Top Ten Ways for ELLs to Beat Summer Backslide

Holly Niemi shares how she beats the summer backslide.

The downside of summer vacation is backslide.  Summer learning loss is an issue for many learners, especially English language learners. A variety of summer programs may focus on remediation, acceleration or enrichment, all of which will help ELLs maintain and improve the language domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

ESL Summer School may meet the language learning needs of ELLs with localized instruction. ESL Grants and Title III monies may help schools fund ELLs with this opportunity.

Summer Activity Camps may be offered through local boys & girls clubs or religious organizations. These camps may provide ELLs the opportunity to learn an instrument, play sports, or visit local attractions, all while interacting with native speakers. Depending on the organization, many of these camps provide financial assistance or reduced for those who qualify.

Job Shadow programs are offered by some businesses, Junior Achievement Program and county programs. This may help secondary ELLs maintain their language proficiency, while venturing into the business world and learning about potential future careers.

Summer Academic Camps may be offered through local colleges and universities. These camps focus on math, science and language arts. Often times, they are organized through the institute of higher learning’s teacher training programs.

Library Youth Programs offer a variety of weekly programs for ELLs, ranging from story time to crafts and games.

Phone Number & E-mail Exchanges on the last day of school will provide ELLs with contact information for their classmates. This way they can call or write their peers and perhaps even plan a time to get tougher in person.

Summer Field Trips are a great way to maintain contact with ELLs. They have a chance to reconnect with the teacher, as well as classmates. This can even be an opportunity to engage parents and families.

Television Programs in English may help ELLs maintain their listening skills, as well as reading skills when the closed-caption is activated. Teachers could recommend a variety of shows with the channel and time for ELLs.

On-line ESL resources may help ELLs practice their listening, speaking, reading, and writing from a computer. Here is a link to 50 resources that may prove useful to ELLs over the summer.

ESL Class Websites will enable the ESL teacher with the ability to post various informative pieces and ELLs to connect with other ELLs over the summer.  Posts could include reading material, articles, as well as English practice website links, as well as local community events that may interest students.

We Still Love Lucy: Writing Workshop 2.0

In this post, Ashley Coblentz, Jackie Moreno, and Brian Digate take a closer look at stories that matter.

Context: We want our students to master digital age skills while staying true to the core principles of the writing workshop. So when thinking of how to do this, we kept Lucy Calkin’s philosophy at the heart of our writing block. Students still write “stories that matter” regardless of whether they are using pencils or keyboards. When students began using iPads during writing, we didn’t want to simply replicate what they were doing with paper and pencil; we wanted them to have experiences as writers that were not possible before. Take a look at these students conferencing if you remain unconvinced:

Have you seen high school students conference as well as these elementary students?

Outcomes: We still give students the option to write with paper, but the digitization of the writing process has created inspired writers in our classroom and has taken the writing process to new heights.  Students feel more motivation to write because they know that more readers will have access to their work now that they can share multiple copies digitally. They have more stamina and enthusiasm for writing than ever before.

Writing Workshop 2.0

Planning:

Instead of teachers giving students printed graphic organizers, where they have to fit their ideas into our structure, students use Popplet to create their own graphic organizers, customizing them in a way that allows them to take ownership of craft and structure.

Drafting: After planning using Popplet students draft their piece in Pages or another word processing app.

Conferencing, Revising and Editing: Before it was difficult to know what students were discussing during peer writing conferences unless we were right next to the kids. Now students are able to record their thoughts about potential revisions and edits in the app Educreations, using a CCSS-based rubric and sending conference links to teachers and each other. We have noticed a dramatic increase in use of academic language and focus during this part of the writing block. One of the most powerful outcomes is how much having access to videos of students talking about their writing has improved our formative assessment practices, which in turn, has greatly improved the instruction we offer our students.

Publishing: Students love when it’s their turn to share a published story. Students used to only be able to publish only one copy of each of their stories, and it was typically read by only a few students who got their hands on it. Now students can send their work to their classmates’ iBooks libraries, and every single student in the class and beyond can have a copy of that story, accessible at any time, on their personal bookshelves.

How to Upgrade the Writing Workshop:

1. Plan with a graphic organizer app (Our favorites are Popplet and

   Idea Sketch).

2. Write rough draft in a word processing app (Pages or Google

   Docs).

