentions, "Plenty of research supports its use (especially with ELLs)."
Ferlazzo clued us in on the 15th that TED-ED is starting an animated poetry series. So stay tuned! I know that visuals will help our ELLs with what can be stymying--poetry!
And finally, give Fotobabble a try with your ELLs. They can add audio captions to their own photos (or maybe a classmates ;-) )! The uses in class are endless!
This podcast is amazing. It is organized and informative. I especially liked the TED-ED information on poetry. What an opportunity to explore the cultures, diversity and feelings of the gifted
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