BAP052 Aging Out & What We Do Every Day

Here are some answers to FAQ’s on working with SLIFE!

Listen to “BAP052 – Aging Out & What We Do Every Day” on Spreaker.

You can read the short responses below or listen to this show with more explanation right here. Actually, as of the publication of this post, the podcast is available in all podcast apps. Hope you will subscribe!

THANK YOU Metro Nashville Public Schools and Beaufort County School District for offering the Boosting Achievement Book Study to your teachers. Megan Trcka in Nashville, Alisa Rhodes and Bethanne Barner in South Carolina supported some amazing teachers who were collaborating on their own time to find more learning about working with students who have interrupted or minimal education.

Thank you Carol Salva @MsSalvac for taking the time to discuss your book with BCSD. Loved the opportunity for teachers to come together! #BoostingAchievement pic.twitter.com/d3PV0Wybgd

— Alisa Rhoads (@AlisaRhoads2) April 2, 2019

If you’d like to see one of these video chats, you are welcome to watch the Q&A and the positive outcomes shared by McMurray Middle School.

Here are a few of the questions I didn’t answer in my last few video chats:

In the last section of Boosting Achievement, I noticed the emphasis placed on independent reading time in the classroom. I also noticed the suggestion to slowly build up to 60 minutes. I understand how beneficial this is, but do you have any ideas or suggestions to show that this is beneficial enough to take away from other possibly worthy activities in order to allow for this extended amount of time?
- My Answer: This all depends on how much time you have and what your role is for the child. So if you are the reading teacher, and you have 60 minutes with students, I would absolutely build stamina for sustained silent reading (SSR) of up to 60 minutes. For example, when I was teaching middle school, I was the SLIFE teacher and I had 4 hours with the students every day. Reading for 60 minutes was not something I would do every class period, but we did have SSR every day to settle down and from time to time we went longer periods of time. On occasion, we did read for 45-60 minutes. More recently, in high school, I did not have the luxury of that much class time. We STILL had SSR when we first came into class and we worked up to at least 20 minutes. I also counseled students to realize how important it was to read for 60 minutes a day (for several reasons) and I made sure they had resources to do that at home. They can read with newsinlevels.com, they can read what we wrote together, they can read in their native language, they need to be reading, reading, reading. As the year goes on we encourage more and more English reading during SSR and we show students how many English sight words they gain and other benefits of reading for longer periods of time.
- To the part of your question about other worthy activities, Shared Reading, Shared Writing and Oral Language Practice (Language Experience Approach is an example of how you can do all three) are those worthy activities that I feel have to happen in every class. I feel these MUST happen with students so we can’t spend all of our time in free voluntary reading. But we partner with these older learners to realize they must do the SSR on their own to help close their gaps.
If you only have 30 minutes twice a week, what is the one that you absolutely must do with those students?
- As mentioned above, I advocate for Shared Reading, Shared Writing and Oral Language Practice every time I meet with students. You can do it in less than 30 minutes, your shared writing pieces just happen over more than one class. See LEA episode to see how to do it and just break it up over your different meeting times.
- Even if you only have 30 minutes twice a week, I would have students settle down with a choice book. You might only read for the first 5 minutes but it gives you so much benefit. Students can share why they liked the book, you can connect to grade level standards like genre, authors craft, and it gives you a chance to remind your students of why they need to be reading ANYTHING for several minutes a day.

How do you deal with an 18-year old that enters and has to take the end of course exam, has 6th-grade education, will age out before he can complete school? What do you focus on? AND
How do you overcome the difficulty meeting grade level expectations for growth and proficiency with your lowest level and SIFE students?
- I’m addressing question 3 & 4 together. If I’m the Newcomer English Language Development teacher, see above. I’m doing the same things I do for all children. I make sure we empower kids with the awareness of how quickly their language and literacy can come. It is CRITICAL that we don’t feel that the child is expected to do this all on their own. *WE* need to change and offer more comprehensible input and use more sheltered strategies. But we do make sure the student knows how to advance their language and literacy when they are not with us.
- Please make sure the student understands that the standardized assessments are not the finish line. Also, make sure they realize that when they age out.. that isn’t the finish line either. Find out what their long term goals are and help them see how, with community partners, we can help them get to those goals. Our building is one step closer to their goals.
- For content teachers: PLEASE teach them as much of your content as possible. Don’t feel that they need to gain proficiency in English or literacy before they can comprehend your content and interact with it. YOU are the only one that will teach that child biology or social studies or math. They need to learn as much of your content as possible so they can continue to move forward, even if they fail your class and age out. Please make sure you or someone is collaborating with that child to realize that they can continue to gain math skills and eventually master the content. Their language and literacy will also come along if they dont’ give up. We all need to look at the long game and help that child move forward toward a better life.
Do you ever have bad days in your classroom too? It always seems so nice!
- MANY bad days. It’s real life over here. But I’m grateful for more nice days than bad days. If you watch that Language Experience Approach video you’ll see a big fail. A child falls asleep in front of me! And I have had plenty of days where I brought my bad mood to the class or things were not on track. We take those in stride and just keep trying to improve.

