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Summer PD - PM Unlocking Understanding: Tips, Tools, and Tricks to Engage Student Minds

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Summer PD - PM Unlocking Understanding: Tips, Tools, and Tricks to Engage Student Minds

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July 22nd 12:30 - 3:30

Stony Point HS

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This dynamic three-day academy explores the best practices in ESL instruction, foundations of language acquisition theory, language concepts, and cultural awareness. Participants will receive an ESL Academy guidebook that will help them prepare for the TExES #154: ESL Supplemental Exam.

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Join this dynamic three-day academy that explores the best practices in ESL instruction. With the number of Emergent Bilinguals steadily increasing, the ability to provide effective ESL instruction is key. Prepare for the TExES #154: ESL Supplemental Exam required to service Emergent Bilinguals with this workshop.

At the ESL Academy, we will explore the foundations of language acquisition theory, language concepts and cultural awareness. This interactive and engaging academy provides guidance for educators on how to provide academic and linguistic instruction for students whose primary language is not English.

Participants will receive an ESL Academy guidebook that accompanies the training and serves as a helpful resource as you prepare for the exam. The guidebook includes examples to support participants' understanding of the 10 exam competencies, as well as embedded practice questions, and an additional practice exam. This event is face-to-face.

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This three-day academy provides a foundation on language acquisition and explores best practices in ESL instruction while preparing participants for the TExES Exam #154: English as a Second Language Supplemental.

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Summer PD - Boosting Brilliance: Supercharge Learning with Content and Language Supports

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Summer PD - Boosting Brilliance: Supercharge Learning with Content and Language Supports

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July 23, 2024 12:30 - 3:30

Stony Point HS

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Summer PD - Unlocking Understanding: Tips, Tools, and Tricks to Engage Student Minds

# data[].attributes.subject
Summer PD - Unlocking Understanding: Tips, Tools, and Tricks to Engage Student Minds

# data[].attributes.body
July 23, 2024 8:30 - 11:30

Stony Point HS

# data[].attributes.headline
Summer PD - Boosting Brilliance: Supercharge Learning with Content and Language Supports

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Summer PD - Boosting Brilliance: Supercharge Learning with Content and Language Supports

# data[].attributes.body
July 22, 2024 8:30 - 11:30

Stony Point HS

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Summer PD - Secondary Teachers: TELPAS: Easy Ways to Move Those Speaking Scores

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Summer PD - Secondary Teachers: TELPAS: Easy Ways to Move Those Speaking Scores

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August 6, 2024 8:30 - 11:30

To be determined

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Summer PD - Secondary Teachers ~ Let's Talk: Activities to Get Students Talking

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Summer PD - Secondary Teachers ~ Let's Talk: Activities to Get Students Talking

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August 6, 2024 12:30 - 3:30

To be determined

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February 13, 2025

Virtual

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Summer PD - Seidlitz Education: Talk, Read, Talk, Write (TRTW)

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Summer PD - Seidlitz Education: Talk, Read, Talk, Write (TRTW)

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July 23, 2024

Stony Point HS

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Structured visuals and conversation prompts. A teacher subscription is needed.

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The Visual Non-Glossary is very organized. I can pull up any topic and use it immediately. I can use this resource, quickly and it is very impactful.

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TAMU Physics/Astronomy Hands On Demonstrations

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TAMU Physics/Astronomy Hands On Demonstrations

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YouTube channel filled with engaging experiments and demonstrations.

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The Department of Physics and Astronomy within Texas A&M University is home to internationally leading research in astronomy, atomic physics, quantum optics, condensed matter physics, high energy physics, nuclear physics, and related areas. We offer our students a variety of graduate and undergradua…

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Visual supports to post within your classroom and on slides.

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Visual supports to post within your classroom and on slides.

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Free icons to post within your classroom and on slides.

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Linguistic Scaffolds and Levels of Support for Grading EB students

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Linguistic Scaffolds and Levels of Support for Grading EB students

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Linguistic Scaffolds and Levels of Support

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The Five Pillars of Equitably Grading ELLs

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The Five Pillars of Equitably Grading ELLs

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In our work with educators of English language learners (ELLs), we often find that there is a lack of resources in our field about how to equitably grade ELLs. This blog post offers some insights and ideas that we hope will spur further discussion.

First, we'll share the reason behind our focus on this topic, as well as a summary of challenges related to grading ELLs. Next, we'll give you a brief overview of related research before sharing our own recommendations developed in response to our research, which we call the Five Pillars of Equitably Grading ELLs. (You can find a related infographic on the SupportEd website.) We'll end the post by providing a space for you to share your thoughts, add some additional resources, and share some references with you.

Resources from Larry Ferlazzo

This post complements the following from Larry Ferlazzo:

We also produced a webinar with Larry, available on the SupportEd website (scroll down to "The Five Pillars of Grading ELs Equitably).

COVID-19 updates

For more information on grading equitably during COVID-19, see the following:

Why this topic?

As part of developing a blended ELL assessment professional development course for the Mid-State Regional Bilingual Education Resource Network in Central New York State, we were asked to create a component on grading ELLs. We thought our task would be straightforward enough, but once we started researching the topic, we found very limited resources specifically for ELLs.

In an effort to gather more information, we reached out to our online professional learning network. Diane posted the following questions on the Colorín Colorado Facebook page, the Advocating for ELLs Facebook page, and Twitter in early January 2018:
We're doing a little research on grading ELs at SupportEd. Could you please share your answers to these questions? 1. What are the challenges that you and your colleagues may have in grading ELs? 2. What are some strategies or tools that you find particularly helpful in grading ELs? 3. Do you have any exemplary EL-friendly report card samples you can share?
The responses were numerous and came quickly. Many of our online colleagues shared that they were also looking for guidance around this topic. We also took part in a Twitter #ELLCHAT on January 8 on the same topic with a similar response from colleagues around the country. (You can see a transcript from that Twitter chat by registering for a free account from Participate.com.) We'll summarize the top three challenges that we read about next. Please note we don't share answers to questions 2 and 3 since we incorporate some resources to address these questions in our Five Pillars.

Challenges from the Field

The challenges we saw most often were:

1. Issues with the structure and content of report cards: Teachers mentioned not having an ELL-specific report card, and they also mentioned not being able to adapt their curriculum or school report card so that the ELA skills graded are "on level". (Example: 4th grade beginner student failing ELA because she does not meet grade four ELA standards and is performing at a grade two level.)

2. Lack of validity in grading content: One comment was, "Sometimes a child's grades are just a reflection of how well the teacher taught to their learning style, rather than a true representation of what the child knows." Another colleague wrote, "Separating ELD from content knowledge! So integral to each other - how to assess accurately??" She noted these are listed separately on report card, but there is no tool to assess them.

3. Challenges with school or district policy: Often, educators commented that existing policies at the school and district level don't address the unique considerations inherent in grading ELLs, such as inflexible time limits for exemption from letter grades regardless of the students' language proficiency and educational backgrounds.

Synthesis of Research on Grading Challenges for Teachers of ELLs

The challenges our colleagues reported on social media are in line with what the research tells us, namely that there are many obstacles that may prevent ELLs from benefiting from equitable grading practices. Here we summarize some of findings from relevant research. Please note that this is not an exhaustive literature review!

Research shows that grading, even among teachers at schools with clear grading policies, is often inconsistent (Reeves, 2008; Seeley, 1994). This inconsistency can lead to inequitable grading practices and even failure for certain groups of students, such as ELLs (Waldsburger, 2012). Many teachers believe that report card grades should be based solely on students' mastery of grade-level content standards, which can be challenging for some students. Jung and Guskey (2012) note that while an ESOL teacher may complete a supplemental progress report for ELLs, that piece of assessment information does not often support the general education teacher in assigning grades.

Another obstacle in grading in general is that many classroom teachers feel uncertain about how to hold all students to the same expectations for performance as other students (Guskey, 2011). Teachers can find it challenging to differentiate instruction and grading for ELLs while trying to meet the needs of the other students in their classroom (Pawan & Craig, 2011). Even those teachers who are able to differentiate instruction may find it difficult to score learning tasks and assign grades based on differentiated student work.

Still another challenge that stands in the way of equitable grading for all students is the belief that grades should be used to identify and maximize differences among students (Guskey, 2011). Many teachers feel that there should be students who perform well and students who perform poorly, such as with a normal bell-shaped curve. Jung and Guskey (2012) share that teachers often grapple with questions of fairness, such as giving a passing grade to an ELL who did not meet grade-level content standards. However, Guskey (2011) notes that when teachers identify what they want students to learn and be able to do and when they do all they can to support students in meeting these goals, it is possible for all students to obtain high scores on academic tasks and thereby receive high grades.

The literature we reviewed notes several recommendations for improving ELL grading systems as a whole (e.g., Waldsburger, 2012). For example, one recommendation is not giving letter grades to newly arrived ELLs who are beginning to learn English. Another option is to provide narrative assessments only or use a system of pass, fail, and high pass that measures effort, language growth, and content standard mastery based on students' levels of language proficiency. Tomlinson (2001) suggests providing two grades for all students. The first would be a traditional, standards-based grade, and the second would be a grade based on an individual student's progress towards language and content learning goals. Similarly, several authors (e.g., Jung & Guskey, 2010; Tomlinson, Moon, & Imbeau, 2015) recommend three grades for differentiated classrooms based on a student's product (mastery of content), process (effort, motivation, and participation), and progress (improvement over time).

Our Recommendations: The Five Pillars of Equitably Grading ELLs

We drew from our colleagues' responses, the research we synthesized on grading ELLs, our review of best practices in ELL grading, as well as our own expertise in the field to create five recommendations for equitably grading ELLs. We call them the Five Pillars of Equitably Grading ELLs. For each pillar, we provide a few steps to incorporate that pillar. In defining and describing the five pillars, we fully realize how intertwined effective instruction and equitable grading are. You simply can't fairly grade ELLs if you haven't already positioned them to access the instruction of content.

Pillar 1: Identify the content and language standard(s).

In setting up a system in which ELLs can be graded fairly, teachers first need to define which content as well as language standards they would like their students to meet. Hand in hand with these two sets of standards go content and language learning objectives for ELLs based on these standards. We recommend that teachers share these content and language learning objectives with ELLs using "student-friendly" versions to the degree possible. Also, we recommend that teachers identify success criteria for ELLs in meeting the objectives, and share models of strong work samples with ELLs so that students are aware of teachers' expectations. Model work samples should also include models produced by ELLs at different levels of proficiency so ELLs can see themselves reflected in exemplary student work.

Pillar 2: Incorporate scaffolding to support ELLs in achieving the standards.

Depending on their level of English proficiency, most ELLs will not be able to access grade-level content standards without appropriate scaffolding. We recommend using three types of scaffolds in the areas of materials, instruction, and strategic grouping of students to work toward removing linguistic barriers for ELLs. In implementing scaffolds, we recommend you do so based on ELLs' English language proficiency level as well as individual ELL strengths and needs and also the demands of the particular lesson (Staehr Fenner & Snyder, 2017). In addition, we recommend that teachers set expectations with students for the gradual removal of scaffolding, as appropriate. ELLs should be aware that scaffolds are temporary and will be removed as they gain language proficiency and content knowledge and skills. Further, we stress that it's crucial for ESOL and content teachers to collaborate to determine appropriate scaffolds for their ELLs to meaningfully access content.

Pillar 3: Support ELLs' progress toward mastery.

We believe that grades should not be used punitively for any students, and especially not for ELLs who are already more inclined to drop out of school than non-ELLs. Therefore, we suggest providing ELLs sufficient time and opportunities for learning, such as offering " lunch bunch" and after-school opportunities to do schoolwork with guidance from teachers, tutors, or peers. In addition, we recommend focusing on ELLs' progress towards mastery as well as their achievement. It is important to underscore that we are evaluating ELLs' progress towards mastery, not just whether they have mastered the objective or not. In spite of careful scaffolding, all grade-level standards may not always be 100% achievable for certain ELLs. It may be more motivating for an ELL to recognize his or her progress than to see an achievement score alone.

Also, since many ELLs have responsibilities such as work and taking care of siblings outside of school, they may not be able to complete all assignments on time. Therefore, we recommend allowing ELLs to turn in some work late without penalty if they are in communication with the teacher about the unique circumstances. Moreover, late work may be a sign that an ELL is needing more support to be able to access the content, understand the directions, and/or complete the task. Finally, if homework is given, we recommend using it as an opportunity for non-graded practice.

Pillar 4: Assess ELLs' progress equitably.

In order to equitably assess ELLs, teachers need to design assessments and supports that allow ELLs to access and demonstrate mastery of content and/or language objectives. To equitably assess ELLs' progress, it is critical to also scaffold assessments (not just instruction) for ELLs based on individual ELL strengths and needs. For example, depending on an ELL's level of English proficiency, that student could be provided sentence frames, images, or a word bank to lighten the "linguistic load" of the assessment to be able to provide a more valid picture of what that student knows and can do in a particular content area. During instruction, ELLs should have ample classroom opportunity to practice with any scaffold that will also be provided during an assessment. Another aspect of equitably assessing ELLs' progress comes in the form of group work. While we recommend strategically grouping ELLs as a form of scaffolding instruction, for grading group work we recommend assigning individual scores instead of a group grade to students, including ELLs. In this way, individual students aren't penalized if all students aren't contributing equally to a particular group project.

Pillar 5: Involve ELLs, families, & colleagues.

We have often found that ELLs and their families do not have a full understanding of grade-level expectations, how grades are given, and what each section of a report card means. We advocate for explaining grade level expectations, the grading process, and report cards to ELLs in their home language whenever possible. In addition, ELLs and their families should be involved in the entire grading process, beginning the school year or their enrollment in school with an overview of what the grading expectations and processes look like. Such meetings are also a good time for ELLs and their families to set goals for their learning. Finally, while collaboration and co-teaching have been on many teachers' radar for some time now, co-grading may not be. We strongly recommend that ESOL and content teachers co-grade, collaborating to assign grades to ELLs on formative and summative assessments as well as discuss final grades on report cards. In that way, the level of collaboration will strengthen, and all teachers can leverage their expertise when it comes to ELLs.

Your Thoughts

While we offer our ideas on guidance around equitably grading ELLs, we also encourage you to share your thoughts here. If you have any samples of ELL-friendly report cards, grading policies, success stories, or additional considerations, please share them in the blog post comments!

Additional Resources

References

Guskey, T. (2011). Five obstacles to grading reform. Educational Leadership, 69(3), 16-21.

Jung, L. A., & Guskey, T. R. (2010). Grading exceptional learners. Educational Leadership, 67(5), 31-35.

Jung, L.A. & Guskey, T. R. (2012). Grading exceptional and struggling learners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Pawan, F. & Craig, D. (2011). ESL and content area teacher responses to discussions on English language learner instruction. TESOL Journal, 2(3), 293-311.

Reeves, D. (2008). Leading to change: Effective grading practices. Educational Leadership, 65(5), 85-87.

Seeley, M.M. (1994). The Mismatch Between Assessment and Grading. National Education Association. National Education Association. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/teachexperience/ ask040326.html.

Staehr Fenner, D., & Snyder, S. (2017). Unlocking English learners' potential: Strategies for making content accessible. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Tomlinson, C. A. (2001). Grading for success. Educational Leadership, 58(6), 12-15.

Tomlinson, C.A., Moon, T. and Imbeau, M.B. (2015). Assessment and student success in a differentiated classroom, Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/siteASCD/publications/assessment-and-di-whitepaper.pdf

Waldspurger, T. (2012, March). A? B? C? Assigning meaningful grades for ELLs. Presented at the TESOL Convention, Philadelphia, PA.

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The Five Pillars of Equitably Grading ELLs

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How can teachers equitably grade ELLs? Learn more about challenges, related research and resources, and recommendations developed by the Diane Staehr Fenner, Jill Kester, and Sydney Snyder.

