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bilingual

ELL and Bilingual Resources for Remote Learning

by Andrew Roush August 12, 2020

written by Andrew Roush

In the U.S. today, bilingual education and education for English language learners (ELLs) is in high demand. And while students with limited English proficiency (LEP) might face difficulties at school, institutions have also struggled to support and fund bilingual and ELL programs among a number of competing demands.

The changes to education occurring because of the COVID-19 pandemic pose new challenges for all kinds of learners, and especially those with limited English proficiency. Organizations are responding to the need, however, and we’ve put together a curated collection of useful resources that can help educators deliver quality English language instruction while in a period of remote teaching and learning.

Resources for ELL Remote Education

The nonprofit New Jersey Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages/New Jersey Bilingual Educators shares an extensive list of teaching resources, from best practices to tools and templates.
Colorín Colorado, an English language learning site from WETA Learning Media, has a comprehensive guide for remote ELL education, complete with sample schedules, activities, and more.
For educators looking for Spanish-langauge resources, Colorín Colorado also offers a clearinghouse of bilingual education resources in Spanish.
Edutopia outlines ways to use video and learning apps to help engage ELLs.
Those searching for interactive learning websites should investigate the University of Wisconsin Libraries’ ESL/ELL Education: Interactive Websites for Learning research guide.
The United Federation of Teachers (UFT) has developed its own collection of resources for supporting effective instruction for ELLs, including sites, publications and guides, information from other professional organizations, and more.
You can find webinars and tools in the list of resources available from TESOL, an international association of English language teaching professionals.
Common Sense Education shares not only existing resources for ELL education, but also helpful information to help educators independently find or develop resources.
Region 18 Educational Consultant Maria Mata shares health guidelines, lessons, free resources, and more in her Bilingual/ESL/Title III remote teaching resources newsletter.
The English Learner Support Division of the Texas Education Association (TEA) also shares a number of updates and helpful links, including the English Learner Web Portal.

Do you have resources you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments!

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

August 12, 2020 1 comment

Using Google Translate in Sheets to Differentiate

by Dr. Bruce Ellis March 21, 2019

written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Many teachers may have students in their classrooms that have a different home language than English. While this can be an advantage to the student in many ways, it can also provide some challenges. One challenge that can happen is the lack of parental support that may be given. Also, if the student speaks little English but is fluent in another language, it may be hard for you to build on prior knowledge, especially if you do not know the academic vocabulary in the target language of the student. This is a perfect time to use the Google Translate function in Google Sheets!

I originally came across this Google sheet online while reading through various forums. The initial sheet allows you to enter your vocabulary words in the first column (far left). The words will be translated into the other languages using the function: GOOGLETRANSLATE(text, [source_language, target_language]). You can obtain and modify the original page at http://bit.ly/2EBD9p0.

Create Your Own Translation Spreadsheet

If we tweak the spreadsheet some, though, we can make it into a great tool to help us differentiate vocabulary words for students. Follow along with me as I make the alterations to the file so that we can have a nicely tailored list of vocabulary words that can be shared, printed, or saved as a PDF. If you want to access the finished file that you can copy and alter, then go to http://bit.ly/2Ev13lY and make a copy. You can use the drop down cell (cell B2) to select any of the languages to which Google can translate. For this sample, we will be creating a seventh grade science vocabulary list.

Name the blank sheet VocabularyList.
Put a title in A1. A title is helpful if you plan to print this page or save it as a PDF.
Select A1 and B1 and click the Merge Cells icon so that the title can span over both columns that we will use.
Enter “Vocabulary Words” in cell A2.
The cells below A2 will be used for vocabulary words. Enter as many as needed. As mentioned above, our list happens to have science vocabulary for seventh grade listed.
Insert a New Sheet (SHIFT + F11 or INSERT→New Sheet). This sheet will contain the languages which you want to make available to your users.
Name this new blank sheet LanguageCodes.
Go to http://bit.ly/2Ev7zZP and transfer the languages into column A on the new sheet and the codes into column B. You are now ready to create the magic!
Go back to the VocabularyList tab.
Click in cell B2 and click DATA→Data Validation.
For the criteria, “List from a range” should be selected. To select the area, click the “select data range” icon and then click on the LanguagesCode tab and click/drag to select column A cells that have languages identified. Your dialog box should look like the image below.
In cell B3 enter the following formula: =GOOGLETRANSLATE(A3, “en”, VLOOKUP($B$2,LanguageCodes!$A$1:$B$64,2))
A3 refers to the vocabulary word in column A to the left of B3 where we currently are
“en” identifies that our starting language is in English
VLOOKUP is the function that will look up the contents of a given cell based on the criteria
$B$2 is language that we will be looking for in the formula
LanguageCodes!$A$1:$B$64 is the range of cells on the tab named LanguageCodes where the information is that we need
2 identifies that what we are looking for is in the second column and adjacent to the language as identified in $B$2
You may now copy/paste the formula you entered in B3 to the remaining cells in the column where a translation is needed.
If you want, change the color of the drop down cell so it is easier to see which cell to adjust.
Your vocabulary list is ready to be played with. Select a different language in the drop down cell and watch the translations update. You may see a brief error message while the function is looking up the language code in the other tab and translating each word; this is normal. Your final sheet should look something like the image below.

