English Language Learners Make Schools Stronger

6/15/2020

English language learners (ELLs) DO make schools stronger because they incite educators to think strategically and thoughtfully about how to create inclusive learning environment in their schools.

Through our work together, you will have a more comprehensive understanding of how to authentically connect with your ELLs, better understanding who they are, and the strengths they bring to bear.

During our live sessions, we will explore strategies for making content concepts more comprehensible and accessible for your students, cognizant of the fact that your ELLs are simultaneously balancing the learning of language and content.

Please view each of the videos below and contemplate the Food for Thought questions.

Food for Thought: Are your students hearing words like ’sesquipedalian’ and ‘volation’ throughout the day? What strategies are you implementing that allow your ELLs the opportunity to successfully access the content concepts being explored in your class?

II.

Food for thought: Given the wide array of factors that affect additional language acquisition, what is your role in supporting your students (i.e. leveraging factors that help and mitigating factors that hinder) and in promoting their multilingualism and multiculturalism?

III.

Food for thought: How do you encourage your students and their families to take pride in their bilingualism and biculturalism? Do you encourage students to share with each other and with you?

IV.

Food for Thought: What are the typologies of each of your ELLs? What’s their story? What accommodations do you make in order to support such a diversity of learners in your class?

Food for Thought: At which level of English language acquisition are your students? Check out the WIDA can-do descriptors to identify the plethora of tasks in which your students can engage.

VI.

Food for Thought: Where are your ELLs on the Culture Shock curve, and what can you do to help move them toward the Recovery phase?

VII.

Food for thought: Have you had moments of cultural misunderstanding with your ELLs? What are the cultural factors that impacted the interaction?

VIII.

Food for Thought: Where are you along the cultural spectrum? How does your perspective differ from the perspectives of your ELLs?

IX.

Food for Thought: What is your biggest takeaway from this video series and how has it informed you? More importantly, how will it impact you as you proceed in educating your ELLs?

As mentioned during the Cultural Iceberg videos, here are some resources where you can continue your exploration into the dimensions of culture.
https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/compare-countries/
https://geerthofstede.com/culture-geert-hofstede-gert-jan-hofstede/6d-model-of-national-culture/
https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_66.htm

Now that you have viewed the videos, and you have taken the time to critically assess your own practices, please share by clicking on Comments below:

how you have engaged in KYS throughout this school year
how you plan to engage in KYS as you move forward

Given that this is a learning community with your peers, I encourage you to comment on each other's posts with supportive feedback and recommendations.

Homework: Please read the three brief articles listed below. During our live session, we will be referring back to these readings while you are working collaboratively in groups during breakout sessions.


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Take care. Please stay safe and sound and sane. If you have any questions at all, please feel free to email me at smk@upthebarconsulting.com. I am very excited about this innovative professional learning format, and I look forward to working with you during our live session.

26 Comments

Ellen Porter

6/24/2020 10:40:54 pm

So, I always engage in conversation with my students all throughout the year, but especially at the beginning to see what they think their own strengths, weaknesses, likes, dislikes are. I love the profile sheet done up in a graphic organizer fashion. I will now add cultural background information as part of my conversation in order to understand better where my students are coming from.

As I do for all my students, not just my ELL's, any time we have new vocabulary that we come across whether it is in our reading, science, social studies or math book, I always show pictures of what the words look like using the smart board. We also use body gestures to help remember what the word means. For example, "manhole" was a word many of my students (both ELL and non ELL) didn't know. I showed them what it looked like on the smart board. We stood up, "drew" a circle with our skywriting finger on the ground, stepped on it and said "manhole". Sometimes I might have the students draw an actual picture of a word and sometimes I don't. I do like the word "doodle" better. I will incorporate that as part of my vocabulary.

For some reason the BICS and CALP keep standing out for me and I don't know why. Perhaps I like the break out of the two different skills. One being the development of the social language first and the other (CALP) being the academic language; which is much more abstract and therefore harder to comprehend. I actually wrote down two students names when they talked about CALP as not being there yet. Even though they talk up a storm and are very personable and seem to talk well. The comprehension part was always tough for them and that's even with pictures of new vocabulary shown.

Last, under WIDA, I don't understand why kids exit the program before they are proficient in the native language. It doesn't make sense to me. It's like mowing half of your lawn. You're almost done...,but we're going to stop here.

Thank you for the videos. I look forward to meeting you on zoom.
Ellen :o)

Danielle Giordano

6/26/2020 10:54:24 am

I understand what you are saying, Ellen, about exiting the program. Maybe we can talk about the markers needed for completion of the program and the indicators needed to be accepted into the program. Thanks so much!

