Homophones and First Grade ELL Students

Melanie Ann Kirschner, First Grade, Albemarle Road Elementary School

Final Unit(pdf)   Implementing Teaching Standards(pdf)

Synopsis:

What would happen if you moved to another country and enrolled in school there? Most likely, you would not be able to understand what was being taught as you would struggle to comprehend what was being asked of you.  This curriculum unit is designed for those students whose native language is not English.  Students will study homonyms, words that sound the same but have different meanings (i.e.: duck the bird and duck under a table). English Language Learners can be tripped up by words with different meanings so this unit is designed to expose the students to these words and give them a chance to begin using clues in the sentence to pick out which word is being used.  The students will read books that contain homonyms, play homonym bingo and charades, and then create and publish their own homonym stories.  Throughout the unit, the students will be recording homonyms in their interactive journals and illustrating them to aid comprehension.