ELD Weekly Bulletin
Title III/ELD Listserv - November 2, 2015
Conversations with a Purpose
by Christi Gilbert
Raise your hand if you love to read! Now, raise your hand if you love to read journal articles... about language acquisition... and about how students learn and use language in math! Meeeeeee!! I love to read articles, books, anything I can get my hands on. That's how I learn.
One article I read recently is called "Instructional Strategies for Developing Oral Language." Sounds exciting, right? Trust me, IT IS! Oral language is incredibly important for developing reading comprehension in any content area. "It is the fuel that feeds the fire of comprehension, as the language that is heard must be understood before the language that is read can be decoded and understood," states the author Sue McCandlish.
Read more here about developing oral language in the math classroom.
Using Pair and Group Work to Develop ELLs’ Oral Language Skills
By Diane Staehr Fenner, Sydney Snyder
In our last post, we shared information about the new Teaching Channel ELL series based on Academic Conversations (2011) by Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford featuring related classroom videos developed in partnership with the Oakland Unified School District. This week we’d like to delve deeper into these resources and provide strategies for building the oral language skills of ELLs across content areas that are framed around four practices.
Most teachers understand that pair and group work provide excellent opportunities for ELLs’ oral language development because each student has more time to talk than in a large group discussion, and students often feel more comfortable sharing their ideas in a small group environment. However, in order to build on the skills described in the CCSS, it may be necessary to re-envision pair and group work and provide additional supports for ELLs. ELLs may find group work challenging if they do not understand their expected role in the task they are working on, or if they do not feel confident in using the language required for the task.
Let's Write! 20 Ideas & Resources
“Young people are reading and writing more than I ever did at their age, but they are doing it using their computers and mobile phones … The mobile is central, and will become even more so as time goes by.” – David Crystal
- Ideas for digital writing projects, include comics, scripts for videos and podcasts, ebooks, multimedia posters, eportfolios, infographics, blogs, essays, scrapbooks, ezines (digital magazines), and online newspapers
- Inspire students to write by first creating a safe environment where students can share their work without it being full of red marks. Help students learn how to give and receive constructive feedback during the peer editing stage.
- Get them to practice writing routinely with journals or blogs. Blogs give students an audience. Check out my resources, Blogging Tools and Tips. Discover how to get your students’ blogs comments using Quadblogging or Comments4Kids.
- It’s important students get to practice free flow writing, which isn’t graded or edited. This allows them to generate thoughts about a topic.
- Students can organizer their thoughts with graphic organizers and interactives, such as Creately and ReadWriteThink. Find more sites for graphic organizers here.
Read more great ideas for supporting the writing skills and digital literacy of your ELL students.
Maximizing the Benefits of Project-Based Learning in the ELD Classroom
by Bülent Alan & Fredricka L. Stoller
The implementation of project work differs greatly from one instructional setting to another. In some settings, fairly non-elaborated tasks, confined to a single class session, are labeled as projects. In other settings, elaborate sets of tasks establish the process for completing the project and span an entire instructional unit; in settings like these, the benefits of project work are maximized because students are actively engaged in information gathering, processing, and reporting over a period of time, and the outcome is increased content knowledge and language mastery. In addition, students experience increased motivation, autonomy, engagement, and a more positive attitude toward English. Although project-based learning presents challenges for teachers and students (Beckett 2002; Eyring 1997), most project-work proponents assert that the advantages
outweigh the disadvantages
Read more about engaging your ELL students in project-based learning in your classroom.
Coming Soon! ELLevation Instructional Strategies
Launching in 2016, Ellevation's Instructional Strategies will provide classroom teachers with online easy-to-use activities for English learners to be implemented across grade levels and content areas - and personalized to student proficiency levels.
This sample activity provides a glimpse of the supports offered through Instructional Strategies including:
- Pre-lesson needs
- Activity details (domain, grades, etc.)
- Student lanage adaptations
- Quick tips
- Evidence of success
Check out the sample Double Vision Instructional Strategy here.
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.
Too Fun Not to Share
Title III/ELD Upcoming Events
November 2nd, 1:00pm - Meeting the Needs of Opt-Out ELs (Webinar Registration)
November 3rd, 4:00pm - Spanish for Educators (Edivate)
November 6th, 2:00pm - Interpreter & Translator Training (Edivate)
Register in MyLearningPlan unless otherwise noted.
Click here to view the Title III/ELD Calendar.
ELD Weekly Bulletins for SY2015-2016
October 26, 2015 October 19, 2015 October 12, 2015 October 5, 2015 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