Finding Already-Created Vocabulary Lists

Dolch Word Lists – This set of words is the most commonly used set of sight words in the English language.

Fry Word List – This is the most commonly accepted list of 1,000 words that students will encounter in reading and writing. The main list is broken down into sets of 100 words and identified as to the grade level at which they are typically encountered.

Vocabulary Spelling City – Here you will find lists of words categorized by grade level or content area. Within the content area, words are then grouped by category (specific subject area).

Words by Theme – This site has over 100 lists identified, each with its own list of related words.

Comprehensive English Vocabulary Word Lists – This site has tons of lists that you can use and is great for expanding vocabulary beyond typical grade level words.

Inserting into Google Sites

If you want to make your word wall more available to your students when they are not in your classroom, consider inserting the spreadsheet in a Google Site. This will allow students the ability to access the words (and translations) anywhere they have Internet access.

Because the drop down box does not work when the spreadsheet is set to view only and embedded in a Google Site, you’ll need to decide how you want to tweak the spreadsheet and make it available. You have several options:

Create a single Google Sheet document with each sheet having its own language. Be sure to name the associated tab with the language that is the target language.
Create a single worksheet in which each column is a different targeted language. Students won’t have to go to a particular tab since all the translations will be on the single sheet.

Once you’ve decided how to best make your spreadsheet, it is time to insert it into Google Sites. Be sure that you set your share settings on the Google sheet so that anyone with the link can view. Then, you are ready to follow the steps below to insert your vocabulary translation spreadsheet:

Create a new page in the Google Site for the vocabulary spreadsheet.
On the right-hand side of the Site editor, click on INSERT→From Drive.
Locate your vocabulary spreadsheet and click Insert (or double-click the file).
If your spreadsheet has more than one tab, click on the gear icon that appears just above the inserted sheet (when it is selected) and select the desired sheet from the drop down list.
If needed, you can extend the “window” of your spreadsheet by dragging the bottom handle down.
Voila! You are done. Now all you need to do is publish your site.

NOTE: The user can click on the various tabs that are visible, so you may want to hide the tab with the language codes since it is irrelevant to the user. Also, remember that the drop down list does not work when set to view only and is inserted in Google Site. To make the drop down list work, it is recommended that you set the sharing to be able to edit and then users will need to have the sheet pop open in a new window to change the language choice.

So how will you use the Google Translate feature? This is just one way that you can use it to support students of different languages and students in foreign language classes. If you create your own translatable page, let us know and share it in the comments below!

March 21, 2019 0 comment

ESL/ELL Good Teaching Microsoft Tips and Tricks Reading Special Needs Writing

Supporting Bilingual Students with Reading and Writing

by Miguel Guhlin December 12, 2018

written by Miguel Guhlin

In the United States, over thirteen million children speak a language other than English at home. After English, Spanish is the most common language spoken (Source: Data Center). In 2016, there were 456,000 Texas students who had difficulty speaking English. What are some of the ways that schools can use technology to assist students who are learning English? In this blog entry, let’s review research, approaches, and tools for teaching reading and writing to English language learners.

Enhancing Reading

Microsoft’s Learning Tools and other digital text tools can enhance reading. Students’ experiences with digital texts include pictionaries, read alouds, and parts of speech. Each can help extend students’ vocabulary and support them in learning more about sentences structure.

One incredible Office 365 tool is the Immersive Reader. It offers various features such as:

Adjustable font size, text spacing, and background color
Splitting up words into syllables
Line focus
Highlighting verbs, nouns, adjectives, and sub-clauses
Choosing between several fonts optimized to help with reading
Reading text aloud with adjustable speed
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) from print and pictures

These tools can help English Language Learners as they learn to break down words and phrases and improve their English literacy. Enhanced reading can also lead to enhanced writing, as my own story can attest.