3. Open writing rubric in Educreations to conference with a peer.

4. Have a writing conference-annotate draft.

5. Make revisions & edit in a word processing app (Pages for us).

6. Send to iBooks via email.

Holly Niemi Shares How Her Students Are Stars...Video Stars

Let Video Star kick start you into the last marking period of the 2013-2014 school year.  This app is a free and easy way to enhance any lesson.

I’ve included two different videos* as examples of Video Star’s capabilities.  The one video shows a montage of various ESL classes’ Video Star projects and the other video is one completed Video Star project in its entirety, both created by Levels 1 and 2 ELLs.  Video Star is a great way to present material visually to music.  I have used it as a culminating extension project to complement the end of the unit assessments to Edge Fundamentals.  The objective of the video project was to give students the opportunity to respond orally and in writing to the unit’s essential question.

Here is an overview of my experience using Video Star.  First, each class nominated songs that supported the unit’s theme.  For example, one unit’s essential question was entitled “What does it take to survive?”

Students suggested songs like Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Queen’s “We Are the Champions.”  After reviewing audio clips of the nominated songs, each class voted to choose which song would accompany their video.  Next, I printed the lyrics to the song for us to analyze together in class.  Then, students brainstormed how we would visually interpret and conceptualize these lyrics into a music video that was connected to the multiple texts we read throughout the unit.  After that, we organized and plotted all the ideas on the whiteboard to create a loose script to follow and the students signed up for various video performance roles.

The next day, it was time to shoot the videos as a class with my iPad.  Some students were so excited with this new app, they created their own videos with their iPhones. With the lyrics on the Promethean board, we shot each clip verse by verse and scene by scene until the song was complete. The next day, each class participated in a video share and watched all the Video Star videos.  While watching the videos, they had the task of answering the unit’s essential question in writing that we later discussed in a Socratic seminar.

In addition to supporting the curriculum and integrating technology, this lesson was both rejuvenating and motivating.  I found the benefits of Video Star to support the common core insofar as analyzing and interpreting meaning across genres, connecting meaning to multiple texts, as well as responding to the essential question, collaborating with others, and integrating new technology.

Day 1 (5 minutes): Students nominate songs that support the unit’s theme.
Day 2 (45 minutes): Students vote on which song will be used in the Video Star production.
Students analyze the meaning of the song lyrics and look for connections to the unit’s texts and essential question.
Students brainstorm video sequence ideas.
Students sign up for video performance roles.
Day 3 (45 minutes): Shoot the video.
Day 4 (45 minutes): Students share Video Star videos in class, respond to the essential question, and discuss their answers in a Socratic seminar.

*It is important to note that I have pixilated, darkened, and blurred the videos on purpose in order to mask the identity of students.

WIDA offers this blog post as a resource for educators.  It is not intended as an endorsement or recommendation.

Do You Have a Favorite Lesson to Share?

Hey, ELL Teachers! 

Win an Amazon gift certificate to purchase books or supplies for your classroom! WIDA announces the return of the Lesson Plan Share Space Contest.

The Lesson Plan Share Space is a community space where you can upload lesson plans or search for other example lessons to support your ELL students in language and content learning.

A few recent contest submissions include, "Inferring Feelings using the book The War With Grandpa" for 4th graders,  "Vincent Van Gogh: His Life and Artistic Principles in his Work," for grades 9-12, "Migration Stories" for grades 3-8, and "The Progressive Era," for the 6th grade classroom.

Upload a lesson plan and be entered into a weekly drawing to win a $25 Amazon gift card. A winner will be drawn each Friday and a final drawing for a $100 gift card will occur on December 6.

The Lesson Plan Share Space is located in the Get Involved! section of the WIDA website (www.wida.us/lessons).

Enter now, enter often! 

Resources and Reflections on Migrant Education Programs

 

 
"Our migrant children ...

they are our only hope ...
Like seedlings, they have been sown in your school.
It is our wish they blossom into harvests of hope."
-Author unknown

 
Source: Illinois Migrant Education Program brochure


This time of year most teachers are packing up their classrooms and beginning their summer vacations. But a number of educators around the country are unpacking boxes, setting up their summer programs, and welcoming new children into their classrooms right now. But these are no ordinary summer school programs. The teachers I am talking about are those working in migrant education programs. 

