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Hello, from New York State.
I felt engaged right from the beginning of the class reading the syllabus and going through the modules. Exchanging ideas on good and bad discussion characteristics in an interactive excel-spreadsheet helped me get to know my fellow students a little better.
I'm looking forward to this class and learning more about teaching methods and working with my peers.
Petra

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Happy Wednesday team! I love this format of sharing that we are using in this class. This morning I got straight to work in this course and I felt the most engaged when reading through the syllabus and course schedule. It really helped me prepare for the course expectations and the content that we will be learning. I cannot wait to get to know my peers and hear their ideas on the module subjects.

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Hello Everyone!
I felt most engaged when thinking about the artifact I wanted to use in our discussion. I love creating those personal connections with my peers and understanding the different perspectives in this course. It really has helped me gage a better understanding of the cultural aspect of artifacts as well as start learning about my peers. I am excited to learn so much more about everyone!
Best,
Vivi

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Hello. I'm writing from Texas. Two things stood out to me from this first week. The first is the readings from Savignon (1997) who gave helpful examples of different types of communicative activities, role-plays, and conversations that can be used in the classroom. These are useful because, although I have a curriculum for instructing my teen and adult English Language Learners, I need to add more fun activities that help my students to become more engaged in their learning. I also appreciate discovering that I should not correct forms (such as grammar) when learners are expressing their own meaning. I need to work on that. Second, I appreciated having the opportunity to observe and read about the artifacts that are meaningful to other students/teachers in this program. I really enjoyed gaining a glimpse of what matters to each of you.

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Hello everyone, I really felt engaged and enjoyed the reading material this week. I had a hard time deciding between a TESOL degree and Educating Multilingual Learners. Since I chose the latter, I always welcome new ideas, activities and strategies for what I actually do, which is TESOL! I appreciated the relevance of the reading this week, and only wished there had been more for the online teaching context. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!
Anna

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Chin an Hsu   Hi there, I felt engaged in this class since started working on the assignment for good and bad discussion and artifacts. That makes me think of my students that I taught before and makes me think about my teaching materials. Also, the assignment for discussion makes me think of the class that I took before and the discussion that I had before. Besides, after reading the assignment from other classmates, it also broadened my horizon for having basic understanding of them. I am happy to be here and I am looking forward to the following lessons. Have a nice weekend.

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Chin an Hsu   Hi there, I felt engaged in this class since started working on the assignment for good and bad discussion and artifacts. That makes me think of my students that I taught before and makes me think about my teaching materials. Also, the assignment for discussion makes me think of the class that I took before and the discussion that I had before. Besides, after reading the assignment from other classmates, it also broadened my horizon for having basic understanding of them. I am happy to be here and I am looking forward to the following lessons. Have a nice weekend.

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Hello everyone! I felt engaged from the first moment I started reading the course syllabus. Since I'm a working mom and wife, I immediately felt time pressure thinking how to distribute this limited and precious substance - time - between students, my child, and my husband. I'm doing TESOL, and BLE 538 is one of the electives for TESOL students this semester. I have some experience of working with Russian speaking children from ethnic Korean families here in South Korea, and, therefore, I chose the course to better understand pedagogy and workind methods with different types of bilinguals or in some cases multilinguals. So far, the most interesting was writing my story and reading the stories of other students about artefacts. I presume that I never thought before that anything might be material evidence of learning and teaching. The true story behind artifact(s) reflects a unique process and moments of someone's life achievements or failures in learning and teaching.

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I have felt very engaged since the very beginning of the course. Reading the syllabus and the specifics of each assignment immediately piqued my interest.
I am very passionate about pedagogy and content strategies, and I was so excited about the prospect of adding to my instructional repertoire.

The peer interactions also served as engaging elements. In addition, the assignment to co-author a handbook chapter was very appealing because I have also wanted to publish.

The readings have only intensified my engagement. The format of the readings has been very user friendly so far, and the information presented bridged theory and practice. I have already learned so much, and I’m eager to continue learning from the professor and from my peers.

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I think I felt the most engaged in this course when I began reading the articles and working on my reflection. When reading, I really thought back on all of my teaching experiences and how I might have engaged in different strategies without realizing that I was. The readings also made me realize that there are some areas that I can improve in. Additionally, my reflection left me with many questions which will give me focus as I move forward in this course.

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Greetings from NYC! This week, I felt most engaged with the course during the artifacts discussion board. An online program can make it difficult to connect with peers and learn more about their teaching strategies. I felt that the artifacts discussion was a great way to learn more about classmates, hear about their professional experiences, and understand why they chose the Educating Multilingual Learners program. I look forward to engaging with them more throughout the course!

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I felt engaged when I was reading about the Problem-Based_Project model. I noticed places that I was beginning to implement the steps in my content, despite not having heard of it before. Working at an arts integrated school gives me a unique perspective of presenting alternative information to students, one of my favorite parts of my school is that a student can have severely low verbal skills but still be able to prove their comprehension of the content through the creation of art. I look forward to how this course will pair up with the arts integration strategies I already use.

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The moment I felt the most engaged with the class was the artifact assignment. I engaged and had fun reading about the meaningful artifacts in the class. I was able to relate to some of my peers and everyone showed how it shaped them into an educator. Moreover, this is something we can facilitate as educators in our classroom. We can try this activity and learn from what our students find meaningful to them. As we learn from each other, I think it is important to also learn from our students. An artifact as simple as a paper was so important to my peers and I have never connected with others over a piece of paper. This shows how the smallest things mean the world to us.