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RRISD: District Approved Software & Apps

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RRISD: District Approved Software & Apps

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It is important to know what is approved and what (if any) restrictions exist before using software/apps with students:
https://sites.google.com/roundrockisd.org/instructional-software-apps/home

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Rewordify-Teacher Use Only (No logins created)

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Rewordify-Teacher Use Only (No logins created)

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This has been approved for teacher use only (without a login) within our district at this time.

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Rewordify.com | Understand what you read

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Rewordify.com helps you read more, understand better, learn new words, and teach more effectively.

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TEA: Helpful video that will guide you through understanding the process for Serving Emergent Bilinguals.

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TEA: Helpful video that will guide you through understanding the process for Serving Emergent Bilinguals.

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TEA: Supporting English Learners for At-Home Learning

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TEA: Supporting English Learners for At-Home Learning

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The Texas Education Agency (TEA) English Learner Support Division has compiled a variety of helpful websites to support families with English learners at home. These websites will help in strengthening English language proficiency skills in Listening (L), Reading (R), Speaking (S), and Writing (W).
Helpful Tip: On your computer, phone, or tablet, you can install Google Translate for free to translate text, handwriting, speech, and websites. You can also go to the "Settings" section of most , phones, and tablets to change the language from English to your preferred language. Follow these for
Apple or Android devices.

Website

Target Skills

Description

Elementary Grades Pre-K-5

Middle Grades 6-8

High Grades 9-12

L, R

Fun and engaging topics and games to wake up students' bodies and minds, in English. The link to GoNoodle en Español is provided for similar activities, in Spanish.

X

TEA is not responsible for the views and opinions expressed in each resource mentioned in this document.

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The Texas Education Agency (TEA) English Learner Support Division has compiled a variety of helpful websites to support families with English learners at home. These websites will help in strengthening English language proficiency skills in Listening (L), Reading (R), Speaking (S), and Writing (W).

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The Frayer Model is a graphic organizer for building student vocabulary.

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Click "select video" in orange to see elementary and secondary examples.

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Upgrading Your Vocabulary Activity with Interaction and Comprehensibility

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Upgrading Your Vocabulary Activity with Interaction and Comprehensibility

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Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) @ValentinaESL

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Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM) @ValentinaESL

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To Translate or Not...That is the Question!

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To Translate or Not...That is the Question!

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@Inspiring Young Learners 2020
*please note Talking Points is approved for teacher use only within RRISD

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Vocab mix and match example referenced in Upgrading Your Vocabulary...Webinar. @Englishlearnerportal.com

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Upgrading Your Vocabulary Activity with Interaction & Comprehensibility "Vocabulary Mix & Match" Slides

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Upgrading Your Vocabulary Activity with Interaction & Comprehensibility "Vocabulary Mix & Match" Slides

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A non-profit, virtual conference that removes the physical, financial, and time barriers for teachers of language learners.

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Site Menu is linked to past conferences, certificates, and individual 2021 sessions.

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by Valentina Gonzalez

When you look at a piece of art or a photograph, what happens in your mind? Images like these often tell a story. There's a message, the main idea, and the details. How do we decipher one from the other? What do we infer? How do we interpret imagery? The truth is, our own personal lived experiences and background knowledge come together as we meet an image, forming an idea and creating an interpretation. It's at this intersection that we synthesize.

What Is Visual Literacy?

The term "visual literacy" was first coined in 1969 by Jack Debes, founder of the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA). But is visual literacy itself a new concept? Think about cave paintings that date back over 30,000 years. They, too, communicate through visuals. The visual literacy definition continues to evolve as the world around it does. The IVLA currently uses this definition:

Visual literacy is a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media. Visual literacy skills equip a learner to understand and analyze the contextual, cultural, ethical, intellectual, and technical components involved in the production and use of materials. A visually literate individual is both a critical consumer of visual media and a competent contributor to a body of shared knowledge and culture. (Visual Literacy Standards Task Force, ACRL, 2011)

Why Is Visual Literacy Important?

We live in a visual world. It has become increasingly more visual with the invention of the internet, tablets, and smartphones. Being able to interpret visuals and use them as a way to communicate messages to viewers is critical. Pictorial representations are common in all content areas. Visuals surround us in daily life, making it essential for students to understand their uses and incorporate them into their work.

Even more importantly, visual literacy provides an accessible platform for critical thinking. Images carry meaningful messages that we can leverage to help students communicate their thoughts and ideas with one another. We can use images to guide powerful peer-to-peer conversations that push students' thinking, language development, and concept attainment.

Take a moment to reflect on your day-to-day routines. Think about the visuals that surround your daily life (advertising, infographics, texting, television, social media, street signs, communication, aesthetics, etc.). Ask yourself these questions:

Are visuals used?

How much are they used?

When and why are they used?

What message(s) does the creator want to convey?

How Does Visual Literacy Fit into EL Instruction?

Visuals enhance learning, memory, and comprehension. Studies on the impact of pictures on memory have shown that pictures are superior to words alone. The theory is called the pictorial superiority effect. Many teachers of English learners (ELs)already use images, pictures, and multimedia to help ELs comprehend challenging English curriculum. We can use the opportunity to increase student engagement and critical thinking, to probe and ask for evidence. In Mastering Vocabulary with Visuals, Dr. Fleenor describes how visuals can support vocabulary development.

Many state standards include students' abilities to read, analyze, and deconstruct visual images. For example, one of the Common Core third grade reading standards asks students to "explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in a story (e.g., create mood, emphasize aspects of a character or setting)."

In this video for Edutopia, director and actor Martin Scorsese shares the importance of visual literacy and why we should teach it in our classrooms.

Here are three practical ideas for using visual literacy with ELs:

Word Clouds

Create Word Clouds as warmups to a lesson or at the end of a lesson or unit. After creating a Word Cloud as a class, analyze it using the questions and sentence stems below. Here's an example of how that might look and sound.

What do you see? The word ___ is larger/smaller than all of the other words.

What do you think? I think a lot of people agree that...

What makes you think that? I think the word ___is larger/smaller than all of the other words because...

What surprises you? I'm surprised that...because...

Maps

Post a distorted map or cartogram of your community, the world, or your state, and start a discussion.

Image from https://gisgeography.com/cartogram-maps/

What do you see? I see a map of ...

What do you think? I think the map is showing a representation of...

What makes you think that? I know that ____, ____, and ____ all...

What surprises you? It surprises me that ____ is...

Sketchnotes

Have students take visual notes/ sketchnotes while reading, viewing a video, or listening to a lecture. Then pair them up and have them talk with partners about the notes they made.

Skectchnote by Valentina taken at Adrian Mendoza's Sheltered Instruction in Math Training

What do you see? I see images of...

What do you think? I think the main idea is...

What makes you think that? The words ___ stick out big and are repeated in ...

What surprises you? I'm surprised by the quote...

Picture Books

Take a picture book with illustrations and one with actual photographs on the same topic that you've previously read as a class. Open each book to a page with an image. Use them to discuss the author's purpose and message.

Eg. Diary of Spider by Doreen Cronin and Spiders by Seymour Simon

What do you see? In the ___ book, I see...

What do you think? The drawn illustrations make me think...but the real photographs...

What makes you think that? I think the illustrator/photographer wants to make viewers believe that...

What surprises you? I'm surprised that...

It's easy to see that visual literacy promotes higher-order thinking skills and language development through a low-stress entry point. I remember first hearing about visual literacy as a teacher. It seemed like such a vague concept, and I really couldn't wrap my brain around how it fit into the curriculum in my classroom. As our team planned, we tried to understand why it was important. It took a while to see that visual literacy is more than taking pictures at face value. Visual literacy is about critical thinking and seeing the world through multiple perspectives.

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by Valentina Gonzalez When you look at a piece of art or a photograph, what happens in your mind? Images like these often tell a story. There's a message, the main idea, and the details. How do we decipher one from the other? What do we infer? How do we interpret imagery?

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Vocab. sheet for Mix & Match Vocabulary Activity @Englishlearnerportal.com

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Upgrading Your Vocabulary Activity with Interaction and Comprehensibility "Vocabulary Mix & Match" Vocabulary Sheet

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Upgrading Your Vocabulary Activity with Interaction and Comprehensibility "Vocabulary Mix & Match" Vocabulary Sheet

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@Miss_Bilingual_Bee (Brooke Bee M.Ed)

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@ValentinaESL

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Ideas to Facilitate EL Comprehension During Remote Learning

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Ideas to Facilitate EL Comprehension During Remote Learning

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Online books offered in multiple languages.

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Online dictionaries and tools in over 100 languages

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Online dictionaries and tools in over 100 languages

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Online dictionaries are available for many different languages. This page contains links to as many as I can find.

If you find a link that is no longer working or that has moved, or would like to add a new link to this page, please contact me

Dictionaries for individual languages

Multilingual dictionaries | Visual dictionaries

Other websites with links to online dictionaries

Abaza
http://www.abazinka.ru/en
Information about Abaza | Numbers

Abenaki

Information about Abenaki | Numbers

Afrikaans dictionaries

Albanian dictionaries

Alsatian dictionaries

American Sign Language (ASL) dictionaries

Amharic dictionaries

http://www.amharicdictionary.com
http://aemd.org

Learn Amharic with uTalk

Ancient Egyptian dictionaries

Arabic dictionaries

- Learn Arabic online with ArabicPod101

- TalkInArabic.com - learn colloquial Arabic of Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, the Levant, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Sudan or Tunisia

- eArabic Learning - Learn Arabic Online with Live Teachers

- Learn Arabic online with Mondly

Arabic courses and other resources available on Amazon

Information about Arabic | Phrases | Numbers | Video lessons | Tower of Babel | Articles | Links | Learning materials | Books about the Arabic script | Arabic electronic dictionaries and translators

Aramaic dictionaries
http://www.peshitta.org/lexicon/
Armenian dictionaries

Aromanian dictionaries

Assamese dictionaries
http://www.xobdo.org
Learn Assamese with uTalk

Aymara dictionaries
http://www.lenguandina.org/
Azeri dictionaries

Learn Azerbaijani with uTalk | Learn Azerbaijani with Glossika (affiliate links)

Balinese dictionaries
http://dictionary.basabali.org/
Basque dictionaries

Bantoanon dictionaries
https://asi.webonary.org/
Bavarian dictionaries

Bengali dictionaries

Learn Bengali with Glossika

Belarusian dictionaries

https://www.bielmova.org
http://www.slounik.org/
https://www.skarnik.by/tsbm
http://www.belarusguide.com/dictionaries/engblr/index.html

Learn Belarusian with uTalk

Learn Belarusian with Glossika

Bislama dictionaries
http://www.bislama.org/translate
Blackfoot dictionaries
http://dictionary.blackfoot.atlas-ling.ca/
Information about Blackfoot | Numbers

Bolinao dictionaries

Information about Bolinao | Numbers in Bolinao

Breton dictionaries

Information about Breton | Phrases | Numbers | Family words | Colours | Time | Weather words | Comparison of Celtic languages | Celtic cognates | Celtiadur | Tower of Babel | Learning materials

British Sign Language dictionaries

Bulgarian dictionaries

Burmese dictionaries

https://www.myordbok.com
https://www.burmese-dictionary.org/
https://www.myanmar-dictionary.org/http://sealang.net/burmese/
http://www.lexilogos.com/english/burmese_dictionary.htm

Cantonese dictionaries
Learn Cantonese with Glossika
Catalan dictionaries

Learn Catalan with Glossika

Cebuano dictionaries

Chechen dictionaries

Cherokee dictionaries

Cheyenne dictionaries

Chinese (Mandarin) dictionaries
Learn Mandarin Chinese with Glossika
Information about Mandarin | Phrases | Numbers | Colours | Family words | Time | Tongue twisters | Video lessons | Tower of Babel | Articles | Links | Learning materials

Chuvash dictionaries

Cornish dictionaries

Corsican dictionaries
http://www.lexilogos.com/corse_langue_dictionnaires.htm
Cree dictionaries
http://www.creedictionary.com
Croatian dictionaries

Crow dictionaries

Czech dictionaries

Danish dictionaries

Information about Danish | Useful phrases | Silly phrases | Numbers | Colours | Family words | Terms of endearment | Tongue twisters | Tower of Babel | Learning materials

Dutch dictionaries

Learn Dutch online with DutchPod101
Learn Dutch with Glossika Dutch learning software

English dictionaries

Esperanto dictionaries

Estonian dictionaries

Faroese dictionaries

Fijian dictionaries

Learn Fijian with uTalk

Fiji Hindi dictionaries
http://www.oocities.org/fijihindi/FijiHindiEnglishDict.htm
Information about Fiji Hindi | Tower of Babel in Fiji Hindi |

Finnish dictionaries

French dictionaries

Frisian (North) dictionaries

https://friisk.org/

Frisian (Saterland) dictionaries

http://www.saterfriesisches-wörterbuch.de/?suche=zwanzigste

Frisian (West) dictionaries

Galician dictionaries

Gamilaraay dictionaries
http://www.dnathan.com/language/gamilaraay/dictionary/GAMDICTF.HTM Information about Gamilaraay
Garifuna dictionaries
http://www.garifunainstitute.com/
Georgian dictionaries

German dictionaries

Gonja dictionaries
https://gonja.webonary.org/ Information about Gonja
Greek dictionaries

Guaraní dictionaries
http://www.uni-mainz.de/cgi-bin/guarani2/dictionary.pl
Gujarati dictionaries
http://www.gujaratilexicon.com
Learn Gujarati with uTalk

Hausa dictionaries

Hawaiian dictionaries

Hebrew dictionaries

Hiligaynon dictionaries
http://www.bohol.ph/kved.php
Hindi dictionaries

Hittite dictionaries
http://thevore.com/hittite/
Information about Hittite

Hmong dictionaries

Hungarian dictionaries

Hunsrik dictionaries
http://www.hunsrik.org
Information about Hunsrik

Hupa dictionaries
http://nalc.ucdavis.edu/hupa/hupa-lexicon.html
Information about Hupa

Ibibio dictionaries
http://talkingdictionary.swarthmore.edu/ibibio/
Icelandic dictionaries

Indonesian dictionaries

Innu dictionaries
https://dictionary.innu-aimun.ca/
Interlingua dictionaries
http://www.interlingua.com/ied/
Inuktitut dictionaries
http://www.livingdictionary.com
Iñupiaq dictionaries
http://www.alaskool.org/Language/dictionaries/inupiaq/dictionary.htm
Irish (Gaelic) dictionaries

Italian dictionaries

Information about Italian | Phrases | Family words | Terms of endearment | Colours | Numbers | Time | Weather words | Tongue twisters | Tower of Babel | Articles | Links | Learning materials

Jamaican dictionaries
http://jamaicanpatwah.com/
Learn Jamacian online

Information about Jamaican | Phrases

Japanese dictionaries

Jeju dictionaries
http://talkingdictionary.swarthmore.edu/jeju/
Information about Jeju

Kannada dictionaries

Kapingamarangi dictionaries
http://talkingdictionary.swarthmore.edu/kapingamarangi/
Kashmiri dictionaries
http://dsal.uchicago.edu/dictionaries/grierson/
Kashubian dictionaries
http://www.cassubia-dictionary.com
Khmer dictionaries

Ki'che' dictionaries

Information about Ki'che' | Tower of Babel

Kinyarwanda dictionaries
http://kinyarwanda.net
Kiribati dictionaries

Klingon dictionaries

Konkani dictionaries
http://www.savemylanguage.org/app/home.php
Korean dictionaries

Kosraean dictionaries

Kumyk dictionaries

Kurdish dictionaries
http://www.ferheng.org
Kyrgyz dictionaries

Ladin dictionaries

Information about Ladin

Lao dictionaries

Latgalian dictionaries
http://www.vuordineica.lv
Information about Latgalian | Numbers in Latgalian

