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🚨Please add your responses to the Chapters in the Padlet Linked here, not as a response on this column.🚨

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🚨Please add your responses to the Chapters in the Padlet Linked here, not as a response on this column.🚨

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⭐️Responses to Chapters 1-6 by YCIS Faculty⭐️

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⭐️Responses to Chapters 1-6 by YCIS Faculty⭐️

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You will need to log in with your YCIS Credentials

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Asynchronous Course Access (Chapter videos are here!)

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Asynchronous Course Access (Chapter videos are here!)

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Password: YCIS2025EKC

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This link will take you to the original Padlet for Course 1: Elevating Bilingual Learners: Strategies for Success in International Schools.

You can access these resources if you choose to dive deeper into the content - however, you don't need to! Everything you need to pace your learning, is in the Padlet entitled 'YCIS EKC Asynchronous Course Guide | August - October 2025'

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Scaffolding Instruction for Mandarin Speakers

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Scaffolding Instruction for Mandarin Speakers

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Link: https://erinkentconsulting.com/ycis

Password: YCIS2025EKC

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Cultivating a Culturally Responsive Learning Environment

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Cultivating a Culturally Responsive Learning Environment

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Link: https://erinkentconsulting.com/ycis

Password: YCIS2025EKC

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Assessing Bilingual Learners:  Considerations and Approaches

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Assessing Bilingual Learners:  Considerations and Approaches

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Link: https://erinkentconsulting.com/ycis

Password: YCIS2025EKC

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Understanding the Bilingual Learner's Journey

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Understanding the Bilingual Learner's Journey

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Link: https://erinkentconsulting.com/ycis

Password: YCIS2025EKC

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Literacy Consultants & Consulting Services | Erin Kent Consulting

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Literacy Consultants & Consulting Services | Erin Kent Consulting

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EKC provides literacy consultants, consulting services, and literacy professional learning for schools.

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Valuing Language & Culture in the Classroom

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Valuing Language & Culture in the Classroom

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Link: https://erinkentconsulting.com/ycis

Password: YCIS2025EKC

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Link: https://erinkentconsulting.com/ycis

Password: YCIS2025EKC

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Reflect on the current practices in your classroom setting. How are you already fostering flexible use of languages? Give one or two examples.

Next, list two ideas that you're keen to try to implement in your classroom in the next couple of weeks.

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Option 2:  Jim Cummins on Language Identity

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Option 2:  Jim Cummins on Language Identity

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Reflect on the current linguistic landscape of your classroom. How can you intentionally design and enrich this space to better reflect, affirm, and support the diverse linguistic and cultural identities of your students?

Identify two specific elements you can add or modify in your classroom environment and explain how these changes will contribute to a more inclusive and empowering learning experience for all students.

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When you return to your classrooms and teams and try something new, be sure to snap a picture and share with us.

Tell the story of your learning and help other educators around the world! We love to see what's transferring to the classroom!

Linkedin

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Instagram

Don't forget to use the #EKCLiteracy 🤓

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Option 1:  Phonemic Inventories and Cultural and Linguistic Information Across Languages | Mandarin

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Option 1:  Phonemic Inventories and Cultural and Linguistic Information Across Languages | Mandarin

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At YCIS, educators serve many students who speak Mandarin as their primary/home language. After reading about the linguistic features and common influences of Mandarin on English learning, reflect on how this knowledge can inform your teaching practice and interactions with Mandarin-speaking students.

Based on the Mandarin phonemic inventory, linguistic features and phoneme charts; share one specific insight or strategy you plan to implement to better support these students' language development and academic success.

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Phonemic Inventories and Cultural and Linguistic Information Across Languages | Mandarin

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Option 2:  Using Informal Assessments for ELLs

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Option 2:  Using Informal Assessments for ELLs

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As educators committed to equitable assessment practices, it's crucial that we use a variety of methods to accurately gauge the content knowledge and skills of our ELLs. After reading about performance-based and portfolio assessments, reflect on how you can incorporate these informal assessment strategies into your classroom to better understand and support the ongoing progress of your ELLs.

What specific steps will you take to ensure your assessment practices are fair, comprehensive, and responsive to the unique needs of your bilingual/multilingual students?

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Using Informal Assessments for English Language Learners

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Informal assessments (also called authentic or alternative) allow teachers to track the ongoing progress of their students regularly and often. While standardized tests measure students at a particular point in the year, ongoing assessments provide continual snapshots of where students are throughout the school year.

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Option 3:  Culturally Responsive School Checklist and Goal Setting

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Option 3:  Culturally Responsive School Checklist and Goal Setting

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In small groups or departments, review the checklist and discuss which of the five guiding principles are currently areas of strength at YCIS and which ones represent areas for growth. For the principle(s) you identify as growth areas, brainstorm specific look-fors from that section that you feel are important to prioritize.

Then, complete the goal-setting portion individually, choosing one guiding principle to focus on and listing three concrete action steps you will take to strengthen that principle in your classroom or sphere of influence. Share your goals with your group and identify ways you can support one another in implementing culturally responsive practices.

