HELP! I do not know what to expect from my English Learners!

First thing is not to worry! Stay connected to your students (voice to voice is best).  Students will really appreciate your specific support to them during this time.
Relationships first, but also we must design our instruction based on data.  We got this!  Below are  tools to help you to think about the needs your English Learners that you will meet in the virtual world.  

• Students will benefit from data based instruction and assessment of learning.  This handy tool  can help you to gauge what students can do and what they should be expected to produce.
• Students need supports and differentiation to access your content but also to access the language complexity that stands between them and your content.  This tool can give you Access Proficiency level based scaffold ideas

Remember kids really need preteaching of critical vocabulary-You can make cognate lists between English and Spanish with helpful tools like google translate, you can encourage yourself or your students to add visuals to them.

Finally, English Learners must be engaged in discourse.  This is a great opportunity to make appointments with your ELs and their non-EL peers for small group conferring or discussion with supports.  

Inquire with your ESL Teacher for opportunities to coplan and coserve students-our team is here to support you and our students!

Teaching English Learners in Virtual Spaces Part 1

In these challenging times, the RELATIONSHIPS you have with your immigrant students and those with immigrant families will be the most important link to learning.  If relationships were warm, empathetic, and connected before the covid crisis, the opportunity to provide comfort, communication and connection during this crisis is already there.

But, what should you do if that warm and trusting relationship was not exactly where you wished it was?  Recommendations are to follow.

I wish a list of strategies were going to radically change the depth of trust in our relationships with immigrant students and their families.  If the relationships in the classroom were not there the way you would have hoped, they need to be built more than ever now that students are away from the classroom and the daily structures of school.
As we know, Immigrant students are likely to experience several issues during covid that deeper than just being able to access online learning in English.  Many students are living in a lot of trauma based "fear" today.  Parents and caregivers have potentially lost their employment, the ability to pay rent and bills, and families are struggling to provide food and transportation.  Families often do not qualify for any type of support, stimulus or community funding to offset the impact of covid.  This means children, especial young teens and teens, are taking on adult responsibilities like full time work, full time childcare, becoming their siblings "home school teacher," and cooking/acquiring food.   Younger children may not have the resources to support the volume, timeline or academic content that they are asked to complete while away from school.  Meeting basic needs have moved to top priority for some of our students.

We can do simple things for immigrant students that can make a big difference in meeting some of the basic social needs they have during this time.
Daily meaningful,voice to voice communication is one the best ways to do this: calls, but then texts and emails can proactively build or build upon relationships.  While many student's roles in families have shifted,  immigrant students more than ever require even deeper relationships with us if they are to stay engaged with "schooling".  To follow are some guiding reflection questions to help you consider the space many immigrant students might need us to be in.

1.  How personal is your daily contact with immigrant students voice to voice? Are you having daily voice to voice contact with your students? If you aren't, why not? who is?  Are there barriers that you are able to problem solve with your administrator or peer?
2.  Are you sending personal emails and chats to these students? are they engaged back with you?
3.  Have you prioritized asking students how they are, what is going well and what is challenging?
4.  Have you asked whether a students is "going through" anything that you could help them to understand?

Please know that everyone is here to support this unexpected opportunity to learn how to teach and engage all students virtually.  Please reach out in any way that the Department of Multilingual Education can support you or your team. dmgarcia@waukesha.k12.wi.us.



Read more here

Serving English Learners: Waukesha ONE Learning Opportunities

Waukesha ONE Learning Opportunities

 to Enhance Engagement and EQUITY for 

English Language Learners

Classic Sessions 10:30-11:30

• English Learning and Writing: Meeting the Challenge of Achievement In this session, participants will be looking at writing through the lens of linguistic complexity by grade level and language acquisition level. You will see and interact with writing samples of students learning English by grade, and by ACCESS level. The session will prepare you to be able to identify typical patterns of proficiency, text density and linguistic complexity, as well as prepare you with ideas on how to challenge and support learners to meet their next goal.

Modern Session Conversations 12:30

• ESL Teachers-IMPACT
• Individualized Language Plans as a Tool for Student Success

Modern Session Conversations 1:30

• ESL Strategies in Language Workshop
• Enhance Vocabulary Development
• Making Content Accessible to English Language Learners
• Communicating when there is a language barrier

Modern Session Conversations2:30 

• New Comer English Learners: What should I do to include these students?
• SWIVL and Language Objectives

DL: Waukesha ONE Sessions

Waukesha ONE Learning Opportunities

 to Enhance Engagement and EQUITY for 

Dual Language Learners

Classic Sessions 10:30-11:30

• Dual Language Word Study (en espanol) Find out more about the process of how these units were created. Then, participate in the delivery of one of these lessons. Obtain ideas on how different grade levels have been using the information gained from their lessons. Finally, come with questions and wonderings you currently have.

Modern Session Conversations 12:30

• DL Science K-1
• DL Intervention
• Thoughtful Log Calibration (for DL)

Modern Session Conversations 1:30

• Revising the DL Language Workshop Planner
• Enhance Vocabulary Development
• Make and Take DL Word Study

Modern Session Conversations 2:30 

• DL 4K Interactive Read Aloud
• SWIVL and Language Objectives

NEW TDP: Teaching Foundational English Literacy

Are you teaching Kindergarten to 3rd grade standards of English Literacy to:

• young students, 
• struggling students, 
• older students, 
• students who are literate in another language

Do you know what a struggling reader needs??