Growing Up Bilingual

“How’s that book report coming along?” asked my dad. It was nearly noon on a Saturday. Balled up pages of handwritten text covered a corner of the hexagonal kitchen table. I smiled at him. “I’m on my fifth draft of a page-and-a-half book report.” The sheer exhilaration of putting words where I wanted to kept me wrestling with the ideas. Each time, I changed a sentence, I got an insight into the idea I was fishing for. I’d come a long way from my big fat “F” in reading and writing in second grade.

Research says a lot about children like me who grew up speaking and writing in two languages. Growing up bilingual? Some research says the following:

You may learn English words and grammar at a slower pace than monolinguals,
You tend to be better at multitasking than monolinguals.
You can pick out relevant speech sounds and ignore others in noisy environments. (So, my mom was right. I did have selective hearing as a teenager!)
Your verbal skills in each language are weaker than those of monolingual speakers.

Growing up bilingual, my dual language background enriched my writing style.

Improving Writing

From book reports to essays and then more book reports, I learned to write in sixth grade. Constant writing allowed me to refine my use of two languages. Some of the techniques that I rely on as a bilingual writer are as follows:

Create graphic organizers, semantic webs, and concept maps.
Summarize research and explain what another has said or written in your own words.
Chunk writing in blocks with headers.
Start with dialogue or a story.

Want to help your English language learners and bilingual/ESL students improve their writing? You can use these same techniques with the help of tech tools.

Blending Technology into Writing

Ready to blend technology into the four techniques I mention above? Today, we have access to a wide range of tools and resources. Here is a roundup of tools:

1. Create graphic organizers

Have a touchscreen device like an iPad, Windows 10 tablet, or Chromebook with a stylus? Use convenient apps to organize your nonfiction or fiction writing. These apps do well for note-taking. Find them available for iOS, Windows 10, Chromebook. Many types of graphic organizers exist online. Use them as a model to organize your work and model it for students. I grew up drawing concept maps for lecture notes and grabbing key ideas from texts. Until I internalized the process, I used them to organize my writing.

2. Summarize research in your own words

Summarizing is the process of keeping what’s relevant and discarding the rest. For bilingual brains, this is one strength to develop. As a child, I was assigned research papers. I had limited access to encyclopedias. If I wanted access to information at home, I had to take notes on what I read. I kept what was relevant to what I hoped to write. One way to encourage students involves focusing on the main ideas and supporting details. Get them to write, revise the information, and focus on the relevant. One tool that I use often is Hemingway Editor. It helps cut unnecessary words and shorten ideas.

3. Chunk writing with headers

Chunking splits information into small pieces. This makes reading and understanding faster and easier. Students may see a piece of writing as one long narrative. Teach them to write longer pieces. Each piece is assembled in short chunks. Students can apply chunking strategies with these methods:

Craft short paragraphs.
Keep sentences short.
Use bullet or numbered lists.
Create a visual hierarchy with varying styles of headings and subheadings (Source)

One easy way to model this for students is to write blog entries. Your students can write about anything. Practice chunking it. Begin with short pieces first. Craft longer pieces in time. A fun way to approach this could be to have students chunk an existing piece of writing, explaining why as they do it.

4. Start with dialogue or story

“When do you use quotation marks?” asked my son. I had shared my Dad’s approach to selecting books to read. He was wont to say, “I crack the book open. If it has a lot of dialogue, I get it. If it doesn’t, I leave it on the shelf.” This made my son want to create writing worth buying. “You use quotes around things people say,” I said to him.

“Quotes move a piece of writing forward,” I added after a moment’s thought.

Want students to use dialogue well? Have them create comics. Every speech or thought bubble is a snippet of dialogue, spoken or imagined. Using tools like Book Creator, students can make comics. They can highlight nonfiction or fiction information and ideas. Each exchange forces students to break concepts into smaller pieces. They use their own words, striving for natural speech.

Reading and Writing to New Heights

Writers can be like rock climbers. The cliff climber pits herself against the physicality of the rock. A writer clings to ideas, dangling from a precipice. Embrace strategies and technologies for reading and writing with your bilingual students, especially as they work to perfect their English. Give them the skills they need to express themselves in English as well as they can in their mother tongue.

December 12, 2018 1 comment

ESL/ELL

ELL Strategies: Digital Phrase Walls and Anchor Charts

by Miguel Guhlin May 31, 2016

written by Miguel Guhlin

“My principal wants me to use anchor charts, or at least, hang some on the walls” an experienced teacher told me recently. “I’m just not sure I get the value.” I immediately started to explain why anchor charts are so important, and then sputtered to a stop, like a car running out of gas, realizing that I could not articulate why they were beneficial. In this blog entry, let’s explore the benefits of anchor charts, phrase walls, and technology for use in English Language Learner (ELL) classrooms. Of course, these approaches work for monolingual classes as well.

