Adventures in ESL

As we were gearing up for our annual ESL ACCESS test, I knew my students would need some practice with test taking skills to give them the best opportunity to show how much they have learned this year! To make test prep more exciting, I did a LEGO themed room transformation.

I decorated my classroom with a LEGO bulletin board set, LEGO bricks made from tablecloths and paper plates, some traced figures, and motivational posters. As they walked into class the first day, I played the Everything is Awesome song from the LEGO Movie.

The students' favorite part was the LEGO bin (of course). As students completed practice questions for each domain, they could earn bricks for their team baseplate. I set this up differently depending on language levels and grade levels. In some groups, each student earned 1 brick for every 10 points he earned on practice activities. I would give them 1 point for each correct answer on listening and reading. I scored them with a rubric for speaking and writing for them to earn points. I kept up with these on a tally chart so sometimes the points would carry over. Other classes earned bricks based on the assignement as a whole. Did they participate and try their best? Did they remember to add details or punctuation? You could customize to meet your students' needs.

Beginning baseplates

After 6 days of practice!

4th grade's final baseplate

3rd grade's final baseplate

The day before we began our ACCESS testing, I had students write goals based on their scores from last year and how they were going to meet those goals. We made a LEGO snack. The students also viewed some Flipgrid videos from teachers throughout our building wishing them well on their testing! You should've seen the smiles on their faces!

We had a few LEGO building brain breaks throughout test prep season as well!

My students were definitely more engaged with test prep this year! I can't wait to see how AWESOME they did on their ACCESS tests!

Happy Adventuring,

Heidi

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The latest trend at our school this year is room transformations. These aren't required but are definitely encouraged. I am trying to incorporate at least a mini room transformation each month this school year that is either related to our topic of study or time of year (or both). What I have found is that you can go all out or just a little and the kids are excited either way. I was a little nervous that it would be a distraction, but it has actually been a huge motivation for my students.

Here are a few room transformations that I have tried this year:

Beginning of the Year: Dr. Seuss theme to kick off my reading program (see full post here)