Course Highlight: Technology Applications for Teaching and Supporting the Struggling Reader, by Ted Hasselbring & Margaret Bausch*

Too many students are entering middle and high schools with deficits in literacy skills that prevent them from participating in grade-level learning. Students with low literacy skills quickly fall into a cycle of failure, often resulting in dropping out of school. This need not be the case.

Over the past forty years, research in the cognitive and neurological sciences has helped us to better understand how the human brain is restructured during the process of learning to read. In this course, Drs. Hasselbring and Bausch discuss how to leverage this knowledge to facilitate the use of technology to enhance literacy instruction for all readers, and especially struggling readers. They provide specific examples of technology that will help you teach and support literacy skills. The course is enhanced by screen shots, product walkthroughs, interviews, and footage of students at computers and in classrooms.

Learn how to:
* Facilitate the brain’s process of learning to read
* Assist students to word level automaticity and fluency
* Encourage guided practice or independent practice when appropriate
* Develop students’ comprehension skills
* Use video anchors to help students develop mental models
* Assist struggling readers through Read 180 and System 44
* Employ text-to-speech programs, visual learning tools, abridged text, alternate text, picture text, and supported text to assist struggling readers

What will you earn?
* Professional Development credits applicable to teacher state license renewal in the form of:
o Continuing Education Units
o State specific approved credit types (i.e. Act 48 Hours, CEUs, Clock Hours, CPDUs, PD Hours, PDPs, PGPs, PLUs, SB-CEUs, Renewal Credits, & USOEs)

Acquire the professional development/continuing education units needed to meet your state-license renewal requirement today!
This is an online course, accessible 24/7 from anywhere that has an internet connection. Course format is self-paced with a video-based mode of instruction. Additional details on how to find this course in your state can be found below.

Teacher Collaboration in TESOL
Edited by Andrea Honigsfeld and Maria Dove

TESOL Journal announces a call for abstracts for the 2012 special-topic issue on teacher collaboration in TESOL. In this special TESOL Journal issue, collaboration will be treated in the broadest possible sense, inclusive of collaboration among ESL/EFL specialists as well as general education teachers and instructors and their language teaching counterparts both in and out of the classroom.

Read the call for abstracts
The deadline for proposals is January 31, 2010.

Questions?
Please send inquiries and submissions to the special-issue editors:
Andrea Honigsfeld
Maria Dove:  mdove@molloy.edu

Good morning all,

We have now subscribed to the fortnightly newspaper Newsacademic. This reading resource is most useful for Levels 7 and 8, although teachers have also used it with L6. We have an intranet licence which allows us to make as many copies as we like across all four campuses. The newspaper can also be viewed and saved in an HTLM version on-line. Newsacademic also comes with classroom activities and puzzles. I’m attaching the current issue here with the classroom activities. To get the next issue and access the archive of back issues (over a hundred) go to the ZU website, intranet page – Newsacademic is the first item at the top of the academic column.

Regards,

Andy

Dear Colleagues,

TESOL Arabia invites you to attend a morning of workshops mainly for teachers of young learners on the 24^th.

Organizers: TESOL Arabia YL SIG, Read SIG & Abu Dhabi Chapter

Venue: Khalifa University of Science, Technology & Research (KUSTAR), Abu Dhabi  (19^th/Sa’ada Street, Opposite Abu Dhabi Police Headquarters).

Date & Time: Wednesday, Nov 24 (2:30-05:30 pm)

Speakers:   Dr. Fíodhna Gardiner-Hyland: Interact in Class Education Consulting

Dr. Melanie Gobert: Abu Dhabi Men’s College, Higher Colleges of Technology

Tom Le Seelleur: Khalifa University

Poster Session: (Theme: Various aspects of reading teaching)

Publishers: Oxford University Press & MacMillan Publishers displaying graded readers and young learner books

Participants: Everyone is welcome! TESOL Arabia members: free; Non-members: AED 40

Certificates and refreshments will be provided as usual.

Please see attached the event flyer with the program and location map.

We hope to see you all there.

Regards,

Fiodhna, Tom & Ahmed

 

Thanks to Don Glass for sharing helpful instructions and a screencast to remove toolbars from students computers while they are taking online tests.  I have put the screencast in K: ENGLISH-ASSESSMENT-SCREENCASTS.

From Don:

Many students have these ‘toolbars’ at the top.  Some of them have as many as 4 or 5 toolbars and they can interfere with the space for the test.  Some toolbars might pose a security risk as well.  They should be removed for the test.   This can be done by doing following;

1. Right click on a blank space in the top ribbon (usually grey, below the URL box).  A list of toolbars will be displayed with the ones open checked.