Amy Sulich

6/26/2020 06:56:04 pm

I agree with the comments about exiting ELL support based off the WIDA markers. I tend to not agree with it in Kindergarten. I would like to discuss this more and how to express concerns from a classroom standpoint, small group, community input and family input.

Lisa Bencivenga

6/26/2020 07:27:40 pm

I completely agree, Ellen! These children are exited from the program when they should be flooded with services. I don't understand the rationale for removal.

Tracy

6/29/2020 12:53:22 pm

I agree Ellen, we should definitely look at why children are exited before they are proficient in the native language. I think that having them in the ELL program until they reach proficiency would be more beneficial to them. I think this needs to be further discussed.

Donna Cifarelli

6/30/2020 08:59:42 pm

I also questioned why ELL students exit the program before proficiency. The WIDA can do descriptors is definitely a valuable resource that I plan to continue using to guide me while teaching my ELLs according to their levels of proficiency and to differentiate and modify their tasks.

Nicki McGrane

6/25/2020 09:56:42 am

I engage in KYS by using strategies with my ELLs that I feel will be beneficial to them as they learn the English language and the academic content in my class. I use TPR, visuals, rewording/restating, routines, and when possible, the use of a peer who speaks the native language. I also try to learn about my students' language and culture from them, so that they know I am interested in their background. I also use this to show them that they can provide new knowledge to me, the same way I am providing new knowledge to them.

I found the Cultural Iceberg to be very interesting. I do not have as strong of an understanding about others' cultures as I would like. I am looking forward to learning more about different cultures so that I can use that knowledge to assist me when teaching my students.

Danielle Giordano

6/26/2020 10:50:04 am

As a kindergarten teacher, I feel it is important to use the four modalities in activities that I plan in order to help engage the students' learning. I feel that by incorporating all of these learning styles into one lesson enables the students to grasp the idea more easily. I try to make sure that there is a kinesthetic activity, a visual connection, an auditory component and a tactile piece. I believe this especially helps the ELL students as all four components are incorporated which allows for a better understanding of a skill.

I try to call on different students to reiterate the instructions several times. Sometimes there are a few words that are substituted or an addition to my direction which makes it easier for students to understand. I always try to write the directions with words and some type of symbol next to the words which allows for the students to easily know what to do. I often pair an ELL student with another classmate who can help translate if needed.

There are many ideas that I learned in this course that I am excited to use in the classroom. I enjoyed watching the videos. I would love to incorporate the idea of learning more about one another's culture. This seems to be a very important piece that I would like to dig deeper into next year. I also would like to use the green and red cards again. I used them one year and they were very successful.

I am looking forward to seeing you all at our next Zoom.

Amy Sulich

6/26/2020 07:12:21 pm

As a kindergarten teacher as well, I agree with Danielle. We use a lot of visual, kinesthetic, auditory, verbal and non verbal cues throughout our teaching.

I would like to add more insight on how to connect and understand various cultures more thoroughly. I have used apps to better help communicate with ELL children with the Say Hi app for translations. I found it very helpful. At the beginning, the students enjoyed the use of technology and slowly trusted that we were learning together.

At the kindergarten level, I find that eating snack or lunch with the children is extremely insightful. It allows us to share a bit of ourselves, while fueling our bodies for the rest of the day. The conversations, language, sharing, colors, flavors, and smells makes it fun loving and relaxed. If you know me, I love food and embrace it fully, in and out of the classroom. I wish there was a way to use this intense commonality of food in a safe way to explore each child's culture deeper. It is hard to do so with allergies, policy and protocol. I am open to suggestions!

Jill Martinelli

6/29/2020 10:44:41 am

I'm right there with the kindergarten teachers when I speak for all of my special needs students, many of which are ELL learners also. Most important to me is KYS. Learning about them will help us figure out what is going to work best for them. I always use a mult-sensory approach with them. A few years ago I went to a workshop on executive functioning and many of the strategies I learned there are similar to those we have been discussing and were discussed in the videos. I feel one of the most important things we (as teachers and non ELL learners) need to do is not take for granted that the students know what we are talking about. We need to constantly assess their understanding and break things down that need to be. We also need to make sure students feel comfortable advocating for themselves and letting us know when we need to take a step back and explain something.

Tracy

6/29/2020 01:03:26 pm

I love the idea of eating snack with the kids and talking to them casually . You can most definitely learn a lot about the kids doing this. It is too bad that we can't explore their culture more through the foods that they eat. (allergies, etc.) I remember years ago, when I first started teaching, we had an evening event where the families brought in a food item represented in their culture and everyone could go around the gym to sample all the different foods from around the world. I thought that this was a great event being that Bergenfield is such a diverse community.

