Supporting ELL and Dual Language Students
I am a HUGE fan of our Texquest databases. In an age when it's harder and harder for our students to distinguish accurate information in a Google search, the databases provide vetted resources to jumpstart their research journeys.
A recent newsletter from Marty Rossi at Region XX included a link to Texquest's ELL and Dual Language Resources. Here are four more reasons I an enamored with our database subscriptions!
- Did you know that EBSCO has over 1300 books available in Spanish?
- Did you know that our subscription includes a Spanish language database called ¡Informe!?
- Did you know that the Spanish version of Encyclopedia Brittanica, Brittanica Escolar Online, is available for primary, middle, and high school students?
- Did you know that the Gale/Cengage and SIRS Discoverer Encyclopedia Brittanica offer translation tools as well as Google Classroom integration?
If you are looking for materials to support your ELL students, Texquest has much to offer. See your campus librarian for login credentials.
Supporting Students Who Need Text Read to Them
When I visited campuses this month, I shared Google Voice Typing with many teachers. A primary grade teacher at AES asked a really good question. Voice typing is an awesome resource for our youngest learners, but if they're not reading yet, what's available so they can read/hear what they wrote?
The Read&Write extension reads online text and so much more. You can acquire the extension from the Chrome Web Store. Just search for Read Write. It's little purple puzzle piece icon will live with your extensions. Once it is installed, access it by clicking on the icon. A toolbar will pop up. Click on the purple box in the tool bar. Uncheck "continuous reading" or the app will read every tab on the page! To turn the extension off, just click the icon again.
It's a powerful little tool that can make a difference for many students.
This short video highlights the extension's features.
And this one minute video shows how to get started.
Learning is Fun with Adobe Spark
If you've been by the technology office this fall looking for Mr. Halsell, you may have had to peek behind the mountain of Chromebook boxes containing computers that he has been processing to get into the hands of our elementary and secondary students. Exciting times for BISD!
All those new devices open up opportunities for learning. Adobe Spark is a great tool for making images and videos. Adobe provides an Educator Guide that contains great ideas for using Adobe Spark in the Classroom and projects can be downloaded to post in Google Classroom.
See how this fourth grade teacher used Adobe Spark with her students.
Need help getting started? Give me a call or send an email. :)