For the Love of Language
ELA TOSA Final Newsletter - May/June 2024
Hello amazing ELA teachers!
I can't believe we're staring down the end of another school year! Part of me still feels like it just started yesterday. Where has the time gone?!
As I think most, if not all, of you know by now, my time as a TOSA is coming to an end as well, as the position has been cut for next year. It has been such a joy for me to serve in this role, and I have truly loved getting to work with each and every one of you. I hope that over these last three years, I've been able to offer you the support you needed, share some new ideas for you to try, and be a resource you could lean on. I have learned so much from you and am so thankful to have had this opportunity to work with the awesome English teachers of Simi Valley Unified.
Luckily, I will continue to serve in Simi schools. Beginning next fall, I will be the new assistant principal at Santa Susana High School. I'm so excited to be heading back to a school campus, and I can't wait to be a part of the Troubadour family (I already have a teal, black, and gray tutu ready to go!).
Going forward, should you need anything ELA curriculum-related at the district, please feel free to contact Dr. Justine Wienken, Coordinator of Curriculum and Assessment. I am still happy to help with what I can as well, so please don't hesitate to reach out!
With gratitude for all you do, and best wishes for a restful summer,
Jennifer
In This Edition...
* Project Zero's Thinking Routines π
* COMPASS: The California Online Media Program for Access and Student Success π
* Rethinking Rubrics π€
* Inspiration from the Internet π‘
* Summer Reading Lists π
* Congratulations to our VCOE Battle of the Books Champions! ππ
* Emergent Bilinguals - Strengthening the Superpower π¦ΈββοΈ
* Mirrors & Windows π
* Freebies and Giveaways π€©
* Opportunities for Students & Teachers π
Project Zero's Thinking Routines π
In looking for some resources for my Induction candidate recently, I came across a site from the Harvard Graduate School of Education called Project Zero's Thinking Routines. A thinking routine is a set of questions or a brief sequence of steps used to scaffold and support student thinking. The researchers developed these routines to deepen student thinking and help make thinking "visible". The site includes ten types of thinking routines, including Digging Deeper Into Ideas and Considering Controversies, Dilemmas, and Perspectives. Each thinking routine includes information on how to get started in class with the routine, and some also include helpful features like explanatory videos, ways to adapt the routines to varying age levels, and links to documents in Spanish. These can be great ways to help encourage discussion and reflection in your classroom.
COMPASS: The California Online Media Program for Access and Student Success π
COMPASS is online educational content and tools offered by the state of California at no cost to public schools and students. Students and educators can access informational articles, magazines, online books, scientific research, newspaper articles, data graphics, dynamic photos, interactive tools, videos and performances, educational guides and more β all aligned with Californiaβs educational standards. This is a great resource for helping students with research and media analysis, and teachers can create custom learning experiences for students to accommodate individual learning differences, varying student interests, and deeper learning.
You can find more information, as well as connections to the available databases, here.
Here are a few other vetted research sites that were currently featured in the NEA Today magazine:
* History Channel Famous Speeches: Features a large collection of famous speeches and events in video and audio; great primary sources for Grade 3 and up.
* How Stuff Works: One of the websites I would always direct my students to! An award-winning source of unbiased, reliable, accessible explanations about how a huge variety of things works. Aimed at Grade 6 and up.
* Infoplease: Authoritative answers to questions using statistics, facts, and historical records culled from a broad overview of research materials. Aimed at Grade 6 and up.
* NOVA Videos: High-quality, well-researched videos on a variety of topics of interest to older students. Many topics also include teacher resources such as lesson plans, assessments, slideshows, and webinars.
Re-thinking Rubrics π€
Using rubrics for evaluating student writing is a long-standing practice, especially in ELA instruction. Recently I came across the idea of the single-point rubric, and it's something I think could be a very powerful tool to help students engage on a deeper level with assessment and feedback.
The idea of the single-point rubric is simple. The success criteria that students need to achieve to demostrate proficiency are listed in a column in the middle. A blank column is placed to the left and right of these criteria, leaving room for the teacher to share with students where they exceed the standard or are still growing toward the standard.
