Manor Post
Volume 7 December 1, 2015
12 and 1/2 days until Break! Make Sure You Stay on Course toward Positive Change.
- Why are you doing what you are doing? What data do you have to show that you are addressing the right problems and doing the right work?
- How are you spending your time? What percentage of your day is spent on managing tasks? What percentage is focused on setting the course, engaging with others and providing leadership?
Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing. Warren G. Bennis
From the desk of Bilingual/ESL Department
Updates from the Bilingual/ESL Department
Bilingual:
In November, Muro and Roddy attended the LaCosecha Conference for dual language educators along with Ms. Ewald and Ms. Kopp. There are lots of resources to share with bilingual elementary friends:- Cheryl Urow and Karen Beeman, authors of Teaching for Biliteracy, have a resource,Paredes de palabras para la lectoescritura en español, that gives grade level appropriate guidelines for Spanish word walls for students in K-4th grade, with specific suggestions for each grade level. There are a ton of resources on their website, also called Teaching for Biliteracy. We attended a session conducted by Urow and Beeman that focused on language "bridging." The Bridge is the instructional moment in teaching when teachers bring the two languages together, guiding students to analyze features of the two languages and transfer the academic content they have learned in one language to the other language. You can read more about the bridge here and at their website.
- Dr. Kathy Escamilla's work with Literacy Squared was featured at the conference as well. We learned about a paired reading strategy, Lotta Lara, that has shown promising results in advancing reading fluency and increasing reading levels. With the Lotta Lara strategy, one book is read three times a week, three times each, with structured oracy and comprehension activities that follow. We look forward to modeling this strategy in classrooms!
2nd grade teachers are invited to a second grade bilingual meeting on Monday, Dec. 7 from 3:15-4:45 in room B217 to learn about modifications to the 2nd grade language arts block.
ESL:
Our sheltered instruction initiative continues to expand! We have provided professional development in SIOP to middle school and HS teachers. We look forward to providing sheltered instruction training to 3rd-5th grade teachers on their campuses during district PD days on Jan. 4 and 5.- Here are some Sheltered Instruction resources for ESL teachers: SIOP lesson plans and activities can be found here.
- Here's another resource for teachers of ELLs who are interested in sheltering instruction with tons of cooperative learning activities that boost language development: Linguistic Scaffolding Strategies for ELLs by Region 1.
Resources for you!
Ayudas gràficas/Graphic Organizers
This website provides a variety of graphic organizers in Spanish. Graphic organizers are powerful tools that help students visually organize and classify information. The documents on this site can be downloaded as PDF files, and you can print and copy them freely for classroom use.
Academic English Website for Teachers
Jeff Zwiers, author of Building Academic Language, has an webpageAcademic Language & Literacy with free resources for helping educators accelerate and deepen students' learning of academic language, literacy, and content. Lots here for both bilingual and ESL Teachers!
Ciencias en español / Science In Spanish
Visual Learning Systems publishes this collection of science units of study in Spanish that use videos, interactive graphics, animations, and images to support the delivery of science content. Collections in Spanish are available at three levels: primary (K-2), elementary (3-5) and middle/high school (6-12). Providing native language support to immigrant newcomers is a great way to accelerate content acquisition.
HELP!
- Remember if you need assistance ask for it. If the assistance you are getting is not what you asked for then articulate your needs and if that does not work I need to know! We can make positive change together but I can not hold staff accountable if we do not work together to grow as a team. We all want the same results at the end of the day. As Tom Cruise stated in Jerry Mcguire, Help Me, Help YOU!