elps

July 30, 2010
Today's binder; ELPS Academy for teachers of science
Leonard Beles was the presenter for the morning session with Karen Phillips for the afternoon.
We received a few books today, ELPS Flip Book, Navigating the ELPS in the Science Classroom, and Hard-to-Teach Biology Concepts.

The Navigating the ELPS appears to be a good resource book. It includes state law about servicing ELL. It also has strategies / activities to use with ELL. The flip book will be more useful with the ELL. Using TELPAS ratings you can see a snapshot of what the kid can do and what the teacher can do to help the child learn.

One of the big points that Beles made was dealing with the comfort level of the student. As the comfort level increases the output will also. If the student is uncomfortable or afraid of ridicule then output will be virtually nil.

I would like to get Beles to agree to a podcast to go over at least some of the information. I can't do justice to any part of his presentation. I may also try and get a bilingual teacher on at the same time. The two of them would be able to provide a lot to those of us that weren't ever ELL.

another interesting idea;
take pictures of your word wall and put the words in a digital frame (just pulled at random $15). The ELL could take this to his desk and use as a review for vocabulary test. You could also take pictures of labs for those that miss lab work to review.