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Hello, everyone! Greetings from Korea! This week, I felt most engaged when considering my post for the artifacts discussion. Initially I wasn't sure what I should post, but I read through the previous posts and loved seeing the unique and meaningful items each person shared. I found this to be a much more interesting way to get to know everyone than reading/watching an introductory post/video. I really appreciated seeing what brought everyone to the program, and this is what inspired me to consider all the steps that brought me to where I am today. It was great to reflect on my teaching journey and remember why I chose to change schools, teach English abroad, and join this program. I was nervous about taking this course because my first year in the program was incredibly challenging to balance with my work and personal life. As I looked at the photo I shared for my artifact, I felt motivated to engage with the course and remember why I chose to pursue this career path.

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Hi friends, I'm here in Phoenix AZ. I felt most engaged as I read the personal artifacts from my classmates. I appreciated how it revealed elements of each others personalities and what we hold dear in our instruction or work. I really enjoyed looking at all of the pictures and the reasons behind why everyone chose them. It was also strangely difficult and challenged me to think about what physical artifacts are really valuable and significant to me. It felt like a personal show and tell, and something I love doing with my students even though they are 7th graders. We love sharing and show casing things of value to us, so it is only natural to get a little excited about it.

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Hi friends, I'm here in Phoenix AZ. I felt most engaged as I read the personal artifacts from my classmates. I appreciated how it revealed elements of each others personalities and what we hold dear in our instruction or work. I really enjoyed looking at all of the pictures and the reasons behind why everyone chose them. It was also strangely difficult and challenged me to think about what physical artifacts are really valuable and significant to me. It felt like a personal show and tell, and something I love doing with my students even though they are 7th graders. We love sharing and show casing things of value to us, so it is only natural to get a little excited about it.

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Caitlin Rose-(Sorry Prof, I didn't have my name on my post, but it was in on time;/). Here it is again.                                   Hi friends, I'm here in Phoenix AZ. I felt most engaged as I read the personal artifacts from my classmates. I appreciated how it revealed elements of each others personalities and what we hold dear in our instruction or work. I really enjoyed looking at all of the pictures and the reasons behind why everyone chose them. It was also strangely difficult and challenged me to think about what physical artifacts are really valuable and significant to me. It felt like a personal show and tell, and something I love doing with my students even though they are 7th graders. We love sharing and show casing things of value to us, so it is only natural to get a little excited about it.

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Caitlin Rose-(Sorry Prof, I didn't have my name on my post, but it was in on time;/). Here it is again.                                   Hi friends, I'm here in Phoenix AZ. I felt most engaged as I read the personal artifacts from my classmates. I appreciated how it revealed elements of each others personalities and what we hold dear in our instruction or work. I really enjoyed looking at all of the pictures and the reasons behind why everyone chose them. It was also strangely difficult and challenged me to think about what physical artifacts are really valuable and significant to me. It felt like a personal show and tell, and something I love doing with my students even though they are 7th graders. We love sharing and show casing things of value to us, so it is only natural to get a little excited about it.

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Hi, everyone

I feel engaged in week 2 because of the readings. There are lots of activities which are mentioned in the chapters and it reminds me of my teaching. Especially, the chapter mentions about role play which is one of my favorite activities. Role play is an important practice for students, so that they can learn something more than the text books. Therefore, I like to make students do role play in the class and I feel engaged after reading the chapters. Also, I have learned other activities, for example, shared readings, predicting, silent reading, free composing and so on, are categorized in interpersonal mode, interpretive mode and presentational mode. I have tried these activities before, but I did not know they belong to these three modes. I have learned a lot in week 2, and I am looking forward to the following lessons.

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Hi, my name is Rosita, I live in from Woodland, Ca. The students that I have worked with have given me so many chances to listen and learn from them. As I worked on my "Reflection" paper, I realized that I have so many memories of the students strengths and persistence. The most important is, their willingness to learn, even when I mess up.

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In week 3, I have learned that there are many ways to teach students words from the book, for example, making prefixes and suffixes worksheets, making teacher made tests, and providing student-friendly definition. Also, shared reading and independent reading can make students expose to the language and they could use context clues or dictionary to help them understand the words that are new to them. Moreover, I agree with that making students have chance to talk to native speakers can help them build their oral vocabulary.

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My word for this week is "communication"

Language is all about communicating with others in different ways. Interaction can be face-to-face or written or in electronical form. As teachers it is our goal to teach students of different L1s to communicate in a predetermined L2 (mostly English in the US). Our course is introducing us to different methods and activities to reach this goal.

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"Desire". I really desire to be a more effective teacher. In reading about all the approaches and activities for instructional design, I desire the time to incorporate and experiment with many different types of learning with my students. I feel a little frustrated with the limitations of my online teaching context. I desire to fine-tune our experience together to create a classroom community where we can use our truly authentic interactional and transactional communication in meaningful learning activities.

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I would summarize this week’s reading with the word “comprehensive.” I have learned about language pedagogies that include the communication standard of three types of modes: interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational. I have discovered how to add Transformative Practice to my teaching. I was impressed with the wealth of new ideas which describe quality communicative activities that I can utilize in my classroom to facilitate learning and forge stronger connections among my students.

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Connection...
This week was about forms of communication. I had a new experience in my classroom, I had a new student begin and I was left wondering how to reach him. He is deaf, spoke only Armenian (no sign language) and is learning to read lips in English and ASL at the same time. Verbal communication is the way that I engage my students and in his case, I can't depend on that. For once it made me wonder if I am truly capable of engaging with him. I am now on an epic hunt for resources, since he has a translator and an IEP but no resources were given to the general education teachers, to engage with him and make sure that he feels like he is truly a part of my classroom.