Each year thousands of children and their families move in order to work in the agricultural or fishing industries. Collectively, these families are considered migrant agricultural workers.  For many migrant children, their life experiences are impacted by substandard housing, poor nutrition, low wages and seasonal work. Repeatedly moving in order to find employment can impact students' academic achievement. Therefore, the goal of migrant education programs is to reduce the impact of these issues on the children's education. Illinois alone identified over 1,700 children through its Migrant Education Program during the 2011-2012 school year.

What is WISACALD?

The first time I heard the name WISACALD, I couldn’t help but smile.  I thought to myself, “What’s a WISACALD?” Reading my mind, Amy Christianson explained.  Amy is the OELA Grant Program Coordinator and my go-to person for questions about WISACALD.  I must say, I was immediately impressed by this innovative approach to reaching out and connecting educators of ELLs.  For those of you in Wisconsin, what a treat you have! For those of you outside Wisconsin, WISACALD might spark an idea for your state or region. 

So back to the question…what’s WISACALD?  And the answer is…

Working at WIDA

With so many exciting projects in the works at WIDA, it comes as no surprise that they are in need of a few new team members.   If you are passionate about educating English language learners through high quality standards, assessments, research and professional development for educators, then take a few moments to review the current job openings.  If one (or more) strikes your fancy, then review the

Interested in presenting at the WIDA conference?

The word is out!

WIDA announced last week that they will be holding a national conference from October 17 to October 19, 2013. I am so excited about so many aspects of this conference. It will be in Milwaukee, my second favorite city on Lake Michigan.  The conference will be open to all educators, regardless of their membership in the WIDA Consortium.  The conference theme is Language Learner Success: Building on Strengths.  I can’t wait to see what the sessions will be about! Speaking of which, guess who might be presenting at the conference? 

First Look at the Early Language Development Standards

Have you heard?  WIDA is creating Early Language Development Standards for children who are 2.5 - 5.5 years old.  On November 29, 2012, practitioners from several states gathered in a Chicago suburb to preview these new standards.   Similar to the K-12 English Language Development Standards, the Early Language Standards will contain the following components:

•    Six Early Language Development Standards
•    Two language domains (receptive and productive)
•    Three early language development levels in English
•    Three age groups
•    Two features of developmentally appropriate academic language
•    Performance definitions that define each level in each age group
•    Model Performance Indicators (MPIs)

Early in the day each table was asked to create a visual that would represent the relationship between the various components.  Here are two examples:

The Puma table visualized a tree with two trunks.  One trunk represents the receptive language

Check Out the 2012 WIDA Video Contest Winners

Several months ago I told you about the WIDA video contest and encouraged you to submit a video. Over sixty of you grabbed your video cameras and answered the call.   

Everyone who entered will be receiving a copy of the 2012 edition of the English language development standards.  The top four entries (which included a tie) will receive cash prizes and a scholarship for the awardee and a colleague to attend a 2012 WIDA Professional Development Academy. 

Watch all of the winning videos here.

This year’s winners are:

Tips on Creating Content Area Word Walls

Do you have a word wall in your classroom?  Is it dedicated to high frequency words?  What about content area words and phrases?  What challenges have you had with supporting your students’ language growth visually in your room? 

When I was teaching, I struggled with the best way to use the wall space in my classroom. I had a “traditional” word wall on the back wall which held many of the high frequency words in English in alphabetical order. Other walls were dedicated to various content areas or particular projects we were working on in class.  My bulletin boards held student work samples and information about upcoming events.  While the various content area posters and visual aids were helpful for students, I always felt like I was missing something.  It wasn’t until I started providing professional development full time that I stumbled across the idea of a content area word wall.  Today I’ll share with you some of my favorite tips, tricks and links for word walls dedicated to learning the language of the content areas.

Using the CAN DO Descriptors in Grades 3-5

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This month, teachers have been sharing ways that they differentiate classroom instruction and assessments for their ELLs.  In each post, they have highlighted the levels of a particular student and listed a corresponding CAN DO Descriptor before sharing their instructional and assessment ideas.  So far we have heard from preschool and high school teachers who work in ESL, bilingual and mainstream content area settings. As the school year winds down, consider how you can use these blog posts as a way to start conversations among teachers who teach the same group of ELLs.  How do we pass on what we know about our students’ strengths to next year’s teachers?  How can the CAN DO Descriptors help us contextualize our students' ACCESS for ELLs scores?   

For more information on the CAN DO Descriptors for PreK-12^th grade, click here.

