OPENING SESSION
A Joyous and Just Education for All
Juliana Urtubey
In order to be equitable, linguistically and racially inclusive, schools must present a Joyous and Just environment and education for students and families. The Joyous brings a sense of belonging. The Just ensures that we acknowledge and dismantle barriers. A Joyous and Just school is intentional, holistic and inclusive to build welcoming environments for all members of learning communities. Every student, family and community has the right to a Joyous and Just education. Explore examples of how schools can continue to transform educational spaces to ensure everyone can shine through community connection and growth. Learn and share examples of how to transform your classroom and school spaces to welcome everyone.
9:30 a.m. - 10:20 a.m.
Boosting the Big Five with a Focus on Language Support
Karen Sander, Columbia Public Schools
The 2000 National Reading Panel report was significant because it categorized reading skills into five main areas: phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension. The “science of reading" movement has placed additional emphasis on phonemic awareness and phonics. Explore the oral language needs of ELs with literacy instruction and concrete suggestions about boosting oral language and literacy.
How to Embed Multilingual Communication Practices in Daily School Operations
Anne Truran, KIPP St. Louis Public Schools
Designed for administrators that have the appropriate tools to support multilingual communication but feel their staff is not actually using those resources consistently to communicate in a language families can understand. Discover the steps of an annual cycle to increase the use of document translation and verbal interpretation in order to provide families with equitable access to information and ensure district compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Learn how to gather family and staff input, gain buy-in from key players, train staff, measure implementation, hold teams accountable and maintain a positive culture. This session does not include an examination of digital tools for translation and interpretation.
No Child Left Monolingual: The Why and How of Dual Language
Kim Potowski, University of Illinois Chicago
Mainstream education in the U.S. generally suffers from two problems: We don’t help speakers of other languages maintain proficiency in them while they learn English, and we don’t teach non-English languages early enough nor very robustly. Dual immersion is an outstanding solution to both challenges. Through research-based findings, discover how these programs can consistently result in higher levels of English Learning, academic achievement and Spanish proficiency for both English Learners and English speaking children.
Thinking and Language Connection
Jennifer Blaylock, Windsor C-1 School District
Learn 5 practical strategies for connecting language development to content and higher-order thinking skills. The strategies are simple ways to illicit thinking and language through the use of images. Each strategy can easily be adapted to fit a variety of content and topics.
10:30 a.m. - 11:20 a.m.
Joy and Justice: We are Linguistically Gifted
Juliana Urtubey
Delve deeper into the Joyous and Just Education framework that was inspired by Ms. Urtubey’s students and community through the eyes of your students, their families and communities. Explore what it means to be Linguistically Gifted and how we create a space for everyone’s strengths in our classrooms. Through the power of storytelling, we will ensure linguistic and cultural identities are centered, celebrated, nurtured and protected.
Anchoring Writing 2.0: Creating Writing Rubrics with PLDs
Daisy Skelly and Rachel Mizera, Wright City R-II School District
Students need visual tools to help guide their growth as writers. Teachers need visual tools to help assess student writing effectively. This hands-on session will help educators create tools they can use to teach and assess writing based on WIDA's PLDs.
Better Together: How to Effectively Collaborate with Content Teachers
Laura Malik, Mehlville School District
In order to increase student success, all stakeholders must work together. Learn tips for collaborating with content teachers. Explore Ideas for planning, sharing data and general communications for effective co-teaching.
Build Number Sense with High Yield Routines in Math
Christy Brooks, EducationPlus
High Yield Routines to build number sense in math class will encourage English Learners to use discourse in the classroom. These lesson launch routines have an entry point for every student to be able to engage in the math conversation. These routines are designed to build number sense, but also include opportunities for rich conversation.
12:30 p.m. - 1:20 p.m.
Joy and Justice: We are Linguistically Gifted
Juliana Urtubey
Delve deeper into the Joyous and Just Education framework that was inspired by Ms. Urtubey’s students and community through the eyes of your students, their families and communities. Explore what it means to be Linguistically Gifted and how we create a space for everyone’s strengths in our classrooms. Through the power of storytelling, we will ensure linguistic and cultural identities are centered, celebrated, nurtured and protected.
Cultivating Sound Awareness: The Color Vowel Way
Cynthia Chasteen, Heart of Missouri RPDC
Pronunciation and phonemic awareness are often areas of challenge for ELs. The Color Vowel® method provides learners with simple yet powerful brain-based strategies that build phonemic awareness, improve oral communication and boost word learning. Explore the Color Vowel® Chart as well as gestures and images utilized during facilitation. Participate in Color Vowel® Yoga which incorporates physical movement as a tool to bolster phonemic awareness.
