Happy November!
Our BL post today will be a shorter one because we are busy cranking out our Fall Eblast, which (if you are on our mailing list) will hit your inbox in the next week or so! Look for all of the fab resources and freebies we’ve been saving up for you these last few months, plus a promotional giveaway for a free book! If you haven’t already put yourself on our newsletter mailing list, you can do so now by sending us an email with YES TO NEWSLETTER in the subject line to bilinguallearner@hotmail.com.
If you reside stateside (or maybe even if you don’t), it’s getting close to that festive time of year….Thanksgiving! We’ve been having a blast this week, gearing up to work with our “newcomer” group of students on our BL Thanksgiving activity. As always, we’ve included a lot of helpful resources- just click on the links which will take you right to an article, video, or product you can use after you leave a comment below. As we’ve mentioned before, we run 2 weekly ESL Survival Skills groups for students who have just arrived this year to the US from another country. The purpose of these groups is to help students learn about and transition to the US culture. Every week, Counselor Stephanie has so many endearing stories about working with these group members; this past week, she was reading Amada Irma Perez’ wonderful autobiographical picture book, My Diary from Here to There/Mi Diario de Aqui hasta Alla, to the group members, when she looked up and noticed 3 of them crying as they listened to the story of Amada having to say goodbye to her father as a young girl. Oh, the emotions and experiences these newbies struggle with! On a lighter note, next week we will start our Thanksgiving activity, “Thanksgiving Booklet & Funquiz,” with these groups. The booklet and funquiz introduce students to this important American holiday, while strengthening English vocabulary and listening comprehension. Knowledge of major holidays is such an important part of feeling comfortable and accepted within a culture. It is a great way for “newcomers” to gain understanding of that culture. Moreover, this is something all young nationals get as they go through the school system in their own culture, but our “newcomers” often miss out on this important cultural knowledge when they transition in after all the fun grade school holiday instruction is finished. So, the Thanksgiving activity is a fantastic blend of both counseling and ESL/EFL/bilingual support! This booklet and fun quiz is included in our ESL Survival Skills Guide on the Products Page of our website. We’ve also included a few freebie clips from this Thanksgiving booklet for your downloading pleasure: Thanksgiving in America and El Dia de Gracias. Additionally, if you want a guide that exposes students to the English-speaking culture, but not necessarily the US culture, check out our Culture Explorers Guide.
Here are some of our favorite Thanksgiving activities that you also might want to use with your students/clients…
November Books for Guidance/Counseling Lessons
Teaching a Thanksgiving Lesson Outside of the USA
And now for some EXCITING NEWS–
~We just put up our Thanksgiving in America Ebook & Funquiz on the Products Page of our website!
~We also just added our Grammar Structures Guide to the Products Page of our website!
~We are so proud to unveil the brand new Bilingual Learner logo here! A huge thanks and shoutout to our very talented illustrator and designer, Michell Schalik.
~We’ve just been published by the Nepal English Language Teachers Association on just the same topic we are blogging about today! Check out our article here titled “Culture and Language Learning.”
Finally, we’ll leave you with this super-silly comic from the talented Mark Parish…
And that brings us to the end of this month’s ESL/counseling post. Catch up with us again the first Saturday in December for our post focusing on classroom management techniques in both the counseling & ESL/EFL worlds. We’d love to hear about your November experiences, lessons, or resources, so please leave us a comment. Remember, just click on the links above and we’ll take you right to an article, video, or product that you can use after you leave us a comment below. 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.
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