Latin dictionaries

Latvian dictionaries

Limburgish dictionaries
http://www.limburgs.org
Information about Limburgish | Phrases

Lingua Franca Nova dictionaries
http://ccgi.esperanto.plus.com/cgi-bin/lfn/disionario.html
Lithuanian dictionaries

Livonian dictionaries

Lojban dictionaries
https://mw.lojban.org/extensions/ilmentufa/i/
Low German dictionaries

Luxembourgish dictionaries

Macedonian dictionaries
http://www.idividi.com.mk/recnik/
Malagasy dictionaries

Malay dictionaries

Malayalam dictionaries

Maltese dictionaries

Mam dictionaries

Manx dictionaries

Māori dictionaries

Marathi dictionaries

Marwari dictionaries
http://hattai.page.tl/Marwari-Dictionary.htm Information about Marwari
Mi'kmaq dictionaries

Mizo dictionaries

Information about Mizo | Tower of Babel

Mohawk dictionaries
http://glosbe.com/en/moh/
Mokilese dictionaries
http://talkingdictionary.swarthmore.edu/mokilese/
Information about Mokilese

Mongolian dictionaries

Learn Mongolian with Glossika

Nahuatl dictionaries

Nepal Bhasa/Newari dictionaries
http://glosbe.com/en/new/
Northern Ndebele dictionaries
http://www.northernndebele.org.za
Information about Northern Ndebele | Phrases

Northern Sámi dictionaries

Northern Pomo dictionaries
http://northernpomolanguagetools.com/dictionary/
Information about Nothern Pomo

Norwegian dictionaries

NorwegianClass101.com - Learn Norwegian with Free Podcasts | Norwegian learning software
The Mystery of Nils: Norwegian Course for Beginners - Learn Norwegian - Enjoy the Story

Occitan dictionaries

Okinawan dictionaries

Old English dictionaries

Odia dictionaries

Páez dictionaries
http://talkingdictionary.swarthmore.edu/paez/ Information about Páez
Pahlavi dictionaries
http://www.rabbinics.org/pahlavi/MacKenzie-PahlDict.pdf Information about Pahlavi
Palauan dictionaries
http://www.tekinged.com
Information about Palauan | Phrases

Papiamento dictionaries

Pashto dictionaries

Persian/Farsi dictionaries
Learn Persian (Farsi) with Glossika
Polish dictionaries

Poitevin-Saintongeais dictionaries
http://dicopoitevin.free.fr/
Portuguese dictionaries

Potawatomi dictionaries
http://www.potawatomi.org/lang/our-language Information about Potawatomi
Punjabi dictionaries

Quechua dictionaries
http://www.katari.org/diccionario/diccionario.php
Rapa Nui dictionaries
http://kohaumotu.org/Rongorongo/Dictionary/dictionary_complete.html
Rarotongan dictionaries
http://www.cook-islands-maori-dictionary.org
Romansh dictionaries

Romanian dictionaries

Romany dictionaries
Information about Romany
Roviana dictionaries
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/lcts/bill.palmer/NWS_site/Rov/RovDic.pdf
Information about Roviana | Numbers

Russian dictionaries

Sanskrit dictionaries

Sardinian dictionaries

http://www.ditzionariu.org

Sasak dictionaries
http://kamusbahasasasak.blogspot.co.uk/
Information about Sasak

Scots dictionaries

Scottish Gaelic dictionaries

Shanghainese dictionaries
http://wu-chinese.com/minidict/search.php
Serbian dictionaries

Learn Serbian with the Serbian Language Podcast

Sicilian dictionaries

Sinhala dictionaries

Slovak dictionaries

Slovenian dictionaries

Somali dictionaries

Southern Sámi dictionaries
http://snl.no/sørsamer
Spanish dictionaries

Information about Spanish | Phrases | Idioms | Family words | Time | Weather | Tongue twisters | Video lessons | Tower of Babel | Articles | Links | Learning materials | Learn Spanish through stories

Sumerian dictionaries
Information about Sumerian
Swahili dictionaries

Swedish dictionaries

Information about Swedish | Useful phrases | Silly phrases | Numbers | Colours | Family words | Time | Weather words | Idioms | Tongue twisters | Tower of Babel | Learning materials

Tagalog dictionaries
http://www.tagalog-dictionary.com
Tahitian dictionaries

Taiwanese dictionaries

Tamil dictionaries

Tarahumara dictionaries
http://www.sil.org/resources/archives/10966
Information about Tarahumara | Numbers

Tatar dictionaries

Telugu dictionaries

Tetum dictionaries
http://www.gnu.org/software/tetum/contributors/cliffMorris-xhtml/index.html
Thai dictionaries

Tibetan dictionaries

Tłı̨chǫ dictionaries
http://tlicho.ling.uvic.ca
Tongan dictionaries
http://www.tongantranslator.com
Turkish dictionaries

- TurkishClass101.com - Learn Turkish with Free Audio and Video Lessons
- Learn Turkish online with Mondly
- Learn Turkish with Glossika

Turkmen dictionaries

Twi dictionaries

Ukrainian dictionaries

Urdu dictionaries

Uyhur dictionaries

Uzbek dictionaries

Vietnamese dictionaries

VietnamesePod101.com - Learn Vietnamese with Free Podcasts
Learn to Speak Vietnamese, in northern and southern accents, with Interactive Bilingual Lessons
Learn Northern Vietnamese or Southern Vietnamese with Glossika

Võro dictionaries
http://www.folklore.ee/Synaraamat/
Vurës dictionaries
Information about Vurës
Walloon dictionaries
http://www.lexilogos.com/wallon_langue_dictionnaires.htm
Waray-Waray dictionaries
http://www.bansa.org/?q=dictionaries/cmd&dict_lang=Waray
Information about Waray-Waray | Tower of Babel

Warlpiri dictionaries
http://ausil.org/Dictionary/Warlpiri/lexicon/index.htm
Information about Warlpiri | Tower of Babel

Welsh dictionaries

Xhosa dictionaries

Yiddish dictionaries

Yoruba dictionaries

Zaghawa dictionaries
https://zaghawa4all.wordpress.com/bereng/ Information about Zaghawa
Zarma dictionaries
http://www.bisharat.net/Zarma/
Information about Zarma | Tower of Babel

Zulu dictionaries

Multilingual dictionaries

Multilingual online dictionaries
http://www.logos.it
http://www.linguee.com
http://lingro.com
http://hablaa.com
http://www.majstro.com
http://www.eurodict.com
http://www.majstro.com
http://www.wordreference.com
http://dicts.info
http://www.wordanywhere.com/
http://www.staropolska.gimnazjum.com.pl/
http://dictzone.com
http://www.langtolang.com
http://www.logos.it
http://dictionaries.travlang.com
http://www.get-together.net
http://www.interglot.com
http://www.japplis.com/jlearnit/dicos/
http://www.diccionarios.com
http://www.dejudicibus.it/dizionario/
http://www.linux-ku.com/ferheng
http://www.lingvosoft.com/free-online-dictionaries/
http://www.popjisyo.com/WebHint/Portal_e.aspx
http://www.stars21.com
http://www.lexibase.com
http://www.twikilate.com
http://www.dictionarist.com
http://www.jonsay.co.uk
http://leximo.org
http://www.lingodict.com
http://www.april.com.ua/dict.html
http://www.englishdictionaryonline.org
http://www.ingilizceceviri.org
http://dict.com
http://dictionary.reverso.net
http://www.linguee.com
http://www.dictionarist.com
http://www.covot.net/dictionary
http://context.reverso.net/translation
https://tr-ex.me/

Specialised Spanish-English dictionaries (Accounting and Financial)
http://www.spanish-translator-services.com/dictionaries/

English Dictionary/Thesaurus and English > French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and German translation: http://lookwayup.com/free/dictionary.htm

Visual dictionary - image-based look up with words in English and French
http://www.infovisual.info

jARGOT.com - a multi-lingual database of words, grouped by categories such as legal and computer: http://www.jargot.com

Rhyming Dictionaries for many languages
http://www.alcor.com.au/rhyming_dictionary.asp

Talking dictionaries for various small / endangered languages
http://talkingdictionary.swarthmore.edu/

Visual dictionaries

Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary Online (English)
http://visual.merriam-webster.com

Visual dictionary (English & French)
http://www.infovisual.info

Visuwords - online graphic dictionary (English)
http://www.visuwords.com

Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus (Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish)
http://www.visualthesaurus.com

Other pages with links to online dictionaries

Directory of bilingual and multilingual dictionaries
http://www.lexicool.com

FREELANG - Free dictionaries for downloading and free translation
http://www.freelang.net

Lex Scripta: links to dictionaries in many languages
http://www.lexscripta.com/desktop/dictionaries/foreign.html

yourdictionary.com - links to dictionaries in 230 different languages, from Afrikaans to Zoque: http://www.yourdictionary.com/languages.html

Lexicool - links to online dictionaries in many languages
http://www.lexicool.com

List of links to online dictionaries
http://www.lexicate.com

Scrabble Word Finder
http://www.scrabblewordsolver.com

CrossWordGuru - solve crossword clues
https://crosswordguru.com/

Avionary - mulitilngual dictionary of birds
http://www.avionary.info

Recommended books

Dictionaries, language courses, grammars, phrasesbooks, etc.

Links pages

Links for individual languages

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Online dictionaries are available for many different languages. This page contains links to as many as I can find.

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Steinhardt.NYU Glossaries: Great for Academic Vocabulary

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Steinhardt.NYU Glossaries: Great for Academic Vocabulary

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https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/metrocenter/language-rbern/education/glossaries-ells-mlls-accommodations

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Short video describing the English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS) in Texas and why they are important

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Mastering Vocabulary with Visuals by Dr. Stephen Fleenor: Seidlitz Education

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Mastering Vocabulary with Visuals by Dr. Stephen Fleenor: Seidlitz Education

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by Stephen Fleenor

It's as simple as this: mastering academic vocabulary is essential for mastering content. Granted, this probably marks the one million and twenty-third time that statement has been said, but it merits repeating for three key reasons: first, academic vocabulary is the language by which content concepts are expressed; second, mastering today's academic vocabulary is fundamental for mastering tomorrow's content; and last but definitely not least, the ability of a student to master academic vocabulary is directly tied to his or her confidence in the subject.

That last point is key and often underemphasized. It also explains why students often struggle with using academic vocabulary. As humans, it is natural for us to be intimidated by "big" words and either insert generic filler words, such as a "thingy," or avoid the conversation entirely (like when Bridget Jones classically evaded academic conversation with Salman Rushdie). A large part of this intimidation is not being able to visualize what the vocabulary represents, and not having the background to construct the visualization in one's mind.

Consider, for example, the word saponification . Most people (including myself) who enter into a conversation about saponification would feel like a deer caught in the headlights. Listen closely to the conversation and you might hear the words "acid-base chemistry," and, weirdly, the phrase "soap is a salt." Here is the image you now might have in your head:

Just when you're trying to figure out if soap might be bad for you, someone turns and asks you, " how do you think taking an antacid might affect the body's natural saponification? " Okay, now it's time to go find the restroom.

In our classrooms, our students often experience the same degree of intimidation with academic vocabulary, and often equally struggle to evoke a comprehensible image in their minds of what the academic vocabulary means. This is especially true of students who lack background knowledge or who do not read and write on grade level. It's not that struggling students don't have visualization in their minds' eye about what they're hearing, it's just that the visuals we conjure up when we don't fully understand something (like new content) are often confusing and inaccurate.

Imagine now if, instead of leaving you to try to come up with your own mental image of what saponification means, the other people in the conversation are referring to a poster on the wall about saponification:

Now when you hear the words "acid-base chemistry," you have an idea that saponification has to do with combining acids and bases. And when you hear "soap is a salt," you can infer from the visual that soap is an example of a salt. You also know exactly how saponification is spelled and you can make a visual connection to the word every time you hear and say "saponification." Then, when somebody asks, " How do you think taking an antacid might affect the body's natural saponification? " you have a foundation to begin confidently thinking about the question.

First, make sure the vocabulary word is based on the visual. This means that a student can draw meaning (or make an inference) from the visual regardless of his or her background knowledge. We teach highly heterogeneous classes and every student brings a unique schema of understanding about academic vocabulary. Great visuals, therefore, allow students to make a connection to the content and normalize around the academic meaning of the word. Take for example the visual of "capitalism" below:

Some students might have never heard of the word "profit," and some students might be imagining state capitals or capital letters when they hear the word "capital." However, with this visual it is easy to infer that profit is basically money, and that capital has to do with ideas and money to make the ideas happen. After some thinking and discussing, one can infer that capitalism has to do with generating profit in order to create more profit.

Pitfall to avoid: hieroglyphics. A good visual cannot be just a hieroglyph. For example, today's young people know what the save icon looks like (left), but they probably do not know that it represents a 3.5" floppy disk, or know that data was originally saved on these disks before the age of cloud computing. It is a hieroglyph because it can be used to refer to saving, but its meaning cannot be inferred without specific background knowledge from the 1990's. In the case of capitalism above, a simple money sign will only be a sight reference for the word, and will not help students understand the meaning of capitalism.

Second, have students with the visual. Open-ended questions that refer to the visual, combined with opportunities to speak in small groups about the questions, help students to think deeply about the word. Discussion prompts also help students forge connections to other vocabulary words or concepts. Lastly, discussions centered around visuals give students a platform to learn from each other. This is true for all learners, including the highest-performing learners. Asking questions about what the visual might mean and how it might tie into the lesson is an excellent way to challenge students while making them feel smart and supported in the process. Pitfall to avoid: wallpaper. A visual is only as effective as the opportunities students have to interact with it. Leaving a beautiful poster or image on the wall is effectively fruitless if the teacher does not refer to the visual or ask students questions based on the visual. Make sure to refer to the visual and have the students think about it - the more often, the better.

As teachers, we can let visuals - and students' interactions with those visuals - drive our lessons. Try to think of two to four vocabulary words or concepts essential to the lesson, then find supporting visuals and questions to stimulate thinking. With increased opportunities to visualize words, students will more confidently express themselves using academic vocabulary and not feel the need to excuse themselves from the conversation.

Image Attributions

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by Stephen Fleenor It's as simple as this: mastering academic vocabulary is essential for mastering content. Granted, this probably marks the one million and twenty-third time that statement has been said, but it merits repeating for three key reasons: first, academic vocabulary is the language by which content concepts are expressed; second, mastering today's academic...

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Differentiating Instruction with the ELPS 

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Differentiating Instruction with the ELPS 

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Differentiating Instruction with the ELPS_ ELPS Linguistic Accommodations

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Carol Salva: Newcomers at Grade Level and Beyond Blog (podcasts, videos, kahoot ideas and more!)

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Carol Salva: Newcomers at Grade Level and Beyond Blog (podcasts, videos, kahoot ideas and more!)

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I'm working in districts where we have been in school for 5-8 weeks. This show is in response to some challenges and reflections on what I want to emphasize more. You can listen to this show right here or on your favorite podcast app.
Listen to "BAP111 Instead of IDK for SLIFE and Newcomers" on Spreaker.
An edited transcript follows with links to what I talked about:

This episode is going to be about lessons learned. I think there's value no matter what you do if you're a teacher, instructional coach, or administrator.

This is that time of the year when the honeymoon is over! LOL. Things are playing out in a certain way depending on what routines you put in place or did not put in place. What I've learned is that in many places where we're not getting things off the ground with students, it's because this strategy is not in place. We are realizing that we did not emphasize the teaching of this skill enough.

So let me offer you the strategy, and then I'm going to tell you why it's so critical for new arrival students. And this one is important for even your highest flyer in your classroom no matter what you teach. And I'm also going to tell you about a fail, so look forward to that. People always say they love hearing about what didn't go right or a non-example when I'm trying things.