This week we wrap up our series with some ideas from Soledad Rios.  Sol is a dual language teacher who works with students at various grade levels.  Here are some of her ideas for providing instruction in English that are matched to what each student can do at their level in each language domain. 

Using the CAN DO Descriptors in PreK Classrooms

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The WIDA CAN DO Descriptors are a wonderful tool for understanding what our students can do and express in English.  This week Martha Weisman and Hertha Ramirez share their ideas on how to use the PreK-K CAN DO Descriptors to plan instruction for two of their preschoolers.

Using the CAN DO Descriptors in a High School Math Class

Image: Grant Cochrane / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

WIDA’s CAN DO Descriptors are one of my all-time favorite documents to share – especially with mainstream teachers.   They are a wonderful resource for understanding the language acquisition process and brainstorming ideas for differentiating classroom instruction and assessment.  Some of you know that I teach a graduate course on assessment of ELLs.  Recently I asked my students (in-service teachers pursuing their ESL or bilingual endorsements in Illinois) to choose one ELL that they currently teach.  Then I asked them to list the CAN DO Descriptors that correlate to that student’s current English language proficiency (ELP) level.  Lastly, I asked them to list ways they could differentiate their instruction and classroom assessments to better align with that student’s level of ELP. 

Get those videos in by April 15, 2012!

Image: Ambro / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What would you do with $1,000 or $500 or even $250 in prize money?    Which WIDA Professional Development Academy would you go to -if it were free?  If you win, you could be faced with those very questions.  All you have to do is submit your entry for the WIDA video contest.  

WIDA is looking for short videos (5-10 minutes) of instruction or assessment of ELLs.  I wrote about a possible approach to this contest in a recent post.  The best news is that the deadline has been extended to April 15, 2012.  Now you can wait until your spring break to put the finishing touches on that video before you mail it.  Click here for more details.

If you have additional questions about the video contest, please e-mail Connie North (cenorth@wisc.edu).

Happy filming!

Written by: Tammy King

“Off To Class” Book Review

Recently a colleague introduced me to a beautiful book called Off to Class: Incredible and Unusual Schools Around the World written by Susan Hughes.  The book was written for children between the ages of 9-13.  But because of the splendid layout, the intriguing scenarios and gorgeous photographs, this book would be interesting to much older students (and adults).  It certainly kept my attention!

The content of the book is not light and fluffy.  The author, Susan Hughes, begins by stating that the United Nations considers education to be a basic human right.

Favorite Lessons

Image: farconville / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Since so many of the WIDA states are in the midst of testing right now, I wanted to provide you with a little break and share a lesson I was reminded of recently.

As you know, last week was Groundhog Day. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow, so six more weeks of winter are on their way.   What a strange and uniquely American day! As I heard the reports of our favorite national rodent seeing his shadow, I was reminded of my days as an ESL/ bilingual teacher.  I was teaching in a suburban district in a building where the overwhelming majority of the students spoke a language other than English at home.  Collectively, our students spoke over fifty different primary languages.  Most of our students were born and raised in the United States.  But every year we had some students in fourth, fifth and sixth grade who were new to the country.  Every

Become a Certified WIDA trainer

 2011 Certification Institute Participants and WIDA Staff

It’s hard to believe that it has been almost two years since I became a certified trainer for WIDA.  (Though, my family would be happy to tell you that I am also certifiable nuts!)  For me, the journey

Video Contest for Educators of ELLs

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I am excited to let you know about a video contest that WIDA is sponsoring for teachers of ELLs. Not only are there some great prizes for participants, but you also have the chance to showcase the wonderful activities and assessments that you use with your ELLs.   The contest is open to all

An Evening With…Dr. Yong Zhao

Every year I am eager to see the “Evening with…” dinner and speaker at the Illinois bilingual conference.  This year we were honored to have Dr. Yong Zhao as our guest speaker. If you have not heard of Dr. Zhao, check out his website or one of his many publications.     

 Photo courtesy of Nicole Conroy

Not only was Dr. Zhao’s presentation insightful, he struck the perfect balance between serious and funny.  As someone who does professional development for a living, I know how difficult that can be. 

Dr. Zhao began his talk by asking the audience – what kind of education do you want to buy for your children?  He provoked us to really think about what is most important when educating our children.  Do we want children who do well on tests or students who show creativity?  In a moment of both humor and complete seriousness, Dr. Zhao mentioned