Welcome back! We hope you had a restful and rejuvenating spring break!

In The Community

The Burnaby Public Library and Literacy Now Burnaby are running two excellent workshops for families on multilingualism. Please check out the information below and share with the families in your school community!

Join Burnaby Public Library and Literacy Now Burnaby as we present the first two workshops in a series on multilingual literacy.

New Booking System!

Please let your school staff know there is a new booking system for the Welcome Centre. It is online and for new to Burnaby students who know languages other than English. More information can be found at http://www.burnabyschools.ca/ell

Year-End Assessments

Elementary teachers – if you haven’t already, please complete the “Form” from Fanny to request your year-end testing materials.

Secondary teachers- all documents have been uploaded to our shared Teams folder. Please get in touch with Kiran if you wish to use the BERA.

Thank you

A huge thank you to Michelle (and Fanny!) for the amazing work she did as the ELL Program Consultant this past year. I am so grateful for her adaptability and familiarity with technology to help support Burnaby ELL through all of the many Covid changes.

Today is my first day back and I am very much looking forward to virtually connecting with you all and to be working alongside both Fanny and Michelle. Please feel free to reach out anytime: kiran.abraham@burnabyschools.ca

Thanks,

Kiran

Reminders

Secondary SIOP meeting: Thursday, March 11 at 3:15

New Booking System!

Please let your school staff know there is a new booking system for the Welcome Centre. It is online and for new to Burnaby students who know languages other than English. More information can be found at http://www.burnabyschools.ca/ell

The system is currently down as we add in new assessor availability, but we hope to have it back up and running this week.

Year-End Assessments

Elementary teachers – a form will be coming out soon for you to request your year-end testing kits from the Welcome Centre.

Every Teacher is a Language Teacher

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

Group Chat is a program for newcomer youth who want to meet other youth and practice speaking English. with the Burnaby Public Library. We will play games, connect, and discuss an interesting topic in a fun and friendly online group setting. Please email teenservices@bpl.bc.ca for the zoom link.  Next meeting: Saturday February 20^th at 3:00pm-4:00pm

Elementary ELL meeting: February 24, 2021 We will be discussing 2021 Spring Assessments. This meeting will be on zoom.

District Pro-D Day: February 26, 2021 In conjunction with Coquitlam, Burnaby has many choices for District Pro-D day. We are especially excited to have Dorina Sackman Ebuwa join us virtually from the Florida-Georgia Line with her Emotional InELLigence workshops. She is a dynamic educator passionate about transformative emotional intelligence from an ELL lens.

New Booking System!

Please let your school staff know there is a new booking system for the Welcome Centre. It is online and for new to Burnaby students who know languages other than English. More information can be found at http://www.burnabyschools.ca/ell

Every Teacher is a Language Teacher

Co-teaching with Co-Assessment

Several Burnaby teachers were fortunate to attend the second session with Tan on February 16th, 2021. As always, Tan’s enthusiasm and positivity were inspiring. He shared his newest blog post about co-assessment with content and language teachers. Check it out: https://www.empoweringells.com/co-assessment/

Thank you

In March, Kiran will be return from her mat leave. I know we are all going to welcome her back. I wanted to say thank you all for helping me as I stepped into her big shoes this past year (and what a year!). Everyone has been wonderfully supportive.

United National International Mother Language Day

February 21st is the UN’s International Mother Language Day. Consider how you can discuss, share and promote mother/home languages with your students. According to the UN, approximately 43% of the world’s 6000 languages
are endangered. The UN also notes that “languages are the most  powerful instruments of preserving and developing our tangible and intangible heritage.” We hope this leads to interesting and meaningful conversations with your
students.

https://www.un.org/en/observances/mother-language-day

Every Teacher is a Language Teacher

Sentence Frames

Having sentence frames for both oral and written answers is one way to provide content to all levels of language learners. They provide explicit modelling of academic language and can be leveled to provide access for all.

First, use sentences that have a language function such as sequencing, comparing and contrasting, or describing. Then write the sentences for various abilities on the board with the target vocabulary.

Example of contrasting sentence frames

Beginning: “Plants are living. Rocks are non-living.”  ______________ are living. _____________ are non-living. (simple sentences)

Expanding: “Plants are living, yet rock are non-living” _______________ are living, (but, yet, although) _____________ are non-living.” (compound sentence)

Bridging: “The main difference between plants and rocks is that plants are living organisms while rocks and nonliving substances.” The main difference between _____________________ and _______________ is that ____________________________ while _____________________________________________________.

Image from: Valentina Gonzalez https://elementaryenglishlanguagelearners.weebly.com/blog/sentence-stems-or-sentence-frames

Reminders

Teen Group Chat is a program for newcomer youth who want to meet other youth and practice speaking English. We will play games, connect, and discuss an interesting topic in a fun and friendly online group setting.  All English language learners are welcome. The next meeting is: January 23 at 3:00pm. Email teenservices@bpl.bc.ca for the video meeting (Zoom) link.

