Dual Language Learners

Possible Center opportunities for exposing students to a second language/culture:

• Dramatic Play~ offer students opportunities to be exposed to text in different languages (menus, signs, labels, etc).

• Literacy~ offer books written in other languages. The public library would be a good source for these materials.

• Music & Movement~ offer students opportunities to listen and dance to music from different countries.

• Blocks~ offer students opportunities to build buildings from different countries (please have visuals for students to mimic).

Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) for Pre-K and K students

This workshop is typically offered once in the fall and once in the spring and is sponsored by the CMS ELL department.

"This workshop is devoted to helping participants become familiar with Second Language Acquisition and the SIOP Model; providing opportunities to reflect on and incorporate sheltered instruction principles into lessons and academic language development activities.

The workshops will include activities such as demonstration and explanation, analysis of video teaching sequences, small group learning tasks, and the development of academic literacy alignment plans.

Participants will learn how the SIOP Model supports any PreK and Kindergarten content through reading, writing, speaking and listening as they shift towards becoming teachers of academic literacy."

Surprising Benefits of Bilingualism

exchangeeveryday@ccie.com March 7, 2017

"Most young children throughout the world successfully learn more than one language beginning in their earliest years," Linda Espinosa reminds us in her article, “Benefits of Bilingualism/Multilingualism” in the Exchange Essentials Perspectives on Diversity.

"Many cognitive neuroscientists have concluded that the human brain is primed to learn language from birth and is actually hearing and processing the unique characteristics of different languages beginning in the last trimester of pregnancy.

"Current scientific research suggests that the development of two languages from a child’s earliest language exposure has specific impacts on a variety of cognitive abilities that are discernible as early as seven months of age. These enhanced cognitive and linguistic abilities are persistent throughout childhood and may even offer some protection from symptoms of Alzheimer’s in adulthood."