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Current Newsletter

April 2022, Issue 9 - Essential Practice in Focus: Addressing the Whole Child

In this edition of our ELLMA newsletter we honor all of our multilingual students and the entirety of them as scholars, community members, and humans. Supporting the whole child is an important part of the educational landscape for all children, but arguably more so for our Multilingual students for whom their academic and linguistic needs come packaged with a host of other needs as well. Leveraging family and community support and activating resources to address the unmet, non-academic needs that can hinder ELLs’ ability to thrive in school is an important part of what OUSD strives to do for all students.

February 2023, Issue 7 - Essential Practice in Focus: Asset-Based Instruction

In our February newsletter we are focusing on our essential practice of asset-based instruction, with a special spotlight on what this means in classrooms with many of our newcomer students. Asset-based instruction means lifting up students’ cultural and linguistic resources in the classroom and creating lessons that build on the expertise students bring from their homes and lived experiences to learning new content and language.

January 2023, Issue 6 - Essential Practice in Focus: Data Driven Decisions

In order to make effective programmatic, placement, and instructional decisions for English Language Learners, we must regularly analyze the variety of evidence available to us about our students. This data can run the gamut of ELPAC scores to first language skills to performance on in-class writing and speaking tasks. The better we know our students as multi-faceted learners, the more we can hone the supports we provide them.

December 2022, Issue 5 - Essential Practice in Focus: Integrated ELD

A guiding belief in ELLMA is that all teachers are teachers of language. And this is exactly what is at the heart of integrated ELD! Integrated ELD means planning lessons that include an eye on the language students need to both access the content and to write and speak about that content. Teachers across grade spans and disciplines in OUSD are embedding explicit language teaching into their lesson planning through exemplary integrated ELD practices.

November 2022, Issue 4 - Essential Practice in Focus: Designated ELD

One of the most important gifts teachers can give to our English learners is mastery of the English language. Though students hear and practice language throughout their school day, it’s important that ELLs have a dedicated time to learn how English works. Teachers who teach this class, called Designated ELD (d-ELD), lift up the language demands and opportunities of a text or task ideally grounded in the content from students’ core classes.

October 2022, Issue 3 - Essential Practice in Focus: Access and Rigor

This month we explore ways our educators are working to provide access to meaningful and rigorous educational experiences. Read on to learn about the first Essential Practice for ELL Achievement “Access and Rigor”, the newcomer wellness initiative, hear from one of our amazing ELD educators and two of her newcomer students at Castlemont’s International Academy, and as always, we have important updates and resources for you in the ELD, Multilingual, Newcomer and ELL Ambassador Corners.