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Strategies for Teaching Adult Refugees in the ELL Classroom

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Strategies for Teaching Adult Refugees in the ELL Classroom

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There is an excellent PDF at this link about teaching adult ESL refugee learners. https://globalaccess.bowvalleycollege.ca/our-resources/publications-resources/strategies-teaching-adult-refugees-ell-classroom

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Strategies for Teaching Adult Refugees in the ELL Classroom

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This tool is designed for ELL practitioners working with refugee learners and includes: information on the impact of trauma on learning tips for creating a supportive and safe classroom environment effective teaching strategies and approaches suitable for different levels and groups of learners

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Creating Conversations: Low-prep conversation groups for all levels, presented by Virginia Vasser Aggrey from Denver Public Library. Her co-presenters were Amy Van Vranken and Walid Al Ani.

This is a link to the handout she shared with the breakout session: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YVEgaBUm262QCwwRrH20qpN4zfFWONwp-RA5aS4K0hE/edit?usp=sharing.

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Helpful Links for Intercambio Teachers from the Creating Conversations presentation.

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Helpful Links for Intercambio Teachers from the Creating Conversations presentation.

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All Things Topics: https://www.allthingstopics.com/

Newsela: https://newsela.com/

Picture Sites for "What's going on in this picture?"
New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/column/learning-whats-going-on-in-this-picture

National Geographic:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/
Photo of the Day

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Choosing and Using Picture Books with Adult English Language Learners

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Choosing and Using Picture Books with Adult English Language Learners

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Debbie Goldman, ELT Consultant (and someone who's worked with Intercambio several years), presented on using picture books with Adult ELLs.  In her presentation, she talked about:
- choosing appropriate picture books (considerations)
- using picture books before reading, while reading, and after reading.

The presentation was full of strategies for using picture books. What I really got out of it was the ways in which to expand on the picture books as well as good activities to do after reading.

I took a couple of screen shots that I am including here; Debbie didn't send a copy of the presentation because it has copyrighted material in it, and it wouldn't be ethical (although possibly legal?) to distribute it as a result. She did include a list of picture books she's used. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1e4GO-5nFrWvxsox1wTZTI7ZbGcIsyz6zW0bU4ONL_J0/edit?usp=sharing

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Confident Fluency in English Through Stories

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Confident Fluency in English Through Stories

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Suan Schnell, from Conversations in English (CIE) volunteer program at the Boulder Public Library, shared how she uses stories with English language learners of all ages. This was a demonstration presentation. In the demonstration, she told a story about "First Man and First Woman: A Quarrel." Suan explained that she gives as many vivid reminders as possible, connecting to all five senses, so that there are "hooks" on which to hang comprehension. She also reviewed these things during the storytelling. For example, she opened the story with a bright picture of a strawberry and asked us if we could imagine holding it, smelling it, tasting it.

She described how to connect the story to the students and to their cultural backgrounds. She also expressed that fluency is being able to make a sentence that puts a picture in someone's mind -- to communicate the picture in your mind to another person.

I will try to type up the story she read and attach it here.

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Best Practices in the ESL Classroom for Adult Refugees

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Best Practices in the ESL Classroom for Adult Refugees

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https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxiZXN0cHJhY3RpY2VzZm9yYWR1bHRyZWZ1Z2Vlc3xneDo1ODYzZjY4YzQyNGQwOWVj

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Teaching and tutoring adult emergent readers with refugee backgrounds: Implementing a training program for community volunteers

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Teaching and tutoring adult emergent readers with refugee backgrounds: Implementing a training program for community volunteers

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https://www.academia.edu/41365500/Teaching_and_tutoring_adult_emergent_readers_with_refugee_backgrounds_Implementing_a_training_program_for_community_volunteers

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Best Practices for Adult Refugees in the ESL Classroom

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Best Practices for Adult Refugees in the ESL Classroom

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https://sites.google.com/site/bestpracticesforadultrefugees/research-and-theory

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Research and Theory - Best Practices for Adult Refugees in the ESL Classroom

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https://gsi.berkeley.edu/gsi-guide-contents/learning-theory-research/neuroscience/

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This article is based on a talk by Daniela Kaufer, associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, for the GSI Teaching & Research Center's How Students Learn series in Spring 2011.

On this page:
Key Learning Principles
Research Fundamentals
Applications to Teaching
Further Reading

Also available:
Video and full summary of Daniela Kaufer's talk "What Can Neuroscience Research Teach Us about Teaching?"

