Bathroom Briefs

All educators are teachers of language, but not every educator has time to learn the strategies to teach language. That’s the purpose of Bathroom Briefs (BB). Each Monday, I physically post a new BB in the faculty bathroom.  They offer a quick, easily accessible strategy that can be used cross-content.

You are free to use these, modify them, translate them as needed. Please just reference that you got them from the site. I’d love to see them and share them on Twitter, so please tag me (@TanKHuynh) in your tweets when you tape them up in your schools or when you create your own.

In the December 2019/January 2020 issue of ASCD’s Education Leadership, Bathroom Briefs was featured as something newsworthy for teachers.

I’ve created classroom-ready posters for these academic command terms for you to post in your classroom.  I hope they support your ELs in all classes, not just their English.

Bathroom Brief # 6 to 8 will be sharing sentence stems with you.  I have found it an indispensable tool to scaffold EL’s production of ideas.  However, the legendary Jana Echevarría strongly encourages that we differentiate the sentence stems.  She recommended that they not be too basic for the more advanced students nor be too complex for the developing ELs.  If we have a group of five ELs, there might be three different sentence stems to support ELs to share their thinking.

 

Here’s an article she wrote on the topic called “Are Language Frames Good for Learners?”  When Jana recommends something, I listen because she is one of the creators of the sheltered immersion (SIOP) approach.

 

Educational posters to help every educator be a teacher of language.

how to scaffold instruction for English learners
Teaching practices that help ELLs
how to scaffold instruction for English learners
How to support English learners
ELL strategies culturally responsive brain
how to scaffold instruction for English learners
how to scaffold instruction for English learners
Bathroom Brief 25
how to scaffold instruction for English learners
teaching text structures to ELLs
Bathroom Brief 23
teaching text structures to ELLs
Bathroom Brief 23
teaching text structures to ELLs
Bathroom Brief 23
Bathroom Brief 18 text structures
Bathroom Brief 17
Bathroom Brief 18 text structures
Teaching ELLs academic language
Bathroom Brief 3
Bathroom Briefs 4 visual scaffolds for academic language
Visual scaffolds for ELLs
Visual scaffolds for ELLs
bb7-sentence-stems ELLs
BB8 Sentence stems for ELLs
BB9 Beginning English Leaner
BB8 Sentence stems for ELLs
BB9 Beginning English Leaner
EmpoweringELLs Bathroom Brief # 12
Bathroom Brief 13
Bathroom Brief 14
Bathroom Brief 15