ESL Resources
Critical Thinking
ACES Resource Library: Critical Thinking
The Critical Thinking page from the ACES resource library contains a wide variety of resources to support teachers looking to incorporate the Transitions Integration Framework (TIF) skills into their classroom instruction.
Creating Questions to Engage Critically with Texts
The strategy described in this article provides tools to create questions that help students engage critically with central texts and examine them for issues of power and social inequity. The activities suggested here also encourage readers to bring their knowledge and experiences to the reading of a text.
Once Upon a Picture: The Thinking Collection
A collection of images, photo and illustrations, with prompts to inspire learners to write or speak using critical thinking skills about the image.
PowerUp: What Works – English Language Arts Teaching Strategies
This website was built for teachers with a variety of learner levels in their K-12 classes and offers resources, strategies, and practical tips to personalize instruction to meet the needs of struggling students. The teaching suggestions and instructional suggestions can easily be applied to adult ESL classrooms where English Language Arts CCRS are being applied. This page provides information on topics such as teaching context clues, self-questioning, visualizing, and semantic mapping.
Talking Politics: Valuing Different Perspectives
This video from Edutopia demonstrates how high school students learn how to share and listen to opposing beliefs with empathy in the classroom.
Teaching with Current Events in Your Classroom
The Current Events Teacher Checklist from Facing History and Ourselves provides a step-by-step guide for teachers looking to incorporate reading and discussion about current events into their classroom. This website also offers a variety of accompanying activity suggestions and a moderated list of online news sources. Appropriate for intermediate level ESL and up.
Visible Thinking
Visible Thinking is a flexible and systematic research-based approach to integrating the development of students' thinking with content learning across subject matters. This website provides a convenient way to learn about Visible Thinking as well as thorough descriptions of the ideals, routines and activities that were developed from research in K-12 schools.