Elementary ELL Meeting-January 27th, 1:00pm Zoom– We will be discussing reporting and file reviews. Please send agenda suggestions to Michelle.

Every Teacher is a Language Teacher

Groupings in a Pandemic

Grouping students together in a variety of ways is a powerful tool in most teachers’ toolboxes. For ELL students, it increases their language opportunities tenfold.  However, it has become much more complicated since March 2020. How do you put students together when you need to keep them physically distant?

Pairs grouping are probably the easiest way to go. Students can still sit 6 feet apart and hear each other. However, having students use outside spaces for group work can also be possible, although more complicated with our wet winters.

While physical groupings are not always feasible, digital ones have become more readily available. Breakout rooms in Zoom or Teams offer virtual spaces for students to work together. Furthermore, Office 365 means that students can collaborate on multiple documents with groupings from in their class, school, or even district like never before.

Putting students together often allows for them to learn from each other and shifts the focus from teacher-centric conversations. This allows students to push each other for more more meaningful learning.

Reminders

January 11th, 3:30-5:00 ELL Book Club

January 18th, 3:30-5:00pm-Impactful Differentiation: We encourage teams of teachers from schools to work together to attend the sessions  (ELL support, LSS support and classroom teachers in both English and French Immersion) to develop strategies to diverse classrooms.

Schedule your file review meetings with Fanny and Michelle when you receive them back from the Welcome Centre.

Every Teacher is a Language Teacher

Instructional Conversations

Instructional Conversations is a technique to use student-centered conversations to provide more language opportunities for all students.

The teacher first introduces a topic or theme like space, for example, related to a reading. They relate it to students’ background knowledge. For instance, they could ask a question about what objects exist in space.

Then, the teacher will link it to students background knowledge. Using the previous example,  one could ask about movies they’ve seen set in space and what was real or not in the film.

Next, the teacher can preview the text and ask prediction questions. As the class moves into reading, the text can be chunked to create opportunities for maximum discussion by relating back to theme and the students’ background knowledge. The teacher also reinforces students supporting their comments with evidence from the text.

Combined with other scaffolds such as sentence stems and word walls, this approach can significantly increase students’ academic discourse.

There is no Monday Mash-up today. Just wanted to say

Reminders:

For the month of December Burnaby Public Library will be hosting their Group Chat program on two different days, Saturday and Tuesday, during the winter break!

Group Chat is a program for newcomer youth who want to meet other youth and practice speaking English. We will play games, connect, and discuss an interesting topic in a fun and friendly online group setting. Please email teenservices@bpl.bc.ca for Zoom links.

Saturday, December 19, 3 – 4:00pm
Tuesday, December 22, 3 – 4:00pm

Monday, January 11th, 2021-ELL Bookclub -Zoom

Friday, December 18th, 3:00pm: Winter Break (in case anyone forgot) Agenda: rest, respite, and recover.

Reminders:

For the month of December Burnaby Public Library will be hosting their Group Chat program on two different days, Saturday and Tuesday, during the winter break!

Group Chat is a program for newcomer youth who want to meet other youth and practice speaking English. We will play games, connect, and discuss an interesting topic in a fun and friendly online group setting. Please email teenservices@bpl.bc.ca for Zoom links.

Saturday, December 19, 3 – 4:00pm
Tuesday, December 22, 3 – 4:00pm

Every Teacher is A Language Teacher

Higher Order Thinking Skills

Teachers can improve student engagement by providing learning opportunities that promote higher order thinking skills at all language levels.

When creating questions/tasks with Bloom’s taxonomy, create sentence stems that can indicate task and appropriate academic language.

Move beyond just recall, by having students show the concept/skill, develop a plan or argument, and extend their thinking (design, synthesize, apply etc)

Higher Order Thinking Strategies

1. Digital story telling: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYtxV-SNUxZA7W_EjT3NDoU4TQJ88lr5h
2. SQP2RS: https://carla.umn.edu/cobaltt/modules/strategies/SQP2RS.pdf
3. GIST: https://www.s2temsc.org/uploads/1/8/8/7/18873120/gist_summaries_strategy.pdf

Reminders

Thursday, December 3, 2020, 3:30pm-SIOP Leads meeting on TEAMS

Every Teacher is a Language Teacher

Verbal Scaffolding

Teachers are always scaffolding learning for students to help them access and retain content material. For English learners there are some simple actions that teachers can use. This week, we will look at verbal scaffolding.

1. Paraphrasing-teach they key vocabulary but then simplify for ELs
2. Use “think alouds” to model the language needed for a task
3. Reinforce definitions because no one learns a word from hearing or seeing words once
4. Slow speech, increase pauses, and give wait time
5. Elicit more language from student answers