This year, I have a large group of kindergarten ESOL newcomers. Newcomer ESOL are students who are new to the English language and, oftentimes, are new to the United States. English is a brand new language for them, so while many native English speaking students start their kindergarten year with some knowledge of the English alphabet, my ESOL newcomers are starting from scratch.
This year, I decided to create an alphabet book for my newcomer ESOL students, so that they could become familiar with English letters and letter sounds. The book contains a page for every letter of the alphabet, space for illustrating and labeling, and lines for writing. I thought it would be a great opportunity to introduce school related vocabulary, so I created colorful posters to go along with each letter of the alphabet. The kids have really been enjoying creating their books. Each day, I introduce a letter, students practice making the sound and discuss words that begin with that sound. My more advanced students can think of objects on their own, but some of my newcomers need more help thinking of items. The posters that I created have been really helpful for my students who struggle to think of an object on their own. My students have been using the posters to help them when illustrating their book. Each poster comes with a sentence helper, ex. A is for _________. This is getting them familiar with site words and constructing a sentence orally. My more advanced students have been writing sentences in their books, while my newcomer ESOL draw pictures and label. If you would like to take a look at the ABC book that I have created for kinder, click
here.
Here is a pic of some of the items in the book:
If you are interested in learning more about ESOL Newcomers, click
here.
