Contents
Introduction
1. Choice Time in a Workshop Structure
2. The Benefits of Choice Time Workshop for English Language Learners
3. Unit 1: Planning and Pursuing Collaborative Projects
4. Unit 2: Story Play
Final Thoughts
Works Cited
Books Recommended by This Author

Sample Chapter: "Choice Time in a Workshop Structure."
Story Play Minilessons
A Comparison of the Process in Writing to Block Building
Bibliography of Cited and Recommended Titles

Introduction
English language learners (ELLs) flourish when they feel comfortable using English in a risk-free environment. In today's educational climate of standards, testing, and accountability, the sheer pace of instruction in most classrooms is enough to create a stressful environment. How important it is for young children, and especially young ELLs, to have a time in the school day when they can feel safe enough to approximate using English and meanwhile can work with zeal on collaborative projects that require lots of communication. In this book, we suggest that a choice time workshop can provide a rich and supportive opportunity within which ELLs can develop the language skills they need while also learning many of the constituent skills of strong reading and writing. In a choice time workshop, children can imagine, predict, envision, and problem solve, and they can do all this with support from each other, teachers, and literature.

We have written this book with the assumption that you already teach reading and writing as workshops and you have already found workshop teaching can provide powerful learning opportunities for children. We are also assuming that your class contains many ELLs. This book will help you provide your ELLs opportunities to make meaning through play. When children use blocks, construction paper, and improvisational drama to create alternate worlds and to inhabit those worlds, they're meanwhile drawn into a rich language curriculum. They use language to imagine and assess possibilities, to negotiate roles, to critique and revise work, and to assume roles. This language work is important for all youngsters and it is especially important for ELLs.

We believe passionately that young ELLs need to explore language through play. This belief was influenced by our experiences as early childhood teachers and as staff developers in primary classrooms brimming with ELLs. We were also inspired by the rock stars of education: Lev Vygotsky, Jean Piaget, Brian Cambourne, and Lucy Calkins.

In the first chapter, we suggest that choice time can be taught effectively within a workshop structure. In the second chapter, we emphasize the advantages that a choice time workshop can have for ELLs. The third and fourth chapters outline two units of study in choice time workshop and explore the notion of developing a curriculum for choice time.

The most rewarding part of writing this book was the collaborative aspect. Each chapter was truly written with a collective "we" and is infused with ideas and experiences from each of us.