Overview 

Below you’ll find a curated list of our favorite lesson plans designed to support multi-language learners. They include strategies, scaffolds, and strategic planning to accelerate the learning of all students. 

Literacy

Grades 1-2 

• Burro’s Tortillas Colorin Colorado:  This 1st grade unit is based upon the picture book Burro’s Tortillas by Terri Fields, a Southwestern adaptation of The Little Red Hen. Activities include a lesson on Spanish words that appear in the story, a “realia” walk, interactive readings, and a cooperative paragraph.
• Weather New Jersey Dept. of Education:   This 1st-2nd grade unit students explore a variety of weather concepts including air movement, clouds, precipitation, and temperature using a range of culturally authentic learning materials such as websites, graphs, science equipment, chants, songs, and literature both fiction and nonfiction. 

Grades  3-5

• Cinderella Colorin Colorado:  This 4th grade unit is based on a picture-book version of Cinderella, written and illustrated by Barbara McClintock. Activities include interactive readings, embedded vocabulary instruction, mini lessons on context clues and idioms, and an opportunity for students to write their own fairy tale.
• Simple Machines New Jersey Dept. of Education:   This 3rd-5th grade unit students use the language of physical science to describe several types of simple machines.
• How Does Someone Show a Great Heart, Figuratively? ELSF:   This 4th grade Wit & Wisdom lesson series allows students to explore the word heart, considering its literal and figurative meanings. The lessons are annotated to highlight supportive features for ELLs.
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  • Lesson 2
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  • Lesson 5
  • Lesson 6

Grades 6-8 

• Persuasion Across Time and Space   Understanding Language:    Built around a set of famous persuasive speeches, the unit supports 7th & 8th graders to read a range of complex texts. Students write and speak in a variety of ways and for different audiences and purposes.
• The Story of an Hour   Colorin Colorado: This 8th grade unit is based on “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin. Activities include interactive readings, embedded vocabulary instruction, mini lessons on literacy concepts such as irony, and an opportunity for students to summarize and paraphrase the story.
• The Impact of World Conflict on Human Interaction New Jersey Dept. of Education:   This 6th-8th grade unit students understand, synthesize, analyze and evaluate the events related to World War II and the Holocaust.
• Water Is Life  New Jersey Dept. of Education:   This 6th-8th  grade unit is designed to emphasize the importance of water locally and globally to sustaining life. Students discuss how water becomes polluted and communicate the steps that can be taken to protect this natural resource. 

High School 

• The Immigrant Experience   New Jersey Dept. of Education:   This 9th-12th grade unit students explore their personal and their peers’ perspectives on immigration using a range of culturally authentic learning materials, such as magazine articles, websites, graphs, and photographs. 

Math 

Grades 1-2

• Quick-Sketch Story Problems ELSF: This 2nd grade lesson provides students with opportunities to solve change unknown story problems. The lesson is annotated to highlight supportive features for ELLs.

Grades 3-5

• Roger’s Rabbits   Understanding Language:     This 4th grade task provides students opportunities to work with patterns and tables. Students identify whether finite sequences of numbers follow given rules and extend those sequences according to those rules. 
• Measuring Mass ELSF:  This 3rd grade lesson centers on a story about baking bread as an introduction to measuring mass in grams. Students learn about metric units of mass and how to use a digital scale. They also practice estimating and finding the mass of classroom objects. The lesson is annotated to highlight supportive features for ELLs.

Grades 6-8

• Making Matchsticks Understanding Language:     This 8th grade   task provides students opportunities to interpret a situation, represent the variables mathematically, select appropriate mathematical methods, interpret and evaluate the data generated, and communicate their reasoning. 
• Eureka Math Lesson 2: Translations ELSF: This 8th grade Eureka lesson asks students to perform translations of figures on and off the coordinate plane. They also explore the properties of translations and perform translations along given vectors. The lesson is annotated to highlight supportive features for ELLs.

High School 

• Creating Equations   Understanding Language:     This 9th-12th grade task provides students opportunities to use algebra in different ways: manipulating a given equation, writing equations to represent situations, solving equations, and interpreting solutions of equations in the situations represented.

• Sidewalk Patterns Understanding Language:   This 9th-12th grade task gives students an opportunity to work with expressions, equations, and functions.