ELL and MyEd Refresher

Bring your questions and queries to in-person meetings to work on using MyEd with ELL.

Location: Room 8, Canada Way Education Centre

Time: 3:30-5:00pm

Dates:            September 20, 2022 (This meeting will be located in Portable 26 at Brentwood Park Elementary)

November 17, 2022

January 12, 2023

February 16^, 2023

March 28, 2023

May 16, 2023

Sign up here: https://forms.office.com/r/59M8nV25BU

ELL Bookclub: 101 Strategies to Make Academic Vocabulary Stick by Marliee Sprenger

Practical ideas that you can incorporate immediately into your practice. Open for K-12 teachers of all subjects.

Location: Room 8, Canada Way Education Centre

Time: 3:30-5:00pm

Dates:            October 18, 2022

December 13, 2022

February 7, 2023

April 4, 2023

Sign up here: https://forms.office.com/r/2pdv5HzbTf

Equity for ELLs

In our second year, we have set a goal to improve parent engagement of ELLs in our schools, communities, and district.

New members will receive a copy of Culturally Responsive Teaching for MLLs by Snyder and Fenner. Open to K-12 teachers of all subjects.

Location: Online TEAMS Meeting

Time: 3:30-5:00pm

Dates:            October 4, 2022

December 6, 2022

February 1, 2023

May 9, 2023

Sign up here: https://forms.office.com/r/pmTth6ye0k

Reminders

April 11, 2022 at 3:15-Equity for ELLs-See TEAMS Invite

April 12, 2022 at 3:15-SIOP Lead Meeting-See TEAMS invite.

May 5, 2022 at 1pm-ELL Elementary Meeting-See email

Ideas

Tas and the Gilmore school community are exploring books around Ramadan.  One book is Love Ramadan We are doing the books about Hassan and Aneesa,

Here’s a Youtube link for the first book “Love Ramadan” by Yasmeen Rahim and illustrated by Omar Burgess (Read aloud: https://youtu.be/lDby8qaOPJU  The story’s main characters Hassan and Aneesa, siblings learn about Ramadan.  The book is a good step to discussing acts of kindness students can do.  Some teachers are also doing Ramadan Art (lanterns or Islamic shapes).

The next lesson  they will do is “Hassan and Aneesa Celebrate Eid.”  (Read aloud: https://youtu.be/Y1txbejRA7Q)

Bite Sized Pro-D

Tan Huyhn recently wrote an article Changing the Narrative around Immigrant Families for the Middleweb blog. He talks about his own mom and how she might be perceived by educators. However, they would be wrong.  Take five minutes to read this article challenging the stereotypes that still persist of our parental communities.

Resources:

The Vancouver Island Counselling Centre for Immigrants and Refugees (VICCIR) goal is to provide mental health counselling to immigrants and refugees. They offer their services on a sliding fee scale and have trained interpreters as required. Since the pandemic, they have moved to almost entirely online and offer support through out BC. Check out their website here: https://www.viccir.org/

Reminders

Equity for ELLs-on TEAMS on February 28, 2002 at 3:15pm

MyEd AIP Mentor Training at DRLC on March 1, 12:30pm

Picture Book Inquiry Group-on Teams on March 1, 2022 at 3:15pm

MyED Training Sessions on March 7-10 9-11:30am. Please see TEAMS for details and links.

Student Spotlight

Batu San (12) and Raha Fani Pakel (11) were studying the novel Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman in the Expanding English Strategies class at Burnaby North Secondary. On their final project, their teacher, Ms. Stokes, asked them to reflect on their learning from the book. Batu identified how the author uses indirect characterization effectively and Raha made connections between herself and the situations the characters are in. Both demonstrated powerful critical thinking skills!

Seedfolks is available as a 20 copy set from the DRLC.

Teaching Ideas

Did you know that BookCreator is an app from Microsoft Office O365? BookCreator is an excellent tool for digital storytelling. You can choose templates like picture book or comic book. You can write texts of all lengths and languages. You can also add images for engagement and visual supports and even record someone reading the book for audio support. You can find this amazing program under your apps on Office 0365.

Resources

Linda Peteherych, LINC instructor and Literacy Lead, created this beautiful poster for helping MLLs with letter-sounds. A black and white version as well as different sizes are available on Teams as PDFs. Thank you Linda for sharing with our community!

A Taste of SIOP

Vocabulary Development:

When planning your own lessons or supporting a colleague, consider focusing on only 3-5 Tier 3 vocabulary words at one time. Choose the words that have the most impact on the topic. By focusing on only a few at a time, it allows students to deepen their understanding of the words and makes it more likely that they will retain the words.

Some strategies that can help with this include the use of images or diagrams, providing non-examples and using the word across multiple contexts.

