Many schools struggle with how to handle ESL, or English as Second Language students, in mainstream classrooms. Sometimes school boards "pull" ESL students from English classrooms for special instruction with a certified or experienced ESL teacher. Including ESL students in mainstream classrooms, however, offers them an opportunity for immersion in English language they would not have in a separate classroom, even in the third grade.

Methods
ESL inclusion lessons often entail co-teaching, with a special ESL teacher working with a mainstream teacher to deliver instruction. To avoid the ESL teacher acting merely as an assistant, ESL inclusion lessons in the third grade can either consist of parallel teaching or tag teaching. In parallel teaching, both teachers teach similar lessons to ESL and regular students at the same time, for example, grammar lessons on basic punctuation or spelling lessons, but at different levels. Tag teaching involves teachers taking turns teaching the same lesson. One teacher could explain what a book report looks like and how to write one, and the other teacher could discuss what kind of content should fill it.

Ideas
Teaching ESL students in mainstream classrooms may present its challenges, but it also offers opportunities for enriching children's educational experience. Teachers can present information about the cultures and customs of the various countries of the ESL students. Teachers can ask students to volunteer suggestions about the problems, difficulties or fears a student in a new country might face. An effective follow-up activity to this lesson could have native English-speaking students write journal entries about how they would like to be treated by classmates if they began third grade in a totally new country.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Lessons
Different teachers will have different ideas about how to approach teaching both ESL and regular students in the same classroom. ESL inclusion teaching is experimental; teachers may find that ideas they thought were great don't appear to be successful. Because students are only in the third grade, receiving feedback from them on what is working and what isn't proves difficult. Therefore, teachers of ESL inclusion have to carefully observe and note how students receive and retain information from lessons by regularly asking students if they understand, and briefly checking in with each student individually as they work on activities that implement concepts from lessons.

Tips
In some ways, co-teachers may end up with more work because not only do they have to come up with lesson plans, but they have to consult with another teacher and explain all of their ideas every time. Teachers can lessen this issue by planning out lessons several weeks ahead of time, clearly outlining their respective roles in each lesson. In this way, teachers only have to be responsible for the function their role entails.