If you are a volunteer ESL teacher, or really any teacher for that matter, you know that sometimes you have to stock your classroom with very little (and sometimes your own) funding. If this applies to you, check out my list of top ten things to get from the Dollar Tree for your ESL classroom.
- White boards: In the teacher’s supply section Dollar Tree has personal whiteboards with small handles. These are great to give out to students for seated activities. The possibilities are really endless.
- Composition books: Most of your students will bring their own notebooks for their class notes, but a notebook that stays in the classroom can be a great way to communicate with students and check in on their work. Some suggestions for classroom composition books include: a two-way journal where students can write short notes (with or without prompts) to the instructor and the instructor can reply, which is a great way to build relationships and informally assess student language; student dictionary – students can build and create their own dictionaries or vocabulary word lists; warm up books where students can brainstorm and answer the class warm up questions.
- Bingo Dot Markers: These bingo dot markers are great for beginners. They can be used as their namesake suggests for ESL bingo, but they can also be used to indicate answers for preliterate or nonliterate students who struggle with writing.
- Sentence Strips: Blank sentence strips are amazing for all levels. They can be used for vocabulary, sentence ordering, captioning images, identifying parts of speech, and they can even be cut up for beginners to practice putting individual words together from letters or sounds.
- Dry erase dice: These dice are also great for all levels. For beginners these can be used to put together words from word families. For more advanced students they can be used as story dice by having students roll the dice to find a short story prompt or by having students. For all levels it can be used to practice vocabulary by having students roll the dice and whichever word it lands on they either have to spell or create a sentence with it.
- Dry erase markers: I think this one speaks for itself. You can never have too many, especially if you’re grabbing some dry erase dice and whiteboards.
- Clothes pins: These are good tactile resources for beginners. A suggested activity is: using flashcards or sentence strips with words, have the students place the correct amount of clothespins for the number of syllables in the word.
- Baking Pans: While a little unconventional, baking pans can be great to have in the classroom too. A favorite way to use these, is to write the alphabet on them in sharpie and have my beginner, preliterate, or nonliterate students match alphabet magnets to the letters on the pan.
- Poster board: I can always find a good use for poster board in my ESL classroom. From unit vocabulary lists, to grammar charts, to student projects, poster board is a great resource for visual aids.
- Certificates: This may be also be a little unconventional in an adult ESL classroom, but I love certificates. I teach my students to celebrate everything, and a lot of my students have had interrupted or little to no formal schooling and love the gesture.