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Hi everyone,
Module 2 reading was very informative with detailed explanations of the three modes. The reading revealed and exposed the inner mechanism of a foreign language learning arguing that it is a quite complex and everchanging process. However, I wouldn’t fully agree with all propositions of the author because of too deep, sometimes unnaturally deep, connection of the language cognition to sociocultural aspects. I presume that it works especially well when we talk about new immigrants – both adults and children - when there are two circles of a language setting (Hall, 2001). First one is a small circle like a family with a heritage language, and second is a big circle - a target language setting. The sociocultural theory defines and conforms better these situations. However, when a language is learned in a foreign country as a second one, limited interactions are mostly taken place within a language learning class or through the Internet, and, therefore, the processes of learning and teaching are seen differently. It is not a constant information exchange between two language circles small (family, immigrant community) and big (outclass target language circle), but a discrete information perception between instructor(s) with limited opportunities of the target language implications out of class.

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Week 2 readings explored activities used with interpersonal, interpretive and presentational purpose. The activities described in each chapter were many that my family uses in situated practice daily. They all require communication between at least two subjects and are designed to collect data for assessment and conclusion of where the 2nd subject currently stands in the area of context.

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The word I chose for this week is "eye-opening". The reason for this word is because as I read Hall's (2001) chapters, I realized how much I do in my classroom without realizing its effectiveness and how much more I can do to make connections between the different modes. I jump between so many activities that touch base with every single mode and types of instruction but I never make purposeful connections obvious to my students. This can be an issue, especially if my students want the reason why with everything we do in the classroom, so definitely eye-opening for me.

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Learning

The word I chose for this week is learning because as I am not a teacher I felt I learn to be one. The readings of this week consisted of me immersing and imaging my own class one day. Following the advice through presentational, interpretative, and interpersonal module has opened my eyes to make an inclusive curriculum for future multilingual students. I truly loved the suggestions for us educators to understand the activities they are proposing. I hope to continue learning some more tools and strategies that can help me develop as educator in the future.

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My word for the week: complex

As I completed each reading this week, I started to notice the similarities in structure, and finally I realized that in each chapter the author followed the same pattern in developing our theoretical understanding of each communicative mode and then outlining the processes for developing communicative activities, instructional strategies, and assessments. Seeing the processes broken down in this way, I was surprised by how complex they were but also how clear and attainable the author made the steps for designing instruction in each mode. In particular, the components of communicative competence included for each mode show how complex developing comprehensive instruction in these areas is, and I was surprised that I had not considered these elements before when planning lessons for my own students.

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I would describe my learning this week as interpretive. I read and listened to readings that described the interpersonal, interpretive, and presentational modes of language. In the process, I encountered new vocabulary and concepts, analyzed text and observed patterns, made text connections, and applied my learning in the form of a written reflection.

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Innovative. This week's readings covered a wide variety of teaching activities and methodologies. When reflecting on the texts, it became evident that teachers are consistently expected to innovate. We strive to create new and exciting methods of engaging our students and helping them learn.

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My word for the week is consideration. As we begin to work with our partners it is important to consider their needs as well as what they expressed as good conversation skills. Collaboration will be key to our success in this course and I do not think that could be done if we do not consider one another, especially as it pertains to time. It can be difficult juggling different courses and work, but I want to aim to be better at communicating so that both my partner and I can complete what we need to. If I do not post or respond in a timely manner, it will be difficult for my partner to succeed.

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"Interconnectedness"
The reason I chose this word is because of how well I was able to connect the reading from last week and this weeks. The 4 stages of learning coincide directly with Interpersonal, Interpretive and Presentational Modes of Instruction. While last weeks focus was more on learning, this week surrounded the Instructional frameworks to communicative competency. As I read through each chapter I was able to make concrete connections and see how none of these learning steps and instructional modes are hierarchical but coincide simultaneously, and are all intended to teach to the whole child.

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I learned that translating vocabulary into 11 languages through Google Translate is time-consuming and not always accurate. Students in my class who spoke Portuguese helped me to correct some translations because the writing sounded too informal to them, even “aggressive.” My partner recommended asking the students to do the translations instead. This is a great plan! It also utilizes my students' languages as resources. So, in the next activity where I plan to use my students’ languages to enhance their comprehension, I will give them the wordlist in advance of the lesson, and they will become the translators.

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Hello class! This week, I enjoyed learning about different strategies for approaching vocabulary development. One of my key takeaways, especially from the vocabulary newsletter activity, is the importance of incorporating different methods of instruction in the classroom. As my peers pointed out in their newsletter submissions, there are shared readings, puzzle games, dialogues, etc. Most importantly, I reflected on just how important it is to get students' families involved. Language learning goes way beyond the classroom!

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Vocabulary strategies
The vocabulary strategies that help ELL students are often helpful to my native English speaking students. The example, exothermic reactions, is one that I used because it is one that challenges both native speakers and ELL students alike, in my experience. To help students develop a better understanding of the vocabulary words I use visual images and hands-on experiences of the phenomena. I think that the strategies for ELL students should be prioritized more for many reasons, one of the primary reasons is that these strategies are helpful to all students. It is assumed that because a student learned English as their first language that they will be proficient in the new material that is presented to them, however the recent statistics on the science of reading and the large percentage of students who cannot read at grade level prove that assumption to be false. Using these strategies can help ELL students, students that are struggling readers, and even help higher achieving students to use these skills for them to apply to the new vocabulary they are learning.

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I learned that while it is good to challenge our students with exposure to complex language and literacy use, we need to prepare them adequately by teaching vocabulary. I can apply this in my lessons by spending more time introducing the weekly passage from literature. If I approach the passage with explicit instruction in potentially unfamiliar words, students will have a better chance of expanding their academic English just a little more that week. Even though our curriculum is conversation based, I feel that I can engage different proficiency levels better by giving overt vocabulary instruction before reading complex passages together.