Key Learning Principles

From the point of view of neurobiology, learning involves changing the brain.

Moderate stress is beneficial for learning, while mild and extreme stress are detrimental to learning.

Adequate sleep, nutrition, and exercise encourage robust learning.

Active learning takes advantage of processes that stimulate multiple neural connections in the brain and promote memory.

Research Fundamentals

Changing the brain: For optimal learning to occur, the brain needs conditions under which it is able to change in response to stimuli (neuroplasticity) and able to produce new neurons (neurogenesis).

The most effective learning involves recruiting multiple regions of the brain for the learning task. These regions are associated with such functions as memory, the various senses, volitional control, and higher levels of cognitive functioning.

Moderate stress: Stress and performance are related in an "inverted U curve" (see right). Stimulation to learn requires a moderate amount of stress (measured in the level of cortisol). A low degree of stress is associated with low performance, as is high stress, which can set the system into fight-or-flight mode so there is less brain activity in the cortical areas where higher-level learning happens. Moderate levels of cortisol tend to correlate with the highest performance on tasks of any type. We can therefore conclude that moderate stress is beneficial for learning, while mild and extreme stress are both detrimental to learning.

Moderate stress can be introduced in many ways: by playing unfamiliar music before class, for example, or changing up the format of discussion, or introducing any learning activity that requires individual participation or movement. However, people do not all react the same way to an event. The production of cortisol in response to an event varies significantly between individuals; what constitutes "moderate stress" for one person might constitute mild or extreme stress for another. So, for example, cold-calling on individual students in a large-group setting might introduce just the right amount of stress to increase some students' performance, but it might produce excessive stress and anxiety for other students, so their performance is below the level you know they are capable of. Any group dynamic that tends to stereotype or exclude some students also adds stress for them.

Adequate sleep, good nutrition, and regular exercise: These common-sense healthy habits promote optimal learning performance in two ways. First, they promote neuroplasticity and neurogenesis. Second, they keep cortisol and dopamine (stress and happiness hormones, respectively) at appropriate levels. All-night cramming sessions, skipped meals, and skipped exercise can actually reduce the brain's capacity for high academic performance. (This is true for instructors as well as students.)

Active learning: Cognitive functions associated with the lower levels of Bloom's taxonomy (see diagram at left), such as understanding and remembering, are associated with the hippocampus (the area of the brain responsible for memory and spatial awareness). The higher-level cognitive functions of Bloom's taxonomy, such as creating, evaluating, analyzing, and applying, involve the cortical areas responsible for decision-making, association, and motivation.

More complex thought processes are more beneficial for learning because they involve a greater number of neural connections and more neurological cross-talk. Active learning takes advantage of this cross-talk, stimulating a variety of areas of the brain and promoting memory.

Applications to Teaching

Classroom Activities, from the Teaching Guide for GSIs

Some Basic Active Learning Strategies, from the University of Minnesota Center for Educational Innovation

Further Reading
Please note that some links may require Library proxy access. Please see the Library's page Connect from Off Campus.
Blakemore, Sarah-Jayne and Uta Frith (2005). The Learning Brain: Lessons for Education. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Felder, Richard M. and Rebecca Brent (1996). " Navigating the Bumpy Road to Student-Centered Instruction." An abridged version of this article was published in College Teaching 44: 43-7.

Tokuhama-Espinosa, Tracey (2011). Mind, Brain, and Education Science: A Comprehensive Guide to the New Brain-Based Teaching. New York: W. W. Norton.

Walker, J. D. et al. (2008). " A Delicate Balance: Integrating Active Learning into a Large Lecture Course." CBE Life Sciences Education 7.4: 361-67.

Winter, Dale et al. (2001). " Novice Instructors and Student-Centered Instruction: Identifying and Addressing Obstacles to Learning in the College Science Laboratory." The Journal of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 2.1: 14-42.

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This article is based on a talk by Daniela Kaufer, associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, for the GSI Teaching & Research Center's How Students Learn series in Spring 2011. On this page: Key Learning Principles Research Fundamentals Applications to Teaching Further Reading Also available: Video and full summary of Daniela Kaufer's talk "What Can Neuroscience Research Teach Us about Teaching?"