But having a social contract made ALL the difference in the world for our classroom climate. Here is a post on that. Thanks for that question. 🙂

THANK YOU so much for reading and or listening! This show and notes are an important place for me to reflect. You’re helping my journey of learning and for that I am grateful.

HUGS,

Carol

Some GREAT questions and some GREAT WINS shared by the Ts at @McMurrayMiddle in our #BoostingAchievement video chat. I turned them on to @VirtuELConf @Larryferlazzo @ValentinaESL & was so happy to hear that @MNPS_EL works w @AndreaHonigsfel & @MariaGDove pic.twitter.com/HPrQs4Ccx3

— Carol Salva (@MsSalvac) April 18, 2019

WHERE CAN WE MEET UP??

Summer 2019

I’m the keynote speaker for #MABEMI19 coming up in May.

Featured Speaker at the Sanibel Leadership Conference in Florida on June 20th

FALL of 2019 – Stay tuned for dates & links:

Coming to Colorado as a featured speaker for COTESOL

I’ll be in Missouri for the MELL Conference in October

I’ll be the keynote speaker for BCTESOL in British Colombia in the fall.

Why You Should Present at #MADPD

You’ve never presented before? That is perfect! This is your chance to do something brave. If you present all the time, you should be there as well. We will have a great day of sharing with and learning from a global network of educators.

Emily Francis, Derek Rhodenizer and Peter Cameron join me this week on the podcast to answer all you want to know about the event. You can listen to that show right here:

I feel strongly that we should ALL be presenting at this conference! If you are apprehensive, just take the leap! This is our chance to practice what we are preaching to our students or the teachers that we support. We ask them to take risks every day. Let’s put ourselves out there too. Let’s take a risk and share something that Makes a Difference in education.

Truth be told, it’s not even very much of a risk. YouTube Live is the platform and it is just a matter of watching a short “How To” video if you don’t know how to launch a Live broadcast. And the founders have you covered! They have short videos for us!

So in this podcast, Emily helps me interview Derek and Peter, who are the founders of #MADPD. The three of those folks are excellent members of any PLN, by the way, so be sure to follow them.

Here is the link so you can go ahead and submit that proposal! Basically, #MADPD is an all day, online education conference that is happening May 6th. It is the 2nd annual conference and should be bigger and better than ever. The first #MADPD had over 60 presenters from around the world and those videos are still being played on demand and will continue to be out there for people to use. Isn’t it amazing that we can be sharing with the world??

I appreciate Emily Francis helping me interview the guys because she is a great teacher to represent the ESL community. If you have listened to my show, you know that I mention Emily all the time. She has her own immigration story that will inspire you and your students. Emily has some great questions and then gives us her take on why teachers of ELs should be presenting at this innovative conference. One of my favorite reasons she mentions is that we all need to be advocating for our English learners. If you have an idea that will help other teachers that work with English learners, you are advocating for those students and for the teachers that teach them.

The founders impress upon us that they are looking for teachers who are new to presenting. This is the type of opportunity that will offer value to all of us. We all have something that is making a difference. You may think that something you are doing is known by everyone, but that just isn’t the case.

Derek makes some great points about why this is especially cool for presenters. One example is that everything is YouTube based on our own channels so presenters retain the rights to the videos.

I love this effort because it is purely to help each other become better educators. We all have a wonderful opportunity to learn so much from this event. I know I’ll be trying to get better at a YouTube live chat this time around and that is just one benefit. There will be so many presentations and I’m thrilled to have access to them all.

I hope you have a chance to listen to the show. Thanks to Peter, Derek and Emily for helping us break this down for teachers of ELs.

One final note!

We don’t just have a moral imperative to share. We have a moral imperative to GET GOOD at sharing! – Dave Burgess on the Ed Podcast

I am thinking that Dave is on to something here. So hurry and get your proposals in. You are guaranteed to get it accepted.

See you on May 6th!

