Listen to Actors Read Some of Your Required Novels to Your Class for FREE!

If you are an English teacher, you probably read excerpts of novels to your students all the time. Students often times enjoy it, but sometimes it can be a bit tiring on the teacher since she/he is probably doing this 5 times a day:) Further, think about your ELLs who might not catch everything you are reading. They might not want to stand out as the few who didn't understand so they are unlikely to ask clarifying questions on what they didn't grasp.

Well, here is a site that has professional readers who donate their time to creating audio books for education. Some of the typical middle and high school books are there in audio form along with teacher guides (not that you would need them, but you may find a few new approaches that might be fun to try out).

How will this help your ELLs? Well, most importantly, they can listen multiple times at home since they most likely won't understand everything the first time round. Also, male actors read male parts and female read female parts. Something this simple assists ELLs in figuring who is doing what in the novel.

Though the teacher guides are good, they are not the definitive ones. You probably have a host of prior successful approaches you have used in the past so use them here as well. For ELLs, why not have them listen to short excerpts and then do a recap of what they thought occurred? This could be a quick draw or a quick write (depending on how much English they have). You could also have students take on roles of characters and write reflective journal entries as that character. This could be done in cooperative group settings where support for accomplishing this task is built into the group. Have students use chart paper and post their entries around the room! ELLs need to be surrounded by comprehensible language and this is one way to do it. Students could also write cartoon strips on what occurred in the section they listened to. No matter what the age, they love doing this type of activity.

FREE AUDIO BOOKS ONLINE

Hope this site supports your teaching efforts in the classroom:)

Denise

ELL TEACHER PROS