Donna Cifarelli

6/30/2020 09:23:52 pm

Amy, I agree with you that eating snack with our children leads to great and very entertaining conversations with them. I also learned so much about my class this year eating lunch with them twice a week during lunch duty. I love the idea of safely incorporating their cultural foods during the school day. An idea could be to have each child bring his/her own cultural snacks or lunch foods to eat and describe to the class while still adhering to our school's peanut/nut free policy.

Tina Pflieger

6/26/2020 12:45:49 pm

In video #4, you spoke about the different ELL types. My question is how do we (teachers, administration and parents) better help the long term ELL's?
Moving forward, I will be incorporating in our nonfiction unit a section where students can celebrate their cultures and the countries that they are from. Many times I ask my students what countries they are from and they can't answer the question. I'll try to give them examples and they are still not able to answer it. I'm not just talking about the ELL's but most of my students.
I'm also going to have students use a large paper map and locate where their families are from. I usually talk about the world as a whole, but now I'll make it more personal by showing them where they're from and/or where their families still live.

Donna Cifarelli

6/30/2020 10:39:04 pm

Tina, I think that integrating our students' cultures and their family's native countries into our nonfiction unit is an awesome idea. It will be very beneficial for all of the children to explore and share about their own backgrounds to learn more about themselves and others.

Amy Sulich

6/26/2020 07:21:21 pm

In my experience with COVID, many families were not prepared for the intense undertaking of this task, especially when it came to access to devices. Our district sent out a survey to better support all families and offer devices. Many did not reply or answer honestly. My question is: How do we gain the trust of families who do not share their current need of a situation? Where and how can we build that trust? My experience has led to too many occasions that there is a need, but often it is not used when offered.

Tina Pflieger

6/26/2020 08:06:53 pm

With everything happening in the world with racial injustice, I started thinking about the books that I read to my students and who are the main characters and what are the problems they are facing in these books. Do my students makes connections with them? Also, I started thinking about the cultures/holidays we do celebrate...what others can we incorporate without it being religious to celebrate all cultures.
Lastly, another question...shouldn't our ELL teacher be explaining the ACCESS test to teachers? After watching video #5, it's my first time understanding the test. I have never seen the results for any of my students. I SHOULD know what my ELL students can do and what areas they are needing assistance.

Tracy

6/29/2020 12:57:46 pm

I agree with Danielle and Amy, as we are all kindergarten teachers. I always try to incorporate the four modalities in my planned activities. Children have different learning styles, and by presenting material in different ways it helps the students to understand the concepts better. During lessons I make sure to verbalize, demonstrate, display a visual, and a have a kinesthetic component.

Students are also asked to repeat directions to one another, or to the group. This allows for a better understanding of my expectations for the lesson.

One thing that I need to do more of is recognizing and learning about the different cultures in my classroom. This is an area that I need to work on.

The videos an articles were very informative and gave me a better understanding of ELLs in my classroom. I learned a lot by watching videos and reading the articles.

I look forward to our Zoom class tomorrow. Thank you for everything. There is so much information that I can take back to my classroom and implement next year.

Lisa Bencivenga

6/29/2020 04:31:39 pm

I used to do a multicultural day with my students when I taught fifth grade. This is back when you were allowed to have food in the classroom. The parents would bring in food from their cultural background and the students were so excited to share. I can still do this, without the food part. They also dressed up and wrote reports about the country they were born in (or their parents). I will make sure to incorporate that in second grade this year.

Donna Cifarelli

6/30/2020 09:38:44 pm

Lisa, I love the idea of having the children come to school dressed for the day to represent their culture. They can explain the meaning of the clothing to their classmates. For example, maybe their clothing is worn during a special cultural dance or on a certain cultural holiday.

Jill Martinelli

6/29/2020 10:24:41 pm

I think my biggest takeaways from these videos are to access my students' Access test scores and the student profile sheets. The other videos put labels to things that I feel I already do to some extent, but also provided me insight as how to react to different students based on levels and underlying factors I may not have taken into consideration. Since I teach special Education, I have to fill out a PLAAFP on each student yearly. I can enhance them by including information that would also be found in the student profile sheet that could be helpful to the teacher the following year. I feel this information was especially necessary for me as a Sp. Ed. teacher since often when students are classified, they are sometimes released from the ELL program. In our district we have so many different cultures that I think the profile sheet could be a working document that is passed along year to year to the student's teacher. With so many ELL students and different backgrounds, this could save the teacher time and help them to start the year running.

Michael Yim

6/30/2020 11:29:17 am

I've always tried my best to use KYS in the classroom. It's not just doing your research on their scores and data, but its usually developing a great rapport with parents and the students.

