It is Saturday, 10:21 PM and I am home. As Ruth, Kristen, and I left our last workshop, everyone was packing up and most had already left. We were really glad, however, that we had attended these last sessions, as they were very well presented and stimulating. Both presenters were from Hunter College. The first, Ann Ebe, spoke about a research study she conducted exploring the relationship between reading proficiency and the cultural relevance of texts read by third-grade ELLs. The results were very interesting. ELLs scored significantly higher on miscue analysis and comprehension measures when given culturally relevant material to read. The presenter gave out a rubric for judging the cultural relevance of children’s books.
Following that, in the same room, was a presentation by her colleague from Hunter, Laura Baecher, on another research study on the subject of push-in versus pull-out models of ELL instruction. The premise of this session was that there has been a gradual shift toward push-in models because of an assumption that pull-out is the least effective model for Ells and that Special Ed “inclusion” models can be applied to ELLs. Actually, push-in has yet be proved more effective for ELLs and, like anything else, is only as effective as how well it is implemented. The effectiveness of a push-in approach is highly dependent on the degree of collaboration and planning between the classroom and ELL teacher. Options for push-in include one teacher teaching the lesson while the other records important information, students moving through stations, parallel teaching, and pulling some students into a smaller group for pre-teaching. The presenter stressed that the ELL push-in teacher needs to define the language goals for the ELL students in the classroom. This was all really interesting and a discussion ensued on state-mandated services for ELLs. Someone there said that WIDA states are required to offer ELLs at different levels a certain number of hours of instruction. We were very surprised to hear that and I do not know if it is true, but will try to find out.
That's it! I am home now. Hope you enjoyed this dicussion-Linda
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Friday Night
After a lovely evening when I wore sandals outside, we awoke this morning to a wintry mix of snow and rain. Fortunately, I didn't have to go outside, as the Westin is attached to the convention center. I did notice that the roooms were freezing, however. I am wondering what transpired weatherwise in Maine. Specifically, I am worried about my crocuses and am now thinkng of heading home.
But let's get back to the day at TESOL. Melissa and I got ourselves out of bed and down to the convention center to hear the Plenary. We were intrigued by the title (The Evolving Reading Brain:Implications for Cognitive and Linguistic Development)of reading and brain research and we were really glad we went. The speaker was Maryann Wolfe from Tufts. if you have the chance to hear her, please go! She is extremely passionate and articulate-and very interesting. She began by talking about how it took 2000 years to develop our writing system and we expect students to learn the basics of it in about 2000 days.
Dr. Wolfe explained how groups of cells get together in our brains and specialize. Concepts develop and create webs in our brains. She showed semantic webs around the words lime and lion. Lion has a much richer web of associations, but is the more difficult to decode. It turns out that lion, because of the rich associations is the more recognizable word to young readers, not the more easily decoded lime.
Another highlight for me was the importance of semantic flexibility, the knowledge that words can have more than one meaning-polysemous words. Dr. Wolfe stresses that we should be teaching this awareness early on in the literacy curriculum. I intend to do that when I return.
It was a great plenary and I forced myself to attend afterward a session on a topic that did not promise to be as exciting, a two hour panel discussion on RTI and ELLs. It was difficult to sit through in some ways, but I did not come away with answers, but I now have a few questi
In the afternoon I went to a workshop by William Grabe where he shared the results of a research project on reading. He tried to find an effective strategy for reading comprehension and the answer is graphic organizers, outscoring comprehension questions and vocabulary exercises by a long shot.
Lastly, Ruth and I went to a workshop ld by our friends Jane Yedlin and Caroline LInse. They spoke about the importance of non-fictin books in primary reading instruction. We looked at various books and evaluated their effectiveness using a rubric they had devised. I was suprised to see how many books had pictures that do not match the print.
Now it's Friday night and we will -Lindabe heading home tomorrow. I am looking forward to going home, but there is one more day of TESOLing. I'll try to make it worthwhile
But let's get back to the day at TESOL. Melissa and I got ourselves out of bed and down to the convention center to hear the Plenary. We were intrigued by the title (The Evolving Reading Brain:Implications for Cognitive and Linguistic Development)of reading and brain research and we were really glad we went. The speaker was Maryann Wolfe from Tufts. if you have the chance to hear her, please go! She is extremely passionate and articulate-and very interesting. She began by talking about how it took 2000 years to develop our writing system and we expect students to learn the basics of it in about 2000 days.
Dr. Wolfe explained how groups of cells get together in our brains and specialize. Concepts develop and create webs in our brains. She showed semantic webs around the words lime and lion. Lion has a much richer web of associations, but is the more difficult to decode. It turns out that lion, because of the rich associations is the more recognizable word to young readers, not the more easily decoded lime.