So this fail is kind of funny too. All right, so here's the strategy.

The sheltered strategy is to Teach Kids What to Say When They Don't Know What to Say.

Let me say that again. We're going to teach kids what to say when they don't know what to say. Some teachers know this as an "Instead of 'I don't know' poster." We are working to remove "IDK" from our classrooms.

So let's think about it a little bit differently. We're not talking about a poster. Idk is what the students use. Many students text, I don't know Idk. All right?

Teach Ss Day 1 what to say instead of IDK. Opting out is not an option for Learners. @MsSalvac #supportingSIFE #BoostingAchievement @LearnTexas pic.twitter.com/djeBCMzs6p

- Trish Hinze (@TrishHinze) July 17, 2019

Often you will see a poster that says IDK, and it has an X through it in a classroom. The idea is that we are not going to say, 'I don't know' anymore. Instead, we want to encourage other things such as: May I ask a friend for help? Would you please repeat the question? Where can I find more information? May I have some time to think? etc. That's a fantastic poster to have. T he company I work for, Seidlitz Education, sells these great posters of things that say, they're beautiful.

WHY is this Important? Can the Students Tell Us?

If you ask the kids, why is it important to say other things instead of I Don't Know, could they tell us? Have we talked with them about this and let them come up with answers. This offers relevancy.

If I asked you to come up with three reasons why it is important for young people to say something instead of I don't know, I bet you could. As adults, we have built a skill where we might pause and say something like "Could you give me a minute?" Or "Can I ask someone to help me with this?"

Just Google It!

You know, the reality is that we don't use the skill so much anymore. Now we just ask Alexa. Or we ask Google. We google it. That's kind of dangerous for the world, don't you think? In the Boosting Achievement book that I wrote with Anna Mattis, we cite researchers that talk about how a part of our brain is starting to atrophy because of technology. We don't have to think deeply anymore. So then it is more important than ever that our classrooms are places where we can practice thinking, be more curious. Be more curious. Don't just default to I don't know.

It's a teenage culture kind of thing, right? I'm sure you can appreciate, even for your own child, do you want them to be okay with not knowing? So the first one that I always teach is, May I ask a friend for help? Because I'm trying to create a culture of conversation. And as soon as the student says that, we say, yes. And I'm going to hover around that student, and I'm going to make eye contact, and I'm going to ask them, Are you ok to answer before we come back. I might have to give them the answer. We need them to have a win in that moment in front of everybody. And if they didn't know the answer, they may not be the only one. They're likely not the only one that doesn't know.

Why is QSSSA not Working?

I'm going to talk about the Newcomer classroom. I am always talking about the newcomer student. This week, I was in a newcomer classroom where the majority of the students have missed large amounts of formal education, and we are at high school. The issue is that the students are not turning and talking when we want them to. And we have a really good structure, QSSSA, for students to turn and talk. But they're still not talking to each other as much as we would like for them to, even when we encourage the use of native language. We just don't have it off the ground.

Modeling for Teachers

A part of my job is modeling for teachers. So I decided I would model how to get this strategy off the ground with a class where most of the students are new to the target language of English. I never promise that I can pull off a spur of the moment lesson well. It is a challenge to model because I don't know the kids and I don't know the content. But I'm willing. I feel that it is important to be vulnerable enough to do these things to support the teachers. Even if the lesson doesn't go as planned, we get a chance to debrief and so we are both going to come out better.

Using Native Language

So remember that most of the kids in the classroom don't understand what I'm saying. Now, a lot of these kids speak Spanish, so I'm going to just be honest, my first instinct would be to just say it in Spanish. I speak Spanish. And this is not the moment to worry about language acquisition. This is the moment to worry about teaching a skill so that we can acquire more English! Routines, directions, telling a student how amazing they are...Those kinds of messages we need to get across, however we can get them across. Use your entire language repertoire to communicate these things. We have Google Translate and I will use it or whatever I need to use to help me , might use whatever I need to make sure they understand.

#SeidlitzEdChat
If anyone needs an "Instead of IDK" poster for thier #virtualclassroom here you go! #KeepItSimple #ells pic.twitter.com/BoEbq8SaQY

- Dr. Carol Salva (@DrCarolSalva) May 20, 2020

A key word or phrase is always okay. - Said by Nancy Motley in one of my first ESL trainings.)
But as the instructor, I want to stay in English as much as possible. I'm the model. I would only just pop out of English for a moment and come right back in. I don't want them to think that I will be translating everything. I want them to get comprehensible input (understandable messages) with me staying in English as much as possible. But again, this is so important that I would use my Spanish. Absolutely. Not a problem for me. It always has worked out just fine.

Translation Can't be our Go-To Strategy for Comprehensible Input

I have no problem using Spanish from time to time but the teacher I was working with does not speak Spanish! And another thing is that several kids in there don't speak Spanish! I could use Google Translate and I would still use some Spanish translation, though. I would still do it because the majority were Spanish speaking kids and they just communicate kid-to-kid better than they can with me often. They're friends. So I would do it, but I would be thinking "What about my student that speaks Farsi? What about the child that speaks Arabic? Are they getting it?" And so translation cannot be our comprehensible input default. And as the year goes on, I want to make sure it's not because more kids have more comprehension and I should not need to translate at all anything pretty soon. So anyway, the teacher I was working with didn't speak Spanish, and I want to make sure that I'm trying to model something that they can do easily.

How do I Get Buy-In for This Norm?

Okay, so here's how it looks if everybody speaks English in my classroom. I would write "I Don't Know." on the board and talk about how it is OK not to know answers. I'd give them a scenario in life like if I'm at the bank and they ask me, "What is your husband's mother's maiden name?" I might just need a minute. I might know it, but I might just say, "Can you hang on just a moment? Can you give me a minute to think?" My husband might be in the car, and so I might instead ask them if I could go ask him for help.

Most importantly, I want them to talk to each other. I'd like the students to talk and to tell me why is this important. I want their buy-in. This is a lesson. It is not just, 'Hey, we're going to start doing this today.'

We can just write one thing on the anchor chart and add to it throughout the year. But they need to buy-in. They need to understand why it's important. So I would have that "I Don't Know" written on the anchor chart and at that point, I would cross it out. Then I would add "Instead of..." and we can start writing other things we could say onto that poster.

Poster vs. Anchor Chart

Instead of 'poster,' let's call it an anchor chart. It needs to be big enough for the kids on the other side of the room to be able to read it. Any environmental print needs to be big enough, written in big enough print, that it's usable no matter where you're sitting in the class. And it needs to be referenced. Otherwise, it is just decoration.

On a mission to increase engagement for early ELs, @PantherNation_1 Ms. Carter begins virtual classes with a purpose statement (doubles as fluency practice), images to support growth mindset and @MsSalvac IDK chart 🙌🙌. @MNPS_EL pic.twitter.com/BfUzlt7lb3

- Heather W. Goodridge (@h_woodroof) September 3, 2020

NO FORCED OUTPUT

That's how it goes when everybody speaks English. So now I will explain what I do when they don't comprehend much English.

I want to say, before I start to tell you about the simulation, No Forced Output. That's a mantra in my mind that I'm saying to myself as I walk in front of a class of new arrival students or any students, no forced output. I am not going to force anyone. I'm never going to force a kid to speak in English. When they're acquiring English, it's just so cringy. And it is doing the opposite, the exact opposite of what I want, which is a low-stress environment where they can acquire, consume, and comprehend as much English as possible.

I want that to go as fast as possible. And there's a researcher named Steven Krashen who will tell you it's really all about reading. And he's right, in my experience. I want to get them reading with support, high interest, compelling things, acquiring and understanding these words as they start to understand how they sound and as they start to use them, we get it off the ground, and it starts going so fast.

They have to be comfortable for that. They have to be really comfortable. Not freaked out. So whatever I'm doing in front of the class, they can attend to it, they can see it, they can get it. They can start getting little things. They can be comfortable enough to talk to their partner in a low-stress way.

QSSSA

One-to-one is low stress, so use whatever language, but I want them to talk to each other. Some of them won't even talk to each other in their native language.

Think about that. A turn-and-talk. What could go wrong with a turn and talk in a regular math class? I'm sure you're thinking a lot of things.

They're not talking about what I want them to talk about....

One of them is doing all the talking...

They weren't paying attention, so they don't know.

And on and on...

QSSSA is a routine that helps solve for so many of the challenges we face when we want students to Turn and Talk. It's a top tip. It is our top tip. I work for a company called Sidelitz Education, and QSSSA is always a Top Tip! Chris Hagy of Charleston, SC has a padlet on the technique here. And this script by Michelle Gill is popular:

That routine is one of John Seidlitz' Seven Steps to a Language-rich, Interactive Classroom. It is a fantastic routine. But guess what step one is? Step one is teach kids what to say when they don't know what to say.

Teaching Students what to Say instead of IDK is STEP ONE.

That is step one for a reason. We need low-stress environments where everybody is willing to take risks. See, I don't want to force them to speak in English, but I do want to arm them with something they can take anywhere they go in the building and also not be so worried that they're going to be called on. So this "Instead of "I don't know" poster that we're creating, I have a little one for you.

They're about six to a page and you can just print them out and cut them up and tape them to the desk. Tape them to their agenda. Have a big one on the wall and also tape these on their Chromebook and everywhere so they can take it with them because it's a skill. It is what they might need at the doctor's office. To use in math class. To use everywhere.

The Fail

Okay, so I'm walking to the front of a classroom where kids do not speak English. The class is for that. And these are new arrival students. And it's at the beginning of the school year and it's specifically for students who have missed education. So imagine there's not much comprehension across the board. So I went up there and I wrote, I don't know on the board. And you see kids, they're looking at it quizzically. So I think, "I'm going to explain this like I always do, but I'll just use gestures."

So for whatever reason, I pointed to my eye in my face. Ha! I'm going to try not to laugh because it was so ridiculous. So I pointed to my eye, but then immediately I was like, no, not that kind of eye .. I. And I pointed to my chest and I saw a kid mouth "me" as soon as I pointed to my chest. He mouthed me and I was like, yes, like me... I. And another student pointed at me, like at the teacher, and said, I? No, no, no... now my mind is racing. I'm thinking, God! Because you know what? I did this for a living, for years. But every time I go in front of a class, I get slapped back into reality of how hard it really is. It is not easy to teach, period. But you forget how intentional you need to be to teach newcomers effectively. But I need this vulnerability. I need to be up there so that I can help. I don't have to have a magic wand and do anything perfectly. Or say "just do this!" I was up there so we can figure out things together. And I know there's a way to do this with newcomers. I'm just thinking, "Why didn't I think about this before I walked up here??"

I was like, no, I (pointing at my chest). Of course some kids got it. "I" is a very common high-frequency word. I like, I am here. Okay, let me just go on to "Don't"... the word "Don't." So I pointed to the word don't, and I said, Say "don't", and everybody repeated it.

I wagged my finger like, no... like you're shaming somebody.

Don't... don't... Don't

And one of them said, "no." And I said, yeah like "no." But he was saying, "I no?"

No. So when I was shaking my finger back and forth, they were getting "no" like yes or no. So I was like yeah, it's no...but it's don't. And I'm trying to think, how do you say don't? How do you convey don't without saying no? Because the next word is know!

I don't know.

So then I was like, okay, don't. Just say don't, and then no. And then point into my temple....know.

I know they're thinking, "I no no? And that no is with a K??"

Okay, right there. Let's just stop. This all happened in just a few seconds, right? To me, it is so funny.

Making Things Harder Than They Need to Be

It is so funny because I'm just making it so much harder than it needs to be. As always. As always, I'm making it way harder than it needs to be. Let's back up. I could have said it in Spanish because one kid finally did say "No Se?" That's beautiful. Yes! Throughout the school year, if they say it in Spanish, I'm going to say, yeah, exactly. Or if they get it, yeah. I don't care if they translate to each other all year long. I just don't want that to be their go-to either. But anyway, as soon as he said , I wrote And they're like, yeah, okay. But there were still kids in the class that don't speak Spanish. But I did see that they can help each other understand this. I saw a kid turn to another kid and make the gesture like shoulders up, palms up. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Yes. That kids should be teaching. LOL!

That kid should be teaching. Because here's how I'm going to always do it from this point forward. They all got it when I made this noise, when I shrugged my shoulders, when I put my palms up, and when I made the "I Don't Know" sound... it isn't even a word. It is a sound. So that gesture with your shoulders up and your palms up, that resulted in 100% of them getting it. And they started laughing, and they're like, okay, we get it.

I can also invite our kids who do have literacy in Arabic or something else to come and write that over here on this anchor chart. There's nothing wrong with the native language. In fact, it's powerful. But I want the English words big as that is our target language in this class.

So they understand this is what we're talking about. But they needed to understand, just like any class, what does it look like in a class? So let me circle back that little moment that I had in front of that class. That little fail, I call it, was such a fantastic learning opportunity for me and for the teacher. At least I know it was for me and I hope for him because we debriefed afterward that we're just making it harder than it needs to be.

Collaborate with Like Minded Educators

This is the kind of thing I get better at because I reflect on it. I am reflecting on it right now in this podcast. But I want to talk with or communicate with other educators to remind me of the basic things that are most powerful. And things like 'When is native language okay?' Again, A keyword or phrase is always okay for the teacher. I mean, when is native language okay for the students in an ESL classroom?

Always, always allow and honor their native language.

Students can use your entire language repertoire in this class because I have a language target. I have a language objective today. Our language objective is "We will use language such as "May I ask a friend for help?" and "Would you please repeat the question?"

That's our language target today. And we all repeated it at the beginning of class in unison because that is low-stress. I'm not forcing anybody, but if we say it all together, you know, and we used it several times in the class, and I'm constantly bringing them back into English. The ones who can speak English, the ones who are able to repeat, the ones who are we're constantly coaching for that through the entire 39 minutes. But you have to use your native language.

It's a source of comfort. Your funds of knowledge live there... everything that you're able to express.

I have a kid who speaks Spanish and a kid who speaks Arabic sitting together. And they do great, but they do use some of their native language. Their common language is English, but they can communicate with each other using everything they have.

We want to create a culture of conversation. And that conversation, we cannot force it all to be in English. But there's more and more English as we are going through the year. I promise this is the answer. Low-stress environments, low-stress opportunities for output.

Opportunities for output. No forced output. And tons of comprehensible input. Tons of messages that you start to understand, what does that person mean? What are they trying to get across to me in this language?

Comprehensible input would be in the target language of English in that classroom. But comprehensible. So me making that gesture really exaggerated...it's comprehensible. It was more comprehensible than anything else I was doing up there. So we just played around with it. We're just playing around with it.

Partner with Students. Be Transparent

And you know, what is great about what happened is the kids don't forget it. The kids won't forget it if it's a fail like that. I'm just transparent with them. I was always telling my students that I'm learning how to be a better teacher every day. That's what other people say, too.

I have heard Instructional Coaches say they don't model because they don't want to take the power away from the teacher. NO. You won't take the power away from that teacher. I don't believe that for a minute. Let's hold students to a higher regard. Partner with the students. I'm trying to get better about that. Right when I walk in, if they let me introduce myself, I want to say "Hi, I'm Dr. Salva. Your teacher and I are both learning. We're always learning. I hope for you that your whole life you will be learning. So today we're going to try some things together because I want to learn, and he wants to learn. And we're always working together to get better at things, to get better at teaching you. And so what I learned from you, too. And you guys learn from us. So we're going to try some things in here and see how they go."

I mean, that's just transparent because we're all still just on this journey, all of us, me, the teacher, the principal, the kids, all of us. Hold them in high regard. We are all learning together, okay?

So Instead of, 'I Don't Know.'

