Mrs. Hurley's ESL Site

Another great website is Mrs. Hurley's ESL (http://www.mrshurleysesl.com/). This award-winning site from Rockaway, NJ, has online practice links, links for homework help, internet projects, and class activities, among others. A successful practice of Mrs. Hurley is to "take students on a number of class trips throughout the year that are incorporated into the curriculum to supplement classroom instruction and to expose the students to new and different real life experiences outside of regular classroom instruction. Field trips do not end once the trip is physically over, but continue into the classroom with follow-up activities." The program gets grants so that these ESL students can go on the trips at no cost. This is part of the Real Life Language Program that is described on the site. Another idea, when it is impossible to take field trips, is to go on a "virtual" field trip. An online visit to a site like the Metropolitan Museum, with accompanying lessons, can be an interesting way to improve vocabulary by exposing the student to memorable images. A Teacher Resources link gives lesson plans and many other links for mainstream, ESL and content area teachers. There seems to be over a hundred different links throughout this site. This is a well-researched and creative website.