Beyond Fronteras
Celebrating our ESC1 Bilingual Community: January 2022
On the Spotlight
By Karina Chapa, ESC1 Language Proficiency, Biliteracy, and Cultural Diversity Director
And just like that, January is gone! We hope your beginning of the year has been fruitful and productive! As we continue working with all our administrators, teachers, parents, and students in our beautiful region, I keep thinking about this quote, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going!" Goodness is it true, especially in education! The kind of challenges we are currently experiencing are truly unheard of, and yet, educators keep pushing forward, because we know that what we do matters. Mil gracias a todos los educadores que día a día dan lo mejor de sí para preparar un futuro mejor para todos. From the bottom of our hearts, ¡MIL GRACIAS!
And how can we not be thankful for our educators, if they continue helping us celebrate incredible successes even during these difficult times! We would like to highlight one of those successes today and congratulate Mellanie Olivares from La Joya High School for being named the 27th Mariachi Vargas Extravaganza National Vocal Competition Winner - Grand Champion Vocalist! ¡Felicidades Mellanie! ¡Gracias por poner el alto el nombre no solo de tu familia, tu escuela y tu distrito, sino de toda la región! ¡Y mil felicidades también a tus padres por el apoyo que te han brindado y por supuesto a tu director de mariachi, el maestro Martín Cantú, por compartir contigo su conocimietno y amor por la música!
Like Mellanie's, we have a tremendous amount of success stories in our region, and it's all thanks to you, educators, who are relentless, fierce, and passionate about each one of your learners. ¡Qué sigan los éxitos para todos! ¡Juntos y adelante!
¡Mil gracias y esperamos que disfruten este boletín!
Karina E. Chapa, M.Ed.
Language Proficiency, Biliteracy, and Cultural Diversity Director
Center for Excellence in Education of Diverse Students
Region One Education Service Center
@esc1bilingual
~ Virtual Learning Tips ~
By Felicia Salinas, ESC1 Bilingual/ESL Specialist
The goal for all Emergent Bilingual teachers is to help students gain content knowledge and develop language proficiency. Text-to-speech tools improve students' access to content by allowing them to both see and hear the words they read. Vocaroo can be used as a text-to-speech tool. It is a free and simple audio recording service for educators and students. It allows you to record your voice, play it back to listen, and download the recording. This tool provides you with different options on how to share your recording. It even creates a QR code of your recording. A teacher can record their voice giving instructions or reading questions and/or answer choices. You can add your downloaded recording to google slides by uploading it to the drive and then inserting it as an audio.
~ Multicultural Book Spotlight ~
By Dr. Lileana Ríos-Ledezma, ESC1 Bilingual/ESL Specialist
“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror.” - Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop
This book may be a window for some readers, a mirror to others, and most definitely, a sliding glass door for all. Immediately, the reader steps into the world lived by Steve Pemberton in the heartless, cruel environment created by his foster family. Unable to understand why his mother would leave him and where the rest of his family had been displaced to, Steve endures endless physical and mental abuse. His only ray of hope existed in the pages of books he is able to magically transport to in the midst of his tragic circumstances.
This book helps children understand impermanence, differences in families and experiences, but above all, the power of kindness! I highly recommend this young edition adaptation for grades 4th - 7th. Happy Reading!
~ BILINGUAL/ESL CORNER ~
By Felicia Salinas, ESC1 Bilingual/ESL Specialist
List-group-label is a learning strategy that encourages students to improve their vocabulary, categorization, and organize concepts in a collaborative way. Even to this day, vocabulary continues to be an important part of Emergent Bilinguals’ language development. By using a list-group-label strategy, Emergent Bilinguals will better understand vocabulary words, activate their prior knowledge, and learn how certain topics connect. This learning strategy builds on students’ language proficiency in all domains listening, speaking, reading, and writing. The picture below shows how to use the List-Group-Label strategy.
You can extend this strategy to impact Emergent Bilinguals language proficiency by integrating the following extension activities:
Have students discuss, compare, and contrast their list with other groups.
