Heidi Brown albrown@together.net
System requirements: No sound card is needed to access material on the site but RealPlayer was needed for some of the links. Materials can be downloaded and viewed with Acrobat Reader.
Site
Author: Judy
Haynes is an ESL teacher and has published four books on helping
classroom teachers better meet the needs of their second language population.
She is currently the chair of the TESOL Elementary Interest Section. She authors this web site with the help of
Chas Haynes, a self-described designer, builder and geek.
Target
Audience: This
site is best suited for elementary ESL teachers and elementary classroom
teachers.
Summary: This site offers lots of
good information, discussion, lesson plans and activities for educators. The
classroom activities are lively and helpful for those working with beginner to
intermediate language learners. The teaching
tips and discussion forum allow for both classroom teachers and ESL teachers to
better understand the needs specific to their ESL population and to share their
questions/needs. The lesson plans are
detailed and take into account variances in ability and age.
Contents:
Educational Objective: Everything ESL’s objective is to
try to connect teachers globally in hopes of sharing content based lessons and
activities as well as raising an awareness of the needs of the ESL student.
Structure:
This site
is broken down into four main branches; lesson plans, teaching tips, resource
picks and discussions. See chart below
for further details.
Content:
|
Lesson Plans |
Everything ESL offers 50 content-based lesson plans for
beginning through intermediate students.
The plans are arranged by topic/title and contain links to books and
other web sites with corresponding themes and activities. |
|
Teaching Tips |
Teaching tips provides access to articles on in-service
ideas and teaching strategies for both ESL and mainstream teachers. The
articles are annotated with the date and author. Many contain links to related articles, forms and materials. |
|
Resource Picks |
Resource Picks gives recommendations on material and
resources for the classroom. It is
divided into books, cd-roms and web sites. |
|
Discussions |
The Discussions section provides teachers with an on-line bulletin board and discussion forum. It is divided into a general discussion area and an Ask Judy section. Both offer educators a chance to share questions and information about working with the elementary ESL population and their families. |
Site Evaluation:
This site is colorful and attractive. It is well organized and well laid out. Information is easy to access and the ideas
and lessons presented were meaningful and highly motivating. It meets its educational objectives as it
allows educators a chance to access interesting lesson plans and downloadable
activities. It also provides many
thoughtful articles and tips that make educators aware of how they can modify
their lessons/classrooms to better meet the needs of the ESL student. I did not
find this site to be culturally biased.
There were many lesson plans that incorporated other cultures (World
Costumes, Festival of Lights Around the World…) and the overall intention of
the web site was to promote and celebrate differences in our schools while
teaching fun, innovative lessons to the ESL population.
I found this site to be very useful. I loved the lesson on Hats Around the World
that gave details on books to read and activities to do to teach students about
differing occupations or cultures. It
also provided worksheets for sorting pictures of hats from different
occupations. I also really enjoyed the
lesson entitled Say Hello to the World, which could easily foster an
appreciation for world languages, cultural diversity and build the ESL child’s
self-esteem. This lesson provided ideas
for children to learn and share ways to say hello in many languages. A link to the Internet Public Library http://www.ipl.org/div/kidspace/hello/french.html
allows students a chance to hear hello in over seventy languages. This would be a really fun lesson for all
children.
I think that Everything ESL is an excellent site with much
pedagogical strength. Haynes is successful in her attempt to share fun, lively
lessons and information about ESL students. The site promotes the acceptance
and celebration of cultural diversity.