Amid Philadelphia’s crisp autumn air, WIDA held its 2016 National Conference with the theme of Drawing on Life’s Experiences: Designing Bright Futures. From concurrent sessions and keynote speakers to networking with education devotees, helping students achieve successful results in and out of the ESL classroom and content classroom was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Most helpful were the opportunities to listen to presentations on educative innovation for English language learners.
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Making Meaning in Content Classrooms
Science and math are content classrooms that pose peculiar challenges for ELLs not only because of the specific academic vocabulary but the layers of meaning required to truly excel. At the WIDA 2016 National Conference, Rita MacDonald, on behalf of WIDA, centralized her presentation not on the content of math and science but on process of establishing meaning among students in those content classrooms.
6 Steps to Help Your Newcomer Students in the Content Classroom at the Secondary Level
Do you have a newcomer center for your school or a newcomer program for your new students? Newcomer students face mounting challenges when they enroll a new school. Besides the obvious language barrier, they are facing culture and social challenges in their classroom.
Strategies for Boosting Test Scores 24.7%
According to the study done by Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, using a word to word dictionary as testing accommodations for English Language Learners shows testing improvement of 0.247 mean. (24.7% improvement)*.
Tips for Teaching Academic Vocabulary
At a very basic level we define academic vocabulary as the vocabulary that is critical for students to understand the concepts of the content taught in schools. It is vocabulary that supports student comprehension of instructional content.
State Schools Chief Tom Torlakson Announces More Than 10,000 Students Earn New State Seal of Biliteracy
Governor Cuomo Signs Bill to Recognize High School Graduates Who Demonstrate Proficiency in Multiple Languages
Summer Learning with Parents and Families
Summer is here. Some of us ask, “Where did the time go?” Summer has always been associated with fun and relaxation, particularly for our students. They look forward to summer. This is their time to relax and I say let them relax. They deserve it!
Home-School Communications