One of the things I love about this type of rubric is that it takes away the struggle we've all had as educators of trying to cover every single possible outcome in an assignment that could go well or go poorly for a student. This rubric acknowledges that no matter how hard we try, students may not always fall into the categories and strictures we've set. It also takes away the struggle of "well, the student met this part of Point 2 but this part of Point 3, so do I give them a 2 or a 3 or a 2.5?" Instead, the rubric simply gives guidance to students and then gets out of their way so they can show us what they know.
I also like that this rubric focuses students on feedback instead of on the competition game of "I got more points than you did". Here, each student gets unique feedback tailored to their individual performance. Additionally, this takes student focus off just earning a grade and instead guides students to really look at the content of their work.
There are many other benefits to a single-point rubric. If you'd like to learn more about them, check out these great resources:
* Meet the Single-Point Rubric (Cult of Pedagogy)
* 6 Reasons to Try a Single-Point Rubric (Edutopia)
* Using the Single-Point Rubric for Better Assessment Conversations (Pernille Ripp)
Inspiration from the Internet π‘
@jmattmiller on Twitter
Interesting way to have students explore the work ChatGPT can do by analyzing multiple responses to a prompt and then creating their own response.
@kinderkish on Instagram
Fun activity students can do during the summer to practice letters, sounds, or whatever else you want to label their plate parts with.
@thereadingzone on Twitter
@mr_Alsheimer on Twitter
@buildingbooklove on Instagram
@msksousa on Twitter
Cute get-to-know-you idea by having students create a Wordle poem for their name (could be used for other topics as well).
@nowsparkcreativity on Instagram
Fun mash-up of hexagonal thinking and one-pagers!
@MarcusLuther6 on Twitter
Great idea for asking students to recognize other students for their impact on the classroom community.
@historysandoval on Twitter
Fun idea for a biographical report.
@k8roulette2 on Twitter
Could be a great way at the end of the year to ask students to summarize their learning from the class.
@Mrs_L_Addison on Twitter
A way for students to blend literacy and decoding skills.
@MsDGuzman on Twitter
Love this idea for helping students practice inference and citing text evidence. This teacher used it with The One and Only Ivan but could be used with any strong character from a text.
Learning and Exploring Through Play on Facebook
EduProtocols Community on Facebook
Fun idea for the start of the year to introduce yourself and the Random Emoji Power Paragraph EduProtocol. Share a display of emojis pertaining to your life (you could even create your own with the Google Emoji Kitchen that lets you mash two emojis) and let students work together to create a paragraph all about the teacher. Students can share what they believe the emojis mean and you can share what they actually represent.
@nowsparkcreativity on Instagram
Use Google Slides as a template for students to have a silent discussion, adding responses to questions you pose.
Summer Reading Lists π
As I'm sure is the case for many of you, my summer plans definitely include getting some reading in! I'm hoping to strike a better balance this year of reading strictly "for pleasure" books with a handful of educational reads I want to dig into. Here are some of the titles in my TBR pile:
* The Housemaid by Freida McFadden
* The Orphan Collector by Ellen Marie Wiseman
* Dream Country by Shannon Gibney
* Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare
* Foul Heart Huntsman by Chloe Gong
* Momentous Events in the LIfe of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling
* Auma's Long Run by Eucabeth Odhiambo
* Sold by Patricia McCormick
* Lifelong Kindergarten: Cultivating Creativity through Projects, Passion, Peers, and Play by Mitchel Resnick & Ken Robinson
* On Your Mark: Challenging the Conventions of Grading and Reporting by Thomas R. Guskey
* Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone
* When Kids Can't Read: What Teachers Can Do by Kylene Beers
* 7 Mighty Moves: Research-Backed, Classroom-Tested Strategies to Ensure K-to-3 Reading Success by Linsday Kemeny
If you have any good suggestions of other books to add to my list, please email me. I'm always looking for new titles to tackle (can the TBR pile ever be big enough? π).
