Wordless books are a wonderful tool to use in your ESL classroom. They are flexible in their use and can be adapted to the language and ability level of your English language learners. Combine your students' curiosity about American customs with their love of storytelling to stimulate their imaginations and engage their interest.

Lesson Topic

Learning about American customs: The Tooth Fairy

Proficiency/Grade Level

Multi-level early elementary ESL classroom

Goals and Standards

Goal 1, Standards 2 & 3: Participating in popular culture; Sharing social and cultural traditions and values; Seeking support and feedback from others; Develop listening strategies to understand what is heard; Testing hyposthesis about language

Goal 2, Standard 2: Explaining actions; Selecting, connecting and explaining information; Representing information visually; Elaborating and extending other people’s ideas and words.

Background Knowledge

Brainstorm with students about what changes happen to their teeth when they are in 1st grade. Ask who has lost a tooth? How old were they? Encourage those students who are able to talk about losing a tooth.

Concepts and Skills

This lesson will develop oral language, listening skills, reading skills, reading comprehension, and grammar skills.

Materials or Resources

A picture book such as Tomie De Paola's Flicks; language experience chart paper.

Procedure

1. Choose an appropriate book. I decided to use the book Flicks by Tomie de Paola, which I got from the public library. It has 5 "silent movie" (flicks) stories in it. Each story provides a great theme for elementary students. I chose the first story, "Tooth Troubles," because the theme is an excellent introduction to the tooth fairy in our American culture.

2. Preview the book with your students. When you look at the book with the children don't provide them with the title chosen by the author. Let them decide on an appropriate one themselves. As you go through each picture ask questions such as:

• Who do you see in the picture?
• What are they doing?
• Why is the girl happy?
• What happened to the boy?
• What will he do next?

Go through the entire story using this method. This is an opportunity for you to develop the background knowledge needed to understand the American customs about the Tooth Fairy.

3.Brainstorm Vocabulary. Help students develop the vocabulary needed for the story. Make a web or a list of words that the children come up with that can be used for the writing. This list will vary according to the language levels of your students. Examples of vocabulary needed for "Tooth Troubles" are: string/twine; tie; success; quarter; push/pull; pain; dentist; knock; loose; door knob; jiggle; tooth fairy.

Now is the time to brainstorm names for the characters in the story. Ask the students to suggest names. Write them on the board. Take a vote. You also may want to vote on a title for the story or you may want to wait until after the story is composed.

4.Compose the story. Start to write the story as a group. Have the children tell you what to write. Depending on the proficiency level and grade level of your students the stories will vary greatly. You may want to have very beginning students draw a picture and label it.

• Low beginner level example: Janie loses a tooth. The tooth fairy gives her money. She takes the tooth. Janie is happy.
• Advanced beginner to intermediate level example: Yesterday Janie lost a tooth. The tooth fairy gave her a quarter and took her tooth. She was very happy.
• High intermediate level example: Janie was very excited because she had lost her first tooth. The tooth fairy had left a quarter under her pillow and she was thinking about what she could do with the money.

As you can see, it can be a very simple story or more grammatically complex, depending on the ability of the students. I believe that when doing the composing with the class you quietly need to write the sentences correctly in spite of the errors they may give you. For example: If a child says, "He goed to the dentist." You say and write, "He went to the dentist."

After each sentence is written it should be read out loud. Writing the story doesn't take one session. So, when you come back to the story to continue writing make sure the story is read out loud all the way from the beginning so the students can remember the flow of the story.

5. Reading the story. When the story is finished the teacher should read it to the class. Then the group can read with the teacher followed by having the students read individually. At this point in time, you should type up the story and make a copy for each student to work with and to take home to read to the parents.

6. Develop Reading Activities.

• Have the students circle or highlight the word tooth (or any other word used often in the story) as many times as it exists in their copy
• Give students comprehension questions such as: Who lost a tooth? What did she do with it? Who did she show the quarter to? What will she do with the quarter?
• Ask critical thinking questions such as: Did it hurt when James' tooth came out? What would you do if your tooth were loose?
• Have students underline a word that begins/ends with the th sound
• Develop sequencing skills. Write 5 sentences from the story on the board out of sequence and have students write them in the order that they happened in the story.
• Have them put a square around all regular past tense verbs that end in ed/put a triangle around irregular past tense verbs.

7. Follow-up discussions and activities

When you've finished this story go back to a discussion of the tooth fairy which was introduced when developing background knowledge. Discuss again what the children do in their countries when they lose a tooth. Make a chart of customs from various countries. Ask students what they would do when they lose a tooth now that they live in the United States? Read them a story about the Tooth Fairy. Do a graph showing how many teeth each student has lost.