ELD Weekly Bulletin
Title III/ELD Listserv - October 5, 2015
Tips for Successful Parent-Teacher Conferences with Bilingual Families
"Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I'll remember. Involve me and I'll understand."
— Confucius
Your family has been selected for a new reality show called "Education Around the World." You and your children are relocated within a week to a country very different from the United States — let's say China. To win the grand prize on the reality show, you must help your children succeed in the Chinese public school system. Before you leave the U.S., you barely learn survival Chinese and you've gotten the basic assistance to get your children registered in the Chinese school system. You don't know anything, however, about the Chinese educational system, and you are not sure what the expectations are for students or their parents, or how you will communicate with the teacher since he/she speaks very little English.
Once you have arrived and the school year begins, you are not able to understand the information that is sent home; your children are struggling to learn math, social studies, and science in Chinese with one hour of English support each day; and you don't know how you should communicate with the teacher or if the school has parent-teacher conferences. If the school does hold conferences, how does it work? Do you sign up for a time? Do you go there and wait for your turn? Do the teachers come visit the house? Or are parent-teacher conferences only held when there is a problem? And perhaps the most important question of all: if you want an English translator, how do you request one?
This example demonstrates what some of our ELL families might experience as they attempt to understand the U.S. educational system and such practices as parent-teacher conferences. The challenges of this situation could also be compounded if parents do not have very much education themselves and feel uncomfortable in an educational environment.
In addition, parents may come from a culture where it is either insulting to a teacher to ask for student progress information. Alternatively, the expectation may be that the children have been sent to the teacher to learn and if the teacher is asking for a parent's help, then there must be something wrong with the teacher. You can see how many bridges must be crossed in order to offer the kind of outreach and support parents may need to fully benefit from parent-teacher conferences.
Read more here to find before-during-after tips for successful conferences with bilingual families.
How to Hold effective conferences with parents of your ELLs
When families of English learners (ELs) are actively engaged in the education of their children, those children will attend school more regularly, be less likely to drop out, and be more successful academically. Many classroom teachers do not know how to communicate with parents who do not speak English and who are not familiar with U.S. school practices. On the other hand, many families of ELs may not be familiar with the practice of meeting with their child’s teacher and do not know what is expected of them during a parent-teacher conference. The goal of this blog is to help teachers hold productive parent-teacher conferences.
Read more about holding effective parent-teacher conferences here.
Using Cognates with ELLs
Cognates are words in two languages that share a similar meaning, spelling, and pronunciation, such as 'information' in English and 'información' in Spanish. While English may share very few cognates with languages that use a different written system, 30-40% of all words in English have a related word in Spanish. For Spanish-speaking ELLs, cognates are an obvious bridge to the English language and are particularly common in content areas such as math, science, and social studies. These resources offer ideas on how to use cognates in the classroom and provide examples of English / Spanish cognates.
Tips for Teaching ELLs to Write
Writing is the most difficult language skill for ELLs to master. Here are some of the challenges these students face in a writing class.
- English language learners have a limited vocabulary. They repeat the same words and phrases again and again. Content is restricted to known vocabulary.
- ELLs are reluctant to use invented spelling and content is restricted to words they know how to spell.
- Verb tenses are inaccurate. ELLs will usually write in the present tense.
- The chaotic structure and grammar of students' composition make their writing difficult to understand.
- Students are reluctant to share their work during peer editing. When they do share, they prefer to work with other ELLs who may not provide appropriate feedback.
- When ELLs read their writing aloud, they have no sense of what sounds right and what doesn't.
- In many cultures, students are not encouraged to express their opinions. ELLs may have little experience with creative writing to bring from their native language.
53 Wonderfully Pointless Facts about the English Language
1. In Old English, hiccups were nicknamed “elf-chokes”.
2. One third of an inch is called a barleycorn.
3. One third of an hour is called a mileway. Because it’s supposedly the time it takes to walk one mile.
4. The remnants of a drink left in the bottom of a glass is called the heeltap.
5. The distance within which a whisper can be heard is called the whispershot.
6. A zombie was originally the part of a person’s soul that could supposedly be removed and bottled using voodoo magic.
7. In English, the word happy is used three times more often than sad.
8. White meat was originally another name for dairy produce.
9. The word girl wasn’t originally gender-specific, and was used of both girls and boys.
10. Aghast literally means “frightened by a ghost”.
Check out 43 more Wonderfully Pointless Facts about the English language. How many ways can use these with your students? Oral language development? Questioning skills? Journal prompts?
NOW PAST DUE: OCR Language Assistance Services Training
You must register for the course in Edivate using the registration code in the registration guide. If you search and view the video without registering, you will not receive credit for course completion.
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Please remember to complete your OCR Language Assistance Training for School Year 2015-2016 by October 1. All staff who interact with parents are required to complete this training. To received credit for completion, login to Edivate following the steps in the OCR Language Assistance Registration Guide, view the video in full, and review the resource documents in the PDF. Training completion is tracked individually in Edivate. Please email Laura Grisso with any questions.
ESL Certification Test Resources
Online ESL Test Prep Modules: These 10 interactive modules support the professional learning of terminology, concepts and techniques to provide effective and successful instruction for ELLs in all learning experiences.
Reimbursement for ESL Teacher Certification Exam: Title III will reimburse any staff member who successfully earns Oklahoma ESL teacher certification for the testing fees.
ESL Certification Study Group: This group meets monthly at Wilson and is an open group to support colleagues in engaging discussions and test prep that will support the Oklahoma ESL teacher certification standards. For more information on scheduling, please check MyLearningPlan.
Title III/ELD Upcoming Events
October 8, 8:30am - LIEPs Open Lab
October 8, 3:30pm - ESL Certification Study Group (Elementary)
October 8, 4:30pm - ESL Certification Study Group (Secondary)
October 10, 8:30am - SIOP Saturday: Day 2
October 10, 8:30am - Dual Language Lesson Cycle Training
Register in MyLearningPlan unless otherwise noted.
Click here to view the Title III/ELD Calendar.
ELD Weekly Bulletins for SY2015-2016
September 28, 2015 September 21, 2015 September 14, 2015 September 7,2015 August 31, 2015 August 24, 2015 August 19, 2015 August 17, 2015 August 10, 2015 August 3, 2015 July 27, 2015