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Saturday Camp: Super Fun.

If there’s one thing I looooove, it’s a good theme. No, the holidays. No, baking. 
Well, it’s all of those things, and today was a great day, because all of them happened. At school!
Today was the second Saturday in our ELL (English Language Learners) Camp. In my city, we have a high proportion of English Language Learners, and in my school, it’s the majority of the kids. A lot of our kids don’t have the Engligh support at home and it is not uncommon to have new students, just arrived from Mexico and with little to no English language. We are up for anything at all to help our kids grow in the language, and if that means getting up early on a Saturday and doing some crazy stuff, then that’s what’s happening.
For our ELL camp, we invited our kids who hadn’t made enough progress last year in the English language and planned all sorts of fun poems, songs, activities, and, what the kids (and I) will probably remember the most: cooking!
What kid doesn’t like to cook? I haven’t met one yet.
These are some of the things our kids ‘cooked’ and did today and last Saturday.
Last week, our second graders made rice krispie treats! It was hilarious.

This week, our second graders had a pumpkin theme.
  
They read and acted out Five Little Pumpkins, and then they did all sorts of fun stuff!

They measured pumpkins and cut them open to take out the seeds. They counted out the seeds and sorted them into groups!
“Ew! This is gross!” was the most repeated phrase this morning.

They made no-bake pumpkin-ish pies.
And they were actually pretty tasty. (That can be rare when children are doing the cooking.)

Tasty.
Our fourth graders had a Chato’s Kitchen theme this week. 
They sorted beans of different types and made a graph. (A few kids requested their very own bean to take home as a souvenir lol)
Then they made enchiladas! Some very creative teachers brought in a little griddle and fried the tortillas for a minute. The kids dipped the tortillas into the chile.
They put cheese in the middle, rolled them up, and scarfed.

As I walked by the fourth grade room, I overheard them working on a sentence patterning chart. They were adding nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. As they were adding to their list of adjectives, one of the teachers said, “You’ll probably know this adjective! I always say, ‘I’m going to go-‘”
Clearly, she was going to finish with ‘crazy.’
“TO THE BATHROOM!” shouted one of the kids.
I cracked up. Kids have no idea how goofy they are.
These were just some of my favorite highlights from our little Saturday camp. 
So this is my big question. What do you do to support your English Language Learners? 
Also, I have a new product to share with you!
Gobbling Up Words: Thanksgiving Themed Word Work!
Grab it at TPT or Teacher’s Notebook.

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One Comment

  1. One of the biggest ways I support English Language Learners is just to include as much talking in my day as I can. We do a lot of partner sharing, we explain answers out loud and in writing, and we share opinions and answers during games like "value line" and "four corners." I also make sure to include repetition with poems and songs, too! 🙂

    Jenny
    Luckeyfrog's Lilypad

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