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I think that the translanguaging pedagogy is a humanistic pedagogy which observes and takes care of numerous social, psychological, and even economical situations children, who were not born in the USA but immigrated there with their parents, encounter while adapting themselves in a new society. The translanguaging pedagogy not only provides children linguistic knowledge on a language of their new country but also advocates and justifies a right to speak and develop in languages they spoke before and still speak at homes. It maintains children’s self-esteem motivating them to continue development of their heritage languages. In Korea, I saw some insignificant traces of the translanguaging pedagogy. It seems that its in-filed implementation will very much depend on a teacher’s personality and his/her position and eagerness to help emergent bilinguals. I met a teacher who taught Korean to Russian speaking students for 5 years, but she has learned only three words in Russian. This characterizes this person a lot, her formal attitude toward students and teaching.

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Hello!
This week I learned the importance of going back to the "basics" because I teach high school juniors and sometimes I gloss over concepts that I assume students know from previous years like vocabulary. I acknowledge now how detrimental that can be, especially for my ELL students. Many of my students are at a low reading level and I have recently learned how many of them struggle to identify nouns and verbs. This week, based on the readings, I focused on vocabulary strategies and activities that helped my students identify the different types of nouns such as a proper noun versus a common noun. What really surprised me was that my ELL students thrived with these activities whereas my native English speakers really struggled.

- Vivi

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Hey class,
I really enjoyed working on the PDSA this week and engaging with my kids for this activity! There were so many vocabulary building strategies to choose from and learning how to incorporate them through classroom activities is going to be very helpful for me in the future. I also loved doing the newsletter. I felt that it really bridged the gap between school and home. It encouraged families to engage with their children and  learn with them in the process! I will definitely do a monthly newsletter in my future classroom!

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One real world application that I have learned this week is understand the level of comprehension of each person is different. When I was conducting overt instruction activity with my group, I realized the comprehension of English of one person was more advanced than the other. This is something I did not take into account. Furthermore, developing a vocabulary newsletter is something I have never done. Meaning, proposing my own activities that students will be able to learn from vocabulary from. This is something I was very excited in coming up with. I also was scared because I was not sure if the students will like the activities. I hope to one day incorporate these activities along with learning more strategies to implement them.

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Hi classmates, I really enjoyed reading the chapters on the development, teaching and learning of vocabulary for EL students. As an ELA teacher by default, I spend a lot of time grappling with how much emphasis to put on vocabulary. I really appreciated how many  strategies to reinforce/include families was reiterated as well as in class application. It also gave a lot of affirmation to the practices that I have in place but more scaffolded approaches to help support individual/small group/shared reading time, Word list utilization- adjectives, nouns, verbs and etc. It was also just really helpful  information in regards to understanding (roughly) how much vocabulary my EL students need to know, do know, how quickly they acquire L2 English words, and learn them in a deep and meaningful way. I also appreciated reading the stats about how 100 most frequently used words make up approximately 50% of vocabulary. It sent me on a hunt to find all of the words and challenged me to think about if those are the same 100 words my native English speaking students use as well.

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This week I learned about the importance of students keeping or improving their proficiency in their first/native language. The students first language can help them make connections in their second language for ex. cognates can increase a students vocabulary easily. Students with a higher proficiency in their native language can transfer their knowledge through semantic mapping to their foreign language. Students can use their first language to translanguage in their second language to manage gaps in their L2 vocabulary.

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This week I learned about the accessibility, retrievability, and interactivity of digital technologies and how bilingual students benefit from using them. Having access to one-on-one devices in schools is very important for students from low-income backgrounds because almost 40% of households do not have access to the Internet. Some of the major benefits of the Internet is that students can retrieve a source multiple times and re-read it to gain a better understanding. Interactive sites and viewings that feature closed captions are also very effective for improving content knowledge. Although, I knew the importance of technology, I had not considered the benefits in terms of accessibility, retrievability, and interactivity.

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Not So Simple to Say
Helo, today we are going to talk about a new word to add to our vocabulary of how things should be done. Heteroglossic, this big word means, letting the student use his way of speaking and making sense of it in the new language he/she is learning.
What teachers need to understand is that we cannot and should not take the child's home language away but reinforce it by introducing common English words. That way the learner will be able to compare the two words and find that there are similarities. For the parents, and unaware teachers, the method of bridging both languages can be fun. I would use poster boards as a visual aid along with clear pronunciation. Learning any language is difficult and confusing for any child learning new words. But working together parents and teachers giving the learner a chance to practice, encouragement, and scaffolding, the child will build self-confidence and loose the fear of being a part of the classroom.

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In this week's readings, Garcia and Kleifgen (2018) discussed how studies have shown that students that have access to interactive technological tools, their learning has shown to be advanced. In one instance, it was said that those who had lessons through interactive content di better than those that learned in a traditional setting. With this in mind, I would try to adapt more resources and tools into my teaching. Teaching digitally or utilizing online programs can pose to be difficult. In my experience, it is easy for students to get distracted and surf the web when sessions are online. However, I think these online sessions closely mimic in class sessions. With the computer in mind, I would like to incorporate more interactive content that would cause my students to actively engage more with the material.

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I didn't know much about how digital technologies could benefit emergent bilinguals beyond access to online translators and dictionaries. However, the examples in chapter 6 gave me a lot more to think about. I love the way the STEPS to Literacy program provided science resources in Spanish and English, and when I taught in the US I wanted to give my students access to resources like these when they write about complex topics in English. However, this would be quite challenging for me to take on because I don't know how to access those materials myself to gather them for my students. I think when I go back to the US, I could work with a school librarian or a research librarian at the public library to help me gather resources and put these in a shared folder for my students to access. It would be incredible to see my students leverage all of their linguistic abilities to express comprehension of the topic and be able to show what they are capable of.

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I have worked extensively in Garcia & Kleifgen's text- Educating Emergent Bilinguals. Professors for other courses assigned specific chapters, and I used it as a reference when writing my final literature review for the research methods class. Having this repetition and working with a familiar text was VERY helpful. I was able to see how Garcia & Kleifgen's work applies to distinct topics within multilingual education. Furthermore, when I read a text more than once, I always take away new information. I'm glad that this week I was able to re-engage with these scholars and learn even more from their work.

