Digital Learning and Technology Support
Tips to Help English Learners at Home
Here are some things you can do to support your students while they are learning at home:
- Provide a quiet place for your student to work and study each day.
- Set a regular time for them to do their schoolwork.
- Talk with them in your home language about what they are working on and learning.
- Describe how to do something, what a person looks like, or what something is in your home language. Have your child describe the same thing in English.
- Answer any questions that your child has in your home language or in English, whichever is most comfortable for you.
- Share family stories, explain how to do things, and give your opinion. Your child can write about your conversations in English.
- Help your child set goals for improving their speaking and writing in English by writing longer sentences or paragraphs and learning new vocabulary to use when talking.
- Have your children practice their English when they are talking on the phone or on Face Time. They can also practice with family members or friends.
- Label objects around your home and community with sticky notes in your home language and in English.
- Reading Support
- Tell a story in your home language. Have them retell the story to you in your home language and tell you the main idea or lesson of the story. Then ask them to try to write down what happened in the story in English. include they key details and state the main lesson or idea. It’s okay if they just write words and phrases! They can draw pictures of the story and label it in your home language and in English.
- Read books or online articles with your children in your home language. They can summarize them for you in your home language, then write some sentences about what they learned in English.
- Make flash cards for simple addition and subtraction problems and quiz them until they can solve them quickly.
- Make flash cards and practice the multiplication facts that your child has been learning in school with your child.
- Have your child count common items around the house.
- Cut out shapes from paper (triangles, rectangles, squares, circles, rhombus, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, oval, trapezoid) and have them label each shape on the back and color the front or each shape. Have them tell you the name of the shape and its color in English. They can also tell you the number of sides and whether the sides are straight or curved.
- Have them draw a picture using different shapes and label the shapes in the picture