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Culturally Responsive School Checklist and Goal Setting - SupportEd

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Learning Support Team Chapters 1-3 (Annette, Sidney, Mari, Jhulia and Justine)

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Learning Support Team Chapters 1-3 (Annette, Sidney, Mari, Jhulia and Justine)

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Chapter 1

One specific action to leverage students linguistics and cultral assets we can do is for the students to write the task in their own language before they write it in English.

Chapter 2

One specific step we can tak to enhance inclusivity in our classroom to give children time to share cultural backgrounds, this not only validates their experience but enriches the learning environment for all.

Chapter 3

A new strategy we could implement to activily encourage translanguing practises in our classroom is share-pair-talk in their own language and then share back in their own language.

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Y3 PXP Kate Shlair Haddon Alex Traci Fumann Chapters 4-6 

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Y3 PXP Kate Shlair Haddon Alex Traci Fumann Chapters 4-6 

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This is often something we come across in our phonics classes. As Mandarin doesn't have the voiced sounds /b/, /d/, and /g/ like English does, our key strategy is to give students a physical way to feel the difference. We will continue have them touch their throats to feel the "buzz" or vibration when they make a voiced sound like in "bin," compared to a quiet (unvoiced) sound like in "pin." This has been previously taught in our UFLI phonics programme. This hands-on method helps them understand and produce a fundamental English sound distinction, which will improve their speaking and reading skills. Another important strategy focuses on vocabulary. Mandarin words are often single syllables, while English loves multi-syllable words like "com-pu-ter." To help, we will explicitly teach students to "chunk" longer words by clapping or tapping out the syllables. We will practice breaking words down into parts and then blending them back together. This builds the crucial skill of recognising and pronouncing syllables, which makes reading long words less intimidating and improves overall fluency.

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How can I tailor these strategies when I see every student and every learning ability while sharing the same learning space with multiple classes from different year levels? Specifically without having too much information or it looking too cluttered with references that it isn't clear.

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YEAR 1 TEAM

CHAPTER 1-3

OPTION 3:  How the Languages we Speak Shape the Ways we Think.

A practical and inclusive translanguaging strategy for our Year 1 international classrooms with mostly Chinese and a few Korean students, is to allow and encourage students to use their home languages during collaborative tasks—such as group discussions or brainstorming activities—before sharing ideas in English with the class. This approach can be applied during activities like "turn and talk”.

Why This Strategy Works:

*Allowing students to think, discuss, and plan in their strongest language first reduces cognitive pressure and builds confidence.

*By leveraging the full linguistic repertoire, students gain deeper comprehension and develop the ability to transfer academic concepts between languages, enhancing both language development and content mastery.

*This fosters a sense of belonging, validates students' home languages and cultures, and helps create an equitable, supportive environment where all backgrounds are valued.

Implementation Example:

*During an Inquiry lesson on weather, students can "turn and talk" with same-language partners to discuss observations or ideas.

*After sharing in their home language, students prepare their thoughts and present summaries or key points in English to the group.

*With visual supports (e.g., bilingual word banks, illustrated anchor charts), students move fluidly between languages, making connections and supporting each other’s language growth.

Impact on Academic Success

*This translanguaging strategy boosts both English proficiency and content understanding, helping students bridge gaps—especially for complex ideas—while maintaining and growing home language skills.

*Research shows enhancements in reading comprehension, vocabulary, classroom engagement, and positive attitudes toward learning through the use of translanguaging.

By systematically integrating opportunities for students to use and share ideas in their home languages, we can create lessons that are inclusive, equitable, and more responsive to the diverse profiles of international school students.

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Option 3:  How the Languages We Speak Shape the Ways We Think

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Option 3:  How the Languages We Speak Shape the Ways We Think

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Considering the diverse linguistic backgrounds of YCIS students, how can you incorporate translanguaging strategies in your classrooms to create a more inclusive and equitable learning environment?

Identify one specific strategy you can implement in your teaching practice and explain how it will support your students' language development and overall academic success.

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How the Languages We Speak Shape the Ways We Think

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Option 3: Strategy: Multilingual Note-Taking

Allowing students to use any language for note-taking, annotating complex texts, or outlining initial ideas.

Impact:

This strategy lets students focus first on deep conceptual understanding. Using their strongest language prevents students focusing only on word-for-word translation. It also lowers the initial barrier to starting complex assignments.

It also validates the student's entire linguistic understanding, making the learning environment more equitable.

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Option 3:

Principle 2: Culturally responsive instruction simultaeneously supports and challenges students.

Wishing to focus on two of the points:

Instruction includes activities that require students to consider alternative ways of understanding informaiton and push students to challenge the status quo.

Instruction includes activities that foster critical thinking and reflection (eg. open ended discussion prompts and student monitoring of their learning).

Can focus on maths to help delvelop the above points. Some maths questions we provide are differentiated through the perceived expected difficulty of the language the questions use. Some students are 'locked out' of tricker questions through the language not always being translated. I can help make activities more inclusive so that we are assesing their mathematical abiliites rather than their current English language proficiency.