Elementary ESL

The ESL department will be hosting another parent coffee session entitled “Creating A Positive Learning Environment” and we need you, parents of ESL children, to help us.
The afternoon will take place in the ES Faculty lounge on the 9th of December.
We look forward to seeing you there!
Your ES ESL team.

ESL in the Mainstream – Early Learner
Please register your interest in taking this course (recognized by many universities for masters’ credit) with Pippa Beetson (beetsonp@ismanila.org) before December 14th.

ESL in the mainstream for the early learner is a professional development program for teachers working with children aged 4 to 7 years for whom English is a second language (ESL). At the heart of the program is learning how to value and make the most of young children’s diverse backgrounds, combined with good teaching practice that supports children’s learning across all areas of the school curriculum.
The course provides early childhood educators with a classroom-based action research and readings program designed to enhance their skills and knowledge to better support the learning of their ESL children across the curriculum. The face-to-face learning in the eight modules, combined with between module readings and research, is equivalent to more than 48 hours of professional development.
The program:
• enhances understanding of the language-related needs of children from non-English speaking backgrounds and of ways of meeting those needs (knowing who we teach)
• develops an understanding of the role of language in learning, the critical role of the adult in scaffolding children’s language and the value of explicit teaching about language (knowing what and how we can teach)
• further develops collaborative partnerships between educators, parents and children in early childhood settings with a focus on maintaining and developing the child’s home language, their personal and cultural identity, and family and community cohesion (collaboration within our school community – where we teach)
• increases awareness more generally in schools of the need for specialist personnel, training, programs and materials to support ESL learners (critical thinking and reflection on pedagogy)
Date Time Module Title
Mon, Jan 16th
2.30 – 5.30pm 2.30pm – 5.00pm 1. ESL learners in early childhood settings
Mon, Jan 30th
2.30 – 5.30pm 2.30pm – 5.00pm 2. Developing an additional language in a supportive learning environment
Mon, Feb 13th
2.30 – 5.30pm 2.30pm – 5.00pm 3. Talking and learning in a second language: issues
Mon, Feb 27th
2.30 – 5.30pm 2.30pm – 5.00pm 4. Talking and learning in a second language: strategies
Mon, Mar 12th
2.30 – 5.30pm 2.30pm – 5.00pm 5. Reading and writing in a second language: issues
Mon, Mar 26th
2.30 – 5.30pm 2.30pm – 5.00pm 6 Reading and writing in a second language: strategies
Mon, April 16th
2.30 – 5.30pm 2.30pm – 5.00pm 7. A culturally inclusive approach to early childhood education
Mon, April 23rd
2.30 – 5.30pm 2.30pm – 5.00pm 8. Planning more effective partnerships

Parents often ask us about how and when to teach their children to read and write in their home languages – particularly if they are just beginning to learn this in English. This week there is an excellent post about this on the multilingual living website.

The fancy name for the written code of a language is ‘orthography’. The orthography of a language is the relationship between the sounds and spelling (or phonemes and graphemes) of that language. Many European languages are ‘phonographic’, that is they are written the way they sound. English is not. This can provide learners with a great deal of trouble, even adult learners, even learners who are perfectly literate in their own language, even learners who are fluent speakers of English. In fact, I was talking today to a mother who was all three of those things and her concern was about how well she could read aloud to her bilingual daughter in English when she (understandably) finds it very difficult to know how to pronounce written English.

For our students, learning to read in English can present difficulties and cause frustrations if they are used to a phonographic language or a different script (as is the case with most Asian languages).  We are constantly looking for better ways to teach our students and for ways to make the orthography of English more accessible to students. Here are some ways we are doing this right now in ESL transition classes. Of course, the most important part of learning is that the students are having fun…and making learning the orthography of English fun is what we are really trying to do. I think it’s working….

On Friday afternoon we welcomed some of our parents to room 1008 to learn about how we are supporting our ESL students who are in transition. There are two different groups of these students – those who are new to ISM and transitioning into the school, and those who are refining their literacy skills and transitioning out of the ESL program. Of course, the needs of all of our students are very different and we differentiate the level and type of support we give each student accordingly.

One of the ways we are supporting our transition students is by making the “code” of English a focal point of our teaching. We are working with the students to develop their awareness of the 44 sounds (phonemes) of the English language and this enables us to support their pronunciation, articulation and auditory awareness of the language. We are also applying this awareness of the phonemes into the written code of English – the graphemes we use to represent those sounds. There are literally thousands of graphemes in our language so we won’t cover every one but do target the most common ones.

Our parents can be actively involved in discussing, applying and developing the skills we are teaching – provided they know what is going on the classes. So, we thought it would be good for them to experience a transition class and get an idea of the complexities and vocabulary we are using to make the code of English explicit to our students. The parents seemed to really enjoy it – and hopefully they came away with a clearer understanding of the relationship between the spoken and written aspects of English.

This was a really great opportunity to strengthen the understandings and communication between school and home. We are very thankful to have such wonderfully supportive and involved parents. Thank you so much for your positivity and enthusiasm.

Welcome to the new school year returning and new families! Thank you so much to all of you who made it to our afternoon tea on Friday. We enjoyed getting the chance to meet so many of you, as well as introduce our team and show you our classrooms.