As an upper elementary teacher, last year was the first time I had an ELL student. It can be incredibly unfortunate when you receive students in later grade levels and see a major gap between the expectations and where they are at a learner at the beginning of the year. I really had to seek advice from other reading specialists and do some research periodically during the year.

I really was able to relate to a lot of the concepts mentioned in the BICS and CALP video. The student I had last year definitely had the BICS developed, but his CALP skills of using contextual clues to determine meaning was just not developed. In that case, I found myself using doodling and TPF, especially when teaching math. My ELL student knew the computation, but most of the math curriculum had terms that he was not familiar with him. Repeating the term didn't do much good, so providing pictures and using TPF were decent ways to build his understanding of particular concepts.

Nicoette Martin

6/29/2020 11:00:50 pm

I found these videos to be very informative.Thank you!
I am quite curious to understand and I do believe Ellen posed a similar question. Why do we exit our students out of the ELL Program at an elementary level when it take students 5-7 years to fully develop the skills successfully?

Jill Martinelli

6/29/2020 11:02:19 pm

Final thought: One thing that I always knew, but was brought to light during virtual learning was how many of these students are truly on their own at home when it comes to their learning. Many parents cannot help their child because they have limited or no command of the English language. It was easier when we were physically in school to overlook this because we could catch them up the next day on things they didn't understand because we would have contact with them at school. Since we didn't necessarily "see" our students everyday, or some not at all, it was harder to keep them up to date. Some fell behind and despite constantly reaching out, there was only so much we could do.

Diane Petro

6/30/2020 12:42:03 pm

I just completed all the videos and readings. I feel that there was so much amazing useful information. I thoroughly enjoyed them all.
After reading everyone's comments, I am in agreement with my fellow teachers from everything to how we successfully teach all our students in kindergarten using different modalities to why are some of my students that really appear to need ELL not even in the program? (or exit out before they are ready to.)
I know that I will definitely take a look the results of the WIDA Access Test in Sept.
You have motivated me about implementing more sharing of individual cultures. This is something I used to do more extensively but over the years it has slipped away a bit. Just to share my most precious memory: I was teaching second grade and I had a student that arrived from Ghana a few months after the year began to live with her father that was already here. She had to leave her mother and sister behind. Talk about Culture Shock! Too long to go into details. I used her father to help teach all of us about Ghana. His occupation was a bee-keeper in Ghana and it was just amazing! This little girl felt so proud seeing how excited and interested her new classmates were. Of course like most of you, I have many other stories. But by making the families be a part of this cultural sharing brings so much learning and meaning. Yes, food is fun, but like Lisa said, the same can be accomplished without food.
My Question: Should I be giving my kindergarten students books to read in their native language? I tend to stick with English because I feel that's what I should be teaching, but maybe I'm wrong.
My mentor texts bring in other cultures. Some that mix two languages like Mama Provi and Abuela. But I am talking about leveled readers being in their native language or maybe mixing it up. Not sure?

Donna Cifarelli

6/30/2020 09:51:08 pm

Diane, I think inviting the children's families to come into the classroom to share about a cultural aspect is an amazing idea. I would love to incorporate this meaningful activity throughout the school year.

Donna Cifarelli

6/30/2020 11:32:00 pm

Thank you so much, Susana, for these extremely informative and helpful videos and articles. They truly deepened my understanding of my ELL students and their families. The reflection questions that you have provided at the end of each of the videos really give me more of a focus and direction of how I can better help and understand my ELLs. I have learned so much, and I am so motivated to incorporate new activities to learn about all of my students and their cultural backgrounds.
In the beginning of each school year, I read aloud the story "Chrysanthemum" by Kevin Henkes to my class. The kids really enjoy the story, and they learn an important lesson from it. As a class, we discuss the theme of respect and the children share all about their names, including how they received their name and what it means. This activity reminds me of "My Name, My Identity-What Is Your Name Story?" described in one of our readings.
During our school day, I incorporate many different modalities to reach diverse learners in my class, including turn and talk, use of individual white boards to write and show responses, use of TPR and visuals, providing students with sentence frames, step-by-step written and oral directions, and providing model or examples.
Moving forward, I will definitely be incorporating more cultural activities to help me and my students learn about each other's unique cultures, families, and traditions. I am going to plan to have my students create cultural posters like those amazing ones you shared in video #2. I also love the English Learner Student Profile Sheet that you shared in video #8. I will definitely be creating this valuable resource to gather background about my ELL students and help me to better understand them. I also plan to collaborate more often with our ESL teacher.
My biggest take away from this informative video series is that as an educator, I will continue to best support my ELL students as they learn grade-level content while promoting their English language development in a comfortable, respectful learning environment. I will continue to implement what I am already doing, and in addition, I am excited to incorporate the new information that I have learned from this great class.

English Language Learners Make Schools Stronger

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