Recording for revision, encouraging translanguaging, and repetition are useful strategies to exalt and empower multilingual writers. As teachers of multilingual students, encouraging translanguaging and recording as revision is akin to telling students: every aspect of you is valued. Every aspect of you is important.
Category: EAL
Supporting English Language Learners with Summary Writing
When I first started teaching and heard experienced teachers converse using acronyms related to English Language Development, I wondered if I would be able to memorize these acronyms as freely as they had. Twenty years later, I think I have a grasp on several of them. Here’s a few, try it out and see if… Continue reading Supporting English Language Learners with Summary Writing
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Behaviors: Meet Writers Where They Are
Since the beginning of our school year, our schedule has changed more times than I could count on one hand. Students have come back from virtual learning, some have moved in and out of at-home learning for set periods of time, and the rest have remained in the physical classroom. Our environment is in a… Continue reading Behaviors: Meet Writers Where They Are
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A Writer’s Purpose.
I remember the day I ran over to my partner teacher’s classroom. If my memory serves me well, I may have darted over to her classroom, flailing a single sheet in front of her and excitedly showed her the work. It was the work of one of my students. He, a student who could be… Continue reading A Writer’s Purpose.
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Providing Tools for Writing and Sharing Writing Through the Pandemic
Calling all primary writing teachers. Today Janet Ahn shares how she worked with her Kindergarteners to continue thrive in writing workshop through the pandemic. These young scholars continued to draft pieces, engage in conferring, collaborate to mark up mentor texts, and publish their writing through online platforms. Their dedication to continuing the writing workshop virtually was a reflection of how they truly saw themselves as writers.
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10 Strategies to Help Keep All Students Learning and Growing, Especially EALs
There are many strategies we can use to help us be the best teachers we can be for all of our students, but keeping good strategies in the forefront can be especially helpful for EAL students. By adding some simple strategies, we can also help EALs enjoy rich and meaningful learning experiences in the classroom.
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Inviting Voices from the Community
As the 2020-2021 school year sets to start, we recognize that educators need each other more than ever. We need to hold onto our beliefs about the teaching of writing while becoming ever more flexible in our approaches. We need to grow in our understanding of Culturally and Historically Responsive Literacy (as described in Gholdy… Continue reading Inviting Voices from the Community
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Ending Our Pandemic School Year
Now our year is coming to a close and we are having to find new ways to end the year and say goodbye. With another change comes another opportunity for trauma... it is important to remember that the health and welfare of every person comes first, even and especially as we bring the school year to a close.
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Widening the Classroom Community to Include Families
In the last two months, our world has required us to live in the space of continuous new experiences. All of us, but especially the world of education, have taken a hard and immediate shift. It would be blind denial to say it has been easy, but this past week has taken me by surprise.
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Reaching EALS During COVID-19
Meeting the needs of our students may sometimes require much more than paper or pencils, but it is not always as hard as we might think.
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Translanguaging, EALs, & Testing
All I wanted was for their pencils to keep moving, for the writing to flow without stopping. For a short while, that proved to be difficult, but not impossible.
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Writing on the Walls
What we place on the walls of a classroom tells students, or any other person who enters the room, what is valued most, and what we should value most in our classrooms is student work.
TWO WRITING TEACHERS 