The two presentations from our 2nd Community-ED Project, Feb. 1st, 2014, "Back to Basics". This included the talk by Francesca McGeary on "Turning the Disability of EAL/ESL Students into a Gift" and Alison Schofield on "Unravelling the Mysteries of Learning".

1. Welcome to The Community-ED Project #2
“Back to Basics”
Saturday, February 1st 2014

2. Agenda
9:00-10:00
10:00-10:30
10:30-10:50
10:50-11:50
11:50-12:00
Turning the “Disability” of EAL/ESL into a Gift
Navigating the US University Application Process
Short Break & Networking
Unravelling the Mysteries of Learning
Q&A

3. Turning the “Disability” of EAL/ESL into a “Gift”
with Francesca McGeary, Co-Founder of IngeniousEd., Learning and Language Specialist

4. School Admission Criteria:
“We admit students of all nationalities,
as long as they demonstrate that they
will successfully cope with our
academic program and who fall within
the normal range of English abilities for
their age level.”

5. School Reasoning
“Sadly at this current time, we do not have the qualified staff to meet the
needs of ELL students.”
“We would love to be able to take
non- English speaking students to
our school, however, our standards
are too high and they would
struggle to meet them. We do not
want to set them up for failure”
“We have a long waiting list of other
children who already meet our criteria
and standards …and we can‟t take
them.”

6. Al Hamdulillah!
Eureka!
Your child has been accepted into a school!
Now what…..?

7. Deficit Model
“They can‟t do…..”
“They are not meeting expected levels…….”
Classmates’ English language level
Their English language level

8. The child may not fully express themselves in
English but what else do they come with?
Culture + Identity & Values
• i.e. strong and/or weak value for
education, reading, writing,
time-management, independence,
respect for family and elders, etc.

9. The child may not fully express themselves in
English but what else do they come with?
Age appropriate thinking/
cognitive skills
• ability to understand concepts
• ability to absorb ideas
• intellectual capacity
i.e. knowledge of concepts like ‘habitat’

10. The child may not fully express themselves
in English but what else do they come with?
Creativity
+ Imagination
+ Curiosity
• We must engage the student
• We must excite the student

11. Importance of Mother Tongue Development
in ESL/EAL Acquisition
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Student “A”
Boy in Year 7
Malaysian
Strong mother tongue: Malay
Schooled in Malay until Nov 2013
Can read and write in his MT to age
appropriate level
Newly arrived in Nov 2013
English “Beginner”
Had 4 years of EFL in home country
40 mins x3 per week
How fast can he improve?

12. Importance of Mother Tongue Development
in ESL/EAL Acquisition
•
•
•
•
Student “A”
Improved nearly 2 academic reading
and writing Grade-levels in one
month intensive support
4 days weekly x1 hour per day
Why?

13. Importance of Mother Tongue Development
in ESL/EAL Acquisition
•
•
•
•
•
•
Student “B”
Boy in Grade 3
Strong Spanish mother tongue
Schooled in Spanish until last year
Had one year of ESL help
Can read and write in his MT to his
appropriate age level
•
He improved 3 academic year levels
in one year at his English medium
school.
•
Why?

14. Le Theoreme de Bernoulli
•
•
•
•
Pliez le papier en deux .
Rabattre un coin sur le pli central.
Rabattre l’autre coin sur le pli central.
Pliez de nouveau le coin obtenu sur le pli
central.
• Pliez l’avion sur le pli central.
• Abassiez une des ailes de l’avion a l’horizontal.
• Abaissiez L’autre aile de l’avion a l’horizontal.

15. L.O. - The Bernoulli Principle
• Lesson Objectives:
• Gain awareness of the
Bernoulli Principle.
• Relate the principle to the lift,
one of four forces of flight.
• Utilize various thinking skills
related to learning about
science.
• Teaching Method:
• Group discussion, cooperative
learning and interactive
participation
• In 1738, a Swiss
mathematician named
Daniel Bernoulli studied
the relationship between
the pressure and velocity
of a fluid. The Bernoulli
principle states that the
pressure of a fluid (in this
case, air) decreases as its
velocity increases.
• We can understand the
principles of flight using
Bernoulli’s Principle

16. Theoreme de Bernoulli
Simple-level Vocabulary
•
•
•
•
•
Paper
Airplane
Fold
Turn
Throw
Deeper-Level/Cognitive
•
•
•
•
Distance
Speed, Velocity
Pressure
Bernoulli’s Principle

17. How can we best teach this lesson?
•
•
•
•
•
Thinking Question
Visual
Kinesthetic approach
Experiment/hypothesis
Research question/topic in
MT
• Pre-teach important
vocabulary prior to unit
• Translate important
vocabulary into MT prior to
unit

18. You can Facilitate Non-English
Children to Learn Deep Concepts…

19. “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by
it‟s ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life
believing that it is stupid.” - Anonymous

20. Unravelling the Mysteries of Learning
with Alison Schofield, Co-Founder IngeniousEd., Learning & Behaviour Specialist
“If I could share with you some of the most uncommonly
known things about learning that could dramatically
impact your view of learning, this would be it!”

21. Mystery #1
Experiment:
Self-Test: How good a cook are you?
Do you have “cooking dyslexia?”
“What do we really
know about acquiring
new skills or
behaviours?”
Rate yourself between 1-10 with a score
of 1 being the lowest and 10 being the
highest score. Is it likely that you have
“cooking dyslexia”?
We must truly understand the exact components of
the skill/ task/ behaviour in order to be able to
analyse it and assess it accurately.

22. Mystery #2
Experiment:
With the people beside you:
Imagine you are creating a new airline.
You must come up with your airline’s
“brand” by giving it a name and a onesentence slogan. Be prepared to share it
with us.
“What is the single-most
valuable resource that will
increase learning,
engagement and enjoyment
for learners?”
20 years of research supports the power of social
interaction/collaborative learning on the “deepness”
of learning and the “absorption” of concepts…

23. Experiment:
With the people beside you:
Mystery #3
“Why should we understand
the idea of „mastery‟?”
Discuss what “mastery” means in
relation to skills/concepts. Discuss
this with a person(s) sitting beside
you. Think of real examples and
scenarios.
Understanding the concept of „Instructional Levels‟
will allow you to build „bridges‟ for learners in order
to accelerate their levels.

24. Instructional Levels:
We want to understand what the individual can
currently do, independently
Example- Reading
95-100% - “Independent” (Easy)
90-94% - “Instructional” (Just Right)
0 – 89% - “Frustration” (Too Difficult)

25. Experiment:
Mystery #4
As a whole group, look at the
slides.
“How can we teach concepts
as simply as possible?”
Discuss other similar ideas for
any variety of topics.
Often the learner already possesses some level of the
skill you want them to display. Sometimes simply
„activating‟ this is enough to get the concept across
without “teaching” it.

26. Concept of “Percent”
60 % or
60
100
100 %
or
100 = 1
100

27. Concept of “Rounding”
QUESTION:
“How many cars
do you think are
in the parking lot
at the Dubai Mall
on a Thursday
night?”
Round
Numbers
“About”
1,000
Exact
Numbers
“Exactly”
20,000
2,500
2,217

28. Concept of “Saying Large Numbers”
Millions
8 3
Problem:
Many children get
confused with
reading numbers
over 1,000
Thousands
7
,
1
0
9
837, 109, 328
328
109
837
,
3
2
8

29. What else can you
uncover?