Reminders

December 2-BAA Work Group-English Strategies for Social Studies

December 9-Elementary ELL in-service Meeting

December 9-Equity for ELLs Meeting #3

ELL ideas

Animated Shorts are a great activity for students because they tell a story that is accessible to most learners. I’ve used them to teach K-12 and students always find them engaging. Some of the activities you could do is a story map, act out, tableau, or summary. AI’ve created a playlist on YouTube. Some of my favorites are Hair Love, Feast, and One Small Step. Email Michelle if you would like a set of graphic organizers to go along with some of the videos. The playlist can be found here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYtxV-SNUxZA7W_EjT3NDoU4TQJ88lr5h 

Another great idea comes from Sachiko Omoto at Inman Elementary. JAL Foundation is running the 17th World Children’s Haiku Contest. Poetry can be a great way to teach syllables, imagery without as much concern for grammatical structures. Deadlines for submissions is in February 2022. Information is at: http://www.jal-foundation.or.jp/en/haiku/contest2022/

Student Spotlight

Last year at Brentwood Park Elementary, ELL teacher Tas Ismail was using some of the lessons we created for the students studying from home (ELL Teams). She brainstormed wit h her students different holidays and they noticed that there weren’t books in their library for all the holidays they celebrated. The students asked Tas if they could make their own. Students were given the option to write in English or their heritage language and some students did both with help from their families. Student books are a great way to validate student voice, identity, and language as well as engaging for new writers.

Taste of SIOP

Providing Age Appropriate and Educational Background for Students

While ELL students may not have the academic language to complete grade appropriate work, they often do have the academic knowledge in their home language. Students with interrupted schooling often have life experience that may give them background knowledge of content way beyond their years. Therefore, while we need to adapt the English language, we don’t change the content of the learning. Assignments where all students can access higher order thinking, despite English level is necessary.

When planning consider:

·         Student’s first language literacy skills

·         Student’s second language literacy proficiency

·         Student’s reading level

·         Cultural and age appropriateness of the information

·         Reading level of the content material

Then, you can make adaptations such as:

·         Mini-lessons to provide background knowledge that is missing

·         Texts adapted to teach high level content at low readability levels

·         Mini-lessons to teach important vocabulary

·         heritage language texts

Reminders:

File Reviews-please check when your school’s is scheduled

Equity for ELLs #2: November 18th

Reading Recommendations:

Thank you to Danielle Stokes at Burnaby North for sharing this article about the necessity of having students actively use the vocabulary they are learning. It is great for sharing out with colleagues as well: https://seidlitzblog.org/2021/11/05/active-and-passive-vocabulary-what-can-teachers-do/

ELL Ideas

Do you have a die? Then you have all the tools for a fun, engaging review activity for a whole class or a small group. On the board, write 1-6 and then next to it, whatever concept you are reviewing.

Academic Vocabulary Relating to Math?

1-add

2-sum

3-divide

4. multiply

5-subtract

6-Pass to another student

Question forms?

1-Who

2-What

3-When

4-Where

5-Is/Are

6-Do/Does

Natural Disaster?

1-earthquakes

2-tornadoes

3-hurricanes

4-forest fires

5-tsunamis

6-student choice

There is no end to the alterations you can do. You can have students in groups, partners, or solo. They can speak, or read or write.

SIOP Tips

Another great way for all teachers to support students is to write content AND language objectives and read them together every class. They can be written for units, or individual lessons  and are an effective way to utilize the Tier II vocabulary we talked about last week. They also give students a clear idea of the purpose and goal of their learning.

After teachers decide what they are going to teach, they can consider just two questions:

“1. What language will students need to know and use to accomplish this content objectives?

2.  How can I move my students’ English language knowledge forward in this lesson?” (Echevarría, Jana, et al. Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners : The SIOP Model. Boston, Pearson, 2017.)

Teachers can consider academic vocabulary, language skills and functions, language structures or grammar, or language learning strategies.

Then, post it somewhere visible to all students: We will (content objective) by (language objective).

Examples:

We will identify the character’s personality by retelling the actions she takes in the story. 

We will determine characteristics of different igneous and sedimentary rocks by writing comparative sentences.

We will identify specific landforms on a map of Canada by presenting an oral report about one landform and its influence on economic development. 

https://www.shelteredlanguageresources.com/blog/language-objectives

Reminders

File Reviews: Please check your emails to confirm the date and time of your file review. If you haven’t signed up, please email Michelle.

November 2 at 3:15pm (TEAMS)- Picture Book Inquiry Group-Bring your ideas on how to start with your two selections to share.

November 4 at 9am (Welcome Centre) BAA Social Studies Work Group

November 9th at 3:15pm (TEAMS) SIOP Leads Meeting

Reading Recommendation

A recent article in the online magazine “The Conversation” discussed the benefits of using mixed languages. These are languages that are a combination of a language and English that have become more prevalent in the modern world. An interesting, quick read if you are looking for evidence to support multi-lingualism in the classroom:

Why Mixing Languages Can Improve Academic Performance

ELL Ideas

Did you see the Google Doodle last week about Kanō Jigorō’s 161st Birthday. You may ask who that is and the answer is the founder of judo. Google provided a manga style storyboard that would work well for a variety of activities. One idea is to use PWIM model to build vocabulary or assign groups a picture and have a group work together to tell the story using transitional phrases. Some extensions could be to research other historical founders and create their storyboards.   The link for the Doodle is here: https://g.co/doodle/b5fqpfy

