ELD Newsletter

Happy Fall from the English Language Department! We hope you all are in a nice routine now that we are a few months into school. As always, please reach out to us with any questions or concerns or if you would like to collaborate together!

Erica Sinclair (NES and District Coordinator) esinclair@northernyork.org

Rebecca Helm (NMS, NHS, NES) rhelm@northernyork.org

October 27- November 1: Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a celebration of life and death. The holiday originated in Mexico, but it is celebrated all over Latin America with colorful calaveras (skulls) and calacas (skeletons). Here are some great resources:

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1w7Wh5HTqLW-5PgjFMCmuDeM39gdjRmfPVyBnqIEBjWc/mobilebasic?pli=1

November 12: Diwali is known as the festival of lights. Diwali is India's biggest and most important holiday of the year. It is also celebrated in Singapore, Malaysia, Fiji, Nepal and several other countries. Its origin story varies depending on the region, but the overall theme is an ode to the triumph of good over evil. Those who celebrate Diwali partake in a number of practices and rituals with different symbolic meanings throughout the span of the holiday.

The festival gets its name from the row (avali) of clay lamps (deepa) that Indians light outside their homes to symbolize the inner light that protects from spiritual darkness.

The festival honors the Hindu goddess Laksmi, the goddess of fortune, good luck, riches, and generosity. She visits every home during the festival. Over the centuries, Diwali has become a national festival that's also enjoyed by non-Hindu communities. For example, in Jainism, Diwali marks the nirvana, or spiritual awakening of Lord Mahavira; in Sikhism, it honors the day that Guru Hargobind Ji, the Sixth Sikh Guru, was freed from imprisonment. Buddhists in India celebrate Diwali as well

November 23: Thanksgiving: Annual holiday in the United States and Canada celebrating the harvest and other blessings on the past year.

With the increase in our number of English language learners (ELLs) over the years, I want to empower you to see yourself as an ELD teacher as well! All of the strategies and tools you use for ELLs will benefit all your students as well. One instructional technique that can be helpful is comprehensible input. The concept comes from American linguist, education researcher, and activist Dr. Stephen Krashen. In his Theory of Second Language Acquisition, he states that students are able to acquire new language when instruction is delivered in language just beyond students’ current level of proficiency. Comprehensible input is an instructional shift when teachers provide input where students understand most, but not all, of the language.

Delivering comprehensible input is a lot like scaffolding except you aren’t just focusing on content knowledge, but also language proficiency in the domains of reading, writing, speaking and listening. Here are some areas of language that you can modify during instruction: adapted speech, visual support, objective driven instruction and chunked instruction. To adapt your speech, use less complex vocabulary when possible, limit your use of idioms and run on sentences. Enunciating your words and slowing down your rate of speech will help all your students tremendously. Use videos, pictures, anchor charts, graphic organizers any chance you can! This will increase comprehension and overall learning. Post your learning objectives so students know where they are going and add visuals to it! You may even want to consider adding a language objective such as, evaluate the key words related to living things vocabulary terms using visuals and a word bank (with a partner). Please reach out to us if you would like more support with incorporating language objectives! Last, consider only providing direct instruction (lecturing) for a minimum of 5-10 minutes. This will allow students time to digest the information and increase their learning.