KDLerma Blog for ESL 509

Valley Vista Expands Dual Language Immersion Program 9 March 2018  - by  John John The Chula Vista Elementary School Distr ict  (CVESD) is the largest K-6 th  grade elementary school district in the state of California and is located in the southern San Diego County and enrolls approximately 30,000 students within 46 schools. The district serves diverse communities and starting the 2018-2019 academic year, every kindergarten class at Valley Vista Elementary School will be a Dual Language Immersion (DLI) classroom.  This program expansion will help Valley Vista to become “the first non-charter DLI school in the Chula Vista Elementary School District (CVESD) and reaffirm its mission to embrace diversity through multicultural language courses.” The dual immersion program provides both English and Spanish instruction to students needing help to develop their language skills.  The kindergarten students will receive personalized instruction...

How Technology Can Equalize Learning Differences By Kathleen L. Daly  MARCH 13, 2018 (photo courtesy of james yang, chronicle) This article talks about how different students learn differently which is the heart of the debate, not whether technology in the classroom is a distraction.  It’s about engaging students according to the diverse learning styles, with some of them involving the use of technology. The examples used in this article are based on the undergraduate population compared to their high-school counterparts as an ideal to replicate. The examples can be used in any classroom in the K-12 environment. Some ideas presented include needing to step outside the comfort zone of traditional pedagogy. “It may mean additional preparation time, rethinking an exam format, showing a movie or film clip, turn on the captions. Although these are simple solutions, they increase accessibility for hearing-impaired students as well as they help English-...

Stung by loss of funding, Syracuse district wants to halt charter school expansion Updated Feb 14; Posted Feb 14 By James T. Mulder jmulder@syracuse.com, syracuse.com An article I read this week was interesting as it relates to charter school funding and how whether financing these schools are “hampering efforts to improve city schools” in Syracuse.  As a result, the district is asking the state to temporarily ban additional charter schools in Syracuse at the next city school board meeting.  According to the article, charters schools have reduced the district’s " ... ability to increase learning opportunities for all students, encourage the use of different and innovative teaching methods, create professional opportunities for district personnel, provide parents and students with expanded choices, and improve student learning and achievement.” Other reasons given are that the charter schools  enroll smaller percentages of students with disabili...