 Well, hello everyone. Good afternoon. It's Jackie here. Sarah Burns is away on a on a brief holiday. So I will be introducing myself and my partner here, Shelly. Today we're going to talk about the unique learner challenges of deaf and hard of hearing and English language learners. And I'd like to introduce Shelly Schwartz. She's an ESL consultant on the inclusive learning team with Edmonton public schools. She supports schools with programming for their English language learners to also include complex English language learners. Shelly's journey with English language learners began in the 80s with tutoring the children of immigrant families. And as she became completely hooked into the second language learning within her 27 years with Edmonton public as a teacher curriculum coordinator, project writer and consultant, she has taught a variety of levels of sheltered language classes and adapted programming for hundreds of children so that they could access content while building their language. Shelly's personal interest in the deaf and hard of hearing population was peaked when her father received cochlear implants in 2001 at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver after gradually losing his hearing into middle age. I'm very honored to be doing this presentation with Shelly. Thank you, Jackie. And hello, everybody. Thanks for coming out on this really chilly day to listen to us talk about this topic. So I get the pleasure of introducing Jackie. After receiving her graduate degree in deafness studies, Jackie Dolan pursued a teaching position at Lendrum School with Edmonton public schools as a deaf as a teacher of the deaf and hard of hearing. While continuing to teach at Lendrum School, she instructed an evening course at the University of Alberta introduction to deafness for fourth year educational psychology students. Currently, she is a teacher consultant for the deaf and hard of hearing with Edmonton Regional Collaborative Service delivery and inclusive learning with Edmonton public schools. She has been consulting and supporting students who are deaf and hard of hearing in inclusive educational programs for 13 amazing years. In addition to her work in the Edmonton region, this year, she is supporting students who are deaf and hard of hearing in the Wood Buffalo RCSD in Fort and in Fort McMurray as well, working with Alberta education with the low incidence provincial team. So this afternoon, the afternoon where our discussion points are going to be getting to know your students, the impact to their success. We want to talk about some strategies and resources that we know if there's teachers out there, we know this is really important and something they want to take away. And then we're going to have a case study for discussion. And so this is where we can take a student a scenario and we can look and take it apart and see how we can make some of those meaningful connections in our practice. So I just want to say first that the intention of this PLC is to demonstrate the similarities of these two populations of students regarding their impact to success and strategies for supports. If you have students who are both deaf and hard of hearing and English language learners, this presents some additional challenges that makes their profile a bit more complex and impacts can be more compounded. So we believe that there needs to be some more work in this area as what we found research and the evidence based practices are limited. Thank you. And I believe if we have some time at the end, we will entertain a few questions. We will. We'll see if we have too much to say. So I like this slide because I feel everybody can relate. So what we're going to do here is try and develop a little bit of common language. So we're going to use that strategy that everybody knows works for everybody even adult learning and we're going to front load some of what we know to be the current acronyms and our disciplines and the vocabulary used. So just this is important, you know, just like when we go to a meeting and it's full of acronyms, we need to know what those mean before we can process and learn new information. So we're, we're, you know, practicing what what we preach here. So we're going to be throughout our presentation. We're going to be talking about DHH and that means deaf and hard of hearing that includes all students with hearing loss or levels of of hearing and also the BICS is what we call basic interpersonal communication skills. As well as kelp cognitive academic language proficiency and these as we will learn later on if you haven't heard of them. Those are the theories of language development that are coined by Cummings in the 80s. So we'll dig into that a bit deeper in the next few slides. Oh, and I'm doing L one is the first language of students. So that would be their native language and learning a second language is what we call L two. And if you've got a three L three or four L four. I think of my grandfather he had L seven. So when we're really quite Canadian sometimes L one and L two is what we think of but in other places of the of the world. Typically they do speak two languages very, very common. So I always like to clarify the difference between ELL the English language learner also called just L's in some of the textbooks that I'm reading English learner and ESL English is the second language. When we refer to the ELL or L that is the student. So when we refer to ESL English as a second language that is the methodology that we use to help support these students. So myself I am not an ELL consultant because that would mean I'm an English language learner. English is my L one and I hope I'm not too bad at it as well. So I am an ESL consultant. Another term that I see in textbooks a lot is EL English as an additional language. Sometimes I say if I was queen for a day that would be the type of consultant I would be often. I see English as an additional language to many or sometimes I even