Schoolwide Blog

 Our keynote speaker for Schoolwide's Literacy workshop on March 17, 2010 (click here for details), J. Patrick Lewis recently gave us a poem that will soon be appearing in ESL Magazine.

I’m Learning to Speak English, Por Favor

Be pashunt please, I don’t know how to spell
Or read or write your language.  Por favor,
I’m learning to speak English—ESL.  More...

RTI as in all mandates doesn't play out as nicely as it looks on paper. From working in the trenches with classroom teachers the big complaint is that the initial individualized instruction and frequent progress monitoring that is required falls onto the classroom teacher without help from outside sources and or lack of appropriate materials. It is also difficult to carve out time in an already overstocked day for personal remediation. Unfortunately children may not be discussed with the school based support team if a teacher knows that it will result in extra work that falls on his or her shoulders Another concern is that the problem a child seems to be having, (for example in reading) gets dissected into small pieces in terms of what the intervention will address. The teacher may be asked to work on remediating initial consonant sounds for 8 weeks. If the child shows progress then another small piece will be addressed next, and so forth and so on. Teachers feel that this delays (indefinitely) a child receiving immediate services with a professional trained to work with children displaying unique difficulties. Plus, if reading is the issue it requires integrated thought processes which the remediation is not addressing.

Research states students learn a second language much like they learn their first language—naturally. While students learn basic communication skills in the second language, the process for acquiring academic language to meet the academic challenges, usually takes five through seven years. Research states children can acquire a second language best when More...

Teaching English Language learners requires teachers to consider a “Curriculum of Time,” (Understanding the Curriculum of Time in the Teaching of Writing by Katie Wood Ray, Author and Consultant, Waynesville, North Carolina published by NCTE) Time is something that teachers can control and use to enhance instruction and yet More...

Great Video on transcending international barriers and using technology as a barrier-crossing tool. Can these techniques be applied to younger students at various points of entry? How do you think technology can aid the reading and writing skills of ESL students across the world?

This is really the sweet spot for reading aloud for so many people. It’s the time when longer stories with more complicated plot arcs are introduced. Where we can spend weeks or even months sitting together with our children to share one big, long story.

This is also the age where we can make some of the biggest strides and the biggest mistakes More...

How can classroom teachers enable ESL students to keep up withnative English speakers in mixed classrooms? When ESL students are listening tospoken English it has been said that it can take up to 15 seconds for them toprocess what they've heard and make sense of it. Only then can these studentsformulate a response! We can teach ESL students how to More...

 As ELLs listen to and participate in a variety of literarygenre that their language experience develops, including vocabulary, patternsof speech/usage, and an understanding of idioms and concepts. This occurs througha variety of literacy exposures. There is an endless amount of great books touse in the ELL/ESL classroom. Students are usually more successful in literacywhen provided with texts that offer comprehensible input, that is, they makesense to the learner. Students are also successful when More...

Dear Teacher

I want you to know that I come to school, not language deprived, culturally deprived or void of life experiences.  I have a language and I need to know more about my language.  I have a culture and you need to learn about it so you can understand how I see the world.  I have had many experiences in my native country.  They are all in my schema.  They may not fit your schema, but if you get to know me, there may be some really good connections we can make together. 

I can’t speak English, More...

Various effective ESL methodology and instructional strategies for increasing English Language Learners are scaffolding (teachermodeling, simplifying language, graphic organizers, visuals and graphics, cooperative learning) techniques:

      • Teacher modeling: allows learners to see or hear what a completed product should look like while at the same time gives students an example of what is expected of them.

     • Simplifying language: allows learners to More...