Biographies on US Presidents

Exhibited by:

• Tiffany Opong

Coached by:

• Fanny Castro

PLO Attended:

• MFSC ELL Leads Workshop for District 3 & 4

PLO LEARNINGS:

As a result of attending the PLO, I have strengthened my ability to use technology, mentor texts, text dependent questions/prompts, and language functions to improve writing instruction for English Language Learners. More specifically, the MFSC ELL Lead Workshop provided support for student research projects on US presidents. The activity on focusing on writing structure to effectively support ELL students through purposeful planning allowed me to create an outline for students by focusing on the academic language functions students needed to complete the task.

IMPLEMENTATION OF TECHNIQUES & PRACTICES:

In our current political climate, English Language Learners in grades 3-5 requested to learn more about US presidents. The text dependent questions and academic language functions were immediately integrated into my professional practice. I used information obtained during the PLO to focus on the academic language functions needed for academic writing. Students used technology along with text dependent questions with sentence stems to support the task. Eventually, professional development was held on using Thinking Maps with the appropriate language functions to support student learning for teachers working our Title III ELL program.

IMPACT and DATA:

The EDAT tool that was run in the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year revealed that ELL students needed further support in academic writing across grade levels. Therefore, the focus of ENL instruction was supporting these students’ academic writing through the use of content rich non-fiction texts, which is similar to what they will see on the NYSESLAT exam. The use of text dependent questions and technology allowed students to take ownership of their learning as researchers.

NEXT STEPS:

Students will present their biographies to students in other classrooms in our school community. In addition, next year I will begin teaching students how to write bibliographies when researching.