Continue reading »]]> There comes a time in every reader’s life when they stumble upon a book that moves them emotionally and intellectually, The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi is that book for me.  I was looking for a children’s literature book to use for my intermediate English language learner classes at Portland Adult Education in Maine. A learned colleague, Kathleen Hiscock, referred me to the book and the New Readers Program from the Maine Humanities Council.  I was not disappointed.

The Name Jar tells the story of Unhei, a young Korean immigrant, who travels to the United States with her mother, father, and brother.  Before departing for America, her grandmother gives her a red pouch that contains her name stamp, a symbol that will connect them though they are thousands of miles apart. Her grandmother writes from Korea, “Here the moon is up, but there the sun is up. No matter how far apart we are and no matter how different America is from Korea, you’ll always be my Unhei” (Choi, p.21).

Unhei (which means “grace” in English) is teased by children on her first day of school and decides that she needs her  “own American name” in order to fit in with the other children.  Of course, her mother disagrees and reaffirms the theme of acceptance.  She tells Unhei that she should be proud of her name even if it is difficult to pronounce and even if it is “different” (Choi, p. 8).

Unhei begins to make friends. Mr. Kim the local Korean marketer is the first to welcome her to the neighborhood and becomes a grandfather figure; and Joey, a young, redheaded American boy, befriends Unhei.  He likes her without knowing her name.  It is after meeting Joey that a jar mysteriously appears on her desk filled with names from her classmates for her to select an “American” name.

Will Unhei change her name?  What are the meanings of names?  What does it mean to feel different?  These are some of the questions posed by Unhei’s journey throughout the beautifully illustrated book.

I spent four weeks (classes met twice per week) teaching this book and it was a complete joy.  I used a combination of reflective writing prompts, CLOZE exercises, cognition vocabulary dictionaries, and story mapping.  My students ranged from 19-68 years old, and all enjoyed the story of an elementary aged girl seeking and finding acceptance and friendship in a new culture.  I strongly recommend this book and hope it helps other educators and students make connections with the text and with their classmates.  And perhaps, they will make a new chinku (Korean for friend).

–Farrah T. Giroux MS. Ed., CAS, is NNETESOL President-Elect and President/WIDA Certified Trainer of the English Language Institute, LLC. Choi, Yangsook.  The name jar.  2001.  Dragonfly Books:NY.

Continue reading »]]> For me, oral language has always seemed like the bedrock of my ELL students’ language development.  Often it develops before literacy and when students have strong speaking and listening skills you can use them to develop literacy skills.

This school year, oral language has become a focus for my whole elementary school because the Common Core devotes a whole strand of English Language Arts standards to “Speaking and Listening.”  These standards build on each other so that all students will have effective academic conversation and presentation skills by the time they leave high school.

This new focus on oral language for all students will benefit ELLs because it gives classroom teachers a way to look at teaching oral language, something that may at times seem confusing or imposing to mainstream teachers.  Many teachers are very comfortable teaching content that they know well, but the idea of teaching the language of that content seems foreign to them.

In the last two years as we’ve started shifting to the Common Core, my school has been noticing that all of our students have trouble with academic conversation skills.  Speaking and listening skills don’t develop automatically, we need to teach them.  That’s why we’ve started using “Accountable Talk Read Alouds,” also called “Interactive Read Alouds” to get students talking about literature and content K-5.

Accountable Talk Read Alouds are read alouds that increase student talk and get students comfortable with having independent academic conversations with their peers.  During these read alouds, students have a buddy that they sit next to and talk with during read aloud time.  Teachers choose a specific skill (predicting, inferring, etc.) for their students to work on during their partner discussion.  As they read, the teacher stops at preset moments in the text to think-aloud or to prompt students to “turn and talk” to their partner or to “stop and jot” in their reading journal.  Teachers provide carefully worded prompts and scaffolds to help students with the discussion.  They also model finding evidence in the text to back up their opinions, a skill that is difficult for all students.  There’s also an aspect of accountable talk that is called “The Grand Conversation,” during which the whole class has a discussion about a book without raising hands or being prompted by the teacher.  The students comment on each other’s thoughts and ideas.  It does take a lot of training, but I have seen this work in first grade classrooms.

The exciting thing is that now that all the classroom teachers are using accountable talk, I see my ELLs using the prompts in all content areas.  They’re starting sentences with “I agree with Isha because…” and “I’d like to build on what Mohamed said …”

During my recent ACCESS testing I was pleased to see some of my student using various sentence frames correctly and orally retelling stories with an amazing amount of detail.  I attribute their success to this increased focus on oral language in their mainstream classrooms in all of the content areas.  I plan to continue to use accountable talk with my students and I’m glad that my mainstream colleagues will be as well.  Also, although accountable talk is mostly used at the elementary level, it can be adapted to work with middle and high school students, who still need plenty of practice with academic conversation skills.

If you want more information on accountable talk, here are some good resources:

Bringing Picture Books to Life!!! with Accountable Talk – a great power point that sums up the important points about accountable talk.

Read Aloud with Accountable Talk – Thinking and Talking Deeply about Books – this handout is a good list of teacher and student prompts that can be used during an accountable talk read aloud.

Ms. Gurian’s Class – this website has accountable talk prompts written for 19 elementary aged books, just click on the title of a book and a page of “sticky note” prompts comes up that you can print out and try with your students.

