Special Thoughts - Everyone Can Play

I’ve been called many things in my life, but athletic has never been one of them. Our blog’s vintage sports theme reflects Paul being sporty and me being … vintage. Despite my lack of athleticism, I always enjoyed playing games outside, but preferred ones where the social and psychological stakes weren’t too high for the uncoordinated kids so we could all just do our best and have fun. 

 Although the whole book is fantastic, I have two favourite parts in Katy Arnett and Renée Bourgoin’s "Access for Success: Making Inclusion Work for Language Learners". Both focus on setting up a supportive learning environment that reduces potential barriers and allows everyone a chance to succeed and have fun in French class. 

The first is an excellent chart on dispelling myths about inclusion in FSL classrooms in the first chapter of the book. It lists each myth, what current research actually shows, and links to the studies. It really helped me with my own growth mindset, especially about students with special needs in French Immersion in my school.

The second is the section on ‘Universal Language Actions’. The authors conducted multi-year research with French Immersion teachers in New Brunswick, studying the effectiveness of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) strategies in FSL classrooms. They found that while those strategies were useful, there were issues and needs unique to second language learning that weren’t necessarily addressed through them. In response, they developed a collection of strategies, grounded in strong second language research, specifically for teachers supporting struggling second language learners and called them Universal Language Actions (ULAs).

When Paul and I were reading about ULAs, we found that many of them were things that Paul was already doing. For the action research portion of our project, Paul decided to pick six of the ULAs to really dig into (click here for the full list, with Paul’s picks highlighted). The thought was to choose strategies that he may already be using, but thoughtfully planning ahead and being intentional about it rather than scrambling to use them reactively in the moment. His hope is that it will allow him to be more reflective about what is working and what isn’t in his inlusive learning enviroments so he can tweak planning and strategies to be even more responsive to learner needs. 

Paul will let you know how it’s going in an upcoming post! 

 Things I’m Grateful For: 

- The Companion Website that goes with Katy Arnett’s book (click here). The book includes the research behind each ULA, tips for implementation, and real life action stories, and the companion website has electronic copies of the tools in the book, lots of helpful inventory and tracking sheets for teachers, tips, and links to supportive websites.

 Things I’m Wondering About: 

- I wonder if there is a way to get a copy of this book to every FSL teacher and SERT in our board!

Lisa ☺