https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt Useful and relevant sites for supporting emergent bilinguals -- By Savannah Jenson en-us 2018-01-18 03:35:28 UTC 2018-02-02 06:06:03 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/icons/Apple.png savviejen https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/224917477 1. http://pbskids.org/noah/
This website features stories students can play through in both English and Spanish.  All of the words that are used are both spoken aloud and written out, allowing students to practice various language skills as they play through the game. While it does not require speaking, it does feature the other three modes of language.
2. https://esp.brainpop.com/
This website features several games, videos, and other information for students on a variety of topics ranging from science to art and music.  The site is in both Spanish and English. It will be useful for students looking to develop both language skills and content understanding.
3. http://languagecaster.com/
This is a great resource for students who are learning English and are interested in soccer! The website has the goal of teaching students English through their interest in soccer.  It includes podcasts, quizzes, and other fun ways to students to interact with the website. I would provide this to individual students as a resource to build their English skills based on the student's personal interests.
4. http://neaportal.k12.ar.us/index.php/tag/en-espanol/
This website is particularity helpful for ESOL students who are looking for help in math. The website offers videos that explain a wide variety of math topics. The videos are narrated in Spanish, but the writing in the videos is in English, allowing students to practice both languages.   It will be useful for students looking to develop both language skills and content understanding.
5. http://tv.mes-english.com/
This website is a great resource for ESOL students looking to build their English vocabulary. It features several videos that focus on basic vocabulary words, such as animals, numbers, and verbs.   This resource will be most helpful for ELLs at a lower English proficiency level who are working on building their vocabulary. 

Summary: This collection of websites offer ways for students to both build their vocabulary and utilize their skills in multiple languages to learn new school content.]]> 2018-01-26 01:59:55 UTC https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/224917477 savviejen https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/224917588 1. https://nikpeachey.blogspot.com/
This teaching blog was particularly appealing to me because it features step-by-step explanations about how to incorporate different technologies/apps into the classroom that benefit ELL students. I am often intimidated by using unfamiliar technology, so understanding how to use tech in the classroom that will benefit my ELL students is really helpful for me.  It also features a newsletter that can teachers can sign up for about tech in the classroom.  This website can help me develop a better understanding of how technology can improve my teaching.
2. https://diversebooks.org/
This organization's goal is to affect the publishing industry by increasing the availability of culturally diverse books.  This website is a great representation of the four C's, and can help teachers grow in their understanding of how diversity in literature affects their students.
3.http://www.endangeredlanguages.com/
This organization is using technology to preserve as many languages as possible. The organization believes that every language represents a unique and important view of the world, and working to preserve languages is also working to preserve unique cultures and viewpoints that would otherwise be lost.  This website is a great representation of the four C's.
4. https://ed.ted.com/series
This is a great teacher-centered resource becuase it provides educators with several different videos they can incorporate into instruction.  The videos cover a wide variety of topics, making it relevant to educators of all grade levels.
5. https://www.tolerance.org/
This is a great teacher-centered resource becuase it provides resources to teach lessons that are social justice and anti-bias oriented. It includes content for grades K-12. It also hits on the 4 C's, making it a valuable resource for educators looking to be culturally relevant in their teaching.

Summary: A collection of teacher-centered resources that will lead to better teaching.]]> 2018-01-26 02:00:50 UTC https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/224917588 savviejen https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/224917618 1. International Children's Digital Library.  This website contains children's books translated into several languages, and includes a suggested teacher's guide about how to implement the books in the classroom. It has both teacher-centered and student-centered content, making it easy to implement into the classroom and teach lessons from.
http://en.childrenslibrary.org/index.shtml
2. http://www.colorincolorado.org/booklist/ell-stories
This website gives detailed descriptions of several diverse and culturally relevant books for children that can be used in the classroom. It also features videos for students and tips for teaching ELLs. The reviews of the books include suggested age levels for reading, allowing educators to pick books that would be appropriate for different English proficiency levels.
3. http://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/index.php
This visual dictionary is a great tool for educators to use with ELL students. ELLs of all English proficiency levels benefit from visual definitions of words, and using these visual definitions while teaching will enrich academic language development and content understanding for students.
4. https://www.makebeliefscomix.com/
This website is in both English and Spanish.  The website allows students to create comics, which can allow ELLs to use visuals to enhance their ability to demonstrate understanding of a topic.  Ideally when implementing, every student would have access to their own computer to create their comic.
5.  https://www.canva.com/create/infographics/
This website allows for the creation of infographics, another great way to combine written language with visuals for enhanced content understanding. This could be teacher-centered if an educator wants to create something to share information with their class. But using it as a student-centered resource would also be beneficial, as it provides students with a great way to demonstrate their understanding that doesn't rely entirely on written language. 