Congratulations to our VCOE Battle of the Books Champions! ππ
This year, we had four teams from our district take on the VCOE's Battle of the Books. Two teams from Atherwood and two teams from Vista, consisting of third through fifth grade students, spent the last several months reading twenty-eight books from a variety of middle grade authors and genres. Each team then competed in a two-hour trivia-style competition, answering questions as a team about the books they'd read. The competition was intense, with approximately 150 students competing in each of three competition groups, and all of our SVUSD students did a fantastic job. At the end of the day, two of Simi's teams came out on top! The Word Warriors of Vista tied for first place in their group, and the Reading Renegades of Atherwood won first place in their group! A big congratulations to them, and congratulations to all our SVUSD participants for their hard work and amazing team spirit ππ₯
Emergent Bilinguals - Strengthening the Superpower π¦Έ
5 Effective Modeing Strategies for Emergent Bilinguals
Providing examples of how to do learning tasks is useful for all students. In particular, Emergent Bilingual students benefit from explicit guidance and examples, which can be delivered in ways that capitalize on their English Language strengths, such as speaking and listening rather than reading, or pairing visuals with expectations. This article from Edutopia explains five effective strategies you can implement in your classroom immediately:
1) Complete the first item in a set as an example - a great strategy for when students are doing multiple sets of the same type of question or problem
2) Providing explicit guidance on assignment expectations through visual models - using more images than words to convey performance expectations
3) Using language frames as models for conversational moves - providing sentence frames to support student conversations
4) Demonstrating how to complete steps of a task through video - allows students opportunities to rewatch and pause as they work through language
5) Chunking steps of a complex process and using a template for students to complete - breaking tasks into chunks and providing space next to each chunk to help with smaller focus
Our Categoricals TOSA is Kelsey Koberling. If you'd like additional training or support, please feel free to reach out to her or to me.
Mirrors & Windows π
May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month began as a week-long celebration in May of 1979 after then-President Jimmy Carter signed a joint resolution into law. In 1992, then-President George H.W. Bush designated the month of May as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. The annual celebration provides an opportunity to celebrate the many contributions and accomplishments of Asian Americans, Pacific Islander Americans, and Native Hawaiians. This year's theme is "Advancing Leaders Through Innovation." Here are some great resources to check out:
* Education World: Celebrating Asian and Pacific-Island Heritage
* A Different Asian American Timeline
* Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center
* The Asian American Education Project
* Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Teacher's Guide
* NEA Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Resources
Books to checkout: (NOTE: I have not read all of these books. You know your students and your classroom best. Please preview any materials you choose to use.)
* I am Golden by Eva Chen (TK-2)
* Eyes that Kiss in the Corners by Joanna Ho (TK-2)
* Ojichan's Gift by Chieri Uegaki (TK-2)
* The ABCs of Asian American History by Renee Macalino Rutledge (TK-3)
* Gibberish by Young Vo (TK-3)
* Sky High: The True Story of Maggie Gee by Marissa Moss (2-4)
* Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say (2-4)
* Shining a Light: Celebrating 40 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Who Changed the World by Veeda Bybee (3-7)
* This is How I Roll by Debbi Michiko Florence (3-7)
* Parachute Kids by Betty C. Tang (4-7)
* The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (7-9)
* Displacement by Kiku Hughes (7-9)
* I Was Their American Dream: A Graphic Memoir by Malaka Gharib (7-12)
* Imposter Syndrome and Other Confessions of Alejandra Kim by Patricia Park (7-12)
* American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang (7-12)
* Almost American Girl by Robin Ha (8-12)
Freebies and Giveaways π€©
Last call for freebies and giveaways for you! If you'd like to enter to win some books for your classroom library (or for yourself!), click here to enter the drawing. If you'd like to enter to win some miscellaneous teacher resources, click here to enter the drawing. There are a LOT of books and resources on this month's forms, since they're my last ones, so please check them out!
