ESL & Spanish Teaching Resources

Licensing: You may reproduce the resource for all of your students for as long as you are teaching.  Not transferable after use.  Respect copyright law.
If purchasing on this website doesn’t work as expected, or if the link expires before you get a chance to use it, please contact me to receive a new download link. I keep a permanent record of all purchases and always honor past sales.

English Language Learner Resources

My resources for ELLs (also called ESL learners or multilingual learners) are created based on years of my own experiences teaching real language learners of all ages. These resources are currently only available on TeachersPayTeachers.

  • Early elementary
    “A Good Snack” early reader resource: 1st to 4th grade, phonemes, letter/sound association, and fluid reading
  • Middle/high school
    The Salem Witch Trials: Standards-aligned social studies packet for early American history; question words, vocabulary, and essential concepts (such as “village” or “colony”)
  • Adult
    Travis at Work: 4 stories and related activities about a man and his construction job

Spanish Trip Itineraries

Whether you’re supplementing a travel or country-specific unit or adding context to a comprehensible reader (or just looking for some rockstar sub plans!), the Musicuentos Trip Itinerary is a fantastic fit. Your learners will select places they want to visit in 4 cities, based on authentic travel reviews from TripAdvisor!

Currently available: Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico.

Visit the itinerary page.

Rubric, Reference, and More

  • 2015 Performance Assessment Rubric (FREE)
    Explanation and credits here
    Download the rubric PDF here
  • Simple verb pack (FREE) here
    one-page summaries (each) of present, sudden past (preterite), and descriptive past (imperfect)
    Before using this, please read my blog post “How I use verb charts.”

  • Complete Spanish verb pack$9 on TPT
    8 pages: present, sudden past (preterite), descriptive past (imperfect), future and conditional, commands, subjunctive (“crazy verb switch”), present progressive (“happenING verbs”), past participle uses (“-ado / -ido words”)
    Aids students in refining their grammatical accuracy; ideal for advanced  and other courses requiring a lot of writing
    Please read “How I use verb charts.”

    This is a great resource and very useful!
    –Cynthia

  • Es / Está Battleship (FREE)
    A game for practicing (not “learning”) accurate pairings of es and está; see the blog post with more instructions here.
  • Improvicuentos
    Novice mad-lib-style activities where learners create new stories by filling in the blank
    – Sample: Un evento en mi vida (FREE)
    Others CLICK HERE: En la playa, En el restaurante, Las cartas en el correo, Un regalo para el cumpleaños, Listo para el partido (Bundle pricing available)
  • Embedded Listening
    – scaffolding resources that build learner confidence in listening to authentic Spanish audio by slowly asking them to hear more information in repeated attempts (see this post) –
    La Voz Kids: Novice introductions / description
    El último partido: Intermediate past tense
  • Authentic reading
    Cajas de cartón: a reader’s guide to the short story by Francisco Jiménez
    Vocabulary-boosting, proficiency-based activities for the short story only (chapter 9 of the memoir)
    To purchase the guide for the full book also called Cajas de cartón by Francisco Jiménez, please visit the ebooks section of the site.
    Details: digital file includes 2-page introduction, 2 pages of vocabulary with activities, 2 pages of 31 comprehension questions with activities, and 2-page glossary.
    To buy the electronic guide for $6.95, simply click here:

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