ESL
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Individual Learning Plans
Over the past few weeks we have received many new students. Some from other countries and others are from schools in MN and the greater United States. One of the hardest things to judge as an ELL teacher is how to support students when they first arrive from other schools. MN doesn’t have one reporting Continue reading
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To wrap up the year, I thought I would reflect on the things that have impacted my teaching the most. From the strategies learned and tested to the sociopolitical atmosphere currently stressing the foundations of what education is. These are the things that for good or bad I have taken away from the 2017 year. Continue reading
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Accommodating and Educating Somali Students in Minnesota Schools
I don’t know about your school district, but my school district is still facing many challenges in regards to behaviors and culture bumps with our EL population, especially with out Somali students. This is why when I was introduced to this book at the MELED conference, I jumped at the opportunity to purchase it. The book itself Continue reading
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Why the word Rigor irks me.
This blog wouldn’t be called The Life Argotic without me taking on some buzzwords. So this will be my inaugural buzzword debunking. I’m fairly certain it won’t be my last. Education is full of them. Every time I hear the word rigor, I cringe and brace for whatever is coming next following that word. Why? Continue reading
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Holidays & Culture
Now that Thanksgiving is over, we are well into the holiday season for the majority of teachers in the United States. One thing that I frequently hear from people year after year is that they don’t know how to talk about their values and holiday culture while in the classroom. There is a mass of Continue reading
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Tutuorial Teaching Part I
A few posts ago, I talked about how teaching procedural knowledge was important. As I was assessing my students today, I realized that I failed to scaffold the procedural knowledge part with visuals, lists, and modeling. By the end of my third time teaching that lesson, my board was covered with instructions and models to Continue reading
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Why you shouldn’t call them the WIDA "Standards"
One thing that I think EL teachers need to get better at is explaining our profession. However, one of the largest organizations for teaching English, WIDA, doesn’t make it easy when they decided to call their framework of instructional tools, “standards”. What is WIDA?WIDA stands for the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment. It’s a consortium Continue reading
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How to use Lextutor.ca to create meaningful sentence frames and stems.
Lextutor.ca is one of those hidden gems of the internet that teachers really should know about. I tell people about it, and they look at me funny. Then I tell them what it does, and they reply with “huh?” Today I’m going to explain exactly what it is, why you should be using it, and Continue reading
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MELED 2017; What I learned (Part 2)
During one of the sessions I attended, there was talk about how to fully utilize the WIDA standards in literacy instruction. Going to this session, I didn’t know what to expect. I was fumbling with my notebook and some papers when one of the presenters said something that stopped me. I can’t quote it, but Continue reading
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Using types of knowledge as a building block in lessons
One thing that I took away from last year, was the use of different learning types. When I first read those words, learning types, my mind immediately drove to my experience in philosophy classes. Thankfully, I don’t have to go back to epistemology. The next thing I thought about and wanted to stay away from, Continue reading
The Life Argotic 