A Taste of SIOP

Consider sharing this poster with your school at the next staff meeting.  Often, when we talk about academic language, people assume we are describing Tier 3 words, but Tier 2 language are words students need for ALL subjects. Encourage everyone to focus on teaching the Tier 2 vocabulary students will need to be successful at the current unit.  A list of examples of academic words by grade level can be found on the blog here: http://blogs.sd41.bc.ca/ell/files/2017/12/Tier-2-vocab-K-12.pdf

Provincial Pro-D Day on October 22, 2021

We are super excited for Friday. We will  attending the BCTESOL conference with keynotes Sydney Snyder and Diane Staehr Fenner, authors of Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity. We can’t wait to hear from the authors of this year’s bookclub book. Want to do a deeper dive? Remember to email Michelle to join Equity for ELLs which will use this book to guide our inquiry into equity issues in our district.

Reminders

October-December: File Reviews (Email Michelle to set appointment times)

October 28th 3pm: Equity for ELLs

November 2nd 3pm: Picture Book Inquiry Group

November 4th 8:45 am: Secondary BAA course development work group

Congratulations Kiran!!!

Fanny and I want to send a big thank you and congratulations to Kiran  as she prepares for Zahra’s little sister’s arrival. We never would have survived September start up without her leadership, organization, and humour. Thank you for everything you do! 

Equity for ELLs

 This professional development opportunity is to focus on advocacy issues in Burnaby regarding our multi-lingual learners and explore steps we can take to address them while using the book Cultural Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners: Tools for Equity by Sydney Snyder and Diane Staehr Fenner. Both authors are the keynote speakers for October 22, BCTESOL Provincial Specialist Pro-D day. This group is open to K-12 teachers. It will take place online in 8 sessions (Monthly October-May)  after school in a time to be determined by the group. A copy of the book will be given to each participant. To sign up, please email Michelle.Van-Balkom@burnabyschools.ca

Picture Book Inquiry Project

Picture Books can be a way to access difficult to tackle conversations. This group will meet four times this school year to explore several books around inclusivity and positive self-image. Participants (K-12 teachers)  will explore six picture books and share ideas on how to use them in both an elementary and secondary setting. Members will receive a copy of each book for their schools. To sign up, please email Michelle.Van-Balkom@burnabyschools.ca

Books:

Eyes that Kiss in the Corners by Joanna Ho/ Illustrated by Dung Ho

Your Name is a Song by Jamilah Thompkins Bigelow/ Illustrated by Luisa Uribe

The Little Girl by H.P. Fraser/ Illustrated by Akemi

The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi

Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry/ Illustrated by Vashti Harrison

You Are Enough by Margaret O’Hair/ Illustrated by Sofia Cardoso

ELL Elementary Meeting

Tuesday, October 12, 2021-1pm on Teams: Join us for our first Elementary ELL meeting of the year. The link for this virtual get-together will be posted on the ELL teams and by email. Please share with your ELL colleagues. 

SIOP Leads Meeting

Tuesday, October 12, 2021-3:15pm on Teams. The link will be shared on the SIOP team and by email. 

BCTESOL PSA Day

Registration is still ongoing for October 22, 2021 PSA day. As mentioned above, the keynote speakers are the authors of our Equity for ELL book. Register here: https://bctesol.ca/conferences/

Registration is now live for the October 22nd BC TESOL Conference. Keynote speakers are the authors of the fantastic book Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilinguals: Tools for Equity. Find more information here: https://bctesol.ca/conferences/

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Good morning!

Tan Huynh – Webinar today!

https://www.englishlearnerportal.com/huynhfall2021

Register and receive a copy of the recording even if you cannot attend!

Resources

Looking for resources on names? Check out this link with books that would be great to start off your school year: https://www.weareteachers.com/books-about-names

Don’t forget, the DLRC also has some new resources on names, identity and body acceptance in the ELL section.

Forms Link

Don’t forget to complete the Forms link that was sent in our ELL Welcome email! We want to make sure we have an accurate email list for the year.

BC TESOL Conference

The BC TESOL PSA conference is being held on October 22, 2021. The keynote speakers are Drs. Sydney Snyder and Diane Staehr Fenner, authors of Culturally Responsive Teaching for Multilingual Learners. Their book will be our book club selection for the year as we look to delve further into equity and anti-racism for our learners. More information can be found: https://bctesol.ca/conferences/. Registration is not yet live but should be up and running soon!

New Teacher Workshops

Looking for an intro or refresher for teaching ELL? Check out these digital workshops where we will go over all things ELL from audit compliance to best practices in teaching ELL. Please note, TTOC coverage will not be provided to attend.

Tuesday, Sept 14, 9:00 – 11:00: AIP Files and Audit Compliance

Wednesday, Sept 15, 1:00 – 3:00: Best Practices in Teaching ELL Elementary

Monday, Sept 20, 9:00 – 11:00: Best Practices in Teaching ELL Elementary

Thursday, Sept 23, 1:00 – 3:00: AIP Files and Audit Compliance

Thursday, Sept 23, 3:15 – 5:00: Best Practices in Teaching ELL Secondary

Zoom link for ALL sessions: https://ca01web.zoom.us/j/6724521999

Have a great week!