Carol

PS: Would you like more support? I’d love to come work with you and your staff! Simply reach out to me or Kathy Belanger: kathy@johnseidlitz.com

In the near future I will be presenting at the NABE conference, as well as the ISTE conference and I’m a proud spotlight speaker at the Abydos writing conference.
I’m attending SXSW as well so please reach out if you’ll be at any of these!

You can also join me for two upcoming workshops in Texas. The information for those is below. We’d love to see you!

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They Can Absolutely Read That.

Picture a newcomer you know this year. Remember the beginning of school when we were all freaking out that these kids spoke NO English? I was so worried about how in the world they would survive in a comprehensive high school. I am every year! As always I had to remind myself that they can learn very, very quickly.

Well, we are so proud of those kiddos who are not only surviving, they are thriving!

In the first few weeks of school, I showed someone the “I Don’t Know” poster and explained that this is critical for new English learners and students with interrupted or minimal education. I explained that teaching kids what to say instead of “IDK” is a great practice for all students in every content classroom. This is Step 1 of Seidlitz Education‘s Seven Steps – a fantastic training on sheltered instruction.

This poster is helpful so our ELs have a way to participate immediately if they feel comfortable to do so. Her response was “But they can’t read that! Your kids don’t read any English.”

Okay. I get that. On their own… on that day…. no, they couldn’t read a poster in English. But even on that first day, they absolutely CAN read that poster with our help. Everyone can repeat and follow print and they can comprehend what the sentences mean if you offer some support. And EVERY DAY they gain more English with help from that poster.

“May I ask a friend for help?”
“Can you please repeat the question?”

With phrases like this (that are useful for all students), this environmental print is much more than a poster. For ELs, it is the first step toward participation and eventual independence in any learning environment.

Even with brand new ELs, let’s remember that they understand more English every single day. And with some sheltered strategies, that language can be acquired even more quickly. Once my students began to gain confidence, their participation in English increased. We do a great deal of speaking in unison, reading aloud in unison, tracking print and having conversations with classmates that may start scripted but lead to authentic exchanges.

I’m thrilled to have some of those students preparing for a presentation that they will do next week for 37 World History students who will be visiting our classroom.

The mainstream kiddos are interested in our migration stories! They will come for a class visit, hear a few presentations and share food that they are bringing for the occasion. Can you imagine all of the positive affective, cultural and growth-mindset outcomes for both groups? Not the least of which are the learning standards we are hitting with World Geography and World History in the curriculum.

Presenting to our community is great but it gets even better. We are contributing our slides/stories to a project on migration stories that is happening in a classroom in Laos.

For this project, I have to give a big thanks to two colleagues whom I have never met. These ladies are from my Twitter PLN!

Ms. Olwen Millgate is a 5th grade teacher at the Vientiane International School in Laos. Several months back, she reached out to me on Twitter and invited us to contribute to a Google Slides presentation on Migration Stories for her students.This opportunity to tell our stories and write for an authentic audience was like gold! And what an amazing opportunity to learn about each other’s cultures, countries, push/pull factors, current events and more. So much learning happens in the cracks with this kind of global collaboration. It is profound for both classes!

At first, I was not sure how to have my newcomers (some who are just gaining literacy in any language) participate with the limited amount of time we have in class or in a grading period.

Enter Noa Daniel and her fantastic idea of BOBs (Building Outside the Blocks)! I first heard Noa on this episode of Derek Rhodenizer’s podcast. She was talking about the idea of having your class work outside the blocks of times that we are allowed in class. WOW! Why had I not thought of this? This idea of flexibility paid off in so many ways. Noa’s students are taking off in all different creative directions so her blog is worth checking out no matter what you teach! For my students, the choice of projects and the choice of presentation

For my students, the choice of presentation dates, offered them a realistic way of preparing and sharing something in their new language. Noa also sent me a different project “What’s in a Name” that allowed the students a chance to research the origins of their name, interview parents and analyze if this name suites them. I was inspired by how many students chose to do this project even though they had already compiled enough information to present on other subjects. This project was compelling to many of them.
What I am seeing is that CHOICE + FLEXIBILITY = SUCCESS for my learners. Wouldn’t this be motivating for any learner?

So now we are getting close to the end of the school year. This time of year is so rewarding! As ESL teachers, we get to see all the growth our students have made and we are now communicating with more ease. We start to relax as we see these learners using their skills to take ownership of their learning.

It creates a differentiation issue when we have new students arriving all the time. My campus has received over a dozen newcomers in the past few weeks and my veteran newcomers are far beyond the beginner stage in several domains.

Thankfully, the poster is still there and the class helps the new students use it so they can start participating right away.

Thanks for your interest and for being an EL advocate!

We need more like you!

Carol