see children being exposed to English and other languages simultaneously. English is a foreign language. That's it. You are in a context where English is not typically the language of the land and you are taking it. You know maybe like we would take like a Spanish or a German because we maybe are going to school somewhere else or we want to connect with family or do some travel. I see as an intercultural consultant in I work for Edmonton Public Schools. We are very lucky to have a team of intercultural consultants. So they have a two purpose job in our district. They bridge culture and they help with language and both roles are extremely important. There are times when we access them and it may not necessarily be just for that language interpretation piece. It might be because somebody is coming from somewhere else in the world and as we know from any kind of travels it's very different when you travel around the world and they do things culturally different. No judgment. It's just different. So they help us sometimes with communicating the message so that what we say is interpreted correctly and vice versa. I find that there's so much to learn about other places in the world. And then this is actually I would say probably the newest one I've come across is the SLIFE students. The students with limited interrupted formal education. So those might be the students who started school in Canada, went somewhere else. Maybe they had some interruptions because they have been moving around quite a bit and then they move back to Canada. So they've had a few interruptions in their school. It can also be those students who maybe land in Canada and have never been to school. So there's many combinations of those. So as Jackie talked about Jim Cummins theory of language development is really key in both of our disciplines. And when we were looking for research combined research we thought you know what this is something really instrumental to both of us. And I also think it's important for everybody. I mean we're all teachers of language no matter where you are even a football coach if those players don't know their language. Ooh how are they going to know those place. So we look at the BICS as the social language. If you look at the picture it is the tip of the iceberg. Those are the words that we use just to communicate socially. We don't sound like textbooks when we have conversations. I know people with PhDs. Yeah they throw a big word here and there but it's just a social conversation. When children acquire language it can take up to two years feeling to feel comfortable with the BICS. It's more of the high frequency vocabulary and it's very concrete. Quite often the words they're using are you know table would be something that you could see it's concrete and it's more of a low pressure situation kind of words there. So then we're looking at more of the academic and subject specific language when we look at the CalP. That takes much longer to acquire and it does start even before people have all of their BICS. This isn't okay now I have my BICS stop now it's time to learn CalP. So we say five to ten years because there's so many variables. You know some people are just they learn language it's the way their brain works. It depends upon the context you're in. Maybe you have started to learn it and then stopped because you've moved you come back you're learning it some more. Those are more of the low frequency vocabulary words. And we have to think of the syntax to your sentence structures are different when you're using CalP. More of the abstract contexts and more of a high pressure situation type of language. I always think about it's the language of the textbooks. And so this is very generalized it's more interpreted for more of our children that have consistent access to language. So for our students who are deaf and hard of hearing that BICS would take can take longer than one to two years. And that's because a lot of the language that's expressed in this tier at this level is learned by over hearing. And over hearing is where students have that limited or reduced access. So for this reason the language foundation to build CalP when BICS may have some gaps. And just to let you know that you know it takes about 35 times to hear a word before they can use it. And so for our ELs and our DHH kids they'll get there. It will just take a bit longer and they might need a bit more repetition. Quite often I find this is a really good concept to for not only us as educators to know but for the children to know and for the parents to know. And I know when I'm supporting students and meeting with families I always talk about patience. It takes time if we keep working at it it comes. So that's our segue into getting to know your student. So we just found this to be a very important piece in our presentation in that we might need to get take a bit more time to get to know our student. It may be challenging because there's maybe a language barrier or there may need to be some more teaching that needs to be involved. But we found this to be a very helpful area. So when I think about our ELs there again there's typically two categories we look at. One are the children who are born in Canada and who their home language is something other than English or something in it and with a little bit of English mixed in. And then there are those children who are foreign born. And within these two populations there's lots of variability again. So if you're born in Canada it can be to multilingual families. It can be to families hearing and speaking English and other languages at home. And also it can be to parents with varying degrees of their own language and literacy. For this slide when I refer to language and literacy I think about language as speaking and listening and the literacy is reading and writing. When you look at foreign born students they can have languages in English and other languages. They can be foreign born and have many