If students don't verbalize...

If students don't verbalize, students don't internalize.

 

I attended the Michigan Association for Bilingual Education, MABE event last week along with some of our fantastic colleagues across our NHA Michigan schools. As always, talking with our team served to refresh and renew my spirit!

 

 

Like any conference, there were hits and misses. Two break out sessions really spoke to me. I'll share some highlights and encourage you to follow the links to learn more.

 

"Improving English Language Learners' Writing: Focus on Accuracy and Fluency"- Dr. Zuzana Tomas http://supportingwriters.webs.com/apps/documents/

- I loved how she opened this session up: she had all participants respond to a prompt either a) in a language other than English (if known) or b) by writing from left to right. It was a great framing exercise for us. We immediately felt the struggle of a non-native English writer.

- she gave concrete examples on how to improve and develop students' accuracy and fluency

- she recommended a pretty great resource here http://www.brainfriendly.co.uk/ which I'm excited to explore further

- and to top it off she gave us a new and exciting EL-related blog to read http://eslcarissa.blogspot.com/2012/09/5-fun-ways-to-use-dictagloss-in-efl.html

 

"Language and Literacy for ELLs Creating Systematic Change for Academic Achievement"- Melissa Castillo  https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B62A1VcJ6ws3TWRoZDU4OWhrYWs&usp=sharing 

- here's a video clip showing Melissa's ideas for Building Academic Vocabulary

- Melissa works as an EL coach on a national level. I actually sat by a team of EL teachers from Montcalm that are currently working with her.

- I used her phrase 'if students don't verbalize, students don't internalize', a great reminder that we, and all teachers of ELs, need to speak less and listen more. Get our students talking purposefully!

- she addressed the Brick and Mortar word concept

 

These are some great resources! I encourage you to dive into these links and see what takeaways you can find and apply to your own teaching!

 



Your Service Center Library

I recently hauled in my personal collection of teaching resources and thought, why not share them with you? I am no longer in the classroom using these materials, they should be working for somebody!

So, if you're interested in "checking out" a resource below, email me and I'll put it in your school's mailbox straight away (takes about a week to get to you I'm told). Want a peek inside the resource to see if it's for you? I can do that too!

I'll record your check out date and a month later you'll start getting gentle reminders to send it back my way! Hopefully this way we can share (what I think) are good materials!

Some Novel Ties, read why I love them here

And some workbooks

And some 'best practices'

Get Excited about Language!

I had the pleaseure to visit our schools in Ohio this past week and picked up some great ideas to share with you!

What better way to engage a student and get them excited to play with words than to allow them access to your materials! Pathway Charter Academy makes it hard not to pick something out and take it home to play with!

Everything displayed was asking to be picked. From word games, to dictionaries and books.

A dictionary never looks as engaging when hiding away in a bookshelf.



Just like a birthday gift, these shiny bags are sent home containing stories and materials to be used and returned. From the schools experience it seemed the kids loved showing off their Book Bag of goodies.

So get your things off the shelves! Display them and encourage students to bring them home. And hopefully a little incentive will bring those materials back to you :)

Engaging Your Students with Technology!

Technology! If you're not embracing it, what are you waiting for?! Don't let budget restraints get in the way of tapping into resources that are readily available. Whether you're fortunate enough to have a whole classroom of Ipads or not, there are ways to be creative and engaging.

We know our ELL students benefit from repetition, and we also know we sometimes can get frustrated by having to repeat the same lesson over and over! So why not let someone else teach that lesson a 2nd, 3rd or 24th time?

http://www.schooltube.com/

Has a wealth of lessons that are filmed, uploaded and viewed by schools from all over. Check out their Oral Histories- beautiful research projects done by students on their family's history.

http://esl-lab.com/

Let them listen to someone else talk. This site has an assortment of pre-recorded discussions, complete with multiple choice questions to test your student's listening skills (all without making you lose your voice!)

http://matteson317.blogspot.com/

Love blogs? (you know I do!) Create your very own one for your group of kids. Here's an example of one I used with a group of ELL students in New York.

Other tried and true options:

Take pictures of your students demonstrating verbs- create a personal picture dictionary.

Grab a hand-held camera and record your kids reading or acting.

Sign out the computer lab for extra research time/English interactives

Do read alounds with books on CD

Welcome!

If you have never read or written a blog I hope you learn to love them as much as I do! What better way to share our knowledge, strategies, challenges and success! All without overwhelming your Inbox. As I said in my email, this is by no means a mandatory read for you. It is here for you as a resource. And if you know a classroom teacher who might like it, please pass it along!

Many of you participated in my survey last week, thank you! The more I know about you the better I can serve your needs.

And the survey shows* -

56% of you say your ELL parents

are infrequently involved at your school

52% of you have

never received an ELL PD

62% of you want

on-site training

95% of your schools

offer tutoring for your ELLs

And the top 3 challenges you face as a teacher of ELL students are

Time

Lack of Resources

Space

I don't think anyone is surprised by those common challenges. Many of us spend a lot of time creating or finding our own materials. Let's ease some of that by creating a list of helpful links which you can access from here. If you have another great link please comment and share it with us!

Take a moment to look under the tab 'Student Interactives' on the right hand side of your page. I will add to the current list of Starfall, ReadWriteThink, Dave's ESL Cafe and the ESL Lab. I've used these effectively with one-on-one and with partners.

I'm currently travelling to West Michigan schools and gleaning some of their best activities to share with you. 

The activity that I most loved comes from one of our new NHA schools, River City Scholars. Take a blank BINGO board, fill in with vocabulary (the sky's the limit here!), illustrate them, make copies. The students then color in the illustrations as they review the words, cut out the squares and paste them in different spots on colored paper. Voila! Content and vocabulary specific BINGO. Awesome job River City!

-Laura

Special Population Consultant

*percentages are calculated based on number of survey respondents