As an adult ESL instructor, you’ve likely seen students who can manage everyday conversation or reading, but struggle when asked to write coherent sentences or paragraphs. Writing is often the trickiest skill to teach: it requires mastery of grammar, organization, logical flow, and confidence. Teaching sentence writing to ESL students is essential, and it doesn’t have to be difficult!
A Writing Curriculum that Works
This beginner ESL writing curriculum is perfect for teaching beginner adult ESL and high school ELL newcomers how to write sentences and paragraphs. These no-prep lessons have everything you need to teach very basic sentence structure and paragraphs. There are scaffolded activities, worksheets, simple examples, lesson plans, a rubric and much more! Whether your students need to improve their English writing skills for work or school, these lessons will get them writing clear sentences and organized, cohesive paragraphs in no time!
1. Simple Sentences & Compound Sentences
- – Teach the essentials: subject, verb, different types of nouns; capitalization and punctuation.
- – Move to compound sentences: using coordinating conjunctions (“and”, “but”, “so”, “or”), understanding compound verbs, proper punctuation.
- – Practice with student worksheets (printable or fillable PDFs), answer keys, lesson plans with clear objectives.
2. Basic Paragraph Writing
- – A full lesson on paragraphs: topics & controlling ideas, topic sentences, supporting details, concluding sentences.
- – Pre-writing activities: writing-process guide, graphic organizer, paragraph checklist.
- – Rubric for grading, editing symbols guide, teacher’s guide and answer keys.
If you are teaching sentence writing to ESL students, try this curriculum and watch as your students grow into confident writers.