Below I am attaching an updated version of the PPT we put together. In it we refer to two recent articles about bilingualism in young children. We are excited to be part of this growing awareness of the benefits of bilingualism and to develop our school’s resources and approach to home language support.

It was a great turn-out on Friday – here are some pictures of the afternoon. We’ll be hosting another parent coffee soon and hope to see you all there. In the meantime, we’ll be seeing you all at Open House.

Make sure you stop by your child’s ESL classroom to make a time to meet your ESL teacher one-to-one and talk about your child’s progress and language support. We’re really looking forward to working together closely with you to best support your child.

Wishing you the warmest welcome to ISM,

Pippa

This week I came across a fantastic new resource for multilingual children everywhere. It is called the and it provides books in a huge range of languages all for free!

With the increasing mobility of children, as well as the increasing linguistic diversity of today’s children, this organization set about making books available to kids online in many languages. They recognize the fact that when families move to another country, they are often unable to take their books with them. As many of you have also discovered, children’s interests and reading abilities change over time, and having access to fresh, new books is a luxury many of us are unable to provide whilst living overseas.

Even more importantly, the mission of the organization acknowledges a paper published in 2005 by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) which stated: “Denial to access to information in one’s mother tongue is equivalent to a denial of a human right.” The report also concludes, “In terms of pedagogy, how do children learn best?  In their mother tongue.”

Whenever possible, we encourage parents to read aloud to your children in your own language. There is no better way to keep your language alive and your children’s vocabulary growing in their mother language. The best part, though, is the quality time spent with the children – talking about what you are reading, enjoying the story together, laughing, explaining ideas, discussing feelings and experiences. I am so excited that this resource may offer such an opportunity to parents who were not able to find books here in Manila.

Check out the books available at this fabulous site in your languages, and please also consider making a contribution to the site by translating books for them. That way you can not only make the books available to your own children, but help other children to maintain your language when they are away from home as well. What a great way to help protect the world’s linguistic diversity!

Click this icon to go directly to the site:

This piece was a collaborative effort among parents, students and teachers in the elementary school, all of whom speak more than one language. This linguistic diversity of our school is something we truly value – we hope you feel proud of your multilingual talents. Thank you for your contributions to the project, and for your efforts in continuing to maintain your home languages.  This helps us to be united in diversity, as well as understood through our multilingualism and multiculturalism.

Last month, in Grade 3, we began a mother language group with the help of a Japanese speaking mum, who volunteered her time to come and read and facilitate the discussion in Japanese. (We’ve got the English covered – but we need help from parents for other languages! )

Our aim in providing this opportunity is to encourage the development of cultural identity, and a sense of pride in students for their achievements in becoming bilingual. In addition, this helps children feel connected and part of a bilingual/bicultural community, which in turn enables them to feel comfortable and safe, and contributes to their sense of belonging here at ISM. These feelings help them achieve their best academically. You can see how much the children enjoyed this time in the video clip below.

We will hold another of these sessions next month – and again we will be aligning the discussion to what students are leaning about in their classrooms. It was so interesting to see the children grow less tentative even over the 45 minutes they were in the group. At first, they kept speaking English together, but the end they were using only Japanese and didn’t want the session to end. We had planned for 30 minutes, but the children wanted to stay longer and do some writing in Japanese! Given that it was last period of the day on a Friday, I think that’s a pretty good sign of enjoyment.

This month we will be having our annual Student-Led conferences in the ES. So, what are these? We’d like to answer some of the more frequently asked questions before you come to school with your child on the 15th.

• How are these different from a Parent-Teacher conference?

Student-Led conferences are just that – led by the student. They are different from a parent-teacher conference because your child sets the agenda and decides what he/she wants to share with you. When you come to the classroom, they are the ones leading you – not the teacher. The teacher will be in the room, and may join in some of your conversations, or offer some guidance to your child, but ultimately the focus is on the interaction between parent and child.

• What can I expect to happen?

As an ESL parent, you will be visiting two classrooms – the ESL room and your child’s homeroom. You don’t need to feel pressured by time though – we have a fairly flexible schedule and will be in the room for the afternoon, so if you run out of time, you can come back and see more after your visit to the homeroom.

Your child will show you around their classrooms and probably show you some of their work, their learning journal, evidence of them meeting their goals and things that they enjoy doing. In the ESL room you can expect to be involved in a language game because the students love these.

• What should I be asking?

The most important thing to remember is to keep the interactions positive and encouraging. Some of the questions you might like to ask are: What do you like about this piece of work? What did you feel proud of? What did you learn when you did this? Would you do it differently next time?

Finally, the most important thing we’d like you to remember – please use your own language. We think the opportunity to explain learning in two languages is one that no bilingual child should miss. This is a truly authentic situation for the children to develop some of the vocabulary and concepts that they not have accessed in their own languages. We know they can use English to explain their learning, but can they do it in Korean/Thai/Japanese/Norwegian/Dutch/Spanish/French/German/Lao/Italian/Russian/Danish/Bahasa/Hebrew/Chinese?

Here’s a sample of the first languages we saw in action last year:

It was great to see many of you today for our parent information session. Here’s the video we shared:

Please feel free to set up a time to meet with your child’s teacher if you would like to talk more specifically about your child’s language progress, particularly if you have any concerns.

Remember that the student-led conference is, most importantly, a very positive experience for the children and parents alike. We are sure that you will be so proud of your child’s developing bilingualism.