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I have been the librarian at Rochester International Academy for six years. All of our students are English Language Learners and nearly all have refugee status. Many of our students have limited or no formal education before attending our school. After reflecting on " 10 Ways to Support ELLs in the School Library " , I have my own 10 ways to add to Ms. Jules' list.

1. Visual Dewey - If the non-fiction section is organized by Dewey, consider how you can visually represent the subjects. For example, I have a small giraffe statue on the shelf at the end of the books on giraffes, a small model airplane on the shelf where books about airplanes can be found and a poster of Lionel Messi above the soccer shelf. Three dimensional objects help especially for students with limited formal education.

2. Google Expeditions - One of our best months was the month we borrowed a Google Expeditions Virtual Reality kit. Students were able to explore museums from their home countries and introduce us to key artifacts. Others climbed to the top of Sagarmāthā (Mount Everest in English). We explored biomes, space and Machu Picchu to supplement classroom lessons. When you are learning a new language, it is helpful to receive information in multiple modalities and virtual reality was very engaging for my students.

3. Dedicated keyboards - Did you know you can purchase stickers to turn your keyboard into an English and Arabic keyboard? I worked with our IT department to create a toggle so our students can easily output Arabic from the keyboard. This is helpful since many of our Arabic-speaking students are literate in Arabic and enables them to use more easily use Arabic websites, email fellow Arabic students and use Google Translate.

4. Have you seen Hafuboti's awesome " " graphics? They are available in many different languages and can be downloaded for free. Our students provided a few translations Hafuboti did not have and within a day there were new graphics in those languages available. Hafuboti gave me permission to use the graphics to create shirts for my student library helpers in each of their languages. Some of our local public library branches display posters with the graphic, and we saw them in the library on a visit to our local community college. It's such a welcoming and inclusive message.Libraries Are for Everyone

5. Librarians and teachers often call me to find materials in languages other than English for their students who are learning English. I recognize that my school is unique in that many of my students have limited or interrupted formal education. Many times the first language a student will learn to read is English so materials in other languages is not helpful unless their parents can read and share the content.

6. Google Translate is not a perfect translation, but it is often good enough to convey a message. The "listen" feature is helpful for our students who don't read their other language.

7. Many of my students have never experienced a culture with freedoms that we have in the United States. They may have never had access to information like we have in the library. I teach them about the First Amendment, and its impact on library services.

8. If you are looking for diverse books, take peek at Lee & Low's offerings. It is my favorite publisher.

9. We had a temporary subscription to the the Arabic World Book referenced in Ms. Jules' post. My Arabic-literate students felt it was very simple content and not sophisticated enough for their searching needs. Hopefully, World Book will offer an Arabic version that is closer to World Book Kids or World Book Student .

10. Often, when educators ask me what they can do to support their English Language Learners, they seem to be viewing them from a deficit lens. They describe challenges working with these students, and it seems the teachers are viewing the students through a deficit lens. I see them in a completely opposite way. Our diverse population has taught me so much about perseverance, persistence and tenacity. Many have experience meeting their basic needs in a refugee camp via "make-do's" - a homemade solar oven, sophisticated water collection systems, their shelter. In other words, they are perfect candidates for makerspace learning!

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Thing 35 - Supporting English Language Learners

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I have been the librarian at Rochester International Academy for six years. All of our students are English Language Learners and nearly all have refugee status. Many of our students have limited or no formal education before attending our school.

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The idea of providing better support to English language learners is something that has grown near and dear to me. We have an ESL teacher's office located in our library back room, and I have come to know her services and students very well. I think the work she does is incredible on many levels, and I have talked to her about how I can support these children with my limited budget. I have a decent foreign language book collection, but after reading Jacqueline Jules article, I am inspired to purchase more books about countries (and states) of origin. For example, we have recently had some students enter our school from Puerto Rico, and I think it would be nice for them to be able to share a book or story about their home of origin with their classmates. We also used Google Maps to look at satellite pictures and street views of the island. I am also going to add the Britannica Escolar database to my website. I did not realize that it was available from NOVEL! Several sources also emphasized the importance of having a visual, such as a flannel board, to tell stories. I imagine this would not only help students understand the story itself, but English vocabulary as well.

