eTools and Ideas for English Language Learners

by Tracey Wong, September 2015

Frederick Douglass once said “it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” That very adage holds true in many school library media centers across the United States. In New York City, where our student population includes over 60% English language learners (ELL), many children are performing well below reading benchmarks. Similarly in other schools across the nation, educators must contend with children who are not only learning English, but also come from low-income communities with poorly educated parents who are struggling to survive. School librarians are at the forefront of this challenge. All across America, there are growing numbers of ELL students. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2012 there were an estimated 4.4 million English language learners in the United States public school system.

We have discovered that eResources and eLearning tools foster success in at-risk students and English language learners (ELL) in school. By tapping into our children’s strengths and exploring alternative ways to teach, school librarians are forging ahead and making strong academic gains with students whom classroom teachers typically bypass in the mistaken mindset that those students are unable to reach benchmark standards. Listed below are some of the tools we have found to foster success.

eBooks, eTools, and the Challenged Reader

At P.S. 54 in the Bronx, N.Y., children particularly love reading eBooks on the free site, www.uniteforliteracy.com. Emergent readers and English language learners enjoy reading eBooks since they have accompanying audio. The site additionally gives readers the option of reading and hearing their native language as well. A total of 28 different languages are offered. While the words are only displayed in English, a non-native English speaker can also hear another language read aloud or translated directly after the English page is read. Studies have proven that it is most beneficial to read and hear simultaneously in order to acquire literacy skills at an accelerated rate.

For younger students in need of more advanced eBooks, the subscription database PebbleGo is an excellent eBook resource for informational text in English. However, if your library has budget constraints, many large public libraries, like the Queens Library in New York City, offer free eBook access to TumbleBooks and BookFlix to children through their webpage and also have a Spanish option.

Some public libraries may require a library card before granting online access, but that in itself provides an opportunity to build collaborative community partnerships  and possibly to arrange a field trip. This will get scholars on-board at an early age and connect them with their public library.

Microsoft’s OneNote for Organization

Microsoft has pulled out all the bells and whistles and invested a considerable amount of time, talent, and money into developing free resources that are available to educators worldwide. Microsoft’s Partners in Learning site (https://education.microsoft.com/) provides a wealth of tutorials, lesson plans, descriptive lists of free technology tools, discussion pages, hot topic blogs, learning activities with technology twists, as well as numerous professional development opportunities. In addition, OneNote, Microsoft’s best kept secret and every educator’s dream-come-true, is accessible under Office 365, which is provided free to educators and students.This online, digital notebook tool facilitates organization, record-keeping, and collaboration.

OneNote automatically saves, so you never have to worry about losing your work. It is integrated with the cloud, so storage does not require hard drive space and users can access it from anywhere using all their devices. OneNote provides a powerful search engine through tag finding. Educators can keep copies of disciplinary forms and their images, contact information, make to-do lists, and email computer post-it notes just to name a few things.

OneNote is a technology tool that puts school library media specialists on the forefront of technology and creative lessons. It allows users to gather information from multiple sources while maintaining where the information came from.

OneNote can clip screen shots on the fly, insert audio recordings, upload documents, and insert online links into students’ OneNote notebooks. In the school library media center, scholars have created digital portfolios showcasing all the work they are doing in content areas. Library assignments for students using digital tools to publish their work reinforces literacy and helps to make learning more authentic.

OneNote is unique since it incorporates work ribbons just like Word or Excel and is also a digital binder. What makes OneNote special for children is the fact that they can access it from home in order to share the site and show their family what they are learning as their work continues to evolve. As a school library media specialist, the use of OneNote eliminates the need for students’ physical copies as self-regulated lessons are made and put into each students’ class OneNote notebooks.

As scholars utilize their notebooks and complete lessons, they are building their transliteracy skills. Through continued use, children become fluent in OneNote’s work ribbons and various functions, which resemble the layout of Word. They are simultaneously learning to navigate and manipulate programs that are prevalent in today’s work world. Further, collaborating and creating digital notebooks online also helps to ensure that scholars are becoming technologically savvy as they develop skills that will enable them to compete in a global economy. To learn more on how to use OneNote go to www.onenoteforteachers.com and access one of the many tutorials.

Skype as a Conferencing Tool

Many educators realize that Skype is more than a just a face-to-face conference call for communicating in real time. Skype also provides an incredible avenue and interactive method for children to learn. Mystery Skype is a game we play with ELL learners in an opponent class in another location. Both groups of children must take turns asking yes or no questions in order to determine their opponents’ location before they are discovered. Students have a wide range of jobs during the game, taking on such roles as communicators, questioners, research team members, photojournalists, documenters, and mappers. Through playing this game, English language learners have grown exponentially by articulating themselves unhampered as they covertly learn to use academic language and new vocabulary in an informal and fun manner. Under the pretense of a friendly competition, scholars are not only learning about geography and the world, they are also collaborating, utilizing research and critical thinking skills, questioning, and learning to find answers with evidence-based support.

After the Mystery Skype game, scholars have an opportunity to take learning to the next level by writing about their experiences. These assignments give English language learners further command over the English language as their authentic learning experiences are solidified.  

We have also used Skype-Ed for virtual author visits. Children enjoy listening to authors read books aloud, as they are afforded opportunities to interact with them. Though classes were able to learn from many different authors, our students were particularly taken with Jo Mach, an author who writes about and uses photographs of actual children living with disabilities. The site https://education.skype.com/ gives educators access to many authors that will Skype with school libraries for free. After checking off which authors you would like, a contact email is generated for authors to respond to for virtual visits.

Haiku Deck  and Storybird for ELLs

Lastly, Haiku Deck and StoryBird are two online applications that promote ELLs and other students’ ability to focus on the communication process. Haiku Deck provides colorful and beautiful copyright free photographs under key search words. Layouts can be juxtaposed by a simple click so users, especially English language learners, tend to focus on writing and capturing their thoughts.     

StoryBird utilizes a variety of artwork and styles for students to choose from. After quickly dragging and dropping art into their frames, users are then able to digitally create their fiction or nonfiction stories. Since both Haiku Deck and StoryBird  have built the visuals or illustrations into their programs, scholars are able to allot more time in the creative writing process thus utilizing stronger and more reflective language in their pieces. This is a tremendous benefit to English language learners as it helps them to gain a more thorough command of their new language. We cleverly used StoryBird to create bilingual online books with both English and Spanish translations. When the school library media center promotes digital publications, all scholars are highly stimulated, excited, and empowered. Children work so much harder when they feel their work will be viewed beyond the confines of a school’s bulletin board. By digitally publishing, students’ work becomes more meaningful, authentic, and relevant since they are able to share their work online. When English language learners publish digitally, they are able to include their grandparents, friends, and relatives from back home in their learning and then have conversations centered around the work they are doing at school.

In conclusion, school library media specialists are leading the learning community by fostering e-learning and promoting e-resources. ELL Scholars that have systematically been lost between the cracks are now making rapid progress as they are immersed in eBooks and digital OneNote assignments as they create their own digital publications. By incorporating multimedia lessons, school library media specialists are using transliteracy to conquer at-risk students and English language learners as they teach to their strengths. True to Frederick Douglass’s belief, school librarians are proving it is better and “it is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

References

"English Language Learners Fast Facts." NCES.edu.gov. National Center for Education Statistics. Web.