NEW TDP COMING SOON: Teaching and Assessing Foundational Literacy COURSE (Up to 3 TDP Credits) (Link)

This course will acquaint the participant with the basics in foundational literacy skills, informal assessments, and effective instructional practices for addressing literacy difficulties for all students with an emphasis on the multilingual student.  This course will also include preparation for the FoRT test.  

Learning Outcomes:

• Demonstrate an understanding of established purposes for assessing the performance of all readers including tools for screening, diagnosis, progress monitoring, and measuring.
• Administer and interpret appropriate assessments for students, especially those who struggle with reading and writing.
• Use multiple data sources to analyze individual readers’ performance and to plan instruction and intervention.
• Demonstrate the ability to plan appropriate intervention to address the needs of a struggling reader.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the content covered by the FoRT test
• Demonstrate an understanding of the EL student along with the students’ strengths and areas needing support. 

Dates:

Jan -April 4-6pm

(1/8 1/15, 1/22, 1/29)

(2/5, 2/12,  2/26)

(3/11, 3/18, 4/1)

(4/8, 4/15, 4/22, 4/29)

4th, 7th and 9th Graders: The Critical Importance of These Students Experiences At School

SHADOWING Bilingual, Biliterate Learners

In the School District of Waukesha, Dual Language Programing has made the biggest impact on our student's opportunity to become biliterate (and proficient in English).  Students that make this achievement of biliteracy by 5th grade are at the greatest likelihood progressing through middle school and into high school with the opportunity to experience all the advantages of their bilingualism and biliteracy: AP Courses, AVID, college and career preparation.  Students who enter into middle school on the cusp of proficiency as bilinguals and biliterate learners (and English proficient) can reach their full potential by 7th grade-in fact it is most typical that this is when they would reach their fullest biliteracy according to Jim Cummins, Internationally renowned researcher on second language acquisition. 

When students are not able to leave elementary with strong biliteracy, they enter into middle school challenges to their literacy that they cannot cognitively "keep up".  By the time these students pass through 7th grade and on to 9th grade, they continue to carry the label of English Learner, and are disproportionately represented on the lists of students who are failing classes as Freshman.  As you might imagine, failing even one credit in high school, can set a student on a trajectory, foster a  mindset in the students, teachers and the system itself, on what is possible or even desired.  We believe it does not have to be this way.  We know there are learners we are not reaching sufficiently-and that these learners experience school very differently that their peers. We believe if we can perceive the ways these students experience school, then we can impact it.

What do we know for sure about learning?  S/he who does the talking, does the learning.  S/he who does the talking, can do the writing. Without talking-there is no literacy.  And yet, the National Literacy Panel suggests that English Learning students spend less than 2% of their day using Academic Language.  Do we perceive this in SDW?

Courageous leaders at Banting, Bethesda, Hawthorne, Hillcrest, Heyer, Les Paul, Butler, Horning, West, North and South will be engaging in Action Research in grades 4, 7 and 9 to understand what the learning experience is like for students who are at risk becoming long term English Learners striving for biliteracy.  This courageous team will be looking through the lenses of Access Level 3 students, in essence shadowing these students,  in these grade levels for targeted periods of time, so that they might make some generalizations around what the learning experiences are of these students throughout the days and years they are under our care.  The data that is gathered will be used to make small "hacks" to teaching that will significantly impact learning.  If you are a teacher in grades 4, 7 or 9-you will be brought into the conversation as the learning of your leaders unfolds.    As we perceive what the learning experience look like for students on the path to biliteracy but at risk of becoming a long term English learner, as their experience with our instruction becomes clearer, we will be engaging in small ways to significantly address our opportunity and responsibility to impact.  The links here can provide more insight into the work this team is doing:
The Action Research Approach to PD

Shadowing a Student

WIABE April 24-26 Kalahari Hotel

Dear TEAM. 
Teacher leadership is key to our State's development of programing for Dual Language Learners.  WIABE is a small component of that leadership opportunity that exists every day.

Our Budget this year will allow me to reserve 5 ROOMs and to pay for conference attendance for 5 STAFF.  There are no monies available for subs on April 24th.  This means I can send 5 staff in single occupancy, or 10 in double occupancy (if at least five are presenting)

If you are interested in attending the conference or presenting at it, I want to be really clear about the the expectations in order for me to fund your experience:

1.  If you plan to present, you need to share your proposal to me before submitting to WIABE.   I will let you know whether I will be able to support it.  When you share your proposal, you must indicate if you will share a hotel room or not.

If I do not support your proposal, yet you choose to submit and are accepted, you will be on your own for hotel accommodations unless we have space (ie. the resources I can provide are not already assigned to other staff).

• Your proposal is most likely to be supported if you have never presented before
• Are presenting with someone you will share a hotel room with

2. I will prioritize our department support around the following topics:

• Secondary 6-11 Dual Language
• Biliteracy Development, teaching for Biliteracy
• ENIL
• Content Based Paired Biliteracy

WIABE Conference Presentation Submission

WIABE Student Art Contest