The ELL Teacher’s Role in PLC & DT

ELL teachers in our district provide core reading, writing and language instruction for ELL students to prepare them to transition into the general education classrooms. ELL students’ language acquisition and learning will accelerate WHEN instruction is delivered using ELL research-based strategies.  An ELL teacher’s expertise in language acquisition is an instrumental and vital part of the PLC team’s collaboration as it provides a language learning perspective when analyzing assessment results as well as when selecting high impact strategies for linguistically and culturally diverse students.

In this session, we worked to contextualize the Data Teams process to the ELL teachers’ role. We reviewed the Data Team steps, and we focused on the language acquisition and learning considerations in each step of this process.  Additionally, we developed relevant questions that can help the ELL teacher and PLC team interpret and react to data considering the variables of language acquisition which is key to more critically address the content and language needs of English Language Learners in the PLC process.

Resources:

ELL Teacher Role in Data Teams – (First Draft)

ELL Teacher Role in Data Teams – FACILITATORS QUESTIONS (First Draft)

LPS ELL Strategies

Title I Data Teams Resources

Related Literature:

January ELO Resources

Screen shot 2013-01-31 at 1.39.17 PMOn our January ELO meeting we had the opportunity to work on deepening our implementation of descriptive feedback as an overarching strategy in ELL teaching and learning. Melisa Garcia, an ELL teacher at McPhee, shared one excellent, deep implementation example of this strategy. In this example, students used a kid-friendly rubric for students to self-assess and work on writing targets.  Here are the resources:  a video demonstration and a link to Melisa’s blog.

We also listened to Hager Mohammed, one of our bilingual liaisons. She shared her experiences and her reactions to Lost in Translation, by Eva Hoffman. We also shared a number of other titles that would be good to read.  Mary Reiman’s Multicultural Literature Book Recommendation.

 

 

Prescott: iPads 4 Learning – Session 1

We had a great turn out on our first “iPads for Learning” session at Prescott on February 28. Twelve teachers were interested in learning about ways to use this tool to engage our 21st century learners.

We shared some “tips and tricks” during the session. Please click here to review them.

Although there are thousands of apps out there, our session focused on three apps that can go the distance. And yes, all three of them were free apps: Toontastic, Doodle Buddy and Show Me. Please click here to review these apps and to learn about a few more.

Other pertinent resources are: Managing iPads and iPads 4 instruction.

We would LOVE to hear from you. Your instructional idea, the app you found, and/or comments about what you learn in the session.

Thanks!