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https://www.proliteracy.org/Portals/0/Tutor-Training-Puzzle/story.html?&utm_campaign=Education%20Network%20-%20CRM%20Project&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=222947608&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8iwArLnqRHAL3819eucfG8Gr7io2LNhUzyhX4dJcCDA_jKJUQuiJ03MuvJpO6QO7a6yzH3VpLJzNwZgINbteaZcZzBZw&utm_content=222947608&utm_source=hs_email

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Giving Tutors What They Need When They Need It with ProLiteracy Online Tutor Training

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Giving Tutors What They Need When They Need It with ProLiteracy Online Tutor Training

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq3gSAXCeOc

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Giving Tutors What They Need When They Need It with ProLiteracy Online Tutor Training

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Phonics Workbooks 1 and 2 from English Unlocked are now available! Geared toward beginning ESL students, these are the first packaged phonics workbooks made specifically for adult learners. The workbooks are focused on phonemic awareness, decoding skills and letter formation.

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https://globalaccess.bowvalleycollege.ca/esl-literacy-readers

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Welcome to the ESL LIteracy Readers. Our collection of forty theme-based readers, along with an instructors guide, will support ESL literacy instructors to create comprehensive, theme-based lessons for adult ESL literacy learners. The themes were carefully chosen and are both of high interest to learners, and more importantly, relevant to their lives.

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https://www.crowdedlearning.org/our-work/eslstorybank

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Co-created by adult educators using stories from the Pre-Beginning and Beginning ESL Story Banks, CrowdED Learning is proud to offer instructors Wakelet collections with engaging Jamboard activities and Flippity typing practice.

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Locating Anti-Racism in the ESL Curriculum

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Locating Anti-Racism in the ESL Curriculum

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By Rob Sheppard 4/27/2021

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04/27/2021

Locating Anti-Racism in the ESL Curriculum

In this post, a follow-up to JPB Gerald's post on this same blog , I discuss where ESL curriculum developers can integrate anti-racist work into an ESL curriculum.

Let me start with this: when asked to write a follow-up to Justin's post on decentering Whiteness, I first thought, Me? Are you sure you should be asking cishet white male "native-speaking" me? It felt that white people writing about decentering whiteness could run the risk of inadvertently re centering whiteness. Upon further reflection, though, I remembered that white people are supposed to be shouldering the bulk of this weight of the anti-racist work, and this necessarily involves doing some writing and speaking. I reached out to Justin to get his thoughts on the matter and here's what he said:

More specifically, though, the field of English language teaching is one uniquely rooted in colonialism, and thus bound up with various forms of racism in ways that go far deeper than "racism is everywhere." If there is anywhere that whiteness is still shamelessly centered, it is in the field of English language teaching. Take a look at an ESL coursebook. Look at which Englishes are taught and assigned prestige. Look at which accents are upheld as "neutral" Examine what "professionalism" is code for. Incorporating anti-racism as a partial corrective into the ESL curriculum ranks among The Least We Can Do.

There are those among us who believe that simply by doing "good work" like ESL with pure hearts and good intentions, that we have clean hands and clear consciences and that this anti-racist stuff can be for someone else to do. Gerald (2020) terms this the "altruistic shield." It is a dangerous complacency, and we need to work to disabuse ourselves and our peers of it.

I've come to learn that even seasoned practitioners struggle with curriculum design. It's big. It can feel abstract and distant from what happens in the classroom. It can feel more like an accountability measure than a tool. We seem even to lack a common language with which to discuss it: one person's aim is another person's objective is another person's SLO . And the situation is exacerbated by the fact that so many places are simply doing curriculum badly. Most teachers, I've found, view curriculum as an annual chore that distracts from the actual meat of their work.

So when we consider the prospect of incorporating the difficult work of anti-racism into the chore of curriculum design, the task can seem daunting, to say the least. Because curriculum can be so daunting and its terms so slippery, I want to begin by briefly mapping my own terms and conception of curriculum.

A well designed curriculum ought to be situated to the context and learner needs (all bolded terms in this section are illustrated in Table 1). Quite often, an ESL program is housed within a larger institution or organization, in which case that entity's mission and vision become an important component of the context, to which the program's guiding values ought to be aligned.

Students will be able to complete everyday forms.

Strands are the single rows of aligned objectives progressing from left to right across levels, as shown in Table 2. They are narrower than goals and they develop by increments as students progress through a course or program. Here is an example strand focused on the ability to describe oneself and one's needs for purposes such as completing forms. Another writing strand within this goal might focus on communicating with friends and neighbors via text and email.

We agree to ensure ​that​ ​classrooms​ ​are​ ​inclusive​ ​and​ ​welcoming​ ​to​ ​all.

