ABSTRACT
This chapter explores an extremely important strategy for new English teachers to master: incorporating students' out-of-school lives into in-class activities and assignments. It examines what this strategy is and then reflects on its significance to effective instruction. This instructional strategy incorporates students' out-of-school lives in ways that help them learn academic material. The specific ways it takes shape in the classroom depend on the students you're teaching and the instructional focus for a lesson or activity. Facilitating connections between material that is relevant to students' out-of-school lives and academic topics is a key component of effective English instruction for three reasons: it facilitates student engagement, it makes new material less intimidating, and it encourages students to rethink academic concepts. The chapter considers two important recommendations that can help one's inclusion of students' out-of-school lives work as well as possible: provide a clear academic focus and let the out-of-school connections come from the students.