Congratulations to last month's winners: Terry Panuco (Madera), Bari Carrelli (Royal), Nicole Baxter (Valley View), Jennifer Stafford (Hillside), Caitlin Murphy (Knolls), Kellie Simpson (Garden Grove), Dana Abugow (Berylwood), Erin Kinsley (Simi High), Leane Ricardo (Hollow Hills), Rebekah Todd (Sycamore), Robyn Lazarus (Hillside), Julie Busco (Berylwood), Dona Salazar (Vista), Lulu Means (Vista), Joseph Ochoa (Santa Susana El), Mary Martich (Berylwood), JoAnn Papadopoulos (Valley View), Nicole Malone (Royal), Laurie Cariker (JELA), Jessica Rosales (Garden Grove), Natasha Reinhard (Big Springs), Charlene Valle (Atherwood), Kristine Minter (Sycamore), Teri Landy (Knolls), Kaycee Talili (Madera), Taylor Hubbard (Atherwood), Anne Whipp (Vista), Jill Skwaruzynski (Wood Ranch), Katie Muklevicz (Mountain View).
Opportunities for Students & Teachers π
STUDENTS:
* ELLevation Student Scholarship: ELLevation, our district's teacher platform for multilingual learners, is awarding ten $2000 scholarships to deserving EL high school seniors who are continuing on to higher education. The funds can be used beyond the cost of tuition to address additional financial stressors that arise in the transition to higher ed. Students do not have to currently be enrolled as an English Language Learner as long as they have been at some point in their K-12 career. Application deadline is May 12.
* Become a Time for Kids Reporter: Any student who is 13-years old or younger as of September 1, 2024 may apply. Ten students from across the nation will be selected to be kid reporters for the 2024-2025 school year. Applications are due by June 17.
* Ocean Awareness Contest: The Ocean Awareness Contest is a platform for students age 11-18 to learn about environmental issues through art-making and creative communication, explore their relationship to a changing world, and become advocates for positive change. Applications are due by June 10.
* New York Times Student Podcast Contest: The New York Times monthly contest is open to students ages 13-19. Students are invited to create an original podcast of five minutes or less that informs or entertains. Entries are due May 15.
* New York Times Summer Reading Contest: The New York Times monthly contest is open to students ages 13-19. Students are invited to to tell about what theyβre reading in The Times and why in writing or via a short video. No subscription to the NYT is needed; the Times will provide free links to teen-friendly articles, essays, videos, podcasts and graphics every week from June to August. Students can submit weekly beginning June 25 and ending August 16.
* Simon Teen: May free reads!
* Books to read if you love Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department: Just for fun, see what books you might want to add to your TBR pile depending upon your favorite songs from TayTay's newest album.
TEACHERS:
* The Open Book Simi Valley: Every Saturday for the month of May, kids books and chapter books are buy one, get one 50% off!
* Teaching Secondary Multilingual Learners - Growing Language and Literacy Grades 6-12: This free webinar from Heinemann will feature author Andrea Honigsfeld, Associate Dean and Director of the Doctoral Program for Educational Leadership for Diverse Learning Communities at Molloy College and a former ESL teacher, will be sharing impactful strategies that enrich language, literacy, and academic content learning across proficiency levels. The webinar is on May 6 from 4:00-4:45 p.m.
* Exploring Social Justice Through Young Adult Books: Free webinar with RHCB authors Jumata Emil, Kim Johnson, and LaDarrion Williams as they discuss their books that focus on social justice and delve into issues such as inequity, inequality, and injustice, exploring how they can be portrayed through different genres. The webinar is on May 8 at 11 a.m., and I believe a replay will be sent to you if you can't attend live.
* IMSE Foundation Scholarship for Educators: The IMSE Foundation scholarship program allows recipients to take an IMSE course of their choosing, at the time of their choosing, for free. Teachers can choose to take the Comprehensive Orton-Gillingham Plus Training or the Morphology Plus Training. Scholarship winners will be selected at the end of May.
* We Are Teachers Teacher Appreciation Month of Giveaways: In honor of Teacher Appreciation Week this month, We Are Teachers is giving away amazing prizes every day in May. Be sure to check out the website every day to register for a new prize, and each entry also goes toward the grand prize of $2500 to Office Depot.
Fun Literary Holidays to Celebrate in May:
* Mother Goose Day (5/1)
* Harry Potter Day (5/2)
* National Limerick Day (5/12)
* Sherlock Holmes Day (5/22)
* National Speak in Sentences Day (5/31)
* Children's Book Week (first week of May)
* Reading is Fun Week (second week of May)
* National Get Caught Reading Month
* National Family Reading Month