Friday Fine Points 10-16
ESOL Program- Greenville County Schools
Lunch and Learn #1- Gretchen Barnabei
Yesterday was such a great day and I am glad that so many of you could join us! Gretchen was amazing as usual and left us with some great ideas to apply immediately. We will have another lunch and learn on the January exchange day.
Lunch and Learn #2
Date: January 15, 2016
Speakers: Hoginsfeld and Dove
Topic: Collaboration and CoTeaching
Place: MT Anderson Support Center
Time: 8:00-3:00
Even if you cannot make it feel free to share it with administrators and teachers in your building who could benefit from it.
Failure Monitor Form Date Change
As we draw close to the end of the first 9 weeks please remember to check in with classroom teachers on the progress of your ESOL students. You will send in a list of any students failing any classes using the failure monitor form. We have changed the due date for your first failure monitor form for this school year. The forms will be due on or before Friday, November 6th.
Thank you Jen!
A big shout out to Jen Valenti who led a session for google form support for our ESOL teachers. Jen uses google forms to expedite the process for her failure monitor forms and we appreciate her sharing it with the group!
Go Eagles!
Jen Valenti ESOL teacher at Eastside High School
Go Eagles
Book Club Meeting #2
Thank you for a great first session! The leader of your book club will be in touch with you about your assignment for our next session. We are setting up google classrooms for our book clubs so your assignment will be pushed out via the google classroom.
ESOL Program Professional Development and Parent Nights
Just a quick shout out to all of the teachers doing some great Professional Development and Parent nights in their building! I have heard about some great things going on out there. We all know how powerful it is to educate the mainstream teacher and the parents. You guys are doing great things. If you are hesitant on where to start with this give us a call in the office and we will be happy to help. We might be tapping on some of our ESOL colleagues who have already performed some jam up sessions in their schools. I am attaching the link of a great resource for staff Professional Development. It is done completely. You only have to follow along with the modules.
Scholastic Books
Many of you were not around last spring when we discussed the scholastic books and how we were going to distribute those to students. There are many different possibilities as to how you can distribute the books. Some have set it up like a book fair where the students get to come and pick a few books (some that are on their level and then maybe a few above and below their level). Some have chosen to incorporate it into a family literacy night. It is up to you and how you see fit with the program at your school. Some of you might want to wait until this summer and create some sort of summer reading program with your kiddos using these books. We do ask that you have your Library Media Specialist take a quick peek through your box to make sure that all of the books are appropriate. If you find anything that should not go out just set it aside. This is especially important for grades 6-12 as we have not read all of the books that were sent to us by Scholastic.
WIDA log-ins
For those of you that were with us last spring you may have realized that your WIDA log-in has been reactivated. Since we are giving ACCESS again this year you will receive an email (if you haven't already) that is telling you about this. Remember that we had to use our log-ins to take the teacher training tests in order to administer ACCESS. The log-ins also allowed us to view additional information in the download library that is not accessible to all. Just wanted you to be aware so that you will know why you are getting the emails. You do not need to do anything with them at the time. For all the newbies, I will be getting you guys entered into the system with the SCDE.
ACCESS/ELDA comparison chart
The timeline date will be pushed back a bit on this as we are in the process of building the template that you will use to compare scores from ELDA to ACCESS. We want to make sure that we are able to give you a template that is usable for all parties and that is taking a bit longer to create. We will keep you posted on that project as it unfolds. Thank you for your patience.
Additional Languages added to the drop down box in PowerSchool
The SCDE added additional languages to the primary language field in PowerSchool. The field had not been visited for many, many years in the languages in our districts continue to grow. We are asking that you verify information all ESOL students that have a blank or the word "other" listed in their primary language field. We have spreadsheets for every ESOL teacher to use to simplify the process and they will be shared to your google drive. The spreadsheet will help give you a way to cross-check everything and to make the needed changes so that your clerk can get the information corrected in PowerSchool. The forms will be shared in your google drive next week. If you need help with accessing your google drive please contact one of us in the ESOL office.
ESOL Program
Email: aziemer@greenville.k12.sc.us
Location: MT Anderson Support Center
Phone: 355-2979