Here are some things for my journey of learning lately on supporting teachers:

It's not a poster. The strategy is not a poster because a poster is just decoration. If the kids aren't using it, if we haven't implemented it. And so if you look around your room and it is a small thing where kids can't access it, or if we only talked about it one time, that's where we learned, okay? We haven't emphasized it enough.

We haven't made it a norm. We haven't made it our default. We haven't spent time making sure our highest kid in the class uses it, because we ask them questions that they would need to use it like, "Can you tell me more about that?" Or "Can you say it another way?" Or "Why? Why do you think that?"

Are we using this to help with rigor? Those kinds of higher-order questions would have your highest kids going, hhhmmmmmmm.... So you can offer them, "Okay, do you want a moment? Do you want to use something from the poster?" We want all the kids to see that it's for all the kids. So your highest kids have to buy into it. And if we want our students to buy into this technique, we need to give them the relevancy. We need to explain all of this and make sure they all understand why it's important.

Motivation - Helping Them Find It

We had kids speaking in their native language to each other and coming up with ideas of why it's important because that was the thing. We need buy in from students. We need them to buy into this.

Larry Ferlazzo has written a lot on how to help kids be intrinsically motivated. I'll link to one of his articles. Here are the four things.

I say them all the time. (I'm a Larry Ferlazzo groupie.) The researchers agree. If you want kids to be motivated, if you want people to find their motivation, intrinsic motivation, put these four things in the environment.

Relevancy like I just said, why is it relevant? How is it relevant? Why is it relevant to you? Why should you care.

Relatedness that's relationships. Teachers have relationships with students, and students have relationships with each other, and we want to work on those because it really helps motivation. So relevancy, relatedness another one is:

Autonomy or choice. So I give them that anchor chart, and you can choose whatever one you want to say. But how much choice you have in anything helps you be more motivated about doing it. And then the fourth thing that Larry writes about is:

Competence. A sense of competence. That doesn't mean I've mastered it. It means I feel myself getting better at it. I've had a little win.

So that whole technique instead of I don't know, it's not a poster, it's a skill. What do you do when you don't know what to say? What can you say? So that's what I was saying.

Recap on Some Things That Can Go Wrong

What can go wrong is that we can have it to where it's just a poster. It may even be a poster that they can't read. So to offset that, to mitigate those challenges, we would use it more often. Explain it. Explain the relevancy.

Have kids talking to each other, your relationship with them, hold them in high regard that you want their opinion about why it's important and even using it, explain to them, we're doing it in here, not because I'm the teacher and I want you to answer it's because your voice is important. Your voice is important. And you may just need a moment. You may just need your friend to remind you of something. You may not know the answer, but that's okay. You know a lot of other things, and together we know a lot.

Don't Force Output but Expect Them to Use These Phrases?

So it may sound counterintuitive. Like what I'm saying is make sure they know what to say, but don't force output. Okay...I don't care if they say it in Spanish. I don't care. I mean, once they're comfortable. If I get a brand new student that come this week, I'm going back to relatedness. I'm going to have a conversation with them one on one, and I'm going to use Google Translate to make sure they know that they are in a safe place. That I'm not going to randomly call on them. They're new. I'm going to respect their need for support, but I'm going to have a lot of conversations with them. They're going to be pretty comfortable sooner versus later. They will be ready because they're in a classroom where we do these things and they're going to see this is how we roll in here. This is a very safe place. So when I do finally call on them, it's okay for them to answer in whatever language. It's okay for them to use their entire language repertoire to answer.

Or they can even give me a signal.! They can even point to it in the book when they are new or nervous. And I'll say, "Yeah, right! The answer landforms. You see this? Landforms. What he's saying is 'This week we are studying landforms'. That is the right answer! Let's all say that..."

If I'm trying to get complete sentences out of everyone's mouth, we can do them in unison. And I can honor this child, whatever their language.

So think about your language learners. If you're teaching language learners, they have different proficiency levels, and so a brand new student is not the time to force output, but they can be included. Inclusion! They can understand way more than they can say usually. So let's make them comfortable. They can attend, they can repeat, and in low-stress environments it all works better. Remember, low stress opportunities for output.

Low-stress output could be one-to-one. That would be a whisper read to my teacher. That would be with the students getting comfortable talking to the person next to them one-to-one.

A Culture of Conversation

And I can walk around and listen. I can get a formative assessment. That's better than me calling on one student that doesn't know the answer or only calling on the professional answer. Always, if I call on somebody and they don't know the answer, they can ask me something from the poster, or they can even point to the one on the poster and I can say "Yeah, this one says, May I ask a friend? Let's all say that. May I ask a friend? Yes. Okay... everybody. Ask your friend what do they think? And we'll come right back to this person."

But again, I'm going to make sure they have a WIN. See, with QSSSA, and Teaching kids what to say instead of IDK, you're well on your way to a very language rich, interactive classroom. I'm just asking you to respect the need for support of a brand new student, but in a way that allows them to acquire the language as quickly as possible.

I'm going to wrap up the show now and thank you for helping me reflect that's, what I just did. This is my journey of learning. And thank you to everybody that's allowing me to work with them and support them in their classrooms, in their districts, with training, with modeling, with coaching. Reach out. If you have any questions about that, you can find me on Twitter. I'm @DrCarolSalva or Come over to Facebook with us. I'm also on Instagram but I don't check that regularly. Sorry.

Last Thought

One more thing on "Instead of I don't know." Think about the cumulative effect of that over a person's life. Think about a student, what effect you're having if you help someone build that skill right now over the course of their lives. A person who doesn't just go, "I don't know," especially in this age of technology. What does that do for them in their working groups, in their lives, as they walk through their day, as they get their first job, as they get their next job? Look at the long game, always. Let's look at the long game and realize the effect. That's what I'm asking you to do is realize YOUR effect. Little things add up and they have major effects over a person's life. So that relatedness that relationship you're building with that student, it makes a difference. Hold them in high regard. Hold every one of them in high esteem. Their voice is important, and you want them to have that skill so that as they go through life, they can show what they know and they can get the answers they don't know, and they can add to their knowledge because the sky's the limit.

Please stop and reflect on the huge impact you're having on students. Thank you for everything you're doing.

Bye.

PS: Check Out Upcoming Events! We have a lot of places we can meet IRL!!

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I'm working in districts where we have been in school for 5-8 weeks. This show is in response to some challenges and reflections on what I want to emphasize more. You can listen to this show right here or on your favorite podcast app. Listen to "BAP111 Instead of IDK for SLIFE and Newcomers" on Spreaker.

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https://kahoot.com/
Carol Salva includes how she uses it with her ELs (All things Kahoot).  Check out her blog:
https://salvac.edublogs.org/all-things-kahoot-go-beyond-the-quiz/

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The GO TO Strategies: : Scaffolding Options for Teachers of English Language Learners, K-12 (scroll to bottom for PDF)

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The GO TO Strategies: : Scaffolding Options for Teachers of English Language Learners, K-12 (scroll to bottom for PDF)

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http://www.cal.org/what-we-do/projects/project-excell/the-go-to-strategies

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https://quizlet.com

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Seidlitz Education: What to Say Instead of I Don't Know

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Seidlitz Education: What to Say Instead of I Don't Know

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Leading ELLs by Pamela Broussard: List of Favorite Resources for ESL teachers

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Leading ELLs by Pamela Broussard: List of Favorite Resources for ESL teachers

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https://seidlitzblog.org/2019/03/27/qsssa-more-than-turn-talk/

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ELL 2.0~Pedagogy, Andragogy, Innovation, & Joy

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ELL 2.0~Pedagogy, Andragogy, Innovation, & Joy

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Irina McGrath, Ph.D and Michelle Shory, Ed.S are Google Certified Educators who share ideas for fusing research-based pedagogy and andragogy with innovative and engaging methods, that often include technology.

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https://info.flipgrid.com/

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English Learners Blog by Valentina Gonzalez

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English Learners Blog by Valentina Gonzalez

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Valentina is an educational consultant working with educators across the nation to support English learners.

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Home page for teachers of English Learners/Multilingual Learners

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This is a website designed to support teachers of English Learners/Multilingual Learners.

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8 Tips for Scaffolding Virtual Instruction

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8 Tips for Scaffolding Virtual Instruction

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https://www.readysetcoteach.com/8-tips-for-scaffolding-virtual-instruction/

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Free Resources for The ELL Teacher's Toolbox

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Free Resources for The ELL Teacher's Toolbox

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You can now order our book on Amazon.

The ELL Teacher's Toolbox: Hundreds of Practical Ideas to Support Your Students will be published in April, 2018.

Fifteen ways to adapt your textbook so your students aren't bored to death is the headline of a post appearing in my British Council blog. It's a short excerpt from the book.
Here Are All The Tweets From The First Week Of Sharing Excerpts From Our New Book, #ELLTeachersToolbox Here Are All The Tweets From The SECOND Week Of Sharing Excerpts From Our New Book, #ELLTeachersToolbox
Edutopia has published an excerpt from our new book, The ELL Teacher's Toolbox. Check it out Activating Prior Knowledge With English Language Learners.

Helping English-Learners End the School Year Strong is the title of the excerpt from our new book, The ELL Teacher's Toolbox. It appears in Education Week Teacher.
ALL Student Reproducibles From Our New Book Are Now Available To Everybody!
How to Engage ELLs in Literary Conversations is headline of another excerpt from our new book on teaching English Language Learners.

How to Use Oral Presentations to Help English Language Learners Succeed is the headline of the latest excerpt from our new book on teaching ELLs. It appears at KQED MindShift.
Video: Katie & I Share ELL Instructional Strategies
Carol Salva hosts THE podcast that English Language Learner teachers should be listening to, and she was kind enough to have me on as her guest. You can listen to the show here, as well as accessing a ton of other materials she has. One of the many reasons I like Carol's show so much is that she shares supplemental resources, as well as her reflections on the each show.

Culturally Responsive Teaching in the ELL Classroom is the headline of the book excerpt published by the Washington Post.
Highlights From First Two Weeks Of The Online Book Chat About Our New ELL Book
Four games for vocabulary development is an excerpt from our book, The ELL Teacher's Toolbox, and appears over at the British Council.

Rita Platt has written a very positive review of our new book, The Ell Teacher's Toolbox, over at Middleweb.

4 Fun Ways to Practice Short Oral Presentations is the headline of yet another excerpt from our book, The ELL Teacher's Toolbox. It appears in Middleweb.
Highlights From Last Two Weeks Of The Online Book Chat About Our New ELL Book JOIN A SUMMER VIRTUAL BOOK STUDY ON OUR BOOK, "THE ELL TEACHER'S TOOLBOX"
In the meantime, you can access tons of free resources from our - and my - previous books here.

What a great day of ESL training!! I just LOVE The ELLS Teacher's Toolbox!!! Thank you so much @KatyOOL for this resource!!! Can't wait to delve in! #ellteachertoolbox #eslstrategies #katyisdool pic.twitter.com/4oOzIFWflx

- Cari Bickham (@CariBickham) August 9, 2018

Look at these amazing anchor charts our #ESL teachers made to sum up chapters from #ELLTeachersToolbox by @Larryferlazzo. We love ❤️ this resource! #katyool @cjnguyen10 pic.twitter.com/TBBvMOnXCP

- 🌍 ναℓєηтιηα gσηzαℓєz (@ValentinaESL) August 9, 2018

We ran that round a bit differently than other rounds and did not do weekly questions. We had Ts choose their top 10 strategies and share what they learned, how the strategies were helpful, what they tweaked etc.

- Katie Toppel, Ed.D. (@Toppel_ELD) September 11, 2018

Loved this format given the structure of the book. Currently studying this book w/staff; departments are choosing top 5 & sharing out, reflecting, celebrating successes, etc.

- Alycia Owen (@alycia_owen) September 12, 2018

Using Photos In Speaking and Listening- "If Animals or Inanimate Objects Could Talk"
Sometimes speaking in front of a large group can be scary and speaking through other objects can help reduce anxiety and promote confidence.@Larryferlazzo #ELLTeachersToolbox #ESC1WebbookStudy pic.twitter.com/mORWjE5eT6

- A_GarzaRHHHS (@araseli_garza) May 6, 2019

Here's a wild Escape The Room feature created by teachers to support PD done through our book, The ELL Teacher's Toolbox.

From Rachel Sherwood: I am absolutely loving this book! I especially love the chapter on music and am already thinking through how I can utilize the songs from Hamilton! in my lessons next year! #NKYELBookClub pic.twitter.com/6VVvPWGUp7

- EL Program at NKCES (@NKCESELProgram) May 4, 2020

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Here Are Free Resources For "The ELL Teacher's Toolbox"

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You can now order our book on Amazon. The ELL Teacher's Toolbox: Hundreds of Practical Ideas to Support Your Students will be published in April, 2018. Fifteen ways to adapt your textbook so your students aren't bored to death is the headline of a post appearing in my British Council blog.

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Assigning Work with Topics & Groups

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How to Teach with Flipgrid: New Updates!

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https://www.empoweringells.com/29-trtw/

https://padlet.com/nancyelonide1978/w02lhr06c1s1

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https://seidlitzblog.org/

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www.plickers.com

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7 Steps to a Language Rich Interactive Classroom

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7 Steps to a Language Rich Interactive Classroom

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https://www.smore.com/06vy6-7-steps-interactive-lang-class

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About and Chrome Extension:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/snapread/mloajfnmjckfjbeeofcdaecbelnblden?hl=en
RRISD How to Install and Get Started:
https://sites.google.com/roundrockisd.org/snapandread

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Seidlitz video of an elementary classroom teacher using various 7 Step strategies with her ELs

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Seidlitz video of an elementary classroom teacher using various 7 Step strategies with her ELs

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https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oela/newcomers-toolkit/ncomertoolkit.pdf

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Ways to continue building speaking proficiency with our ELs through all content areas

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Building Speaking Proficiency During Distance Learning Recorded Webinar

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Building Speaking Proficiency During Distance Learning Recorded Webinar

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Short Webinar by Allison Hand that includes ideas that can also be used during face to face learning:

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Building Speaking Proficiency during Distance Learning

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Building Speaking Proficiency During Distance Learning Participant Slides

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Building Speaking Proficiency During Distance Learning Participant Slides

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https://www.colorincolorado.org/ell-basics/special-populations/newcomer-students

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Carol Salva Success for SLIFE Padlet:
https://padlet.com/carolsalva1/SuccessforSLIFE

Carol Salva Promoting SLIFE Distance Learning Padlet:
https://padlet.com/carolsalva1/distance

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More Writing Scaffolds by Pamela Broussard 

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More Writing Scaffolds by Pamela Broussard 

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Larry Ferlazzo: Five strategies for ELL vocabulary instruction

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Larry Ferlazzo: Five strategies for ELL vocabulary instruction

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In other words, vocabulary.

Here are five of the many instructional strategies I and, I'm sure, many other teachers use when teaching vocabulary to English Language Learners. Most, if not all, incorporate the widely proven research that finds that physical movement and/or images strengthen second-language learning:

Personal Dictionaries: Each week students complete at least one of these "Four Word Sheets" where they identify...four new English words they have learned during the week from

another class, our class, television -- from anywhere. It's composed of four of these sections which, as you can see in the image below, have spaces for the word and various representations/definitions of it.

Students divide into small groups and teach and learn these words to each other, using the process as an opportunity to practice academic vocabulary:

John (holding up his sheet): Can you identify a word you like to learn?

Sue (pointing): Yes, can you define ___________(whatever word she chooses that is on John's sheet)?

Picture Word Inductive Model: I've previously written an extensive post about the Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM), which is just about my favorite teaching strategy with Beginning English Language Learners.

Pre-Teaching: Perhaps the most widely-used method, and a particularly effective one, is identify key words in an upcoming text that are probably new to students and then define those terms prior to reading the text. This strategy is also effective for teaching terms that, while they might not be found in an upcoming text, are important for learning upcoming concepts. For example, here's a pre-teaching sheet I use prior to beginning a unit on writing a problem/solution essay.

