Originally sent 11/11/15
Thanks to Joi Hook at my RPDC, Jesse Deleon from SERPDC and Sarah Knoll from KCRPDC for your service to our country. I’m sure there are many more, but Jesse and Sarah are team MELL – my people. To all the veterans receiving this – Thank You. Thank you to Becky Smith at the NWRPDC as well.
This Friday November 13 at 6, Grupo Latinoamericano will be at the Library Center on Campbell. They will present authentic dances from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and South America. There will be live music from Brazil and Mexico and a cultural display of the Day of the Dead.
A quick look inside the LEA guide to ELP assessments shows that the window for test materials ordering will close on 11/13/15. This must be done through WIDA AMS. Please look through the guide for more information or contact Drew Linkon at DESE. There are several training modules opening up 11/14/15 on test session creation, managing students and materials receipt.
As you may know, one of the best ways to determine if an EL has a disability is to go through the RTI process. The most recent literature on this topic basically states that there is a problem and we need more research, which is not especially helpful. Here is an article about RTI and its impact on grades 1-3 reading students. Here is the DESE page on SPED and ELL.
I was lucky enough to get to see Nancy Frey speak last week in Columbia. She is out of San Diego and her school is made up almost entirely of ELs. Her strategies did not specifically address ELs, but they were embedded throughout her presentation. Fisher and Frey have a you tube channel. She showed the video on Grade 2 geometry and it was a very good example of language support and the use of sentence framing. She was very excited about the Literacy Design Collaborative and their (free) sample curricula. She also showed us a new (free) tool called the Reading maturity metric from Pearson. There website is acting weird today, but was working last week when she showed it to us and looked pretty interesting. Finally, she showed another (free) resource called Accountable Talk, which helps build academic language.
Diane Mora once again provided some great resources to the ELA group at DESE. This time she was discussing multicultural literature. She introduced us to the CCBC out of the University of Madison-Wisconsin. Here is the page on multicultural literature. We Need Diverse Books is another great site that is less academic and more social justice oriented.
Lori Hanna from WIDA is coming next week to discuss Collaboration on November 17 and 18. There is still time to sign up. I have an ESL 101 on the books for December 2. Winter ESL Institute is a go for December 11. I have a couple of special guests coming – you need to come too! Writing a Lau Plan (also known as an ESL plan) is scheduled for December 14. I’m still looking for somebody good and interesting to come in the spring. If you’ve seen anyone great that you think your colleagues would like, PLEASE let me know and I will try and get them to Springfield.
Don’t let the wind blow you away
Thanks to Joi Hook at my RPDC, Jesse Deleon from SERPDC and Sarah Knoll from KCRPDC for your service to our country. I’m sure there are many more, but Jesse and Sarah are team MELL – my people. To all the veterans receiving this – Thank You. Thank you to Becky Smith at the NWRPDC as well.
This Friday November 13 at 6, Grupo Latinoamericano will be at the Library Center on Campbell. They will present authentic dances from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and South America. There will be live music from Brazil and Mexico and a cultural display of the Day of the Dead.
A quick look inside the LEA guide to ELP assessments shows that the window for test materials ordering will close on 11/13/15. This must be done through WIDA AMS. Please look through the guide for more information or contact Drew Linkon at DESE. There are several training modules opening up 11/14/15 on test session creation, managing students and materials receipt.
As you may know, one of the best ways to determine if an EL has a disability is to go through the RTI process. The most recent literature on this topic basically states that there is a problem and we need more research, which is not especially helpful. Here is an article about RTI and its impact on grades 1-3 reading students. Here is the DESE page on SPED and ELL.
I was lucky enough to get to see Nancy Frey speak last week in Columbia. She is out of San Diego and her school is made up almost entirely of ELs. Her strategies did not specifically address ELs, but they were embedded throughout her presentation. Fisher and Frey have a you tube channel. She showed the video on Grade 2 geometry and it was a very good example of language support and the use of sentence framing. She was very excited about the Literacy Design Collaborative and their (free) sample curricula. She also showed us a new (free) tool called the Reading maturity metric from Pearson. There website is acting weird today, but was working last week when she showed it to us and looked pretty interesting. Finally, she showed another (free) resource called Accountable Talk, which helps build academic language.
Diane Mora once again provided some great resources to the ELA group at DESE. This time she was discussing multicultural literature. She introduced us to the CCBC out of the University of Madison-Wisconsin. Here is the page on multicultural literature. We Need Diverse Books is another great site that is less academic and more social justice oriented.
Lori Hanna from WIDA is coming next week to discuss Collaboration on November 17 and 18. There is still time to sign up. I have an ESL 101 on the books for December 2. Winter ESL Institute is a go for December 11. I have a couple of special guests coming – you need to come too! Writing a Lau Plan (also known as an ESL plan) is scheduled for December 14. I’m still looking for somebody good and interesting to come in the spring. If you’ve seen anyone great that you think your colleagues would like, PLEASE let me know and I will try and get them to Springfield.
Don’t let the wind blow you away