Launching an ESOL Books and Blankets Book Club
Cheryl Boesch and Heather Tuckson, St. Louis Public Schools
Discover how to promote literacy by launching an ESOL Books and Blanket Book Club. Learn how the ESOL online book club at St. Louis Public Schools has helped ELs develop a love for reading. Review the logistics of providing multicultural books, book bins and blankets to ELs for each 9-week session. Peruse the engaging multi-cultural books, interactive lesson plans, reading strategies and hands-on review games that have been effective in the program.
Write a Grant Proposal to Grow Multiliteracy
Heather LeCureux and Jeff Loughary, Missouri State University
The Show Me Multiliteracy project is a National Professional Development grant that promotes the use of home languages for family literacy, supplemental instruction, enrichment activities and learning tasks in the classroom. The project staff collaborate with teachers to develop demonstration projects of exemplary practices with specific English Learner populations. This session will focus on helping attendees develop their ideas into a fundable grant proposal.
1:30 p.m. - 2:20 p.m.
Bilingualism is Our Superpower: Successful Bilingual Classroom Practices You Can Use
Geri Ross, Ritenour School District
Discover the profound and positive impact of bilingual education on Marion Elementary School’s unique bilingual classroom. Explore the instructional activities and resources that made this program successful and can also be implemented into your classroom.
Portfolios in Action
Jess Marty, Hazelwood School District
Learn about the portfolio process for exiting EL students in Hazelwood School District. Explore the HSD portfolio exit process, have time to ask questions, brainstorm and gain the necessary documents to try out in your district.
Problems of Practice
Mary Hendricks-Harris, EducationPlus and EducationPlus staff members
Arrive with challenges faced in the classroom or your school building. EducationPlus staff will lead you and session members through a Problems of Practice protocol to help you derive solutions to your challenges with the knowledge of other conference attendees.
Scaffolding Strategies for the Mainstream Classroom
Diana Hsu and Lory Willhoft, Ladue Schools
Meeting the diverse academic needs of ELs in the classroom can be challenging. Explore a variety of Tier I strategies to support ELs in the classroom. Strategies that will be shared include wait time, interactive supports, comprehensive input and the use of graphic organizers.
Using Language to Make Sense of Math Problems
Julie Antill, Southeast RPDC
How can we develop strong number sense while we also develop language in the K-5 classroom? Using CGI (Cognitive Guided Instruction), participants will be actively engaged in identifying and sorting word problem types and structures, which are embedded in many migrant summer school programs. Experience evidence-based strategies to promote language acquisition and make sense of word problems. Engage in rich conversations about learning which models we hope to reproduce in math classrooms.
2:30 p.m. - 3:20 p.m.
Adapting Resources for the Sheltered Classroom
Lauren Dickerson, St. Louis Public Schools
Often resources available for content classrooms, even sheltered content classrooms, are unnecessarily complex and confusing for ELs. Gain strategies that will help provide comprehensible input and focus on objectives throughout lessons and assessments through use of modified or teacher-created materials. Learn from and share with your peers simple strategies for streamlining materials and creating a smoother path to mastery.
Co-teaching Conversations
Michele Lashly and Lauren Bax, Hazelwood School District
This session will provide insight into the co-teaching experience from two co-teaching partners. The CoTEL6 will be discussed as participants view a lesson taught by these teachers. Tips for co-teaching will be shared to help others along their co-teaching journey.
Leading PD in Your Building: A Hands-On Workshop
Jillian Baldwin Kim, Parkway Schools and Christina Mendoza, Lindbergh Schools
Experience a variety of techniques to implement and inform your own in-house PD sessions around laws, cultures, accommodations and “can-do” application. Additionally, participants will discuss, collaborate and create a framework for leading PD within their own K-12 contexts.
SWIT Strategy for Selecting and Teaching Vocabulary
Michelle Sencibaugh, Valley Park School District
Explore how to differentiate between current approaches for selecting vocabulary for instruction and the different components of the SWIT strategy. Learn to describe and implement the SWIT strategy with narrative and informational texts.
TPRS: A Fun Strategy for Newcomer EL Students
Rob Greenhaw, EducationPlus
Explore Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS), a strategy that provides ELs with tons of repetition of words/phrases in the target language while also being highly engaging and comprehensible. If you provide ELD instruction to newcomers, this is the perfect strategy to add to your toolkit. We will watch video clips of TPRS lessons, practice some of the techniques together and share resources to learn more.
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