We agree that course ​content​ ​should​ ​reflect​ ​our​ ​students'​ ​realities ​and​ ​goals.

We agree to make every effort to bring ​the​ ​classroom​ ​to​ ​the​ ​world​ ​and​ ​the​ ​world​ ​to​ ​the​ ​classroom.

Curriculum always and inevitably reflects values. Failure to declare those values does not mean our curriculum is neutral or free of values; it simply means the values will be inherited from the status quo. In ESL, that is a status quo that continues to erase, minimize, and sanitize the experiences of Black, queer, and poor people, to name only a few. This is one of the ways that white supremacy and structural racism replicate and permeate institutions, even those composed of well-meaning individuals who may not be personally bigoted.

As we likely know, second language curriculum is weird, as far as curricula go, in that it requires a content distinct from the objectives. The objectives are likely communicative, but achieving those objectives requires that we communicate about something. For instance, in a textbook on my desk right now, a unit objective is about giving directions and describing locations, but the reading content specifically focuses on the immigrant communities of Little Havana and Little Saigon in Miami. In the content of our ESL curriculum-the reading and listening texts that we engage with, the writing and speaking prompts we give our students-is another place we might locate anti-racism.

Rob Sheppard is an English teacher and curriculum developer from Boston living in Philadelphia. He is assistant director for curriculum and instruction at Temple University Center for American Language and Culture (TCALC) and founder of Ginseng English . He serves on the boards of PennTESOL East (as sociopolitical concerns chair) and the Literacy Council of Norristown .

https://epale.ec.europa.eu/en/blog/lots-diversity-not-enough-equality-how-can-esol-curriculum-help-promote-anti-racism

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Locating Anti-Racism in the ESL Curriculum

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04/27/2021 In this post, a follow-up to JPB Gerald's post on this same blog , I discuss where ESL curriculum developers can integrate anti-racist work into an ESL curriculum. Let me start with this: when asked to write a follow-up to Justin's post on decentering Whiteness, I first thought, Me?

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ojUTcq8jIwOifWdl_Yip4ZaHbgW3wtYTO4c5LLXv6_M/edit?usp=sharing

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https://padlet.com/JessicaLander/vsqv5dk0z2b7xl9

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https://padlet.com/JessicaLander/ags1l7qy1nmk5und

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https://www.jessicalander.com/making-americans

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Making americans

Setting out from her classroom, Jessica Lander takes the reader on a powerful and urgent journey-told through captivating stories of the past, the present, and the personal-to understand what it takes for immigrant students to become Americans.

She brings to life historic struggles to improve immigrant education-the Nebraska teacher arrested for teaching an eleven-year-old boy in German who took his case to the Supreme Court; the California families who overturned school segregation for Mexican-American children; and the Texas families who risked deportation to establish the right for undocumented children to attend public schools.

She visits innovative classrooms across the country-a school for refugee girls in Georgia; five schools in Aurora, Colorado that created a community-wide network of organizations and people to support newcomer children; and a North Carolina district of more than 100 schools who rethought how they teach their immigrant-origin students.

She shares inspiring stories of her own students' immigrant journeys and how they created their own American identities-a boy who escaped Baghdad and found a home in his school's ROTC program, the daughter of Cambodian genocide survivors who dreamed of becoming a computer scientist, and an orphan boy who escaped violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and created a new community here.

Together, the stories and insights chart a course for educators and policy makers-and for everyone who cares about America's future. Making Americans is a landmark book, providing a clear vision for how schools can help nurture a sense of belonging in newcomers, with benefits for all students. It is a catalyst for communities across America to reimagine immigrant education.
Beacon Press, Fall 2022

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Making Americans | Books by Jessica Lander - Jessica Lander

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Setting out from her classroom, Jessica Lander takes the reader on a powerful and urgent journey-told through captivating stories of the past, the present, and the personal-to understand what it takes for immigrant students to become Americans.

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https://twitter.com/jessica_lander

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Tweets by jessica_lander

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In this guide, you will find suggestions for leading productive conversations that broaden perspectives, encourage empathy, and build new paradigms for education. This guide was created with difficult and challenging topics in mind, such as gun violence in the U.S., reproductive rights, climate change, and other issues and topics that can evoke strong feelings and opinions in students and/or members of learning communities.

We created them with films in mind, but they can be used for any discussion settings: book clubs, social studies lessons, current event classes, science lessons and much more.

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In this guide, you will find suggestions for leading productive conversations that broaden perspectives, encourage empathy, and build new paradigms for education.