Source: Conversations about English Language Learning

Before we do that, let’s review what anchor charts are, courtesy of Rhonda Stewart (Scholastic) for the quote:

…an anchor chart is a tool used largely to support instruction and to move the student towards achieving success with lessons taught in class. They are also used as a classroom management tool for students to self-monitor their behavior by gently reminding them of expectations and routines. Anchor charts are created during the instruction of the lesson. As the teacher models the lesson or strategy, the lesson reinforcement or strategy tool is written on chart paper. Once the lesson is complete, the chart is placed in a convenient student-friendly location so that the students can access it independently….

The beauty of an anchor chart is that it can be displayed as needed or determined by the student work. Some anchor charts live all year long in the classroom, while others are only displayed during the current unit of study.

One of the key phrases is that “anchor charts are created during the instruction of the lesson.” A question that comes to mind is “How can we transfer ownership of the anchor charts from the teacher to the students and use technology to generate the chart?”

Here are three approaches to try:

Create a Padlet: Although Padlet can be used to create a word wall, you can easily share expectations for what “talking” should sound like simply by having students audio record themselves and share that in the Padlet itself. You can also include other content (e.g. text, video, images). Then make the Padlet available on a device like a digital projector or large screen television/monitor. If working with classroom centers, setting up a computer screen monitor connected to a mobile device will also work.
Create a Thinglink: Think of ThingLink as a virtual interactive wall, which makes it great to combine with a large touchscreen monitor.
Create an Infographic: Having students create infographics that they can share and then hang on the wall can be very engaging for them. Not only have they recaptured ownership of the anchor/phrase chart, but they are able to pull information from others in the classroom. Each contributes their own part.

What other strategies do you see as effective in ELL to create expectations for how students should interact? While you are reflecting on that, consider the following point that Nancy McNeal emphasizes in her blog Learning Twice regarding anchor charts:

The brain-based research of Marcia Tate and others support the use of visuals to incorporate new learning into memory. When the visual represents a learning event that includes the students, it becomes an artifact of the learning experience. It has meaning for the students because they participated in its construction. [emphasis mine-MG]

Are you ready for ELL students to become co-creators of their learning? THEY are.

Join the ongoing TCEA Microsoft Innovative Educator (MIE) SkypeChat via your mobile device or online. Explore and share concepts at the intersection of teaching, learning, leading, and technology!

May 31, 2016 0 comment

Web 2.0 Tool

A Newbie to the TCEA Convention Reflects After the First Day

by Lori Gracey February 2, 2016

written by Lori Gracey

This is a guest blog post by Tosh Mcgaughy, a Digital Learning Specialist from Birdville ISD. Tosh is attending her first TCEA convention and has a blog full of great ideas and resources here.

After years of teaching writing in middle school, the needs of ESL/ELL learners and other struggling readers have become even more important and relevant to me. A full day ESL/ELL Academy was a no-brainer choice when I registered for the TCEA 2016 Convention months, ago even though all my friends were heading to the Google Academy. I know there are digital options and best practices out there that could benefit these unique learners, and I was excited about discovering them at the convention.

Four sessions later, I’m waiting for the closing and door prizes to complete my full day of learning. Not surprisingly, I’m reeling from all of the resources and takeaways that I have gathered today in this academy. I’ve pasted links in our district shared folder, emailed teachers and ESL coaches back home, and tweeted as much as I could without getting off-task. All four sessions I attended yielded information that I will be able to use with specific teachers to help many students when I get back home.

My personal top two favorites of the day were “Sheltered Instructional Strategies: Transforming How ELLs Learn Best” and “Universal Design for Learning with Google and Beyond.” Both of these sessions had interactive elements (always a plus,) and focused on practical strategies for differentiation for these learners using technology as the catalyst for increased language interaction. SIOP strategies made fully interactive with digital tools from United ISD ESL Coaches Dr. Liendo and Dr. Solis included:

Jigsaw with QR codes for collaborative grouping
Quizlet for student vocabulary building using the “pick a definition” function
A clever Google Form template for the SIOP strategy, Alphabox, that allows students to submit responses via a simple Google Form and then creates a visual digital wordwall that ELL students can access throughout a unit on their own devices.
Tracy Clark’s non-stop relevant resources are housed here.

My favorite resource was Prism, where students can close-read and highlight text with digital tools that can be shared with the whole group and analyzed and discussed based on frequency of highlighting with a “text visualization” function. This is a brilliant tool to help these students see the complex thought processes that go into reading comprehension while also giving them practice using digital tools to do this, just like the online STAAR A assessments.

This is exactly what I was hoping for, and I am hopeful that the rest of my week here in Austin will be as productive and full of learning as today.

February 2, 2016 0 comment