Raise the Bar Reading

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Scope and Sequence (Order) for Teaching Grammar Skills to ESL Students

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It can be overwhelming to try to figure out what the order of teaching ESL grammar is to newcomer ELLs/MLs. It is so hard to choose where to start with a scope and sequence because many grammatical skills seem imperative for both conversation and writing.  They need to know subject pronouns, the verb “to be”, creating the present tense…the list goes on and on! 

Scope and Sequence for teaching ESL Grammar

There are such a wide variety of ESL grammar programs that use different sequences, so there is not one “right” order to teach grammar skills. After much thought and research, this is the order I have found makes the absolute most sense for newcomer ELLs/MLs.  

ESL GRAMMAR SCOPE & SEQUENCE:

  1. Personal Pronouns (Subject and Object Pronouns)
  2. Verb “To Be”
  3. Verbs vs. Nouns
  4. Present Tense
  5. Singular & Plural Nouns
  6. Articles
  7. Demonstratives (Adjectives & Pronouns)
  8. Possessives (Nouns, Adjectives & Pronouns)
  9. Present Progressive Tense
  10. Negative Present & Present Progressive Tense
  11. Questions
  12. Adjectives
  13. Superlatives & Comparatives
  14. Quantifiers
  15. Past Tense
  16. Future Tense
  17. Helping Verbs
  18. Adverbs
  19. Conjunctions
  20. Prepositions

By starting grammar instruction right away with newcomer ELs, you can prevent students from creating bad grammatical habits. It can be very hard to break those habits in both spoken and written language as students grow into the intermediate language level.  

WHAT MAKES EFFECTIVE RESOURCES FOR TEACHING GRAMMAR?

As an ESL reading intervention teacher, I often struggled to find the types of grammar worksheets and activities I craved for my newcomers. This is why I created worksheets that:

  • Use Visual Cues for EVERY exercise in order for students to actually understand what they are reading and writing.
  • Have very clear directions and examples to provide students the supports they need to complete the activities. 
  • Allow students multiple opportunities to practice the same skill in different, engaging ways.
  • Provide hands on options, as well as digital options, to reach all learners’ needs.
ESL Grammar Scope and sequence of skills

Each unit builds in order of difficulty in both grammatical skills as well as vocabulary. By having a visual to accompany each grammar exercise, students pick up on repeated exposure to vocabulary words while they are learning the grammar skills.

Grammar Units for MLLs

The resources in each grammar unit come in both a printable PDF and digital Google Slides format for flexibility. Having a digital format is helpful for assigning students some slides to work on outside of the classroom, as well as reducing the need for so much printed paper.

Using digital ESL Grammar activities

Ready to get started? Part of Unit 1 (Subject Pronouns) is available for free here. Hope you and your students enjoy it!

Free Subject Pronouns Unit

ESL GRAMMAR SCOPE & SEQUENCE BUNDLE:

The Complete Grammar Units Bundle follows the exact ESL grammar scope and sequence of skills described above. It includes tons of activities for 20 Grammar Units:

INDIVIDUAL GRAMMAR UNITS:

Need help getting started? This blog post focuses on teaching the first Grammar Skill, Subject Pronouns:

Teaching Subject Pronouns to Newcomer ELs (+ Free ESL Grammar Worksheets and Activities)