Tutor Tips

May is mental health awareness month. Of course, talking about mental health needs to be destigmatized by doing so all year long, but now is a good time to mention a couple of lesson plan resources that you can use with your students. Every single person is struggling in some way, and our students are likely to have more stressors that most. On top of everything going on in their lives, English language learners are often living in fear. Our basic literacy students’ lives are frequently in transition in one way or another. Health literacy in particular is critical: If a person doesn’t understand what they are reading or hearing in regard to a health issue, then that can become a dangerous situation.

While we are not counselors or health practitioners, we are educators, and there is no reason not to use mental health lessons to teach and tutor language just as we use other health lessons. If your student is not quite comfortable about talking about mental health yet, you can start with very small amounts of check-in conversation or by reading short news articles together.

Here are a few sites to get you started:

• #IamABE’s mental health lessons are designed for high beginning English language learners and include all four language skills.

• Here is a collection of resources and lesson plans with a focus on emotions and stress from the English Empowerment Center.

• The Illinois Community College Board has a public collection of statewide contextualized curricula that includes The Healthcare Contextualized Bridge Curriculum for more advanced learners with a theme (8) on mental health.

• Bonus: Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center’s “Bag of Rocks” lesson.

One of the best strategies for ANY learner, including students with learning difficulties, is to utilize visuals of all kinds. The word “visual” does not just refer to pictures. Visuals can also be videos, stories, analogies, metaphors, maps, diagrams, charts, infographics, GIFS and memes, comics, real life objects, illustrations: anything that helps to create images in our minds. In fact, the reason mind-maps and graphic organizers are such an effective strategy is because they aid us in creating mental models. While people may have different preferences, all brains need visuals to learn. In fact, just for fun, next time you do an online search on a topic, try searching with images.

Royalty-free images can of course be found on search engines, but also try Adobe/ Canva, Unsplash/ Pixabay, and other free image sites. College, library, and museum collections like the Getty are also good sources. Here is a collection of collections from Alberta Teachers Association, and here are a few other resources for you to get started incorporating more images. (Of course, the easiest way to begin is for you and your student to draw and bring in real objects/ photos.) Happy visualizing!

• Math Eyes has wonderful mathematical images divided by area

• The New Readers Press Visual Literacy series incorporates visual maps, graphs, charts, diagrams, and so on in ready-made lessons

• For amazing photographs, look no further than National Geographic

• The New York Times’ What’s Going On In This Picture? uses photographs for creative conversations

• Check out these ESL image prompts from BrainPop and these Pics4Learning organized by categories

• Colorin’ Colorado is a solid resource for English language learners and their families with a special emphasis on using images to support learning

• Pathways to Literacy includes Google slides of images for learning vocabulary by theme, and Quizlet allows easy searches to add images for vocabulary

• The ISL Collective includes a nice collection of videos

Did you know that adults lose attention after 8-12 minutes, and it’s getting worse? That tells us that while, yes, we need to practice in a variety of ways, we also need brain and movement breaks. This can be as simple as a walk to the restroom, a quick stretch, or a snack/ coffee break. Movement stimulates our brains so that we can take that new information in. Breaks give us the time to digest information. Some fun ideas that you can do related or not to the lesson at hand:

• 5 deep breaths with arm movement: up, out, down

• Walk and talk about a related example or story (or walk and find, draw, etc.: you fill in the blank)

• Chair or standing stretching -Scavenger hunts

• Floor, table, or wall writing -Mini field trips

• Stand/ bend/ reach and ... -Role plays

• Show and tell -Stations @ the space

• Ball throwing -Move to the music

All of these can be short and sweet, and most take little to no preparation. Get in the habit of adding them into your sessions instead of sitting in one place the entire time. If your student asks why, give them the research: it’s good for us AND helps us remember!

It is so simple, but journals, binders, or notebooks where everything is in one place are valuable for so many reasons. 

Dated journals add an element of accountability and progress tracking as well as create a space for expression and practice. Students can divide them in sections and use them for vocabulary, daily writing, the writing process for a piece that they want to publish (like a letter or recipe to share), ideas and doodles, and responses to readings with writing, charts, drawing, key words, and so on. Encourage color and variety. Students might even tape in comics or readings or tickets to respond to, and the journal becomes a bit of a scrapbook. You will know quickly what your student is comfortable with and open to. The sky is the limit! 

When you first give your student a notebook (or they bring one), bring along some magazines, scissors, and glue and let them personalize it while you do your own. This step really helps any age student gain immediate ownership of the journal.

Tutors and students can also use these to have written conversations, which is a great way to model writing without formal correction.

Tutors can use their own tutor journals for lesson plans, notes on sessions (time/length, how lessons went, students’ progress), and brainstorming ideas. Write on!