2.  Uncheck them.

3.  Some toolbars require you make the extra step of verifying you want to close.  Just click ‘yes’.

 

Problem solved.

 

The following notification was sent to some level leaders and posted on the ICT Website. Just in case you didn’t see it, I’m re-posting it here:

There’s an extensive index to all the resources in the Clickable Textbooks on Blackboard /ABP Org/Clickable Textbooks.

Have fun exploring.

Dear All,

iREACh Testing Centre, an approved British Council IELTS Test Centre, is looking for suitably qualified and experienced individuals to join our team of IELTS Examiners.

You will need:

• An undergraduate degree or a qualification which can be demonstrated to be equivalent to an undergraduate degree.
• A recognised qualification in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) or recognised equivalent as part of a recognised university award course.
• At least 3 years full time (or the equivalent part time) relevant TESOL teaching experience (minimum one year post certificate level qualification). The majority of this teaching experience must relate to adult students (16 years and over).
• The required professional attributes and interpersonal skills.

Closing date for applications: 2nd November 2010

Testing Centre requirements:

If you are successful in your application and training, the expectation is that you would remain attached to the iREACh Testing Centre, and give priority to our Test Dates. With this in mind, you would need to be able to obtain a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from your current employer / sponsor to be employed on a casual basis at the iREACh Testing Centre.

You should also be willing to travel to our Testing locations  in Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, RAK and Fujairah to examine.

Attachments:

You will find attached the IELTS recruitment pack which contains:

·         The guide for applicants to IELTS Examiner recruitment

·         The Examiner Application form

·         The Examiner Minimum Professional Requirements

For more information on the Minimum Professional Requirements and procedure enquiries, please contact: megha.khandelwal@iat.ac.ae

Kind regards,

Megha Khandelwal
Testing Centre 1 iREACh

Institute of Applied Technology
PO Box 111499
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Tel: +971 (0) 2 401 8194
Megha.khandelwal@iat.ac.ae

 

DOCUMENTS

A Guide for Applicants to IELTS Examiner Recruitment

Examiner Minimum Professional requirements

Examiner Application Form

 

American Institutes for Research: Symposium Presentation on ‘Using RTI to Improve Achievement for English Language Learners’

Registration Deadline: Friday, November 5, 2010
Conference Date: Thursday, November 18, 2010
Place: Conference Rooms 200 A-C 1000, Thomas Jefferson Street NW, Washington, D.C.

The American Institutes for  Research-English Language Learners Center is pleased to host a symposium series, Connecting Research, Practice and Policy: Supporting Success for English Language Learners. Our first half-day event is focused on Using RTI to Improve Achievement for English Language Learners. The meeting will be held on Thursday, November 18, 2010 at the American Institutes for Research in  Washington, DC. Distinguished speakers from various institutions, including the National Center for Response to Intervention (RtI), will address the importance of high-quality instruction for ELLs in Tier I, highlight the appropriate use of screening and progress monitoring tools, and then engage the audience in an interactive discussion about implications for policy and practice.

There is no registration fee. Space is limited. To register for this event, please complete and submit this online registration form <http://ell.airevents.org/default.aspx> no later than Friday, November 5, 2010. You will receive a confirmation email after you submit the registration form. Please retain a copy of the confirmation email as proof of your registration.

University of Minnesota: “Expanding Our Horizons” Seventh International Conference on Language Teacher Education – Call for Papers

Deadline for Submissions: December 15, 2010
Conference Date: May 19–21, 2011
Place: Radisson University Hotel, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

The Seventh International Conference on Language Teacher Education welcomes proposals for papers and symposia on all aspects of the education and professional development of language teachers. Papers and symposia may report on data-based research, theoretical and conceptual analyses, or best practices in language teacher education.

The mission of the conference is to address the education of teachers of all languages, at all instructional and institutional levels, and in all the many national and international contexts in which this takes place, including: English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) instruction; foreign/modern/world language teaching; bilingual education; immersion education; indigenous and minority language education; and the teaching of less commonly taught languages. The conference aims to bring together teacher educators from these many contexts to discuss and share research, theory, and best practices and to initiate and sustain meaningful professional dialogue across languages, levels, and settings. The conference will focus on the following four broad themes:

• The Knowledge Base of Language Teacher Education;
• Social, Cultural, and Political Contexts of Language Teacher Education;
• Collaborations in Language Teacher Education; and
• Processes of Language Teacher Education
  

More information and on-line submission instructions can be found at: http://www.carla.umn.edu/conferences/lte2011/call.html

A lesson with listening on International Biodiversity Day (yes, there is such a thing) as a follow up on the textbook readings is available here. You may need to wade through the exercises and select the most suitable as they are quite repetitive.