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The thing that I have learned the most is the importance of cooperation in this week. By doing the discussion with my partner and giving feedback to other classmates makes me notice that how I can do better. Through the importance of the cooperation, I can know the mistake that I have not noticed before and I can also give some suggestions to others to make us better.

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I learned from one the activities I tried this week in my classroom. Giving my students a word list to translate the day before improved their understanding of the vocabulary. Instead of the teacher laboriously using Google Translate to translate the words into 10 languages for them to look at on the screen in class, my students found the translations themselves. In addition, the quiz I made with the word list and matching pictures helped me to identify two students who might need extra help in the future.

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Pressure-
I learned a lot of what my students complain about when they feel there is too much on their plate, this week life (work, my husband and kids, extra duties to my students, etc) crept up and left me barely enough time to sleep properly-let alone complete my work on time. I am not sharing this as a complaint or accusation of anyone doing anything wrong, many times (as adults) we forget how truly overwhelming it can feel when you have everything out of your control. This isn't related to the context of just my ELL students, however, this week caused me to look at my expectations and reactions to my 7th and 8th grade students when they do express that the amount of work that they have is overwhelming.

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The Road Most Traveled
I have to admit, that after reading Garcia & Kleifgen (2018) I felt rebellious. We all know that our schools are failing our culturally diverse students. Schools stand to gain by promoting norm referenced standardized tests. Our classrooms are designed to teach a "proper English" which is Her Majesty's form of speech. That is to say, British English is what classrooms are designed to teach. Come on now, that language existed long before the landing of the pilgrims.
But I see that by being a part of this learning team is one solution to fixing the problem of injustices our diverse students face today. A new field of Culturally Sensitive teachers are now becoming a force in the stance for an inclusive education that allows our students the freedom to learn and that they are not language deficit. Thank you for reading.

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This week I learned so many new ideas to incorporate in the classroom when reading my peers' newsletters. I will definitely be using some of the vocabulary activities that peers shared for teaching ACT vocabulary to my juniors to prepare them for the exam. I think starting a parent newsletter would be a great addition to my classroom.

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Praxis, or reflection + action, really helped me learn the most this week. Reflecting on the readings and considering how to apply them to my current context was a very meaningful experience for me this week. I was excited to read about assessments because I have always struggled in this area as a teacher, but I also took a previous course on assessments so I wondered what the readings from this course would say on the topic. It turns out that they were really helpful as I have been thinking about how to incorporate assessment for and as learning in my classroom. I’m the only teacher in a new program at my school, so I’m setting the standard as I go and constantly wondering if I’m making the right choices and if my students are really learning. The readings for this week came at just the right time as I realized that I have not been using assessment to inform instruction well, but now I have some ideas of how to assess learning and collect data that will help me plan better for this year and make stronger plans for next year.

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Reading through my partners PDSA forms gave me many activity ideas to use in my classroom. They detailed every step of the activity and included adjustments to be made. These examples are great for future teachers like myself to use because we can get a better understanding of when and how to implement them. I am learning so much more about how to apply the reading context to activities and involving parents at home.

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This week I really learned a lot from  reading through my partners PDSA forms. They gave me many activity ideas to use in my classroom. They detailed every step of the activity and included adjustments to be made. These examples are great for future teachers like myself to use because we can get a better understanding of when and how to implement them. I am learning so much more about how to apply the reading context to activities and involving parents at home.

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What helped me learn the most this week was feeling that I was reading material that was current, applicable to my teaching context, and ideas I had not read before. This was the CAL article by Margo Gottlieb (2022). The arguments and conclusions presented in this article aligned with so many of my observations about post-pandemic teaching. It also reinforced my conviction that what is good for English-language learners is good for all learners. I would enjoy being in a discussion group to learn my classmates' reactions to this article. Currently, my students and colleagues are all overseas and sometimes I feel that I am missing out on what's going on right now in the U.S.

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So far, one thing I have acquired from this week’s reading is that no matter when children immigrate to the USA or any other country, they have right to be immersed into agentic learning which will give them a way to complete and creative integration into school and social life of their new motherland. Arguments against it are mostly biased and based on racist assumptions which are disguised with lack of vocabulary or a low-level target language acquisition. Soonest access to the agentic learning can be done through incorporating a translanguaging pedagogy and, by doing this, open a route to more complicated and complex learning contexts.

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Pronouns: Ud./you/she
Why is it that we are now starting these labels? I heard a parent say, "MI nina wants to know if that means she isn't a girl anymore," As if teachers don't have enough to do and undo. What the _ _ _ _? (I needed to share, not sorry:)
I started at a community college and have finally made it to my master's graduate program this year 2022, if I pass the course, I will have earned a M.Ed. in Autism and Related Disorders. As time has passed, and with all the courses I have taken, I learned that I learn something different, new vocabulary, new learning techniques in new courses, and also somewhat repetitive. I wonder what would happen if we changed the channel, and let's say we get into what is happening in real classrooms in real time so that, maybe I can teach these "pronouns" overtly, but not transform idly (google did the spelling), and most importantly, not intrapersonal.
Thank you for reading

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This week I learned most from reading the article about the "word gap". I found it telling that the students in the article who were watching the film were saying that the students in the movie were misbehaving and not learning. It just showed how much influence I have as a teacher and that it is up to me to decide how to use this influence.

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I learned a lot from all of the activities this week, but I think the chapter on assessment was particularly useful because it bridged the gap between what I already knew about assessment in general and what I learned regarding how those principles relate to the assessment of emergent bilinguals. While reading the section on alternative assessments and best practices, I learned how applicable those recommendations are to my current setting.