Have students write the lists or type them using a word processing program.
Provide students with pre-established categories to use to group words.
Create graphical representations of words in order to help students connect to prior knowledge.
Ask students to create their own drawings to accompany the words. (Reading Rockets, 2015).
¿Sabías que...?
By Dr. Lileana Ríos-Ledezma, ESC1 Bilingual/ESL Specialist
A student's success on an exam, on grade-level assignments, including, and not limited to participation in a classroom discussion is encapsulated on having a solid working knowledge of content-area vocabulary. Thus, Step #4: Introduce New Vocabulary and Review Prior Vocabulary is a key component of the Acceleration Framework created by Suzy Pepper Rollins in her book, Learning in the Fast Lane.
Yes, while many students arrive with vocabulary gaps and face a barrage of new academic vocabulary daily, it isn’t enough to simply “prescribe large amounts of reading to build students’ vocabularies” (Rollins, 2014, pg. 79). Rollins encourages schools and teachers to implement a strategic vocabulary plan and lists many Explicit Strategic Vocabulary Routines in her text! Here are two simple ways to build and develop academic vocabulary:
TIP Charts: Build an anchor chart that scaffolds vocabulary learning: List the TERM, INFORMATION, and provide a PICTURE.
Word Art: The goal of this strategy is to make a word’s meaning clear by making art out of the actual text of the word.
~ BILINGUAL DIRECTORS CORNER ~
It's TELPAS Time!
By Karina Chapa, ESC1 Language Proficiency, Biliteracy, and Cultural Diversity Director
If you missed the latest TELPAS and TELPAS-ALT Updates from TEA, do not worry, they have posted the recording already on the new LMS: https://tx.tms.pearson.com/ Just make sure you are under the District Testing Coordinator tab and click on TETN Trainings to find the 2022 Spring Updates for TELPAS and TELPAS Alternate link, power point and PDF. In that same location you will find the 2022 Spring Refresher TETN, along with all corresponding documents.
Another crucial piece of information that all directors have been waiting for is the 2022 Accommodations Guidance for TELPAS Writing Field Test! You can find that document on this link: https://tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/2022-accommodations-for-telpas-writing.pdf
We hope you find this information helpful as you navigate a very busy Spring semester!
~ In Title III News ~
By Leticia Sánchez, ESC1 Title III Coordinator
Para los papás
PBS Kids for Parents
This site offers parents tips and activities for literacy, math, science, social studies, social skills and much more by age. You have access to information, videos, games and crafts to do in each area. También está disponible en español.
ESL At Home
Want to take a break from tech? This site offers activities for students in grades K through 12 that don’t require an electronic device! All you need is paper, pencil, and materials that can be found in your home. There are daily activities to do in the language of your choice that can involve the whole family in the learning. You can choose from over 25 languages available. Check it out!
FREE! Online Bilingual and ESL Certification Training
~ UPCOMING EVENTS ~
TELPAS Virtual Academy: 01/07, 01/21, 02/04, 02/18
- Dual Language, Transitional Bilingual, and ESL Program Implementation Institutes: Spring 2022
- Title III Course: Enhancing Instructional Opportunities for Immigrant Students: 02/16
- LPAC End of the Year Training: 04/19/22
- 7th Annual Effective Border Schools Conference: May 23-24, 2022
Contact Us
Karina E. Zuno-Chapa, M.Ed.
Director of Language Proficiency, Biliteracy, and Cultural Diversity
956-984-6246
Leticia Sánchez, M.Ed.
Title III Coordinator
956-984-6193
Lileana Ríos-Ledezma, Ph.D
Bilingual/ESL Specialist
956-984-6153
Felicia Salinas, M.Ed.
Bilingual/ESL Specialist
956-984-6118
Diana Gonzalez
Program Assistant
956-984-6238
Email: kchapa@esc1.net
Website: www.esc1.net/bilingual
Location: 1900 West Schunior Street, Edinburg, TX, USA
Phone: 956-984-6238
Facebook: facebook.com/ESC1Bilingual
Twitter: @esc1bilingual