Language Experience Approach

NELD:  Newcomer English Language Development using LEA  (Language Experience Approach)

our-messagesI have to say that a lesson we did two weeks ago is paying off huge dividends.  There was a LOT of English language production in our class discussion because the topic was real and relevant and meaningful to my immigrant students.  Some are refugees from different countries and some are just new to America and can identify with people in the world making a journey for a better life.  My focus was a speaking ELPS (3.B).

But we are going to turn this into a writing assignment now that we have a shared experience around it.

Summary of what we did:   I knew someone who was going to visit a refugee camp in Greece.  Younger children were drawing pictures to send to give to the children there.  My high-schoolers talked about this for a while with frames (ELP 3.b, check!) and were given the choice to draw a picture and send a message if they wanted to.  Everyone wanted to.

content-lang-objective-on-refugee-messages refugee-messages

So now I’m confident that we can do a nice writing assignment about this together.  A shared writing that will be very meaningful to them.  It will be an essay they can read because they will help write it as a group.  One more thing they can read at home!

Will share that soon!

Region IV Bil/ESL Conference 9/22

Did you make it to the Region IV Bilingual/ESL Conference?  Were you in my sessions??  Either way, here are some great resources we covered in the sessions.

SUBSCRIBE for updates!!

VIDEOS

KAHOOT SESSION @ 1:00pm

Kahoot! (for Teacher to create Kahoots)

Kahoot Planning Pages (dropbox)

Other Kahoot Plannning and PD resources

4th period Selfie Kahoot Fall 2016

6th period Selfie Kahoot Fall 2016

2015-2016 Dierschke/Salva Refugee Class Selfie Kahoot 

ELPS in ACTION Session @ 2:00pm

Play with your team:  Carol’s Kahoot on how we aquire a second language

  1. According to Marzano, __________________ can lead to a 19 point percentile gain in achievement.
  2. There are ___________ language domains.
  3. The productive domains are ___________________________.
  4. For the biggest impact, the language load should be on the __________________.

Gerson Video 7 Months in US Schools

gerson-essay-2

We Are Just Like Gerson

    People can learn English very

quickly.  We saw a video of

a boy in Spring Woods High School

named Gerson. He learned SO MUCH

English in 7 months.  He did it with

Duolingo and reading and practicing 

every day.  So we are very much like

Gerson.  He is practicing for his future.

He believes the task of learning English

is important.  So do we!

Nabil Learns to Read Video

Five months later: Refugee Essays and Nabil’s Reading Update

 

The New History & Archeology Club

archeo-club

Club sign up day was last week and we had a TON of students sign our “I am interested” sheet.  I’m super grateful to our archeologist friends at Coastal Environments, Inc and The Texas Historical Commission.  Dr. Lohse loaned us a few artifacts and we had many pictures of student engagement that we could share with prospective kiddos.  This will be my first experience with students who are not obligated to sit in a classroom and listen to me.  I have to work with Mr. Knapik (World Cultures & US History teacher at Stratford) to create activities that are of genuine interest to a young person.  With a club, they have no obligation to come and this at this age (high school) they have a social life to think about.  What a nice test for us!

MANY of our international students and Newcomers expressed interest.  Our hope is that this club provides a way to help them connect with their new school and community and that it has the added benefit of providing a motivating topic to encourage the use of their second language.  Our first gathering will be September 20th to get interest information from the students.   I have reached out to CEI and the THC to see what they might be able to provide in the way of experiences.

Stay tuned!!!