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Although reading the material provides me with a lot of knowledge, the interactions with my classmates are what helped me the most this week. Discussions with my partner Anna have helped me focus and be more concise with my PBP PDSAs. The questions she posses and the conversations we have really help flesh out the material. It is really helpful to get another person's perspective and insight to the same material. Hearing different interpretations allows me to have a fuller picture and see things from many sides. When reading other classmates' newsletters, I could see a lot of similarities in our practices, but also quite a few differences. These activities made me think more about the material and question what else I could be doing as an educator.

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Reading about the translanguaging assessment practices taught me about role of technology. I was actually very surprised to hear that some schools have tried a translanguaging assessment practice that helped monolingual educators incorporate such practices. I also learned now why for the first module we introduced ourselves with artifacts. Everything is connected incorporating a translanguaging pedagogy. The material we are learning is helping me realized how much there is still bridge in education and the extensive proposals on assessment practice that still need to be done. However, the first step is learning and now as we making the changes in our classroom.

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Weekly share 4: I hope I am doing this correctly? I am really enjoying reading Garcia and Kleifgen in general, and it has been mutually beneficial for this course but also in developing my final Capstone project this semester. I'd say reading the article by Adair, Colegrove and McManus on the word gap argument for young Latinx children was the highlight. I don't know how many culturally responsive trainings I have been a part of at this point of my career, but I am always being challenged to assess and check myself and my own deficit beliefs when it comes to how I am instructing not only my EL's but all of my students. This article also really had me chew on what messages I am sending to my students, and wondered what the results of a video cued ethnography study would reveal if done in my 7th grade class.;)

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I would like to know more about using translanguaging in assessments. I still don't quite understand how teachers/administrators would be able to evaluate the students English proficiency if their exams were in their native language. Since starting this course, I have done quite a bit of research on this topic but I need more explanation (perhaps from a teachers perspective).

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I have learned more about overt instruction, situate practice, critical framing, transformed practice and I have deeper understanding of these practices. Through the practice of PDSA and the handbook draft, it helps me think over the concepts again and again. Thus, I have better and clearer understanding of these concepts than before. However, I still want to know more about translanguaing pedagogy and culturally relevant pedagogy. Thus, I think I need to read the articles again and do the research on it.

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I would like to learn more about how to determine an English Learner's level of learning. I can definitely tell when a learner is at a beginning level since I teach that group of learners. I know what beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels require, but what are some specific questions I can ask a student that can help me to determine what class they need to be in? I don't have much time to determine this when ELs enter my classroom and have not taken the test to determine what class they should enter. Is there a list of questions in a resource that I can use?

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The muddiest point is how to understand the level of a multilingual (or English language learner) student. There are tests done through the school, WIDA testing, but that data is rarely shared with us. We are given a list of "can-do descriptors" but then our data may not match their official score. I think that there needs to be more training for teachers on what the data means, our WIDA meeting was a 30 minute staff meeting where we were shown a slideshow and told to ask questions later if we were having any issues classifying the levels of our students. For teachers to truly be helpful to our multilingual students and to improve their proficiency in English, we need more quality training. Not slideshows and quick staff meetings, quality information that we can use to plan strategies.

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Hello Everyone! This week I appreciated learning about my groups' different perspectives and how they have taught me a lot, especially with how we wanted to approach the Handbook Chapter Draft. It is definitely wonderful to take in new perspectives that will help me shape and widen my own. Even with the comments peers made on my Vocabulary Newsletter has me thinking of new ideas to incorporate and share with parents such as sending specific examples of concepts home.

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I appreciated learning about biliteracy this week. I was thinking that it might be comparable to bilingualism. While speaking I might change from my first language to my second one without even thinking ( for example finishing a sentence, when I'm lacking certain vocabulary). The same happens while writing, even though I'm more aware of it. I would like to learn more, especially how students are evaluated on their level of language knowledge and how the translanguaging is assessed.

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I really liked working on the handbook chapter and doing some additional research on transformed practice. I had general understanding based on our readings, but as I continued to explore sources, I gained a deeper understanding of how transformed practice is the manifestation of situated practice, overt practice, and critical framing. It was like peeling back the layers of an onion. Working on that segment of the Handbook also provided a springboard for my PDSA in Module 6. I'm interested in continuing to explore the pedagogy of multiliteracies by engaging in a deep dive.

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I’m over fifty, but I still want to know how all these modern technological things work. For me it is a real challenge. Most my classmates are much younger than I am, and I’m happy and gratitude that I have opportunities to know and learn many up-to-date things from younger generations. I’m captivated by their ability to quickly apply all their skills to assignments and produce activities which appeal to children’s taste.

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I appreciated my partner, Joseph, sharing this idea about critical framing: try to get your student to ask YOU the questions. For example, after reading a book together, can your student ask YOU what you liked and why? What was new or challenging? I like this idea because I need to get my adult learners more engaged. This week I felt that the work load was a little imbalanced. I never like being in that spot as a teacher :) As students ourselves, we know how burned out we get with having to answer questions. So, I will try to find ways to put the responsibility back on my students and have them ask me the questions. Like the Socratic method in reverse, for TESOL! When I think about it, this is how I have learned additional languages--because I wanted to, I needed to, and I was constantly looking for answers.

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Hello all! This week, I appreciated learning about the bilingual continuum. I have explored translanguaging in several courses, and I am very interested in the different ways it can be incorporated in the classroom. Diving into Hornberger's theories taught me new ways of conceptualizing bilingual development and creating activities that prize my students' home languages and linguistic repertoires.

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I would like to know more about out using community funds of knowledge (as described in the Hornberger article) in the classroom. I felt inspired by the idea of teachers doing household research and developing their curriculum around students' lived experiences. I've only ever approached an inclusive curriculum by choosing texts that represent all of the cultures in my classroom and inviting students and parents to share their stories. However, I want to take this further, so I'd like to read the studies Hornberger mentioned and learn from the teachers' practices. Ladson-Billings shared specific examples of community members teaching their crafts to the class, students learning poetry through rap music, and students developing standard English skills by writing in their home languages and then translating it. I'd love to see how more teachers practice cultural competence and incorporate community funds of knowledge in the classroom.