other languages and again varying degrees of literacy and language. So all of that really makes a difference because we need to know how much are they hearing how much are they saying. How much English do they have. Do they have literacy. Do they have access to a lot of literacy. Then I think about the wide variety in educational experiences for some of these children. Some of them you know they have had no interruptions no traumatizing experiences that they need to navigate through. And they immigrate or they start in Canada and things are kind of tickety-boo right. But some of them could have different types of educational experiences in other parts of the world or in even in other parts of Canada. And I always think of attendance as a big one as well. As well we look at their journey experience. How much have these children moved around. I know in Edmonton Public we always say you know if they've moved around about five times that's when they really start to become at risk and we need to support these students. Also in their journey I think about those students who may come from a traumatizing experience such as a war torn country. So you know we might be looking for a trauma response in these children. And that can happen in the country when conflict arises. That can happen as they are moving and landing in Canada. Because they could be moving to different countries before they get here. In their journey experience they could also have traumatizing experiences when they land here. Because it's quite a different experience to be in a context where you don't understand the language. Where the culture is very different. With that being said just because we might see that a student has been in contexts that can be seen as traumatizing. That does not mean that the student will have a trauma response. So it's good to know what they've been through so that we can watch them and support them if things come up. And then with our English language learners they can have further complexities. And they could be like we talk about deaf and hard of hearing. And another thing that I like to bring out too sometimes when we think of complexities we think okay what's making it hard for them. Their complexity could also be things like intellectual giftedness. I'm very bright but I'm having a hard time here and I've never been in this context. So that could be a situation where we need to really support students. And we just want to make note that these children who are learning English here in Edmonton they have that consistent access. They are accessing that existing first language and consistent access because they are hearing to that new L2 which is English. So when we look at students who are perhaps L or DHH we're going to look at this group of students. And they could be so children of deaf adults we call those CODA students or CODA children. And that's when they have deaf parents. And so those deaf parents their first language is a sign language here in Edmonton. It's American Sign Language in Alberta, North America. So that was their first language. So these CODA students can be seen as English language learners. Another deaf and hard of hearing I put them together but they can be separated. But just to let you know that it's more than 90% of deaf children are born to hearing families. So when we look at deaf children born into hearing families they may present similar to a student who is learning English or learning a second language. The difference is that their access to spoken information can be limited, reduced or perhaps non-existent. And that can be for a few reasons. Perhaps the deaf child may go undiagnosed for months and years. Now letting you know that this has changed in the advent of newborn hearing screenings in Alberta. Also if even with well intentions of that hearing family committed to learning sign language it may not be at the fluency and the richness of the family's first spoken language. So this is how these children can fall into that is learning English. As well hard of hearing children born into hearing families they can present as well similar to else. Their access however it may have gaps in it because of their you know challenge to over here. You know acquiring a language is different for deaf and hard of hearing than it is for hearing students. And we will discuss this further in our presentation. So getting to know our students so collecting information for students particularly who are hard of hearing deaf and hard of hearing. We like to look firstly at their audiograms. This tells us what speech sounds the student is currently able to access or perhaps not and their level and type of hearing loss. And we have a nice pretty picture of an audiogram there. And so this is very foreign because once we plot X's and O's which means X's left ear circles are right ears. It makes no sense to our schools and our teachers. So we need our educational audiologist to explain what that means. But really this is clearly just a medical document so it really doesn't tell us what the brain is doing. So that's really important to know in collecting you know reports from speech language pathologists or any other professionals that can help us understand the student. And also collaborating with parents and knowing about their their history. And a few more questionnaires that we're going to talk about that you will find later on in our presentation as well. So when I work with families in you know trying to really understand the student. I think the parents are key. I always see parents you know they're the child's first teacher rate. We usually only have them as educators for a little clip of their life. So they're such a valuable part of the homeschool communication. I always like to ask what language the child hears or their receptive language. What are they receiving at home and what language does the child speak or express at home. And I should probably be saying signing as well too right. If we're really