Moving Beyond for Multilingual Learners: The Blog

 For information about the #EduListers Challenge, please check out the first blog post with a description of what this is, and how to use it for either yourself, AND/OR how you might use it with your students! So far, teachers have shared that they've done these either before/after test sessions, as a classroom warm-up, or for early-finishers for other content tasks! Keep it up and please keep sharing your ideas with me at carlymspina@gmail.com. Without further adieu, here's our list of 25 prompts for February!  February Listing Prompts February Slide Deck for Teachers to use with students  (pop this up on the screen for your students- one slide per prompt!) Things that Energize Me Lately Reasons I’ve Laughed Recently Things I’m thankful for today Things I did today Current favorite songs People who may need extra kindness right now Things I really love and appreciate in nature Fun words or phrases I like to say Ways I help people I love I feel most comfortable when… Thi...

 If you know me, this may come as no surprise that I LOVE THE PUPPY BOWL. I have fostered puppies with my family for about ten years, so this televised event is one of my personal favorites every year. It may also come as no surprise that I designed an activity for students to accompany the puppy fun!  Check it out linked here!  It gives students the full lineup of the puppies, with a space for them to write a one-sentence bio. Of course, mix it up by going to FILE and MAKE A COPY and you can edit it to meet your needs! Working on descriptive language? Change it up so it's about listing unique adjectives as a language stretcher to describe each puppy!  Other possible variations:  *Pick 5 puppies to write a one-sentence-bio and pick one puppy to do a full paragraph biography!  *Pick one puppy and create a flyer to help this puppy get adopted (even though, in reality, by the time of the airing of The Puppy Bowl, all puppies will go home to their furever famil...

Schools are required to provide annual language testing. If you're in IL, we belong to the WIDA Consortium, so we take the ACCESS Test. This is time-intensive as it spans across 4 assessments, one each in reading, writing, listening, and speaking. Your school's Multilingual (or EL, ELL, or ESL) Teacher is busy with scheduling each of these assessments, often across multiple grade levels. They have yellow boxes all over their spaces and testing tickets and student rosters and angry emails and tired students and they're just trying to keep their heads above water!  What really makes this season extra difficult is when teachers are trying to do all of this- plus their other duties - and their school is not supportive of the time, care, and energy needed. This is inequitable. ACCESS is a schoolwide assessment. It is a districtwide assessment. It is a school and district assessment, even if there are only a handful of students taking it! This means it must be supported by the wh...

  One way to advocate for multilingual students and their families is to check in with your public library to see if they offer bilingual/multilingual story times! For some public libraries, they may have never been asked this question or even considered that this is a need. For public libraries that are doing this already, GIVE THEM A SHOUT OUT! Let them know how much you appreciate this offering!  You can even drop the above graphic into a DM or email, and keep it as simple as that!  For a quick script for this, consider this message (and just edit to suit your style/message)!  "Hello! My name is _____ and I teach _____ at _______. I love that our local library does so much in our community. I serve students across __(#)__ languages and I think it would be really great to offer a bilingual story time in _____ or ______. This came up in a conversation online recently and I think it would be a great addition to what our awesome library offers! I would be happy to pro...

 A current social media trend (explained h ere in this NY Times Article ) is to define what the author/creator deems is IN and OUT for the new year. I've been entertained by seeing these on my social media feeds, so I'm wondering if there may be some fun value in this trend for our students!  I'm picturing this would work for middle and high schoolers - what do you think? While even our youngest students are utilizing/consuming social media, I think our teens and tweens probably are most familiar with this particular trend, but I could be wrong!  Here's some ideas for how to implement this in your classroom. I love when we're able to incorporate social media trends into our classrooms because there are so many different language and creator models out there, and it gives our students the chance to use THEIR voice, ideas, and reflections to share with an audience (even if that audience is just their classmates!).  View a few student-friendly samples from social media...

Do you experience the winter blues? I do. Do you experience the Sunday Scaries? Same. So this means that for me, returning to work after winter break is maybe more difficult than I want to admit to people. YES, I absolutely LOVE my job. I really do. My work ignites a huge passion I have for serving and supporting students and families. I think there's a lot of reasons to unpack the layers of reasons behind this - but to keep it short, this is a huge struggle for me. I know it may also be a source of struggle for some colleagues, students, and families, too.  Since it's also the launch of testing season for many of us, I'm also going to link a former blog post about Seasonal Affective Disorder & Testing Season ( Part One and Part Two ). If you're a leader, you may also be interested in this post on how to support your colleagues during testing season . I recently filmed an IRC Wind Down Wednesday episode that walked through five tips for those first few days back. C...

Years ago, I participated regularly in a "Listers Challenge." What is that? It’s a community of folks who love to make lists - but not quite “to-do” lists - more like a space to be creative and capture different thoughts, ideas, and reflections in a list format. It really helped me as a form of journaling and also served as a creative outlet. I would write my list out with different pens and colors and then would decorate the page with stickers, washi tape, and doodles. It was a lot of fun! As my daughter got older, I would have her join in with me. After time passed, the listers community started to dissipate. I wanted to bring it back!  For all the inspiration behind this idea, check out this website , and be sure to search the hashtags #ListersGottaList. The creator behind all of this was named Cori, AKA The Reset Girl. As an educator who serves multilingual learners, I’m always looking for ways that teachers can support their students with growing their love and passion f...