I plan to keep the articles in this section close by to reference as I grow my library to be more ELL friendly. These resources were inspiring by pointing out how the library can assist these children in acclimating to a new home while finding pride where they came from.

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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The idea of providing better support to English language learners is something that has grown near and dear to me. We have an ESL teacher's office located in our library back room, and I have come to know her services and students very well.

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

This topic has a lot of relevance to my library. A recent article in the local newspaper stated that "nearly 2,300 students displaced from Puerto Rico have entered New York schools since the fall, with 559 of them in Rochester - the most of any district in the state, according to records obtained from the state Education Department." With my district receiving the largest number of students displaced from Puerto Rico many students not speaking English, being able to support English Language Learners is as important as ever.

We have a large population of ELL's from many different countries at my school and with the large numbers of students that were displaced by Hurricane Maria this year our ELL population has increased. Reading over the article 10 Ways to Support ELLs in the Library one of the suggestions is to promote the public library. This is something that we do at my library. We will have a public librarian come in to sign up students for library cards and provide a presentation to students on the library. It is a great way to promote reading and get students connected to their local library. The public library expands the resources that are available to ELL and their families. ELL's and their families can get help with job seeking, take computer classes and have access to a large number of programs and services that they may have not been aware of.

Since I have been at my current school one of my goals every year is to continue to increase the number of bilingual and Spanish books in the collection. We do have students that speak and read none or very little English. Some even have a low reading level in their native language. Having high interest materials in their native language helps ELLs build up their reading and comprehension skills. This year I was able to continue to purchase materials to add to the collection for ELL students and recently received new bilingual and Spanish books. I recently received some of the books and made a display (see below) highlighting the new novels.

Another way I have supported ELLs this year is by creating a resource list of books at various lexile levels for one of the Social Studies teachers. She wants the students to read historical fiction novels over the summer that cover the content areas taught in Global Studies. She gave me a list of topics that she was looking for books on. I spent a great deal of time working on the list, it was difficult to find many books at lower level reading levels on many of the topics. I have included a link to make a copy here of the list. I would love any suggestions on any resources to find more lower level reading level historical novels on any of the subjects.

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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This topic has a lot of relevance to my library. A recent article in the local newspaper stated that "nearly 2,300 students displaced from Puerto Rico have entered New York schools since the fall, with 559 of them in Rochester - the most of any district in the state, according to records obtained from the state Education Department."

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The ELLs at Edison High School are some of my favorite students with whom to work. Many of them view education as the privilege it truly is, reminding us all to be thankful for the opportunities we are given. A large portion of the articles I read seemed to be more focused on elementary suggestions. However, since some of the students have either not had formal education or have had their education interrupted, these strategies can work with the older students as well. I try to buy books that students request and also to have books about students' home countries in the library. They are very excited to show you where they have come from and I enjoy learning about their cultures.

One thing that I have struggled with is deciding how much of my collection to purchase in languages other than English. At present I have very few books in Spanish... which is our largest contingency of ENL students. However, I have just found out (after my budget was largely spent) that we will be getting an influx of over 100 Puerto Rican students next year will little to no English background. With this in mind, I used the rest of the money I had to purchase books in Spanish. Part of me feels guilty for this because I cannot buy books in all the languages of our ELLs, if any are even available. I do show the students how Worldbook Online can be translated in to various languages or be read out loud to them. I also have audiobooks available, especially of novels that students tend to read in English classes. I plan on coming back to this topic to see if more resources have been added because I can definitely use the tips.

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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The ELLs at Edison High School are some of my favorite students with whom to work. Many of them view education as the privilege it truly is, reminding us all to be thankful for the opportunities we are given. A large portion of the articles I read seemed to be more focused on elementary suggestions.

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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Earlier this year I was able to attend a full day training session on ELLs. This class was enlightening as to the different cultural and educational differences and while I learned a lot there I look forward to learning more about how I can better support students as a Librarian.

