Bridging the Language Gap: Essential Resources for Newcomer EL Students

Welcome to your Morning Boost, brought to you by AWB Education. Here we amplify knowledge, widen reach, and broaden impact in education, delivering your daily dose of professional development. This program is sponsored by Grundmeyer Leader Services, where together we are transforming education one leader at a time. Now get ready. To amplify your day with your Morning Boost. So good morning and welcome to your Morning Boost. I'm your host today, Melissa Grinstead, and I am a lead yousel contributor to the work of AWB Education. Today we are going to dive into a topic that is important to all teachers that I work with, and that is tell me about resources that are helpful for working with newcomer students. What can I tangibly go and find great ideas, strategies supports to help my els when there's in my classroom. So hopefully today I will be able to share with you a few tips and tricks that will help you feel successful in getting your els to access your curriculum content. I know it can be super daunting for both the teachers and the students when those language barriers exist, but thankfully there's a ton of great resources out there that are available to help bridge that gap. And hopefully you'll hear about a new one today. We know that there's going to be a language barrier as our students are sitting in our math or our science or our social studies classrooms, and so remember that these students have the cognitive ability to be able to access these concepts, but we just have to sort of be creative in the way that we can eliminate. Some of the linguistic barriers. One of my favorite site to go to is Cooler and Colorado, and it is a fantastic website. It has tons of articles, tips, resources for any teacher who's working with ELS. There's a ton of information on there about strategies for differentiation, there's tips on cultural backgrounds, anything that you might be wondering about yel's You'll likely find something to support you on that website. I would also suggest accessing one of the many great blogs out there. For me in particular, I've found some gems on Larry Flazo's site, but really just dig around. There are so many great blogs that can support you. Another great resource that I like to tap into is both the ALPA twenty one and the WIDA websites. We are an ELPA twenty one state. In here in Iowa, but WIEDA is also widely used consortium across many of the states, and they have some really great resources, particularly for helping understand language acquisition, frameworks assessment. There are professional development and opportunities on there as well, which can be really invaluable, So I would encourage you to check both of those out to get some more learning around standards assessment things like that when we're thinking specifically about content areas like math or science or social studies. A really great resource that I've. Found, especially for our learners who are more visual learners, which is most to our eels, Pebblego or its counterpart, pebblego Next can be a game changer. So Pebblego is geared a little more elementary, where Pebblego Next has more of that intermediate middle school feel, and they both offer tons of videos and interactive activities and texts that is as academic rigor but is linguistically more simple that can be read aloud, and these really help make some of those more complex concepts more understandable. Additionally, anytime that we can supplement those with any visuals or graphic organizers, we can really work to transcend those language barriers and make that content more accessible. Another great resource that I love to share. I actually just stumbled upon this one not too long ago. I get questions a lot about Okay, you keep talking about visuals every time we talk about English learners. I hear visuals, visuals, visuals. Where do I find good visuals? I don't have time to scour the internet looking for the perfect visual I get it. So one that I recently learned about is called the Noun Project, and it's a really fantastic resource for both icons and real pictures. You simply type in a topic and you will be presented. You can choose if you want an icon or a photograph. The photographs are real color, they're very detailed, there's tons of examples. Your icons are going to be more of those black and white sort of symbol type images, and they're both super great. Of course, simply using Google Images can be helpful as well. It's just important to be mindful of copyright and choose images that are culturally sensitive. And the last resource that I'd love to share with you is new Zella. So new Zella can be super powerful, especially for our students who are later elementary or into those secondary years. New Zella offers articles at different reading levels. You can adjust the lit lexile level to meet the needs of your eels, but it really makes it possible to provide students with information about whatever it is that you're covering in your content area in a differentiated way so that they can access it linguistically but still understand those key concepts. Those articles are really great out providing just the right amount of challenge for students and helping them to really get the gist of those key concepts. Hopefully at least one of those tools is new to you. I would encourage you to check them out. Remember that alongside that, patients and empathy are going to be paramount as our students are working to access some of these really rigorous content concepts as they also navigate the language barrier. But remember to celebrate their progress no matter how small. Language acquisition is going to take time, and just be supportive and patient as you walk alongside your learners, as I know you all do. And that is your morning boost for today. We will talk with you again soon. Have a great day. That concludes another episode of your morning boost. We hope today's daily dose of professional development helps you amplify knowledge, wide in reach, and broaden impact. Your Morning Boost is an AWB Education production brought to you with the generous support of Grundmeier Leader Services. Join us again tomorrow for more. Till then, keep boosting your impact.