I use this strategy by first placing the sheet on the overhead, pointing to each word, say it, and then ask students to repeat in unison. Afterwards, since our students often know more than we think, I give students a minute or two to review the list and see if they know what any of the words already mean. Then, after providing students time to share what they know with the class, we relatively quickly review the words and their meanings. "Relatively quickly" is an important idea to remember -- there are few activities as deadly to a class environment then spending an hour on a list of words. I once saw a teacher spend a half-hour on the definition of "expedition"! I fell asleep, not to mention the students!

After students read the text, I'll often ask them to go back and highlight the words we pre-taught. It's a way to reinforce their meaning and an excuse to revisit the text again with a new task.

Reinforcing Vocabulary Instruction Online: There are countless free online sites specifically for learning vocabulary in English, and most are organized thematically and provide audio and visual support for text. There are also similar sites specifically geared towards teaching academic language. And, for some great fun as well as learning, it's hard to beat online hidden object games.

Creating Vocabulary Videos: Having students use either the Twitter app Vine or Instragram video to create very short creative definitions of words is a fun and reinforcing learning activity. Students can create simple storyboards, video using the Stop Action feature on both of the apps, and then post their finished creations on YouTube.
What are your favorite vocabulary instruction strategies?

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Larry Ferlazzo: Five strategies for ELL vocabulary instruction

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In other words, vocabulary. Here are five of the many instructional strategies I and, I'm sure, many other teachers use when teaching vocabulary to English Language Learners.

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Writing with Paragraph Frames Seidlitz: Natalia Heckman Recorded Webinar

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Writing with Paragraph Frames Seidlitz: Natalia Heckman Recorded Webinar

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Writing with Paragraph Frames Seidlitz: Natalia Heckman Participant Slides 

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Writing with Paragraph Frames Seidlitz: Natalia Heckman Participant Slides 

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Seidlitz Recorded Webinar: 3 Easy Steps for Writing Differentiated Academic Sentence Stems 

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Seidlitz Recorded Webinar: 3 Easy Steps for Writing Differentiated Academic Sentence Stems 

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Marcy Voss, M.Ed.

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3 Steps for Writing Differentiated Academic Sentence Stems

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3 Easy Steps for Writing Differentiated Academic Sentence Stems Participant Slides

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3 Easy Steps for Writing Differentiated Academic Sentence Stems Participant Slides

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Brandi Ball from Cypress Falls High School (video courtesy of Pamela Broussard) conducting a warm up in her Algebra 1 New Arrival class.

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Brandi Ball from Cypress Falls High School (video courtesy of Pamela Broussard) conducting a warm up in her Algebra 1 New Arrival class.

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Color coded vocabulary words with magnets on the back, sentence frames, oral practice, choral responses, and visuals

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Overcoming COVID-19 Challenges Facing ELLs & their Teachers

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Overcoming COVID-19 Challenges Facing ELLs & their Teachers

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Larry Ferlazzo's keynote from VirtuEL-he discusses the do's and don'ts: strategies, differentiation tools, & scaffolds for online and face to face interaction with ELs.

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FREE Download of Chp. 22 of ELL Teacher's Survival Guide

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FREE Download of Chp. 22 of ELL Teacher's Survival Guide

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Chp. 22: Distance Learning with ELs
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1V-tJ4oi6aXxPTjiXjfn8jRuWzJv_DnKe/view

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Example of how Brandi Ball (a content teacher of Algebra 1) demonstrates teaching content and language to new arrivals.  Courtesy of Pamela Broussard @ LeadingELLs

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Example of how Brandi Ball (a content teacher of Algebra 1) demonstrates teaching content and language to new arrivals.  Courtesy of Pamela Broussard @ LeadingELLs

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Many of these are on the RRISD technology approved list, but please check before using (see first post in this column):
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jYrVZbrhKcTBDO7XRqkCwpMVcrE7vxfkyYcml5l9JmI/edit#slide=id.g7c1d55fbd4_0_9

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https://www.peardeck.com/

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“Tech-free” home activities for K-12 students in over 25 languages.

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“Tech-free” home activities for K-12 students in over 25 languages.

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Hello! Thanks so much for your commitment to your students. Here you will find links to activities for students in grades K through 12. They require only paper and pencil, and some materials that can be found around the house.

English K-8, Weeks 1-8, written by Maria Montroni-Currais, NJ. English K-8, Weeks 9-12 written by Meghan Love and Laura McAulay, SC

Spanish, courtesy of the River Falls District, WI. Spanish Weeks 5-8 courtesy of Kelly Cesarski, NJ, Spanish Weeks 9-12 courtesy of Tiffany Wells, NJ

Portuguese, courtesy of Maria Costa, MA. Portuguese Weeks 5-8, courtesy of Elisangela Defreitas

Somali, courtesy of the Saint Cloud, MN Community Volunteers. Somali weeks 5-8 courtesy of Hassan Adan, MN.

Arabic, courtesy of Sarah Badi, TN via Marci Butler, Sumner County Schools, TN

Chinese, courtesy of a student and her family, WV. Chinese weeks 5-8 courtesy of Sue Zhao, TN via Marci Butler, Sumner County Schools, TN

French, courtesy of Jennifer Larance, VA

Urdu, courtesy of Saba Ahmed, NJ

Vietnamese, courtesy of Julia O'Neil, MN and Mai Hoang

Punjabi, courtesy of Savdeep, Hargurjeet, and Ritu, NJ.

Polish, courtesy of Kasia Liu, NJ.

Hindi, courtesy of Savdeep, Hargurjeet, and Ritu, NJ. Hindi weeks 5-8 courtesy of Shilpa Palawat, Lincoln Community School, NJ

Haitian Creole, courtesy of Denise Vega-Moore, East Orange School District, NJ

Turkish, courtesy of Ayse Takhim, NJ

Burmese, courtesy of Globelink, LLC via Talonna Hybki, CO

Korean, courtesy of JaeJun Daniel Cho via Lisa Geib and Heidi Son, TX and Eun Jung Kim, Benjamin Banneker Academy, East Orange School District, NJ

Japanese, courtesy of Mizuho Furusawa, TN. Japanese weeks 5-8 courtesy of an anonymous teacher, TN, via Marci Butler, Sumner County Schools, TN

German, courtesy of Michelle Cimenton, Lyons H.S., KS

Italian, courtesy of Andrea Williams, KS

Nepali, courtesy of Tarwan Tiwari, Nepali liason for Springfield, MA

Khmer, courtesy of Phala Chea, MA

English 9-12, courtesy of Cornelia Okraski, Fort Mill, SC

Romanian, courtesy of Maria Bornea, TN. Romanian weeks 5-8 courtesy of Ruxandra Wagner, parent, TN via Marci Butler, Sumner County Schools, TN

Farsi, courtesy of Yara Ahrar, ESOL Teacher, Fort Mill School District, SC

Tagalog, courtesy of Glenn and Margaret Rutaquio, Garland ISD, TX

Swahili, via Your Language Connection and the school district of Lancaster, PA and Linda Cyomuhendo from Jewish Family Services in Springfield MA. Swahili weeks 9-12, courtesy of Kerry Martins, MA

Ukrainian, courtesy of Maryana, Syracuse, NY

Pashto, *translation is hand-written* courtesy of Shereen Khan and family

Russian, courtesy of Olga Tamm, via Marci Butler, Sumner County Schools, TN

Albanian, courtesy of Anisa Bega and Viollca Sumbulla from Plymouth-Canton Community Schools

Zomi, Kinyarwanda, Hakha Chin, courtesy of LoriAnn Martin, Warren County Public Schools, KY

We are still looking for translations in languages such as:
Thai, Hmong, Tigrinyan, Kurdish
If you or someone you know can effectively translate into these languages, please email mmontroni@Somerdale-park.org.

Stay healthy! - Maria Montroni-Currais, ESL and G&T Teacher, Somerdale, NJ
ESL at Home and www.eslathome.edublogs.org Copyright 2020

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Hello! Thanks so much for your commitment to your students. Here you will find links to activities for students in grades K through 12. They require only paper and pencil, and some materials that can be found around the house. English K-8, Weeks 1-8, written by Maria Montroni-Currais, NJ.

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TEA English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS)

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TEA English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS)

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pYGgaznUb33orakaA_aCuuDMBpP5wQe0/view

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Must be logged into your RRISD account to access

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Short video describing the Texas Proficiency Level Descriptors (PLDs) for English Language Learners.

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TEA Recommended Article~ Culturally Responsive Teaching: What You Need to Know

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TEA Recommended Article~ Culturally Responsive Teaching: What You Need to Know

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Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) is a research-based approach that makes meaningful connections between what students learn in school and their cultures, languages, and life experiences. These connections help students access rigorous curriculum, develop higher-level academic skills, and see the relevance between what they learn at school and their lives.

Our brains are wired to make connections. It's easier for our brains to learn and store information when we have a hook to hang it on. That hook is background knowledge. Students bring this knowledge to the classroom every day, including their culture, language, and life experiences.

When we acknowledge this background knowledge as assets and tap into it, we create an optimal environment for learning. But for students of color, English language learners , and other underserved student populations, those assets are often overlooked and underutilized. As a result, we miss the chance to use them to support rigorous learning. (See recent work by Zaretta Hammond for the neuroscience behind this.)

Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) helps create environments, curricula, and instructional methods that validate and reflect the diversity, identities, and experiences of all students. When we do that, we raise the level of academic rigor for all learners. It also sends the message that educators value all students and that multiculturalism is an asset.

Why use culturally responsive teaching?

Gloria Ladson-Billings introduced the concept of culturally responsive teaching. She saw it as a way to maximize students' academic achievement by integrating their cultural references in the classroom. Since then, a deep field of research has developed around CRT, including important work by leaders like Geneva Gay and Sonia Nieto.

More schools are using CRT to best teach diverse student populations. They're also finding it's a powerful way to reach all students. Here's why:

It raises expectations for all students. CRT moves schools away from approaching instruction with a deficit mindset. (A deficit mindset would focus on what a student can't do.) Instead, CRT identifies students' assets and uses them to create rigorous, student-centered instruction. This is especially important for students from underserved groups whose skills are often underestimated.

Underserved students may face implicit bias because of their race, culture, or language. ( Implicit bias means the unconscious attitudes or stereotypes we all hold.) As a result, these students are often overrepresented in special education. Other times, their needs may go undetected. They're also often underrepresented in gifted education. By using an assets mindset, schools are less likely to misidentify students for special education. At the same time, schools better identify and serve students who may have learning and thinking differences.

It helps students feel valued and empowered. With CRT, students tie their learning to their cultures, experiences, interests, and the issues that impact their lives. When students see themselves represented in the curriculum, they feel like they belong. They're more likely to develop the trust it takes to build a relationship with a teacher. Brain science tells us that this sense of belonging makes learning easier and builds students' self-confidence.

It builds cultural competence. CRT gives students a chance to learn from an inclusive curriculum. It helps both you and your students understand different perspectives, appreciate others' strengths, and build empathy. CRT can also help you reflect on how your own identity and experiences impact your attitudes and teaching practices.

It supports SEL. CRT helps you get to know your students. When you plan social-emotional learning (SEL) lessons, you can use that knowledge to make sure your lessons value your students. By pairing SEL with CRT, you can also help students navigate multiple contexts both inside and outside of school.

What does culturally responsive teaching look like?

CRT is not a strategy or a program. It's not a single lesson on a cultural tradition or a heritage celebration. CRT is a rich, intentional approach woven into every aspect of your teaching.

They shared deep background knowledge, connected to the text, and empathized with the characters. They used complex comprehension strategies and talked about vocabulary. They also insisted on reading parts of the book aloud with the researcher. While the students' teachers knew of and liked the book, they had hesitated to use it or discuss Malcolm X with their class. The researcher's work showed the teachers the power of tapping into their students' background knowledge.

For a video example of CRT in action, watch this clip from Edutopia. Think about these questions as you watch:

How do I put culturally responsive teaching into practice?

Think of CRT as a lens - a new pair of glasses to enhance your vision as you teach. To put CRT into practice, follow the four ideas below. And remember, it's OK to start small as you figure out what works for you and your students.

1. Identify students' assets.

Questionnaires, surveys, and conversations with students and families

Conversations with other colleagues who know the students

Paying attention to the topics or activities that students find most engaging

Take a look at this funds of knowledge matrix to brainstorm similar examples from your students.

Learn about highlights from students' cultures, such as historical figures, accomplishments, and awards.

Find out about local contributions in your students' communities. (Your students and families may have examples to share.)

Avoid asking too many direct questions about families' personal lives as you get to know them. Some families, especially immigrant families, may have concerns about sharing personal information with the school. As trust develops, they may be more willing to share.

It's also important to think about how your own culture impacts your teaching practices. This reflection can help you develop a mindset that strengthens relationships with all students, including those from different backgrounds than your own.

Be mindful of the different communication styles, patterns, and norms that your students may use.

Bring a diverse range of poetry, music, or other forms of expression into the classroom on a regular basis.

Learn about the language skills students bring to the classroom. For example:

English language learners have bilingual skills that are often overlooked when they are evaluated only for their mastery of English.

Some African American students regularly switch between dialects, a skill known as code-switching. This skill requires high levels of linguistic, social, cultural, and cognitive ability, but it often goes unnoticed. Talk about how this skill can help students navigate contexts in and out of school. Support them in using language that's appropriate to each context.

2. Create a supportive classroom environment.

3. Examine the curriculum.

Activate students' background knowledge when introducing a new topic.

Use an inquiry-based learning approach that invites students to identify a question or a problem to solve.

Design research projects that allow students to focus on issues in their own community.

Encourage students to present their work publicly. For instance, they could present to classmates, families, community members, or media.

4. Continue your own learning.

Look for trustworthy, research-based examples of CRT across the curriculum that reflect the diverse student populations you serve. Start with this comprehensive list of resources from Colorín Colorado.

Consider finding a partner or mentor for shared discussion. You can also look for an online community of educators focused on this topic, like @equityinst.

Family partnerships are an essential part of culturally responsive teaching. Think about how to make your family outreach more culturally responsive by asking:

What strengths and interests can you identify among your students' families?

Is the school sending messages that all families are welcome at the school? Are there barriers to engaging families you want to address?

How can you include families, regardless of language, in school activities?

CRT is a shift in mindset that will not happen overnight. It requires a willingness to learn, be vulnerable, be flexible with instruction, and reflect. The path to CRT is a journey, but with practice and patience, it will benefit you and all of your students.

About the Author

About the Author

Educators Team at Understood is made up of passionate writers, editors, educators, and subject matter experts who have worked in classrooms and with students who learn and think differently.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

is the chief executive officer and co-founder of the Karla Vigil, MAT Equity Institute.

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Culturally responsive teaching: What you need to know

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Culturally responsive teaching (CRT) is a research-based approach that makes meaningful connections between what students learn in school and their cultures, languages, and life experiences. These connections help students access rigorous curriculum, develop higher-level academic skills, and see the relevance between what they learn at school and their lives.

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Steps to Make Classrooms More Culturally Responsive by Larry Ferlazzo

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Steps to Make Classrooms More Culturally Responsive by Larry Ferlazzo

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The new question-of-the-week is:
What are specific ways to make lessons more culturally responsive and culturally sustaining?
Culturally responsive-and culturally sustaining-instruction are both widely recognized instructional mindsets and strategies. Gloria Ladson-Billings is the primary developer of these ideas, and Django Paris built on her work. You can read Professor Ladson-Billings previous contribution to this column at The Importance of 'White Students Having Black Teachers': Gloria Ladson-Billings on Education and Professor Paris' commentary at Response: 'It Is Long Past Time to Meet the Needs of Students of Color.'

