July 24
Session D
Audience: middle - high school
Jody Nolf
LTELs: Unleashing Their Superpowers
In this session, Jody will focus on the unique needs of long-term English learners. Oftentimes these students have been in an EL program for six years or more, yet some still struggle with literacy skills in English. Teachers might ask, "Why are they still in ESOL if they speak perfect English?
Audience: EY-2
Matt Hajdun
Practicing Language Through Play: Purposeful Early Language Learning
Sometimes, ‘play’ can be oversimplified to mean ‘letting kids be free’. With emergent bilinguals, purposeful play can include uniting translanguanging, scaffolding, and multimodal instruction to teach, reinforce, and expand both academic and social language. In this session, we will unpack structures to help young learners intentionally develop language through play.
Audience: middle - high school
Pamela Broussard
Stories We Hear, Stories We Tell
Stories we share through videos, text and interviews empower our students. This session will cover some amazing stories to inspire your students. In addition, we'll cover ways your students can share their stories to inspire others.
Hieu Pham-Fraser
Leveraging Cultural Proficiency for Student Success
In this session, Hieu will share with you how teaching is not neutral. Even with the best intentions, teachers can create an "unsafe" environment for their students. Using her own story, Hieu shares how she and her colleagues have begun to reflect on their own world views and how they leveraged that to increase student motivation and engagement in schools.
Audience: high school
Alycia Owen
Reaching the High Bar: Supporting MLs in Honors-Level Classes
The high bar is achievable for all students. Learn how to meet the needs of multilingual learners in honors-level classes. We'll examine strategies and routines that support academic language development in speaking, listening, reading, and writing as we prepare our students for rigorous coursework, including externally assessed exams.
Audience: K-12
Lauren Christensen & Vitaliy Shyyan
Supporting the Language and Communication Needs of MLs with Disabilities
This session provides an overview of WIDA’s development of Alternate Can Do Descriptors for ELs with the most significant cognitive disabilities. This session will describe the process for developing the Alternate Can Do Descriptors and their derivation from alternate content standards. Examples and their application to instruction will be shared.