Special Thoughts - Excited Fan Meets her Idol!

Near the end of May, Paul and I got to attend a day long workshop presented by our second language-special ed hero, Katie Arnett!!! We actually got to talk to her live and in person!!! And she was AMAZING!!!! We learned sooo much in one day I wish we could have met her at the beginning of our project instead of the end, but it was an AWESOME way to wind our project up! 

To make the day even better (if that was even possible!) as part of our project, we were able to bring the FSL-SERT team from Queen Elizabeth PS with us too! Teri Smart and Tanya Campbell seemed to enjoy the day as much as we did, and Tanya was taking notes at least as fast as I was. 

A few interesting / thought-provoking bits from my notes include:

- We were referring to ULAs as "you ell ay's" throughout our project, but Katy calls them "Oo la's" ... which sounds way more 'Oo la la' and fun to me! 😊

- We speak 180 words per minute. In a second language classroom we tend to slow it down to about 120 words per minute.(Crazy, right??)

- For every 10 000 words we throw at students we can expect them to get 3 in the early stages of language learning.

- It takes 30-40 exposures to a word for them to pick it up (and it has to be in context - not just repeated over and over again).

- All of our FSL students have an auditory processing “issue” because their brains are processing in a second language - so using strategies that work for people with actual auditory processing disorders can help:

• Doing repetition of key words/phrases will move kids forward faster
• Underlining and re-enforcing keywords and concepts
• Explicitly tell them “This is a key word”
• Structured listening: Steps: Listen for the jist - Listen for keywords or vocabulary - Listen for specific details (Say at least 3 times to hit each stage. Slow down. Take time to deepen understanding).
• Use paraphrasing with caution - students don’t realize you are saying the same idea with a new word (unless you tell them explicitly that you are paraphrasing)
• Use of English-sandwiching is not an effective practice.

- English and French are both opaque languages - you can’t learn the alphabet and read all words because letters don’t consistently make the same sounds. Transparent languages like Spanish and Arabic are easy to learn. Our students need memory supports to make learning French easier.

- Katy shared with us that her writing partner, Renée Bourgoin, will have a new book out with 200 interventions for teaching reading in a second language in the fall of 2018!!! We will be watching the Pearson Canada website!

Things I'm Grateful For:
- The chance to spend a whole day learning from Katy Arnett live and in person!
- The chance to bring along our friends from QEPS to share the fun!
- The chance to share our learning throughout our TLC project with all of you who read our blog!

Things I'm Wondering About:
- How to get a copy of Renée Bourgoin's new book for all SERTs and FSL teachers in our board
- How to keep our learning about FSL & Special Education going, and extend it to the French Immersion teachers in our school and board ... sounds like a great project for 2018-2019! 😉

Cheers everybody! Thank you for following our project!

Lisa ☺