Going dormant here

 Hello Grout community,

I am letting this space go dormant.

If you have questions or would like to contact me, please do!

Kristin Kjome

English Language Development teacher

kkjome@pps.net

ELD during CDL

 Hello everyone!

Welcome to the 2020-2021 school year! We are well underway; we are doing this!

I do not plan to add posts here very often. If you have questions, please email me. Also, the district websites for families have a lot of information and links. pps.net/student and https://www.pps.net/fall2020 and https://www.pps.net/familyresources

In case you do not know what the acronyms in my post title above are:

ELD = English Language Development

CDL = Comprehensive Distance Learning

During distance learning, I am supporting students with their core learning in language arts / social studies and in science. I have designated ELD small group support times as well as drop-in support times. Students can find the schedule of times by going into my Seesaw class (ELD - Ms. Kjome). They see my class as one of their choices when they are logged in to their Seesaw account, just like they see their homeroom class, their art class, and their PE class. The schedule is found in the "inbox" of Student Announcements in my class.

I will also sometimes post optional supports as Activities in my Seesaw class. We have some great resources to help students with their learning. We have BrainPOP ELL, for example. We have Kids A-Z, which is a great source for many online books. More details will appear in my Seesaw class. For these great resources and more, students log in easily through Clever.

I miss seeing everyone in person in the building, but I am very glad we are being safe and preventing the spread of COVID-19 in our schools. I hope that together, we can all make the best of distance learning.

Along with the online schoolwork, teachers are providing some work for offline too-- math work in notebooks, writing with pencil on paper, handwriting journals, and more! I am glad that students can do some work off the screen. Seesaw makes it possible for students to share their work by taking a picture of it to post to their Seesaw journal. I enjoy looking through the work students do for their classes on Seesaw.

I am on my own this year as the only ELD teacher at Grout. The range of content across K-5 is wide. However, I hope I can be supportive with the learning of Grout's Emergent Bilingual and Multilingual Learner students. Along with the support times in my schedule, I am also collaborating with teachers.

I wish you all the best this fall!

~Kristin Kjome -- kkjome@pps.net

Virtual Learning Days

Hello,

I, along with my teaching colleagues at Grout and in PPS, embark on Virtual Learning Days this week. We, like you, are staying home and social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19. Thanks to the internet, we will all try to keep connected. Of course I also look forward to the future day when we will be able to return to connecting in person at school.

If you are one of my students or a family member of one of my students, hello! I hope you are staying healthy and safe at home.

My plan for this week is to engage in a lot of online learning that has been created for teachers in our district. By the end of this week, I also expect to be added as a teacher to your classroom teacher's google classroom, so that I can work with your teacher to support your learning.

You have already received communication in a variety of ways from Grout and the district about visiting pps.net for many resources to guide your learning at home. You also hopefully know about being able to pick up grab and go food at Grout from 11-1 Monday-Friday starting again tomorrow. Along with that food, there are also printed learning materials available.

All the best,
Kristin Kjome

celebrating and closing out the year

Here we are in June, already. Students have just six days of school left of 2019-2020.

We have gotten back all of our scores from the ELPA Summative, which most of our ELLs took in February or March. (ELPA=English Language Proficiency Assessment)

Today we had a little donut party to celebrate the five students who scored Proficient and will be exiting from ESL service. The academic progress of those students will continue to be monitored.
The kids enjoyed the donuts, their certificates (thank you ESL Department), and the chance to each bring a friend to the short and sweet morning party.

We are proud of all of our Emergent Bilingual students, for all the progress they have made this year.

The school garden is looking colorful. It is fun to be able to see what is growing when I am supervising students outside at their lunch recess. There are often a few students looking out for ladybugs there.

Have a good summer, everyone!

Kristin

Interaction and Scaffolding

I teach English Language Development with some "pull-out" groups every day. With these small groups, our specific activities vary over the course of the year. The themes that we read, talk, or write about vary as well.

A constant is that students communicate in three modalities: receptive, productive, and interactive. Listening and reading are receptive modalities. Speaking and writing are productive modalities.

Interactive skills are developed during collaborative, interactive activities. Students engage in two-way communication. They negotiate meaning. I appreciate the opportunity and the challenge of creating opportunities for interaction that will help students develop their English language proficiency.

I also support some students in their classrooms (for example, during their writing workshop time), instead of pulling them out. A constant in this setting is scaffolding. I focus on scaffolding the work that the student is doing. Scaffolding is providing guidance or assistance that enables the students to perform tasks at a higher level than they would do on their own.

Feel free to stop by 206 to learn more about ELD at Grout.

We are approaching winter break-- enjoy your holidays!

~Kristin

November!

Hello everyone,

Elections just happened a couple days ago on November 6. I voted, and I hope you did too!

Parent teacher conferences are around the corner, on November 19 and 20. We have heard back from the Translation and Interpretation Services department that many of our interpreted conference times have been confirmed. We hope that we get our requested interpreters for the conferences, and that parents are able to make it. It is a great opportunity for families to connect with their children's teachers, and be able to genuinely communicate with the interpreter support.

You are welcome to stop by to chat about ESL at Grout. I am in room 206.
I also welcome any requests for ESL topics to address in a future blog post.

Happy November!

~Kristin

Fall is busy

Hello, and happy October!

Things are busy at Grout. Everyone is in the thick of learning and teaching. I am enjoying a mix of classroom-based and small group English Language Development with my students.

I am also busy making lists for our secretary to make requests for language interpreters for Parent Teacher Conferences, which are coming up in November. We'll be requesting interpreters for over 50 families speaking a dozen different languages.

During my supervision duty out on the field each day, the students and adults are all enjoying the sunny mild weather we have been having.

Thank you to those reading!

~Kristin Kjome (room 206)