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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I've been working on this Thing for a while. I had come across some of these articles and strategies in my work on my administrative license, but I still didn't feel like it was enough. Most of the articles address large populations of ENL students, and many assume the first language is Spanish. This is not my experience in my small school. When I first started in this school seven years ago, there were very few minority students - period - and even fewer ENL students. Our ENL teacher was very part-time. We now have a full time ENL teacher for just our building of 310 students. Our ENL students, though, are so varied it feels impossible to meet their needs in the library. I have families from India, Pakistan, Armenia, Turkey, China, Korea, and Venezuela. I also have a family of three from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who have the additional challenge of not being able to read or write in French, which is the language of their prior education. As a side note, a major complication in providing instruction to these students is their exposure to trauma. This adds another layer of consideration when planning for these students.
One of my major concerns has been communicating library expectations to families. I have approached this in several ways. I worked with the ENL teacher to translate my introductory library letter, as well as letters about missing books as it came up. One piece of advice I read in an article was to send home a picture of the cover of a missing book, which has been extremely helpful - and successful as several books have been returned since using this strategy.
Something I struggle with is that I wish I had the ability to provide materials in students' native languages. One of the basic tenets of ENL instruction is that students are taught in English. This often leads people to assume they should just check out books in English, too. However, it is important that students have a strong foundation in their first language in order to build their skills in English. It seems to me that having reading materials in their first language would be beneficial. However, given the size of my school and relatively wide-range of first languages, my budget doesn't allow for that. I am hoping that with our recent migration to Follett Destiny, with a more powerful capacity for ILL that I will be better able to meet these needs. I understand that there are ebook options, but the truth is that they just aren't the same. They are often of lower quality, and research shows that reading ebooks is simply not the same as reading print. However, I will certainly share resources from the International Children's Digital Library!
I found several ideas to pursue in this post: 10 Ways to Support ELLs in the School Library. I'm proud to say I read Duck for Turkey Day this year around Thanksgiving to my first graders. They loved it, and we had a good discussion about it. I am planning on including more visuals in my storytimes for younger students, and, as mentioned above, I have made minor changes in how I communicate with families. Moving forward, I am planning to promote audiobooks more to students in general, but ELL students in particular. I will plan a meeting with the ENL teacher to show her how to access digital audiobooks through OverDrive in particular.

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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I've been working on this Thing for a while. I had come across some of these articles and strategies in my work on my administrative license, but I still didn't feel like it was enough. Most of the articles address large populations of ENL students, and many assume the first language is Spanish.

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners – Mrs. Remelt's Blog

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners – Mrs. Remelt's Blog

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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Thing 35 Supporting English Language Learners I have taken classes on how to better support my ELLs and they do include some online resources, but I really liked the links to the resources in this activity and how they stressed using libraries as tools. Typically I follow a SIOP approach including all four critical elements...

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners | Erin Frawley Blogs

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners | Erin Frawley Blogs

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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I do not currently have any hard of hearing ELL students, but I could at any time. I am interested in this topic because like ELL students, many deaf/hh students also struggle with learning English. I felt like this topic might have a bunch of information for me to use, either now or in the...

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Cool Tools #4: Thing 35 Supporting English Language Learners

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Cool Tools #4: Thing 35 Supporting English Language Learners

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Cool Tools #4: Thing 35 Supporting English Language Learners

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This topic could not come at a more appropriate time. In the past our ELL population of 80 or so students has attended another school that has more resources. In the next two years, students will be...

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Thing 35 - Supporting English Language Learners

We have always had a relatively small population of English Language Learners at our school and most of them speak Spanish as their other language. I have a collection of picture books in either just Spanish or both Spanish and English. I also have a couple of Spanish/English dictionaries.

Recently there have been a small additional group of students that have come here due to the hurricanes and flooding in Puerto Rico, so I was interested to find out additional ways to support this group.

One thing I learned from a student right away is that in my attempt to make her feel more at ease, I was showing her books and maps about Puerto Rico, while the class was working on learning about different parts of the world. She didn't seem to be very interested but then when we started to point out states and New York, she was very proud to point to New York and say the word. I realized that she wanted to learn about her new home.