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I wonder if everyone applied the “ethic of caring” and the “ethic of personal accountability” what changes would be made. As I was writing my reflection I couldn’t help the idea juggling through my head. I know education is headed in the right direction thanks to those educators who care. However, when we have different opinions and mindset sometimes caring is not enough. Moreover, I still meet people in my job who are older than me and do not take accountability. I cannot help think those who are in power and can make the difference may lack this important feature. I am wondering if we reflect upon ourselves and make the necessary changes, we can create a better world for everyone.

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Something I still want to know about...is there a EL program that really is best? This is the question I have been working on in my capstone project and the topic I chose is on the Bilingual/ESL programs and their policies in the US K-12 schools. Throughout my education and career this has been a debated and controversial subject. There is so much research on Bilingual and ESL education, including all of the readings for this course and I am still asking the subset of the first question: How can I improve in being an effective, culturally relevant teacher who supports my EL students with a "whole child" pedagogy?

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The following are some affordances, or “opportunities for action or interaction” (Ziglari, 2012) that I learned from my problem-based projects. I will now use them in my daily teaching practices. I will give my students a word list to translate in advance since it increases their comprehension of the lesson. We will practice pronouncing the vocabulary three times. My assessment activities will be more meaningful. I will supplement my lessons with translations of target words. Students will utilize their native languages as a resource to learn the meanings of vocabulary, correct Google Translate inaccuracies, and explain communicative activities to one another. I look forward to exploring more avenues that help my students increase their skills and understanding of the language in ways that are engaging, creative, complex, and connective.

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I learned that there are other assessments for critical framing and transformed practice and I get familiar with the four frameworks, overt instruction, situated practice, critical framing, and transformed practice. With the practice of PBP, it helps me have better understanding of the concept and how it works. I have deeper understanding of the concepts than last week. Also, receiving the feedback from partner helps me a lot, so that I can know how to make it better.

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I will be asking a friend about the types of assessment activities she does in her own classroom when connecting to transformed practices, overt instruction, situated practices and critical framing. With my team, I am able to see pieces that I've missed and adapt/modify my lessons to expand on those elements. I would love to understand the instructions and components we have learned with Hall (2001) and Savignon (1997) in more depth as I still get confused between what each entails.

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I appreciated learning about the approach that each of my teammates took in planning their PDSAs. Our activities and teaching styles complemented each other well, and our activities were spread across a continuum from early grades to middle grades to secondary. As I reflect on our handbook chapter, I wonder how best to highlight this continuum in our final reflection.

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I really like how I learned about the transformative power of translanguaging to help minority-language students form new identities. This gives learners increased social and academic confidence, which supports them in language and literacy development. As I did a little extra reading this week about the affects of the pandemic in relation to learning gaps, I made a connection between the quick-reponse, highly customized interventions needed in education right now and the special ability of multilingual teachers to help meet this need. I believe teachers with experience in translanguaging have insights which can cross over to many contexts beyond language learning. I hope to see the philosophies behind translanguaging show up in research and practices in many different areas of education in the future.

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I learned about full involvement of emergent bilingual students into learning process through various pedagogies, methods, approaches, and techniques to adapt them to new social and cultural environment adequately responding to students' needs. It seems that I deeper understand troubles and worries students go through while being in the process of adjusting themselves to sometimes hostile and selfish society. Perhaps my personal experience was not so much harsh as theirs. Simply speaking, students’ voices matter.

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Flexibility was the name of the game in our partner work. Caitlin and I had to be flexible with our time (different states), our expectations (our approach to our assignment was different than expected, and our means of communication. We had to talk through some issues of our first perception of our assignment and the changes that we had to make along the way. I think that working with Caitlin has reinforced my idea that teaching through the arts is the most efficient way to reach the range of students, from gifted students to multilingual learners that are still learning English. Her project was dramatically different than mine, however we both used arts integrated strategies and the natural scaffolding, practice and engagement was evident. Her project was one I had never thought of planning, but after seeing how she planned hers and how it will benefit her students then it is one that I could see amending to fit my content.

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I will ask a friend about how they use translanguaging to promote transformative pedagogies in their classrooms. As most of you know, I have been interested in translanguaging for a while now, but of course I still run into roadblocks and challenges. This week, I felt I fumbled with my lesson for the PDSA. As we head into the final stretches of the course, I think it's time to take a step back, reevaluate my plans, and reach out to friends, fellow teachers, and mentors for tips and guidance.

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I appreciate the way my PDSA group is working together and how we are exchanging
ideas. It has been giving me many ideas that I can fall back on and use in my own teaching. I also gained a lot of experience from doing the PDSA's and teaching them to my student and see how they worked out. I had a chance to adjust them before I teach the same subject again.

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I learned...how insightful and helpful Garcia and Kleifgen's (2018) book is for working alongside my Capstone project. I have been reading throughout the chapters on pedagogy and bilingual education policies and programs and it has been such an amazing added resource. I also learned that students love creating scavenger hunts of their own. This is the first time I have given this project and I used it as a summative assessment, and I was pleased with the engagement, interaction and results.

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I appreciated how my partner Susan and I have been exchanging meaningful ideas in our PDSA’ s. I really appreciate all her feedback as it has helped me develop ideas for our handbook chapter. We are in constant communication and on top of our game plan. I have been so fortunate to have an awesome group member and also someone who is so knowledgeable. I hope to incorporate all the feedback I received from my classmates into my own class one day. I also appreciate the PDSA to think creatively and keep an inclusive curriculum for my future students.

