Quick Tip: Saving Those "First Days" Tools/Resources: Instant Toolkit

 As we begin to prep for the school year, we are gathering resources and materials to support students during those first few days. Consider keeping a small collection of items as you are gathering/prepping these things for students who may arrive "new" in the middle of the school year! 

Many of us have resources that we print in bright colors that say things like "Welcome to 7th Grade!" or packets of information about the school year. We include things like our classroom schedules, teacher information, or important phone numbers for the school. 

Photo by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi: https://www.pexels.com/photo/green-and-gray-scissors-2831794/

We also prep for those first family events, "back to school" nights, or Curriculum Nights. As you gather those materials and resources, create a few extras to distribute to new families later on in the school year. 

Now you have an instant kit to welcome students & families later on! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Language Proficiency Tool for Teachers

Image
 One of the most popular posts from my former blog (Innovative EL) was this- so I knew I had to get it back up and available for folks on my new blog!  This tool is based on WIDA performance descriptors. It is meant to serve as a starting place for educators who may not be as familiar with supports and scaffolds for multilingual learners. Each page features one proficiency level (printed twice: so page one has Level 1 at the top and also at the bottom for easy printing). Please note that these are based on general composite scores, and not on language domain scores. Ready to access the tool? Click here!  A deeper look into each individual students' scores (which I absolutely recommend providing to anyone who supports multilingual learners) can be found in the WIDA Name Charts (available on the WIDA website).   These charts are a fantastic resource that I'd recommend printing and giving to each classroom teacher, content teacher, social worker, psychologist, teaching assistant,
Read more

"I Need" Cards: Printables for Newcomers

Image
At the beginning of the school year, I always encourage folks to prep a ton of these in anticipation of newcomer students that will arrive throughout the school year. Please note that this is one example of a template. You can open the templates, go to FILE and MAKE A COPY so that you can customize these to better fit your needs! This sample template I have ready is for English/Spanish newcomers . I Need Cards - please note that this template has the same tool but presented a few different ways. These are a tool that I reference in my proficiency snapshot tool for classoom & content teachers (a scaffold I'd recommend for level 1 students). As students are beginning their language journeys in English, they may just feel comfortable raising their hand and pointing. As they grow in confidence and have had ample time to practice, they may say these sentences out loud. Here's a quick TikTok that walks through these. **I recently (9/10/23) used AI and digital translation resour
Read more

Reflections, Celebrations, & Goals

Image
 It's MAYYYY! This means a lot of different things to students and teachers. As many of us are starting to receive preliminary scores back from annual language assessments, I wanted to share a few templates that you may wish to use with students you serve! For any of these templates, they're all viewable. If you would like to EDIT any, please go to FILE & MAKE A COPY so you can tweak these to meet your needs!  Stems & Frames Goal Settin g: This doc has stems that are tied to Conditions Needed to learn, Goal Setting, and Action Steps. Celebrations & Reflections     This doc has stems for Celebrations, Maintenance, and Reflections Interpretive & Expressive Goals     This doc has stems and frames to set goals for interpretive & expressive language skills. Simple Template by Domain     This doc is a very simple template for a goal by domain. Last Year/This Year Simple Template by Domain     This doc looks like the one above, but it has a space for students to re
Read more