Another highlight for me was the importance of semantic flexibility, the knowledge that words can have more than one meaning-polysemous words. Dr. Wolfe stresses that we should be teaching this awareness early on in the literacy curriculum. I intend to do that when I return.
It was a great plenary and I forced myself to attend afterward a session on a topic that did not promise to be as exciting, a two hour panel discussion on RTI and ELLs. It was difficult to sit through in some ways, but I did not come away with answers, but I now have a few questi
In the afternoon I went to a workshop by William Grabe where he shared the results of a research project on reading. He tried to find an effective strategy for reading comprehension and the answer is graphic organizers, outscoring comprehension questions and vocabulary exercises by a long shot.
Lastly, Ruth and I went to a workshop ld by our friends Jane Yedlin and Caroline LInse. They spoke about the importance of non-fictin books in primary reading instruction. We looked at various books and evaluated their effectiveness using a rubric they had devised. I was suprised to see how many books had pictures that do not match the print.
Now it's Friday night and we will -Lindabe heading home tomorrow. I am looking forward to going home, but there is one more day of TESOLing. I'll try to make it worthwhile
Thursday, March 25, 2010
It’s 11:00 on Thursday and the end of a very long day two. This convention center is large and you do well to wear your walking shoes. Someone told me it covers the equivalent of four football fields. Grace said she thinks they should have those automatic sidewalks you see in airports. Anyway, at 7:30 AM I dragged my roommate Melissa and friend Kristen to hear Eli Hinkel speak on grammar and ELL writing. For those of you who have never experienced her, she is a very quirky and actually hilarious at times presenter. She talked about the verb tenses that are only used in grammar books. Her advice-don’t teach them! She then regaled us with naked nouns that need pants and shirts, etc. Incredible that anyone could make grammar so entertaining, especially at 7:30 in the morning.
One of the great things about TESOL is having the opportunity to gain the perspectives of other English speaking countries. To that end I attended a workshop on writing called “Glocalisation”. Again, the presenter was very interesting, an Australian, very laid back with a wry sense of humor. He is a linguist who works with ELLs preparing for college writing. His premise was that the writing feedback his students typically receive from their English teachers consists of a one-time editing of grammar. He advocates beginning with the genre and eliciting form that the rhetorical structure and so on downwards to the grammar at the end of the process. It rang very true for me, as I realized I work that way often with my high school students.
It’s a bit late, so I’ll sign off. I did go to a couple of WIDA workshops and an online teaching one, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. Can’t tell who might be reading this. If you are, make a comment. Until tomorrow-Linda
One of the great things about TESOL is having the opportunity to gain the perspectives of other English speaking countries. To that end I attended a workshop on writing called “Glocalisation”. Again, the presenter was very interesting, an Australian, very laid back with a wry sense of humor. He is a linguist who works with ELLs preparing for college writing. His premise was that the writing feedback his students typically receive from their English teachers consists of a one-time editing of grammar. He advocates beginning with the genre and eliciting form that the rhetorical structure and so on downwards to the grammar at the end of the process. It rang very true for me, as I realized I work that way often with my high school students.
It’s a bit late, so I’ll sign off. I did go to a couple of WIDA workshops and an online teaching one, but it will have to wait until tomorrow. Can’t tell who might be reading this. If you are, make a comment. Until tomorrow-Linda
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
For anyone who checked in with this blog last night or today, please know that this is the first opportunity I have had to get online. Today was the first ever K-12 Dream Day at TESOL. I saw lots of Maine folks. Bumped into a contingent from Sanford coming out of the Howard Gardner plenary. Was sitting next to an empty aisle seat in an earlier session when Grace Valenzuela breezed into it. I had to nudge her to recognition. It’s a lot of fun to see people and reminds me of the professional loneliness a lot of ESL teachers feel.
Meanwhile, I have been to some fantastic presentations. The first was this morning and was entitled Becoming Pedagogical leaders for Transformation. The presenter, Annela Treemant, was very dynamic and articulate. Dr. Treemant is at Purdue University in Indianapolis and has set about transforming the way ELL education occurs in mainstream classrooms. She describes the traditional mainstream content classroom as a cemetery where the inhabitants are by definition mute. Her aim is to breathe life into that situation. She works with eight principles devised by CREDE and her short –term goal is to get the teacher to implement three of them. She advocates centers at all levels and sustained engagement with literacy activities, which is a message I heard all day. It was a great presentation and I would like to hear from her again.