The next thing that arose was that the teachers did not have curriculum materials written in Spanish for the students to follow along with their fellow students. I did get some public library resources to help out but it was hard for the teacher to spend time with the one student with all of the background information etc while still trying to teach the class.

The next issue was that unlike most of the students that grew up in this country, they spoke very little English. One very helpful tool was Google translate. The teacher would type a question in the students IPad and it would be translated in to Spanish.

I read some of the articles in this section and I found some helpful suggestions for the library including: "Using visuals at story time, building background knowledge, making story time interactive (story about animals - students make the animal sounds,) promoting use of the public library" (the one near our school has a large collection of Spanish resources)

One suggestion that I really liked was a source called Teaching Books https://www.teachingbooks.net/. The Rochester City School District has free access to it, I am not sure about others. Someone had recommended it to me years ago but I did not look at all of the features at the time. With this resource you can search by subject, grade level, and more - see below

You can create resource lists. I made several (see below):

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We have always had a relatively small population of English Language Learners at our school and most of them speak Spanish as their other language. I have a collection of picture books in either just Spanish or both Spanish and English. I also have a couple of Spanish/English dictionaries.

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Thing 26&35&44/2018: Sketchnoting & ELLs & Book Stuff – Learning Never Ends

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Thing 26&35&44/2018: Sketchnoting & ELLs & Book Stuff – Learning Never Ends

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Thing 26&35&44/2018: Sketchnoting & ELLs & Book Stuff

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I'm taking advantage of the snow day to sit and listen to several webinars I never got to see that both promote the "book stuff" that I wanted to investigate as well as supporting ELLs specifically because we have three ENL classes coming in with a teacher in another week for self-selection of books for...

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Cool Tools Blog - LibGuides at John Jay High School Library - LibGuides at John Jay High School Library

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Cool Tools Blog - LibGuides at John Jay High School Library - LibGuides at John Jay High School Library

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I don't know that I can answer all these, that there are answers, that I have time to answer them, or what I'm going to do with the information but I have begun physically moving items to make them more discoverable and assessing ways to promote the electronic materials that may be the most helpful.

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners | kimleelibrarian

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners | kimleelibrarian

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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Supporting English Language Learners Thing 35 is a topic I'm learning more about in recent years. Although I teach in a city and had students formerly known as ESL; there is a new resurgence in understanding and teaching the now ELL students in the district. Upon reading through some articles I found I am already...

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​I came to this topic a bit circuitously. Our district recently rolled out a new teacher website platform and I plan to use it for my Curation Tools activity. As with most platforms, this site...

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners - Katie Traver

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners - Katie Traver

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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Seeing this assignment made me SO happy! I took this professional development course last year with the primary focus of helping my ELL/ENL students using technology. Unfortunately this "thing"...

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners | Allison Earl

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners | Allison Earl

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Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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After reading one of the articles that showed the percentages of ELLs in New York state, I was surprised to see that Utica schools had a slightly higher percentage of students than Buffalo schools. This fact made me curious, and I plan to reach out to one of the ENL teachers in my school to...

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Cool Tools/Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners | Antique Librarian

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Cool Tools/Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners | Antique Librarian

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Cool Tools/Thing 35: Supporting English Language Learners

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Talk about timely! Our district (5 schools) are working together to collect school materials for two school districts in Puerto Rico. We also have new entrants to our building from Puerto Rico. After reading / listening to the provided materials, I realized how little we had in our collection.

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Cool Tools 35 continued: Looking for bilingual books | Antique Librarian

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Cool Tools 35 continued: Looking for bilingual books | Antique Librarian

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Cool Tools 35 continued: Looking for bilingual books

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Well, this morning I started my search for bilingual books recommended by ALA. This is what I found.. In 1998 the ALSC International Relations committee merged with the Selection of Children's Books and Materials for Various Cultures Committee and the mission broadened to include the preparation of bibliographies of children's books currently available for...