Summary: These websites are great resources for educators to incorporate into the classroom. The provide new content to include and new ways for both teachers and students to showcase content.]]> 2018-01-26 02:01:13 UTC https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/224917618 savviejen https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/227363121 1.http://www.readingbear.org/
This website helps students learn to read by teaching vocabulary and phonics rules.  This website would be great for the ELL students in my kindergarten class, as they can learn the phonics content we cover in class as well as build their academic language skills.
2. https://www.teachyourmonstertoread.com/
This website helps students learn to read by having them create a monster and lead it through a series of games where they build phonics and reading skills, both of which are skills my kindergarten students are heavily focused on learning.  This is a fun way to learn and build new language skills. In addition to these student-centered games, there is also a teacher-centered section on the website that helps teachers learn how to incorporate the game into the classroom and other resources they can use.
3. https://rhymenlearn.com/
This website helps students learn about math and science through songs and raps.  This resource hits primarily on the listening mode of language, although it does incorporate visuals that will help emergent bilinguals to understand the content being presented to them.

Summary:  These websites help students to build content knowledge, and focus primarily on building the content knowledge that I have seen in my kindergarten classroom.  These skills include phonics, letter ID, and other reading and writing skills that are critical for kindergarten students.]]> 2018-02-02 04:33:15 UTC https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/227363121 savviejen https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/227363160 1. http://byrdseed.com/differentiator/
This tool helps teachers to create learning objectives. This is teacher centered, as it helps teachers create clear objectives that align with an assessment. This tool is helpful because it breaks down what students will be doing, making it easier to identify all of the language demands that will be associated with the tasks students will be performing.  This will help teachers set up all of their students, including emergent bilinguals, for success.
2.https://www.socrative.com/
This tool is a great way to bring formative assessments and technology together. The website allows teachers to ask questions that students can respond to in real time using technology, and the teacher gets real time results and a summary of results at the end of the formative assessment. This tool would work the best if all students had either a phone, tablet, or computer with which they could respond. However, it would also work if student could get into small groups and decide on an answer to a question together, that way more spoken language use would take place and less technology would be required. Doing it as a group would help the assignment meet the four C's.
3. https://quizizz.com/
This website allows teachers to create quizzes (or find quizzes made by other teachers) that they can assign to students to complete, either as a live game during class or as a homework assignment. Alternatively, students could be asked to design quizzes as an assessment. The website makes quizzes for students by including elements like avatars and leader boards. This website focuses primarily on the reading mode of language, although teachers could scaffold the quizzes to reach more of the language modes by making quizzes collaborative, including visuals, or reading the quiz aloud so students can hear the questions.

Summary:  These websites include ways to assess students and improve assessments through clear objectives.]]> 2018-02-02 04:33:42 UTC https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/227363160 savviejen https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/227363238 1. http://www.storybee.org/index.html
This website provides several stories, ranging in length and arranged by age level, that students can listen to.  This is a great resource for teachers to incorporate for their emergent bilinguals because it will allow students with a low English proficiency level that are not reading yet to hear stories in English. If possible, the student could listen to the story while following along with a physical copy of the book, helping them build their language skills.
2. https://www.mindmeister.com/
This website is a great tool educators can use to create mind maps, or the visual sharing of ideas. Educators could use this as a way to present information to the class or assign students to create mind maps as a way to visually represent their understanding of a topic. This resource is easily shared, and helping it to touch on the four C's. Additionally, because it is a visual representation it can, but does not have to, include words. This allows for easy scaffolding for different English proficiency levels.
3. http://www.wordreference.com/
This website serves as a dictionary, both for English words and as a way to translate between English and other languages. Teachers can use this as a tool in the classroom to help emergent bilinguals translate words into their native language to increase content understanding. This would also build academic language, as the the student will be able to learn both the English version of a word and the word in their first language.

Summary: These resources would be beneficial for educators to incorporate into the classroom.]]> 2018-02-02 04:34:27 UTC https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/227363238 savviejen https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/227363334 I think that technology offers a lot of potential positives for emergent bilinguals. After learning about the SAMER model, I can see how technology has the potential to not just replace tasks, but to really transform them in positive ways. For example, an emergent bilingual could take the task of writing an essay, which requires heavy academic language, and use technology instead to better communicate their content knowledge. They may be able to write a blog that incorporates videos, or possibly create an info graphic that uses pictures and words to address a topic. Additionally, teachers can use online resources to access tools like bilingual books and translation dictionaries in ways that wouldn't be possible without technology. The ISTE standards for students also show how students can use technology to solve problems and engage with others on a global scale to enhance their learning.  I think that teachers should use technology in the classroom as a resource to enhance learning for all of their students.  ]]> 2018-02-02 04:35:51 UTC https://padlet.com/savviejen/9jxf51ntd4mt/wish/227363334