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I discovered that teaching writing isn't limited to teaching and practicing the five-step process from pre-writing to publishing. For the last three weeks, my student in my PDSA has produced different written pieces that I only planned based on suggestions in Hall Ch. 8. My student and I did more shared writing than I have ever used in writing classes, and I've noticed a difference in the way he approaches writing. I wouldn't have thought I could teach this way, and even as I planned some of the PDSAs I questioned whether I could justify the activities being part of a writing lesson. However, in the end, I feel more proud of the work we have accomplished in the last month than anything we did before.

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I appreciated the feedback that my teammates provided for my PSDA. The questions that they posed helped me with executing the activity and paying more attention to the details. I loved this weeks activity and my students stayed very engaged throughout! I would also like to speak with a friend that is a teacher and learn about what type of classroom activities and planning processes they utilize and what resource they come from.

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I appreciated the feedback I received throughout this course. Constructive criticism and questioning have allowed me to open myself up to different perspectives and activities that I would not have otherwise thought of. Collaborating with others can have its downfall and sometimes when people provide constructive criticism, their delivery may cloud the message. However, in this course I can easily say that everyone has been considerate of one another.

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I appreciated the help from my partner and professor. Sometimes I was stuck and could not figure out by myself, so my partner and professor made me understand the assignment by their explanation. Besides, I appreciated the feedback in PBP from my partner. Because of his feedback, I could know what I did not notice when I was working on it. Also, I appreciated other classmates by sharing their thoughts in discussion, so that I could reflect on myself and think how do I become better.

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I found out how all of our PDSA's activities came together with our handbook chapter. At the beginning, I was trying to find out the purpose of these activities, but after working on the handbook chapter I finally see everything coming together. These guides will help me develop my lessons in the future and share it with other instructors as well. I will continue to learn about the strategies and planning lessons for multilingual students. I cannot wait to put these into practice and continue to develop more PDSA's in my career.

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I appreciated my teammates for reading my reflection and offering positive feedback. I also appreciated their willingness to share their growth, and challenges. I gained additional insight into their experiences as teachers. I also greatly appreciated the suggestions, encouragement, comments, and positive feedback from Dr. Kleinsasser, who challenged us to think more deeply, be critically reflective, develop our repertoire of instructional strategies, and increase our knowledge base by reading about theories and pedagogies that enhance teaching and learning for bilingual students. I also appreciated the assignment to write a letter to future students and to summarize my own interpretation of the learning.

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This week is Thanksgiving, so I will write about what I appreciate. I appreciate learning activities in this course that have helped me to engage my learners and enliven my lessons. They have helped me to be a more effective teacher. I appreciate learning ways to utilize my students’ languages as resources, and to help them understand what I’m teaching them. I realized that assessments can be meaningful if you use the right ones that assess our learners’ progress. I appreciate having a professor who is accessible, encouraging, and kind. I’m grateful to have a partner who is kind, friendly, and willing to do her part. I’m grateful for my family and their support during this learning journey. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

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I discovered writing my draft for the letter to a future student of BLE 538 that hindsight is 20/20! I wish I had had the understanding when I began this course that I have gained now. I still have questions and problems related to assessment and translanguaging that perhaps won't be entirely resolved in my current job, but I feel I gained maturity in this course. Thanks, everyone, for a great class! I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving holiday.

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This week, I have discovered the basis of my Future Student Letter, but I am struggling how to write what I want to say in a way that relays the significance/importance of this course. I am excited to see my final product, but I suffer from wanting my writing to be perfect in the sense of impact. As the course is slowly coming to an end, I reflect on the feedback I have received and it has helped me improve areas of my teaching which will also be discussed in my letter.

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I found out that doing the PDSA and getting feedback from my partner was very helpful in working on the teacher handbook. What I would do different now is not switch the activity from the overt teaching and then go on with other activities.
I will use the PDSA in my future classes, because it is not only planning but also results and reflection, and ways to enhance the lessons for future students.

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I appreciated how the group work was independent activities supported by the partner. The major drawback to group work is that I usually have an idea in my head of exactly what I want it to look like and my partner usually does too. I like the format of working together, but also being able to create your vision as you see it. I feel as though, working with teenagers, this strategy would work well. It eliminates the workload being placed on one person (if the other partner doesn't do their part, which wasn't the case in my group) or any other past issues I have found that occur in group work.

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I appreciated the open communication with my handbook chapter partner. Over the past week, we have been in regular contact via WhatsApp about our final handbook chapter, and we have worked together to develop a deliverables timeline that includes checkpoints for editing and partner comments. I'm grateful that we work well together and are open to each other's ideas and feedback. I feel confident that our collaboration will yield a well thought out handbook chapter.

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I found out that my students not only love scavenger hunts but that they are super innovative in creating their own. While there is definitely room for growth, they participated and were well engaged in the designing of their own Scavenger Hunt. I was very impressed at how much they were involved in the creation of their riddles and clues and seeing them brainstorm with what artifacts they would include. This was a very successful Problem Based Project, and I learned a lot about what worked, what didn't and what I could do differently next time. I think I am going to plan another scavenger hunt activity next quarter to see how well they do a second time around.

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Last week Saturday BLE 328 group A had a meeting on our final handbook writing, and we discussed various points of our writing. While discussing I discovered that children from immigrant and illegal immigrant families in Korea enjoy more benefits living here than in the USA. For example, all children here including legal and illegal immigrants must attend elementary and middle schools, and, according to the law, schools never share personal information on illegal family locations or parents’ phone numbers with the Korean immigration office. The law protects the children’s right to be educated. In addition, if a group of only emergent bilinguals goes on a field trip, and the field trip is organized by a special school multicultural department, then all the expenses are covered by the school or, perhaps, local department of education. If the field trip is a scheduled school trip, the parents have the right to choose to go or not, and, in case of participation, they must pay for it.