Then I moved into a room where some people from Boston college were discussing their research project regarding RTI and ELLs. They worked with several Boston K-5 schools and tried to find out if RTI were working with the ELL population. They described a three-tiered approach with universal screening three times a year using DIBELS at Tier One. From that Tiers Two and Three were identified. Tier Two students received targeted intervention through centers in mainstream classrooms with ELL and literacy specialists pushing in and monthly progress monitoring. Tier Three students received one-on-one with weekly monitoring. A n interesting outcome after two years was that ELLs who had been previously identified LD made the same progress as ELLs never identified, indicating that they never should have been identified.
After a hurried chicken Caesar with Grace Valenzuela,, Ruth Dater and Sue Chevalier, I raced back to catch Jim Cummins. I have always loved his combination boyish looks, Irish-Canadian accent, and radical ideas. He outlined how educational policy decisions are at odds with the research and elicited some heated political comments from the audience.
I was very happy in the afternoon to attend a wonderful hands-on book binding workshop. The presenter was incredibly charming and we actually made at least five small books that we can duplicate in the classroom. After so much time in your head that sort of workshop can be really refreshing. It was a lot of fun!
The day was not over until 7:00, when Howard Gardner finished his plenary. It was all I could do to get myself there, but was it ever worth it!!!! Dr. Gardner presented his new project, which is entitled something like Five Minds for the Future. These are not intelligences, he stressed, but policy matters. The first three are Discipline (learning something well), Synthesis (so much information out there now it needs this), and Creativity. These comprise “the box” as in thinking “out of the box”. Numbers four and five are out of the box. They are Respect and Ethical Behavior. I know I cannot do this justice here, but it was very inspiring and he made a wonderful case for why these habits of mind are crucial in a digital age. I am really glad I was there.
It is now almost 11:30 and I have to stop. Eli Hinkel speaks at 7:30. See you tomorrow-Linda
Meanwhile, I have been to some fantastic presentations. The first was this morning and was entitled Becoming Pedagogical leaders for Transformation. The presenter, Annela Treemant, was very dynamic and articulate. Dr. Treemant is at Purdue University in Indianapolis and has set about transforming the way ELL education occurs in mainstream classrooms. She describes the traditional mainstream content classroom as a cemetery where the inhabitants are by definition mute. Her aim is to breathe life into that situation. She works with eight principles devised by CREDE and her short –term goal is to get the teacher to implement three of them. She advocates centers at all levels and sustained engagement with literacy activities, which is a message I heard all day. It was a great presentation and I would like to hear from her again.
Then I moved into a room where some people from Boston college were discussing their research project regarding RTI and ELLs. They worked with several Boston K-5 schools and tried to find out if RTI were working with the ELL population. They described a three-tiered approach with universal screening three times a year using DIBELS at Tier One. From that Tiers Two and Three were identified. Tier Two students received targeted intervention through centers in mainstream classrooms with ELL and literacy specialists pushing in and monthly progress monitoring. Tier Three students received one-on-one with weekly monitoring. A n interesting outcome after two years was that ELLs who had been previously identified LD made the same progress as ELLs never identified, indicating that they never should have been identified.
After a hurried chicken Caesar with Grace Valenzuela,, Ruth Dater and Sue Chevalier, I raced back to catch Jim Cummins. I have always loved his combination boyish looks, Irish-Canadian accent, and radical ideas. He outlined how educational policy decisions are at odds with the research and elicited some heated political comments from the audience.
I was very happy in the afternoon to attend a wonderful hands-on book binding workshop. The presenter was incredibly charming and we actually made at least five small books that we can duplicate in the classroom. After so much time in your head that sort of workshop can be really refreshing. It was a lot of fun!
The day was not over until 7:00, when Howard Gardner finished his plenary. It was all I could do to get myself there, but was it ever worth it!!!! Dr. Gardner presented his new project, which is entitled something like Five Minds for the Future. These are not intelligences, he stressed, but policy matters. The first three are Discipline (learning something well), Synthesis (so much information out there now it needs this), and Creativity. These comprise “the box” as in thinking “out of the box”. Numbers four and five are out of the box. They are Respect and Ethical Behavior. I know I cannot do this justice here, but it was very inspiring and he made a wonderful case for why these habits of mind are crucial in a digital age. I am really glad I was there.
It is now almost 11:30 and I have to stop. Eli Hinkel speaks at 7:30. See you tomorrow-Linda
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Sunday Night before TESOL
It's time to pack! On Tuesday afternoon four of us will board the AMTRAK Downeaster to make the trip to Boston and TESOL. Next post will be Tuesday night after registering and getting a look at the program. Each night of the convention I will relate here what I have learned.
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