Moving Beyond for Multilingual Learners: The Blog

 If you're looking for some fun ways to create learning experiences that enhance vocabulary AND that are also linguistically inclusive of newcomer students, then you've found the right SPOT.  Spot It! was a game that my own family started to play A LOT during the pandemic. They have lots of different versions of the game at most online retailers like Amazon. Spot It! can be played a number of ways, but it's a great game for kids (and adults) of all ages - and you don't *need* language to play. The way we play most as a family is finding a match with two cards. Whoever finds the match first either says it out loud or points to it, then they keep the pair of cards. We keep going until the deck is gone.  I started to think this would be great for students who are acquiring language since they don't have to be fluent to fully participate. I also started to wonder if there was an online generator that I could use to create experiences for my students with vocabulary that...

We love and appreciate our school nurses! When supporting newcomer students (or students newer to their English language journey), it is important to keep a few things in mind.  Check out this resource that you can print for your school nurse, so that they may feel better equipped to serve and support their newcomer students. The front page is a TIP SHEET for school nurses, and the second page is a list of simplified phrases with printer-friendly icons from The Noun Project. You may want to print and laminate this as a two-sided document for easy access for your school nurse. Hope this helps!

I love creating tools that I can reuse again and again. This is one that I used for teaching newcomers story elements using the 5 W Questions (Who, What, Where, When, Why). Aside from Spanish which I translated myself, I have these ready to go in the following languages using AI Translations. As always, I'm always excited to receive feedback and corrections to better serve students- so if you have corrections/edits - please send them my way at carlymspina@gmail.com. THANK YOU!   Russian   Spanish     Ukrainian Portuguese Polish Here's a blank template (with English, the graphics, and a space for an additional language) AND AS A BONUS (because it doesn't fit anywhere else, haha) here is a quick Newcomer-facing BEGINNING DIRECTIONS sheet ! Again, nothing fancy, but it looks like this:

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...

At the beginning of the school year, we spend a ton of time co-constructing classroom norms, helping our students get to know the learning space, developing expectations with students, and practicing different routines. One routine that I almost ALWAYS forgot about each year was teaching about Indoor Recess routines and norms. Normally I'd get "caught" during the first rain day or extreme heat day, and then would feel like I was scrambling to say a few quick things right before lunch. This didn't set my students up for success, and it made things EXTREMELY challenging for colleagues who would be supervising students during this time.  Dedicate some class time to showing where indoor recess activities are stored. Practice taking out the materials and putting away the materials. You may even need to practice "stacking" indoor recess materials if you have storage issues like I always did!  You may even elect a student-run "Indoor Recess Committee" to ...

 Sometimes I struggle with navigating life's difficult moments, so I write.  Please love the hell out of your students this year. Laugh with them and make memories with them. Joke around and laugh and dance and be silly together. Let them be kids. Play with them. Take pictures. Support them like crazy. Lift them up as much as you can. Celebrate every little thing. Go overboard. Let their time in your classroom be joyful and fun and challenging. Tell them every minute you believe in them. Fight for them as much as you can. Advocate for them. Demand that people pronounce their names correctly. Call their family just to share all the great things they’re doing. Tell them you love them so much. Capture their brilliance when you can, in the form of a picture, a conversation, or writing a special note. Be joyful with them. Tell them (again and again) how much you love them.

 One of my favorite things I did that made a huge impact on me as an educator was to set up an in-school pen pal system between my students and other adults in the building. This served multiple purposes, but the impact was even bigger than expected.  My students and I were reading a book about a pair of friends that moved away from each other and sent each other snail mail. The conversation steered into a conversation about the post office, addressing an envelope, and more. Most students remarked that they had never received snail mail addressed to them before, so it sparked an idea.  I sent out a staff email ( template here ) and posted a "sign up sheet" ( template here, just swap the fake names & bios ) in the teachers lounge with a list of student names and a one-sentence bio about each student, so that educators could sign up with someone who potentially had a shared interest. Not shockingly (becuase of the amazing adults that I worked with who were all incredibl...