Favorite ESL professional learning books for teachers of English Language Learners
Teachers have the responsibility to continue growing as educators. On this page, you’ll find a list of relevant teacher books that provide top-notch professional learning to teachers of multilingual learners.
Increase your confidence and become a teacher leader in your building. Master collaboration, differentiation, reading development, scaffolding, and much more.
Differentiating Instruction and Assessment for English language learners
This guide is packed with ideas for purposeful and differentiated language instruction and assessment that can be applied in most content classrooms. Differentiating instruction and assessment for English language learners contains updated information that every ESL teacher must know to succeed as a teacher leader.
I am using this book to plan and guide instruction and assessment for elementary and secondary ELLs. Read 1st chapter!
Collaboration and Co-teaching Strategies for English language learners
This is my favorite book available addressing collaboration and co-teaching for English language learners.
This book provides a variety of strategies and action items for ESL teachers to collaborate with others. A newer version contains updated information that every ESL teacher must know to succeed as a teacher leader. Read 1st chapter!
Why do English language learners struggle with reading?
This textbook is a wonderful resource that addresses research related to why English learners struggle with reading. It also helps teachers understand how to separate what we all sometimes wonder about: is it a disability or a language issue?
The authors provide insightful information about reading development and English learners. Read 1st chapter!
The 6 Principles for Exemplary Teaching of English Learners
The 6 Principles for exemplary teaching of English learners lays out important information that teachers should know about English language development and the 6 Principles and practical examples of how these principles can be enacted in classrooms (Short, Becker, Cloud, Hellman, Levine 2018 pviii). Read 1st chapter!
Mindset – Updated Edition: Changing The Way You think To Fulfil Your Potential
A long-time favorite. Mindset is one of the first books I read when I began to develop relationships. It helped me re-think my approach in implementing programming for ELLs.
Understanding the psychology of mindsets helped me develop relationships when working with people. Read 1st chapter!
Additional Books
In addition, the below books provide essential information about teaching English language learners.
Breaking Down the Wall...
Margarita Espino Calderon, Maria G. Dove, Diane Staehr Fenner, Margo Gottlieb, Andrea Honigsfeld, Tonya W. Singer, Shawn M. Sinclair-Slakk, Ivannia Soto, Debbie Zacarian
Buy Now
Building Literacy with English... 
Differentiating Instruction and Assessment... 
Pathways to Greatness for... 
Scaffolding Language, Scaffolding Learning:... 
Unlocking English Learners′ Potential:... 5 ESL Teacher Books that Make Great Book Studies
A list of 5 ESL teacher books with a description of how to use each book as a book study
ESL educators have multiple responsibilities to support English language learners successfully. To keep up with these responsibilities, teachers must continue learning and growing as professionals in the ESL field. We often find ourselves looking for ESL book recommendations to enhance our ability to provide high-quality instruction and services to ELLs.
As an ESL coordinator, I integrate book studies as part of our school district ESL team’s professional learning experience. A previous post discusses how to set up a book study, choosing an online platform, question selection and creation, and member participation. Continue reading…
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This list grows as I find additional books to share to better support us in teaching English learners. Please note that this article contains affiliate links, and that means that I may earn a commission if you buy something. Updated 2/6/2021.