This four-part series will look at examples of what these kinds of lessons might look like in the classroom.

Today, Dr. Rocio del Castillo, Dr. Julia Stearns Cloat, Lisa Stringfellow, Valentina Gonzalez, Maurice McDavid, and Cathery Yeh share their suggestions. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Rocio, Lisa, Valentina, and Maurice on my BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.
Five steps toward equity Dr. Rocio del Castillo began her career as a school psychologist in Peru and has dedicated her professional career to being an advocate for educational equity and social justice. Her rich and diverse experience includes serving for over 20 years in both public and private school systems, where she has received recognition and accolades for her work in the special education, bilingual, and dual- language settings. Rocio currently serves as assistant superintendent for special services in Huntley Community School District 158 (Illinois) and as an adjunct professor. Dr. Julia Stearns Cloat has spent the past 25 years working in unit school districts in roles including literacy specialist, instructional coach, and curriculum director and has earned awards for her work in student services. Her areas of expertise and passion include educational equity, literacy, curriculum development, instructional coaching, and RtI/MTSS. Julia currently works as a coordinator in Kaneland School District 302 (also in Illinois) and as an adjunct professor at Northern Illinois University:
How to promote a culture in which teachers facilitate lessons that are culturally responsive is a challenge currently being faced by many school districts. The type of institutionalized change that is needed to make lessons culturally sustaining cannot occur through a single initiative or concrete practice. In truth, we must keep in mind that equity is a foundation, mindset, and approach. There are however, steps that school districts can encourage in order to make the learning environment in classrooms more culturally responsive.

1. Assess your own personal biases

2. Get to know your students

Getting to know your students and the factors that make up the students' personal and family lives will help teachers make lessons more culturally responsive and build relationships with their students. Taking factors such as socioeconomic status, family make-up, the educational expectations and goals that a family has for the child, student interests and experiences will enhance the teacher/student relationship and provide opportunities to make the learning experiences more personalized and better meet the students' needs.

3. Adapt your teaching and curriculum

The process of adapting your teaching and curriculum begins by first responding to the assessment of your own personal biases, by considering if your biases are reflected in your current practices, then making strides to correct and to become more culturally responsive. The next step is to consider what you have learned about your students and making sure that your focus, standards, instructional approaches, and materials reflect the cultures of your students and expose them to different cultures. Additionally, authentic forms of assessment tools (e.g., observations, rubrics, conferring, performance tasks) are a more culturally and linguistically responsive way to assess student performance and progress than a more traditional classroom assessment.

4. Elevate the students' culture and native language

There is truth in Menken's (2017) assertion that "not only is English typically privileged in school curricula, but also in ideology" in that schools operate from the assumption that emergent bilinguals lack the resources to be successful in school. As emerging bilingual students are learning English, we must do what Beeman (2019) refers to as "elevating the status" of the language. It is likely that most collective experiences that are a part of the school culture are conducted in English. As a result, we must make efforts to assure emerging bilingual students that first language has value and will benefit the student's literacy life as they become more proficient in English.
5. Involve family and community
Make the learning environment in your classroom more culturally responsive means engaging families and communities in the academic lives of students. By supporting students' bicultural and multicultural identity development, families will feel more included and more comfortable, ultimately, making it more likely that they become partners with their children's school (WIDA Consortium, 2013).
Lisa Stringfellow has taught middle school English for over 24 years. In her work, she focuses on culturally responsive literacy and issues of equity and social justice in the classroom. She currently teaches 5th & 6th grade English at the Winsor School in Boston, where she serves in numerous roles including grade-level co-sponsor, educational technology co-coordinator, and co-facilitator of Sisters/Somos, an affinity group for black and Latina students. Connect with her on Twitter @EngageReaders:
As a middle school English teacher, I have tried to integrate her findings into my practice and made reflection an ongoing process in my professional life. I have focused on making my classroom more inclusive and culturally responsive. One of the ways I do that is by interrogating my practices and my curriculum.
For books that I have on my classroom library shelf, I ask the following:

What books might serve as mirrors for my students of color?

What books are written by authors of color?

What books are #ownvoices (written by an author that shares an identity with the character)

What books have problematic representations that I should consider weeding?

There are numerous people doing great work in this area. Tools you can use are the Classroom Library Questionnaire from Lee & Low Books or Tricia Ebarvia's How Inclusive Is Your Classroom Library Really? Dr. Debbie Reese's blog, American Indians in Children's Literature, is an excellent resource for evaluating Native and Indigenous children's literature.
For the books that I teach, I consider:

Whose voices are included?

Whose voices are left out?

Who holds power and who doesn't?

Where am I placing voices of color (as core texts or independent reading)

When I consider "rigor," is that coded language for anything?

Am I valuing multiply types of literacies?

When discussing books that have challenging or difficult content, it is also important to unpack the texts with students and teach them to take a critical stance. Teaching students to ask questions and look critically at issues of racism, power, and oppression and draw connections to their lives and the real world.
For my practices, I think about:

What is the intention of this practice? What is the impact?

Are there any texts or practices that I've "pledged allegiance" to? Why? How might those negatively impact students of color?

The following are some practical suggestions I have used in trying to center students' needs in my teaching.

Names are powerful and personal. Many students start the first day of school hearing teachers mispronounce their names. Rather than reading names, considering going around the room and having students say their names to you first. Even better, have students record themselves saying their names using an app like FlipGrid. Bonus-you can listen to them again later.

Educate yourself on racial-equity issues. How are your own biases shaping what you value and teach? Have you added "diverse" books to your library or curriculum? If so, it's a great start, but consider how that might be problematic, too. Adding still centers often majority-white voices in the curriculum. Instead, consider whether the structure of your curriculum needs to be different. A great workshop that has influenced my recent thinking is the Institute on Racial Equity in Literacy facilitated by Tricia Ebarvia and Dr. Sonya Cherry-Paul. For reading, teachers should consider We Got This by Cornelius Minor and Being the Change by Sara Ahmed.

Listen to your students. If you want to know how you're doing, ask your students. Do you know how students of color in your class or school feel about their school experience? Where do they see themselves in the curriculum? Who is centered? What practices do you or your school have that makes things harder for them? Open yourself to listen deeply and taking feedback for those who matter most. The kids.
Further Reading

Class meetings
Valentina Gonzalez has served 20+ years in education as a teacher, district facilitator for English-learners, a professional-development specialist for ELs and as an educational consultant. Valentina delivers professional development and coaches teachers on sheltered instruction strategies. She works with teachers of ELs to support language and literacy instruction. Her work can be found on Seidlitz Education and on MiddleWeb. You can reach her through her website or on Twitter @ValentinaESL:

"... culture is visible and large and if we're not careful, our classroom and school culture can work to silence, exclude, and oppress children."-Cornelius Minor

The words Cornelius uses are strong and hit me hard ..."silence, exclude, and oppress children." Three things I never want to do. In fact, I aim to do the exact opposite. To amplify, embrace, and empower children.

Culturally responsive teaching builds a safe, sturdy bridge between students' home and personal lives to classroom instruction. Culturally responsive teaching is not a program we can purchase. It's not a box of curriculum. It's about how we weave our students' lives into daily instruction. We create the culture in our classrooms: the routines, what is valued, what we shine a light upon, how we celebrate, what is respected, how we interact with students and families.

Often culture is viewed only through the lens of a person's race or ethnicity. But culture is more than race and ethnicity, such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, disability, sexual orientation, religion, etc.

The question becomes how are we giving all students no matter their cultural groups equitable access to the curriculum (math, reading, writing, science, history, music, art, physical education, etc.).

Culturally responsive teaching requires:

Knowing students individually

Valuing students' assets

An openness to one's own biases

Building community

Class meetings aim to amplify, embrace, and empower children and foster a culturally responsive environment throughout the school year.
What are class meetings?
Class meetings are brief (15-30 minutes), regularly held gatherings. They are teacher-facilitated but student-led. Class meetings build community and empathy among students while allowing teachers to learn more about the kids in the classroom. Students look forward to class meetings. They know that this is a time when they can share and discuss with one another. The meeting also provides a safe space to encourage individuality.

Class meetings may look and sound a bit different depending on whether you teach primary or secondary students, but in essence they hold the same critical characteristics. In primary classrooms, students may gather in a circle on the floor; however, in secondary classrooms, students may be more comfortable seated in chairs. This physical seating arrangement is important because it brings all students into the conversation much like sitting around the dinner table together versus standing around at a cocktail party. In primary grades, teachers may offer a song, chant, or game for students to play. This may be appropriate for older students, too, depending on the content or context. Some teachers like to give students an object to hold when it's their turn to talk. I've seen classrooms that use a classroom mascot stuffed animal and others that toss a small ball.

One teacher effectively implemented class meetings by intentionally planning for them. She created a schedule that was similar to this but changed weekly to meet the needs of her students:

Monday: Students share what they did over the weekend or share what they are looking forward to about the week ahead.

Tuesday: Students discuss their goals for the week. What do they hope to accomplish?

Wednesday: Students discuss a topic that was in the news (changes weekly).

Thursday: Students share what they love doing for fun.

Friday: Students reflect on their goals.

Culturally responsive teaching can only happen when we know our students deeply. Class meetings provide us with information that we can infuse into instruction. Regular class meetings allow us to sustain culturally responsive teaching throughout the year.
Infusing what you learned from a class meeting
Classroom Scenario 1:

It's September, and school has been in session for a month now. Mr. Ruby has held regular class meetings for his students through which he learned that many of his students are bilingual. He values all languages and literacy and would like to ensure that his bilingual students feel empowered by their ability. He has decided to ask the students to share more about their languages and teach the class some key words in their primary languages.

Classroom Scenario 2:

The students did an amazing job sharing their primary language with their classmates. While sharing, one student mentioned that he was born in Brazil. Since the class was soon to be studying major landforms, Mr. Ruby asked the student if he had any experiences with the rainforest or Amazon River in Brazil. The student shared stories and pictures of his father who had visited both.
Steps to implementing class meetings:

1. Designate a time for regular class meetings.

2. Plan intentional discussions, activities, and/or events for the meetings.

3. Model expectations for students.

4. Facilitate the student-led discussion/activity.

5. Be consistent. Don't skip a day.

6. Take notes and use them to guide instruction.

The routine of class meetings has a powerful and positive impact on student engagement but can also give us a window into their world. Not only can we use the class meeting as a means to embed students' lives into future learning, but the actual act of the class meeting itself is culturally responsive. By giving students a platform to amplify their voice and allowing them to share their stories and who they are, we are creating environments that are culturally inclusive.
Summing it up
Creating and sustaining an environment that is culturally responsive means amplifying, embracing, and empowering children each day each lesson. In this environment, students' voices are heard and strengthened, students are welcomed for who they are rather than made to feel they need to conform, and the environment shares power with students. Class meetings hold the power to do just that.

You can read more ideas about culturally responsive teaching in this article for NCTE or this one here for MiddleWeb.
Image by Valentina Gonzalez Four ways to implement culturally responsive teaching
Maurice McDavid earned his bachelor's degree in elementary education with a minor in history and Spanish. He has taught middle school history, English, and Spanish, as well as high school geography. He was dean of students for three years and is now in his first year as assistant principal at a bilingual elementary school:

Gloria Ladson Billings argues that culturally responsive teaching must include, at minimum, the following: bringing native language into the classroom, family involvement, understanding history and culture and community culture into the classroom.

Looking for connections between English and other languages as related to the content you're teaching is important. For example, when teaching about "vaqueros," some of America's first cowboys, you can relate the word vaquero to vaca, which means cow in Spanish. In math, you can talk about the numeric prefixes and their relationship to Latin-based languages.

In terms of family involvement, many lessons allow for parents to come into the classroom and be the experts. One teacher that I work with recorded parents explaining how they use math in their jobs. She recorded one parent for each unit theme. This gave parents an opportunity to feel like experts and students an opportunity to feel proud about their parents.

Understanding the history and culture of our nation and more specifically the state and community in which you teach is powerful. When developing lessons for my middle school American History class, I was always very intentional in acknowledging the authors of our history books and how their place in culture impacted their telling of the story. I often presented information on how people who didn't seem to be the main characters in the story were indeed major actors. Asking students to think about the role of gender, race, or financial status can impact any lesson in any content area.

Finally, looking specifically at the community culture is a way to make connections to the students. Students cannot be known apart from the context in which they live. Lessons that include landmarks specific to the community or discuss industry that is important in the community allow students to utilize their background information. In my hometown, we are known for our excellent farmland. Whether science, math, or history, the agricultural culture of our community will connect students. At a surface level, lessons can use the topics from the community. At a deeper level, students can begin to inquire about what has made their community what it is and figure out ways in which they can be a part of its future development.
Six categories of a "culturally responsive framework"
Cathery Yeh, @YehCathery, is an assistant professor of teacher education at Chapman University with 20+ years in education. As a teacher, she visited over 300 student homes to develop partnerships with caregivers and centered curriculum on students' lived experiences and perspectives. Dr. Yeh has published over 40+ articles on mathematics education, culturally and linguistically responsive teaching, and video-based professional developments and is the lead author of the NCTM book Reimagining the Mathematics Classroom:

Our students arrive in our classroom with a mosaic of identities. Lessons that are culturally responsive and sustaining need intentional focus on cultural preservation which require us, as educators, to critically analyze how much of U.S. schooling has focused on assimilation and colonization. Education is a system of policies and practices that currently serves to privilege a few at the expense of many. Too many of our students do not see themselves represented in the curriculum: solving problems in a process that is not their own, in a language different from their native tongue, and solving mathematics problems irrelevant to their interests and experiences.

Culturally responsive and sustaining lessons honor our students and their histories, culture, language, and unique ways of knowing and being in the world. I use a framework to design lessons; it builds from a culturally responsive framework developed by Aguirre and Zavala (2012). The framework includes six categories: cognitive demand, student thinking, discourse, power and participation, cultural/community knowledge, and critical knowledge.

Below are a series of questions related to each category that I ask myself during lesson design and reflection:

Cognitive demand: How does my lesson provide students opportunities to grapple with and make sense of important disciplinary ideas and their use? Students learn best when they are challenged to take risks and be authors of their own ideas.

Student thinking: How does my lesson make student thinking/understanding visible and deep? What are the different places in the lesson and ways (e.g., written, verbal, embodied) in which student thinking is made visible?

Discourse: How does the lesson allow students to engage in the ways of thinking and using language relevant to the discipline? How does the lesson allow alternative forms for expression, representation and engagement-beyond verbal talk and written text-to better capture ways of communicating and interacting representative of all students, including emergent bilingual students, students classified with disabilities, and students who may express themselves nonverbally?

Power and participation: Whose experiences and perspectives are valued in this lesson? How does my lesson distribute knowledge authority, value all students' contributions, and address status differences among students?

Cultural/Community: How does the lesson build on students' cultural and community knowledge? How does the lesson build from resources available in students' daily experiences and their community? How does the lesson honor students' and their ancestral histories and stories? How does the lesson allow students to deepen their appreciation of their own culture and the culture of others?

Critical knowledge: How does the lesson allow students to critically examine the world and to take action to promote change?
References:
Aguirre, J. M., & Zavala, M. (2013). Making culturally responsive mathematics teaching explicit: A lesson analysis tool. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 8(2), 163-190.

Thanks to Rocio, Julia, Lisa, Valentina, Maurice, and Cathery for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.
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Steps to Make Classrooms More Culturally Responsive (Opinion)

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The new question-of-the-week is: What are specific ways to make lessons more culturally responsive and culturally sustaining? Culturally responsive-and culturally sustaining-instruction are both widely recognized instructional mindsets and strategies. Gloria Ladson-Billings is the primary developer of these ideas, and Django Paris built on her work.

