Happy Fall, Fabulous Readers! For our October post, we have some super-fun Halloween/fall festival activities for ESL classrooms AND lots of ideas and resources on running school (or non-school) support groups. A few announcements and then, off we go!
As always, we’ve included a lot of underlined links as helpful resources- just click on them and we’ll take you right to an article, video, or product you can use! Some of the links access our free downloadables through Google Docs- please leave a comment below and we’ll send you access to the Goog Doc straightaway!
- We just put up the first chapter of our newest books, The Complete ESL for Beginners Lessons Guide and Girl World Group Counseling Sessions Guide for FREE download @ http://bilinguallearner.com/.
- These two freebies join our other gratis chapter downloads, ESL for Beginners Vol.3 Lessons Guide and Cope Into Hope Grief Counseling Guide. Head on over and get your free downloads today!
- Our newest teaching guide, The Complete ESL for Beginners Lessons Guide just went up on our website yesterday- it is huge (60 lesson plans!), it is gorgeous, and it is ready for download @ http://bilinguallearner.com/Products. Get your book or ebook today!
THE ESL/EFL POST
Happy Early Halloween, Noche de Brujas, Dead of the Dead, and Día de los Muertos! To celebrate these fall festival holidays, we’ve had lots of fun reading “In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories,” which is full of repetitive scary stories with easy vocab and perfect for the Halloween season. Along with this book, we also teach students the scary song, “Have You Seen the Ghost of John?” (page 46), also with easy vocab and lots of repetition perfect for ESL learners. They love it and we’ve sang it throughout past Octobers with super-simple guitar accompaniment of just four ‘anyone-can-learn-in-an-afternoon’ guitar chords (just google them for finger placement). Here’s some more Halloween stuff that we are re-sharing, because it’s just that good! Additionally, here’s a link to Bilingual Learner’s own fun Halloween passage to teach about this popular American holiday .
And here’s a few more Halloween/fall goodies we want to pass on…
- Spooky Halloween fun from Busyteacher.org: the holiday
- Buzzfeed’s Best Teacher Costumes!
- And, in the spirit of fall and all things slightly scary, you’ve GOT to see the latest Youtube viral video- it is hilarious: Spiderdog!
THE COUNSELING POST
Next week, fall counseling groups will start and run through the end of November. The planning process to get groups up and running is a bit lengthy as there is just so much to do! Check out our Group Prep Checklist to keep track of all the tasks. Counselor Stephanie will be running five groups this semester: Middle School 101, Culture Explorers (two separate sessions for different age groups), Get Your Goal On, and Girl World. Below is a short description of each one…
Middle School 101- This group meets weekly with student who are (already!!) failing multiple core subjects. In group, students check their grades, identify areas where improvement is needed, and formulate goals with specific behaviors to achieve improvement. All of this is facilitated through group strategies such as goal sharing, cheerleading, role plays, organizational tips, and scaling. We will soon start writing our session guide for this group- check out our fun Good Grades Bingo game and a sneak peak here!
Girl World- This group also meets weekly to discuss various issues that adolescent girls struggle with such as friendships, antibullying strategies, rumors/gossip, dating, body image, and more. We use group strategies such as role plays, read alouds (one of my favorites is Letters to a Bullied Girl), art projects, and games. For this group, we follow the soon-to-be-published counseling sessions guide by the same name. Download the first chapter for free @ http://bilinguallearner.com/!
Culture Explorers- This group is for students who are new the the USA (1st year Newcomers). We use the Culture Explorers curriculum to help them adapt to American life with weekly activities focusing on the cultural values, laws/rules, holidays (free ESL/EFL Halloween resource here!), and traditions of America and American schools.
Get Your Goal On- This is our newest group where members will support each other through group sessions in goal achievement. Group members include our ‘frequent flyers’ for whom other counseling interventions just haven’t worked and students whose presenting problem is pretty severe, such as anger over recent CPS removal from parent. This is our first time trying out this group, so check back with us in a couple of months when we can give the full report. But in the meantime, here’s a little taste of what we will be using in this group.
As the school year progresses, we will be sharing updates with ideas and resources on each group. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter (links below) to get real time alerts of when we post these group resources! And, once again, our all time favorite support group comic:
So, that’s it for our October post. Hope to see you back here the first Saturday in November for our posts on ELL classroom management, Thanksgiving activities, and guidance/counseling lessons! Please leave a comment about your group counseling experiences or favorite ESL/EFL Halloween activity. Let’s all share the wealth! Remember, just click on the underlined links above and we’ll take you right to an article, video, or product you can use (after you leave a comment, of course;) In the meantime, you can find out about our latest promotions, free stuff, or our counseling/ESL adventures by following us on our Facebook Page or Twitter Page.
Bilingual Learner 