Kirsten Kollgaard is an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher at JFK Elementary School in Winooski, Vermont, and president of NNETESOL.

Continue reading »]]> WIDA Conference Registration Now Open

WIDA is hosting its first annual national conference, “Language Learner Success: Building on Strengths,” October 17-19, 2013 in Milwaukee, WI. Early bird registration is now open to general education/content area, special education, and ESL/bilingual teachers, as well as school, district, and state administrators and all others who support the education of language learners. Early bird registrants receive a $100 discount and space is limited, so please register today! Learn more

In addition, two pre-conference workshops will be facilitated by Dr. Jeff Zwiers of Stanford and WIDA Lead Developer Dr. Margo Gottlieb. Milwaukee Public Schools has generously collaborated with us to set up an intriguing menu of school site visit options. Individuals who also attend the conference will receive a discount on these pre-conference opportunities.

The draft conference program will be released soon! Be sure to visit www.widaconference.us regularly for the latest updates.

–

Jesse Markow
WIDA Consortium at WCER
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1025 West Johnson St., MD #23
Madison, WI 53706
P 608.262.7594
F 608.263.3733
markow@wisc.edu
www.wida.us

Continue reading »]]> Hello!

Night Owls Press (www.nightowlspress.com), a small, independent press based in San Francisco, is looking for ESL/TESOL instructors with a creative writing bent to join us on a planned book series. For this series, we’re looking to combine the classic “gamebook” format— a type of story structure that makes the reader an active participant in the story— with ESL guided instruction. Basically, we want to create a new line of ESL guides in the form of novels! Our target reading audience: Adult English language learners based in the U.S. at the intermediate/advanced level.

You may recall the popular book series, Choose Your Own Adventure… We want to create something similar for the ESL market, where readers’ decisions as the “protagonist” of a story shape the story they read, help them learn English, and allow for familiarity with different or alternative meanings associated with certain phrases or language elements. The books are meant to be used alongside classroom instruction or as extracurricular reading for students.

The complete announcement is available at: http://www.nightowlspress.com/open-call-seeking-writers-esl-instructors-book-series/. A PDF version of the open call can be downloaded at: http://www.nightowlspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/ESL-Gamebook-Series-Open-Call.pdf.

Applications will be accepted until 15 April 2013. Invited authors will receive a publishing contract with Night Owls Press and work closely with our book development team. Books will be developed through 2013 and published in paperback and e-book formats. For questions about the project, please review the FAQ (the link is listed on the Open Call) before contacting us.

Contact: Karen Hannah <karen@nightowlspress.com>, Book Editor/Series Editor

Best,

Genevieve DeGuzman
Managing Editor

–
NIGHT OWLS PRESS – Turning Big Ideas into Great Books

nightowlspress.com
editor@nightowlspress.com
twitter.com/nightowlspress
facebook.com/nightowlspress

Continue reading »]]> TESOL CALL-IS is providing webcast coverage from the CALL-IS Electronic Village and Technology Showcase. Please see the announcement below with a link to the Webcast schedule and the sessions.

____________________________________________

The CALL-IS is also webcasting several selected EV Fair Classics sessions from the Electronic Village.

Visit http://www.call-is.org/info and follow the link to view the calendar of webcasts and instructions on how to attend. Please pass this link on to others who might be interested in participating.

Jack Watson

2013 TESOL CALL-IS Web Cast Development Co-Coordinator

Continue reading »]]> Hey, NNETESOL members and friends! We’re looking forward to next fall already, and we’re making plans…

We have chosen Saturday, November 9th, for our fall conference. We’ve not yet selected a venue, but we know it will be held in the Portland, Maine, area.

The Call for Proposals goes out late spring, so start thinking of what you could share!

Continue reading »]]> Thanks to all of you who attended our conference earlier this month in Plymouth, NH. We have sent out a post-conference survey to those who registered through ACTEVA. If you did not get the email, however, we would still love to hear from you. Check out the survey here, and let us know what you think. We are looking forward to an even better conference next year!

Continue reading »]]> Dear TESOL members,  

Continue reading »]]> Dear Educators,

Do you need help with travel expenses to attend a TESOL Academy or the TESOL convention? The TESOL Awards Committee invites you to apply for the following funds.

Ruth Crymes TESOL Academies Fellowships

This award provides two teachers or teacher educators with US$500 each for registration, room, board, and travel expenses for a TESOL Academy or the annual TESOL convention. Any TESOL member who is a classroom teacher or teacher educator is eligible to apply.

TESOL Award for the Teacher as Classroom Action Researcher

This award recognizes excellence in action research on language teaching and learning in an ESL/EFL classroom. Its purpose is to enable action researchers to attend the TESOL convention and share their research findings. To offset travel expenses, the recipient will receive US$1,000, which is donated by The College Board.

The application deadline is 1 November 2012. For more information, please visit the TESOL Awards & Grants Web page.

We look forward to receiving your applications!

Continue reading »]]>

Hey, all!

It’s been a while since we’ve updated the blog, and so I thought I would be a little selfish and share what I’ve been doing lately. I’m trying to get professional development to the masses by emailing out links to such videos as the one above.

This has been an idea I’ve been kicking around for a while, and I thought I’d ask a wider audience what you think of it.

Ideas? Comments?

Let me know!

Beth