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Hi-Lo Books Webinar: Creating a Culturally Responsive Learning Environment with Seidlitz consultant Valentina Gonzalez

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Hi-Lo Books Webinar: Creating a Culturally Responsive Learning Environment with Seidlitz consultant Valentina Gonzalez

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Hi-Lo Books Webinar: Creating a Culturally Responsive Learning Environment

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Seidlitz Recorded Webinar: Better Questions for Deeper Thinking...Online or In Person

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Seidlitz Recorded Webinar: Better Questions for Deeper Thinking...Online or In Person

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Better Questions for Deeper Thinking - Online or In Person

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Better Questions for Deeper Thinking...Participant Slides

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Better Questions for Deeper Thinking...Participant Slides

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Once Upon A Picture - Image prompts to inspire reading and writing

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Once Upon A Picture - Image prompts to inspire reading and writing

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A collection of over 400 pictures with a set of questions for each of the pictures with an integrated speaking or writing task at the end.

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Once Upon a Picture - Images to Inspire - Teaching Resources

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Once Upon a Picture - Images to Inspire - Teaching Resources

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Created by: @claribel716
Source: Honigsfeld, A. (2019). Growing Language & Literacy: Strategies for English learners: Grades K-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann

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Writing & ELLs Created by: @claribel716 Source: Honigsfeld, A. (2019). Growing Language & Literacy: Strategies for English learners: Grades K-8. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Table of Contents: Entering Emerging Transitioning Expanding Commanding

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Using Pictures to Promote Language Development: The PWIM

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Using Pictures to Promote Language Development: The PWIM

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@ValentinaESL (Educational consultant and content creator for Seidlitz Education)

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What is PWIM and how do I use it to help my students with listening, speaking, reading, and writing?

There is a misconception that pictures are only for primary students or for ELs at Beginner levels of English proficiency. But that's not the case. Though PWIM does benefit primary students and ELs at Beginner levels of English proficiency, even intermediate and Advanced ELs as well as Native English speakers gain valuable insights from this method across all content areas.

Here's how I've used it in a modified version.

Step 1: Select a picture relevant to the unit of current study and be mindful of the grade level objectives. If you teach science you might select a picture about the water cycle, life cycle of a butterfly, the Grand Canyon, etc depending on the grade level objective. A social studies teacher might choose a picture from history such as The Boston Tea Party, Amelia Earhart next to her plane, the Constitution, or a map, graph, chart or timeline, etc. A language arts teacher may present a picture that exemplifies character traits or feelings, a picture that relates to a theme that is being showcased, etc. Even math teachers can use PWIM by selecting pictures such as pictures with shapes, graphs, clocks, money, etc. Again, it's important here to consider the grade level objective when selecting the image.

Step 2: Share the image with students either in a whole group or in a small group setting. If you are teaching remotely, you can share the image on a shared google slide, a google doc, or another digital platform that your students are accustomed to using. (Day 1)

Step 3: Label the picture together. Tell students that you will "shake out" all the words from this picture. Sometimes I let students brainstorm words on their own first and then share with a partner before we label the picture. During remote learning, you can put students in breakout rooms to brainstorm words. Then pull them back together to label as a class. As I label words, I spell them out or focus on phonics depending on the grade level and students' needs. We stop to read the words frequently, reading chorally or echo reading even in remote settings. (Day 1)

Step 4: Put the words into categories. Ask students to categories the words either by spelling or by parts of speech. Once the class is finished labeling, students can work independently or in groups to categorize words. If your class is remote, you can duplicate the digital version of the picture you labeled and give each student or group a copy of it. They can work asynchronously to categorize the words using the digital copy. (Day 1 or 2 depending on time)

Step 5: Ask students to brainstorm possible titles for the picture. Once many have been generated, discuss them. What makes a strong title? If needed, share examples from picture books or chapter books.

Step 6: Give students time to discuss the picture in cooperative groups or breakout rooms and then verbally compose sentences. Provide students with sentence stems, starters or language frames to support complete sentences as needed even in virtual classroom environments. This step allows students to access their own background knowledge as well as tap into one another's knowledge. It builds on prior knowledge by supporting what they already know about a particular topic. For example, if you give students a picture of a colonial tent, and students share in their groups, some might say they see a house, while others would say it's a home or dwelling. (Day 2)

Step 7 : Next, record the sentences either on a chart, below the picture, or on a shared Google Document. Guide students in choral or echo reading the sentences after you write them even in remote learning. This reading practice supports language development and reading fluency. (Day 3)

Step 8: Give students the opportunity to use the labels to write their own sentences about the image. The sentences created together as a class will serve as exemplars for their own writing. However not everyone will need the support of the example sentences. The students who can independently write their own sentences using the labels can work on their own while the teacher pulls a small group to model using the label to compose sentences. In virtual learning, the teacher can create a breakout room for students who need additional support. Consider asking the group the 5 Ws-Who, When, Where Why, What to help vary the sentences and create a strong understanding of the visual. (Day 3)

There are many ways to vary PWIM to meet your own classroom and students' needs. There is no right or wrong way to do them as long as you are using pictures to develop language: thinking, listening, speaking, reading and writing. PWIM doesn't have to take long. They are not 45 minute lessons. And they are not solely for language arts classrooms. Pictures of historical events, cycles (water, life, etc.), geography, scientific experiments, math problems lend themselves beautifully to PWIM activities.

Pictures are engaging, thought provoking, and help to make content comprehensible for students. The steps above are just suggestions. Make this model fit your students' specific needs. Try out a PWIM lesson and see where it takes you. This language rich learning strategy requires students to think, listen, speak, read and write in the content area of instruction. That's why I love it!

Below are examples of PWIM as well as a video on how to implement PWIM in virtual classrooms.

Ferlazzo, L., & Sypnieski, K. H. (2012). The ESL/ELL teacher's survival guide. ready-to-use strategies, tools, and activities for teaching English language learners of all levels . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Calhoun, E. (1999). Teaching beginning reading and writing with the picture word inductive model. Alexandria: ASCD.
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Using Pictures to Promote Language Development

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This article was originally posted on 2-25-2017 and has been updated on 9-17-2020 to include information relevant to distance learning. "A picture is worth a thousand words" or so we've heard....

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Amplifying Literacy Through Social Studies: Best Practices for Reaching All Learners

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Amplifying Literacy Through Social Studies: Best Practices for Reaching All Learners

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Saddleback Webinar featuring Seidlitz Consultant Tina Beene

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FREE Webinar: Amplifying Literacy Through Social Studies: Best Practices for Reaching All Learners

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The Best Ways to Get Students to Write a Summary

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The Best Ways to Get Students to Write a Summary

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By: Susan Patterson @elllady2 @ell-lady.com

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@ell_lady
Can you picture it? You look in your curriculum map and notice the culminating task for your students is to write a summary. You panic a little inside and may ask yourself, "How am I going to get them from point A to Z!?"

One of the best ways to get there is to do tiny steps and get students writing routinely so that the culminating task doesn't seem so daunting. Where should you start? Before you panic, just remember that "Somebody Wanted But So Then" is here to help.

The Somebody Wanted But So Then strategy, or SWBST, is a quick and easy way to get students to write a summary and can be done with just about any text. I like to use it with my newcomer ESL students by just shortening it a little to a SWB or SWBS. After practicing this strategy with a graphic organizer, students get used to doing it and can write their own sentences without it quickly. I like using StoryboardThat for this. Let's look at the steps we can take to get students started with this strategy and how we can get them to where we want them to be- writing a summary on their own!

Start with a Write-Aloud

Modeling is a great way to begin and this can just be done on a whiteboard whether virtually or in-person- anything you can write on and let students clearly see it will work. Students are probably also feeling a little overwhelmed, and they are looking to you, dear teacher! So show them the way!

During a write-aloud, the teacher says out loud what their thought process is for their writing. They go step-by-step and give opportunities for students to demonstrate that they are following and comprehending. Some ways might be having students repeat after you or choral read what you have just written.

While you are making sure that your students are following along, it's also important to check for understanding and allow students to digest your write-aloud by discussing it with their classmates. In addition, it's a great time to point out any grammar or vocabulary you want to focus on. Here's an example conversation:

Teacher: I am going to do a write-aloud for a summary about the text we just read. I am going to use the structure- Somebody Wanted But So Then. Ok, who is this text about? Hmm...I know it's about a character named Romeo and the girl he likes, Juliet. So, I am going to start with this: Romeo and Juliet wanted...Let's repeat that together! (Choral read: Romeo and Juliet wanted...)

Teacher: Well, what did they want? Let's turn and talk and discuss that with these sentence stems: I think Romeo and Juliet wanted...do you agree?

Once ideas are thought out and students agree, the teacher can bring students back to whole group and finish the ideas students have with their sentences. This process is focused on the teacher's ideas, but as you can see, students are involved in the process as well. This is a great way to manage our teacher talk.

Shared Writing

After modeling writing for your students, you can now write together. Let's go back to our Romeo and Juliet example. Let's say we are also reviewing the scene where they first meet at the party. Before writing, I may get students to discuss what happened first in a think-pair-share. After students have their ideas, I'll ask them to share-out some of them with accountable talk frames like, "My partner and I agreed that in this scene..."

Now, I'm going to ask them how I should start the sentence. I might say, "Okay Jose, what word are we going to start with for our SWBST (Somebody Wanted But So Then)? What did they want? While we are writing this together, I'm also pointing out that we may want to use a comma to separate the sentence and I'm also noting where to add capital letters and a period.

What are students doing during this shared writing? They are writing with you! On page 96 of Valentina Gonzalez and Melinda Miller's book, Reading and Writing with English Learners , they recommend giving each student a small dry erase board to practice writing the sentence parts with you. This also ensures all students are engaged. In their book, you can see more about this writing process going from modeling all the way to independent work.

Independent Writing

Up until this point, students have engaged in writing through teacher's modeling, through discussions with a partner, whole group discussion around what may come next in a sentence, and practiced writing on their own. Now, it's time to try writing without modeling and sharing, but how can we still support our students as they do their "you do" portion of the lesson?

By providing scaffolds to help them construct their sentences. Scaffolds may look like a graphic organizer or writing template, student-constructed visuals such as drawings or photos entered from a Google search, adding a word bank, using a translator, providing a student work sample for them, or providing sentence frames and stems. These scaffolds should be considered when thinking about a student's language level if they are an Emergent Bilingual, or English Learner.

In addition to scaffolds, teachers should be monitoring how students are doing and assisting them through questioning and probing for ideas.

Make it a routine

Writing Wednesdays, anyone? As we said earlier, making it a routine in your classroom is the key to less overwhelm and more practice for the big thing, whether it's a culminating task or a state or federal assessment (here's looking at you, for our ESL students). Let's end this with some easy everyday writing tasks for you to get going.

Easy ways to start writing routinely in class:

Reading & Writing with English Learners: a Framework for K-5 , by Valentina

Gonzalez and Melinda Miller, Seidlitz Education, 2020, pp. 96.

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The Best Ways to Get Students to Write a Summary - ReadTheory

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@ell_lady Can you picture it? You look in your curriculum map and notice the culminating task for your students is to write a summary. You panic a little inside and may ask yourself, "How am I going to get them from point A to Z!?"

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Supporting Content-Area Writing for Secondary English Learners: Scaffolds for Success

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Supporting Content-Area Writing for Secondary English Learners: Scaffolds for Success

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Saddleback Webinar featuring @Jody Nolf

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FREE WEBINAR: Supporting Content-Area Writing for Secondary English Learners: Scaffolds for Success

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Annotating Texts with Multilingual Learners

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Annotating Texts with Multilingual Learners

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By: Susan Patterson @elllady2 @ell-lady.com

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Tonight, I got to talk to fellow (and now former) high school newcomer teacher Esther Park about annotating texts with her multilingual learners. I knew I wanted annotating to be a strategy to focus on for my mini-series about moving students beyond the word level because it is just such a rich strategy to use that can be a foundation for getting students to SWRL (speak, write, read, and listen). And to top it off, it gets students moving from the word to the discourse level, therefore aiding in the development of English language.

I knew it had to be with Esther since I really felt like she spoke my language with the high school newcomer thing. Also, she has a great digital annotation tool on her Teachers Pay Teachers so that was a definite must for having a conversation around her annotation process.

Here are some of our key takeaways:

1. Take baby steps. I am guilty of wanting to do all of the things all of the time. For each task I have my students do, I want to make sure that we are practicing everything that we can which can be extremely overwhelming for students, especially newcomers. I have to tell myself to scale it back a little. Stand-by, overachieving self!

Esther helped remind me to calm it down a little and take baby steps. We talked about how she might have them do one annotation focus at a time and build on them as time goes by. She might start off with having students put a heart by something that they loved and leaving it at that until the next annotating task where another layer can be added on.

2. Give your language and questioning a focus. It's not effective to just tell students to circle words they don't know and highlight the ones they recognize. Give it a focus and do that with your questioning. For example, if you are looking for the setting of the text, have students circle or highlight the words that show the setting of the story. Ask them questions like, "What words demonstrate the setting of the story?" Connect it back to the standard or objective to give your questioning a purpose.

3. Get students SWRLing and moving to discourse with the appropriate scaffolds. As your students complete some of the annotation tasks, have them share with partners with sentence frames and sentence starters. If students need more scaffolding, give them frames. If they are more advanced proficiency students, give them starters or stems and let them fill in the rest. This can be done for speaking or writing.

Esther also talked about using different levels of questions. This reminded me of Costa's questions, which is an AVID technique. I may have students make their own questions and tell them to use one level 1 question, one level 2, and one level 3. If they are newcomers, I may skip the level 3s temporarily.

What are some successful tips for annotating that you can share in the comments?

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Annotating Texts with Multilingual Learners

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Tonight, I got to talk to fellow (and now former) high school newcomer teacher Esther Park about annotating texts with her multilingual learners. I knew I wanted annotating to be a strategy to focus on for my mini-series about moving students beyond the word level because it is just such a rich strategy to use that can be a foundation for getting students to SWRL (speak, write, read, and listen).

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6. What are the components of sheltered English instruction?

While teachers of ELLs have used sheltered English instruction for many years, a consistent understanding of the components of sheltered instruction has emerged only within the past five years. In 1999 the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) was developed following intensive observation of sheltered English teaching across the United States (Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2004). The SIOP identifies 30 important elements of sheltered instruction under eight broad categories:

Critical to effective sheltered instruction is the preparation of learning objectives for every lesson. These include content objectives, aligned with state and local content-area standards, and language objectives, aligned with state language proficiency benchmarks or language arts standards, or the national TESOL standards. Teachers communicate content and language objectives to students, design activities to achieve objectives throughout the lesson, and assess progress toward objectives by the end of the lesson. In this way learning, teaching and assessment are integrated into an ongoing process that provides feedback to students and informs future instruction.

Within each sheltered lesson the teacher seeks to ensure that students have sufficient background knowledge to tackle new curriculum material. Teachers modify their speech and, when necessary and feasible, content text so that English language learners can grasp important content concepts, facts, and questions. Teachers explicitly teach learning strategies - from teacher-centered to peer-supported to student centered - so that students develop a toolkit for accomplishing difficult learning tasks. Teachers also provide ample opportunities for students to interact in the target language around purposeful tasks that are meaningful to them.

Ever mindful of the lesson's framing objectives, sheltering teachers are careful to integrate listening, speaking, reading and writing skills into each lesson. They provide opportunities for students to apply their new knowledge through tasks that involve concepts and skills students have learned. Sheltering teachers work to engage all students at least 95% of the time in instructional activity, at the same time paying attention to pacing, so that no student is left behind.

Reference:

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D.J. (2004). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP model (2nd ed.). Boston: Pearson.

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What are the components of sheltered English instruction?

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6. What are the components of sheltered English instruction? While teachers of ELLs have used sheltered English instruction for many years, a consistent understanding of the components of sheltered instruction has emerged only within the past five years.