Monday, January 5, 2015
Thursday Faculty Meeting Assignment Regarding LEP Students
It's the new year and you all know what we do during the new year........we make resolutions. I have a resolution that I would like to make for Castleberry Elementary School. That resolution? To help the LEP students find even more success in the classrooms. This can be a daunting task, but if we take it one step at a time.......if we eat the elephant one bite at a time.......if we don't try and do too much but choose one activity, one skill, one area of focus and master that particular technique we will find success and more thoroughly meet the needs of our LEP students. So, how are we going to do this? Earlier this school all of the teachers on the campus received two documents in their e-mail. Those documents were the Linguistic Accommodations for Each Proficiency Level planning guide and the Differentiating by Language Level Instructional Planning Guide. These two documents are full of ideas designed to help teachers help their LEP students become more successful in the classroom. The documents have ideas for beginning, intermediate and advanced students in all four of the TELPAS domains. I encourage the teachers to choose one or two ideas from these documents (no more than this or it will become overwhelming) and begin to implement them in your classroom. Once you have mastered the first couple of ideas, choose one or two more that you can add to your toolkit of teaching techniques. That is how you slowly increase your impact on your LEP students over time. In order for us to get off on a good foot as a faculty there is an assignment that everyone needs to prepare for. This Thursday is our next faculty meeting. At the faculty meeting we are going to share different ideas that you have chosen to use from the documents mentioned earlier in this blog. Come ready to share. Better yet, post a comment here that could possibly help inspire others. Let us resolve together to take more steps in helping out LEP students find success in the classroom.
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Very Interesting! I would love to see the content of the documents.
ReplyDeleteThe PK and K Team incorporate many LEP accommodations into our daily learning routines; however, we are going to focus on using visuals with vocabulary and continue using sentence stems (and question stems) that were created as a result of our first Instructional Rounds back in October (it's funny how everything connects). Our team feels these accommodations are the most beneficial to incorporate in the classroom at this time to support our LEP students (and the class as a whole) in their learning. We also found some useful links to share in regards to vocabulary and using sentence stems.
ReplyDeleteVisual Vocabulary ideas: http://learningtasks.weebly.com/vocabulary-strategies.html
Sentence Stems: (purchased from Teachers Pay Teachers for $3.50) (Tip: Purchase this for your team w/ additional licenses and print on poster maker at admin teacher workroom to make small posters to display in your classroom!). http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Accountable-Talk-with-Questions-Conversation-Stems-Commom-Core-SMPs-280248
Boom!
Great ideas. Thanks for the response.
DeleteThird grade is focusing on more student talk versus teacher talk. We are incorporating the strategy of peer interaction into all subjects. When presenting students with questions, we have them answer to a peer as well as justify or explain their answer. We also use turn and talk frequently to give students a broader base of knowledge by allowing them to hear different opinions.
ReplyDeleteIn math MANIPULATIVES are KEY! Teachers have students use manipulatives to show their understanding on specific content. Students are encouraged to use manipulatives whenever they feel there is a need. Manipulatives help math problems become concrete by allowing students to “see” the problem with hopes that eventually students will be able to do problems abstract.
BOOM!
Thanks, third grade. Good input.
DeleteFourth grade has reviewed both papers and were amazed at the amount of activities that we already do in our classrooms. We felt that these teaching practices were beneficial for all students, not just the LEP students. An example that we are doing in Science this week incorporates gestures for the vocabulary words weathering, erosion, and deposition. We will be able to demonstrate this in our faculty meeting on Thursday. Writing incorporates drawing/visual aids for the students to use in order to sequence the events of their stories. Vocabulary is evident on our word walls as well as anchor charts. We look forward to hearing about how other grades incorporate these ideas.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right that you are already incorporating many of the ideas and that they are beneficial for all students. Thanks for the ideas.
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ReplyDelete4th grade has done a wonderful job implementing ideas that we shared with them on how to reach those LEP students. We also would like to add that we believe learning for LEP's really come from peer support and interactions. Fifth grade team likes to have students share what they have just learned with each other by explaining an idea in their own words.
ReplyDeleteNot only do we like them to share verbally, we like to encourage student to share thoughts and ideas through media, such as blogging about what's going on in either the class or in life. Just like what 4th grade said, writing incorporates drawing and visual aids for the students to help give meanings to new thoughts and ideas.
Thanks fifth grade. I have seen you use the blogging to help clarify ideas in the minds of students. Thanks for the response.
DeleteThe First Grade Team incorporates gestures, visuals, and manipulatives in every day instruction. For example: We use gestures during ELA to help students connect their learning to new vocabulary, as well as letter sounds. We use visuals to help build the students' background knowledge when learning new concepts and to produce the desired expectations for rules and procedures. We use manipulatives consistently for teaching every math objective to give our students meaningful, hands on learning opportunities.
ReplyDeleteAs a team, we plan provide an individual Word Bank to every student so they are able to include new vocabulary in their writing.
In walk throughs that I have done I have seen all of these things that you have mentioned being used. Great response.
Delete2nd grade uses graphic organizers in our weekly comprehension skills. We model how to use the organizer and then the students are more confident in filling them out independently.We also use adapted writing tasks with drawing and scaffolding. This can be done during writer’s workshop where they have already been taught the importance of using and labeling pictures to accompany their writing. During our conferring times we can help our LEP students by adapting the writing tasks to fit their needs. In math, manipulatives are strongly used. We implement them into whole group and small group time. Students are encouraged to use their manipulatives to help them when they are struggling with a concept. They are using the manipulatives to help them apply the skills we have taught them.
ReplyDeleteWait time is also another thing we strive for. It’s easiest to just call on a student to get those answers we expect quick, fast, and in a hurry. Taking that extra time for the students to process what we have said or asked and mull it over gives them the time to process and justify their thinking
I agree with all that you have written here. I would especially like to know more about the adapted writing tasks that you all use. Please share with me more about this. Thanks.
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