looking at you know that's why we have receiving. Okay there you go. I'm learning as we do this too. So that's really important because sometimes students or children will hear a language at home and then they will answer in the language that they're using at school. And parents will say oh no they don't speak the home language but they have a lot of language. They'll probably have really well developed bicks in their home language. And if you said hey you know what I would like you to speak the home language. They probably could say quite a bit. Another thing I think is important is to find out the language of instruction in previous schools because we have students that may have a home language. Go to school in another language and then they transfer schools they've got another language and then they come here and we're starting with another language as well. Not that we can't learn a lot of languages if our brains can learn one language they can learn multiple languages. But it takes just a little bit longer to get the academics when we're learning the languages as the way I described it. I think it's important to really know the child's strengths and interests. That helps develop that relationship and give them something to study as well that they're interested in. Knowing their countries of origin are they Canadian born and if they are did they stay in Canada. Were they born somewhere else and where have they moved around to. I think I talked about the three phases of immigration. So you know often knowing is was there anything that might have happened that the school should know about. I always try to ask questions in a trauma informed way because some information is personal to families and they may or may not want to divulge at that time. Who is following their access to language as well is very important to know. Were they in a situation where they didn't have any medical intervention if they're deaf and hard of hearing. Or is the technology that they were using really different than what we would use here. And again it's the impact of trauma. So the more we know the better we can support. So now we're going to talk about the impacts to their success. And we've kind of categorized it into four main areas and perhaps there's more impacts depending on the complexity of the student that you are students that you're working with. And what you may notice when we talk about these four is that there may be impacts and influences upon the other impact. So how cultural influences can affect access to language. So you'll notice that there'll be some overlap or some influences even within these four areas. So number one as as Shelly said we are both being teachers educators language is number one. And I've talked about this with with other students and people that you know students that speech language and SLP work is that access to language is what we deserve as humans. And we want to ensure that the students that we're supporting have access in their mode of communication in their way that they can can access that. So typically hearing people you know realize we kind of assume our hearing our hearing is assumed and so hearing in fact is a passive event. And so we overhear so much language and we don't even realize it. So we're building a language foundation with without much effort. So just to make that very clear. So when we're talking about students who are deaf and hard of hearing we want to look at that autograph we want to see are they able to access speech sounds through technology. Through hearing aids or cochlear implants. If they cannot completely access through their hearing technology there needs to be some additional support for some providing that visual access. It may seem as a visual support for learning or it can be fluent support in a visual language. So that is is really important. And we can we can say that develop sign language does not hinder or impact the development of spoken language. In fact it enhances it. Research has proven time and time again it's it's not confusing for the child and the brain does not discriminate between modes and modes of communication order. Language is so that's I think we we as teachers of the deaf and hard of hearing we have to stress that emphatically with with the people that we work with. And I thought it was really interesting hearing about the access to language and how we call it in the ESL world world comprehensible input because what we are trying to understand with language. We would like to understand what people are saying on the other end. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you don't really know the language on the other end and you smile and nod because we know the social cues and they might think we're understanding. So we want to make sure that there's comprehensible input for our students that it's not just the smile and nod. So and their strategies that work very well for this everything from rate of speech simplifying language using using visuals. So when you think about visuals I think about the signing with the language as well. I have taught French with what's called the Ames methodology where we do use gestures to go with the words and I could not believe how fast those children learn to speak French it was absolutely incredible. So just from that personal experience I sure saw that with my students that using a gesture really does help. And sentence stems to so they know OK what is it that I need to be talking about. So so back to the point again comprehensible input we need to make sure the children are understanding what the type of language that we're trying to get them to understand. And we we have language acquisition should have been kind of more pumped up in the front. But I use this a lot is that in order for a language to be acquired it must be accessible abundant and interactive accessible means accessible visually or through hearing perhaps it's a mixture of both to make it complete and full and rich. It needs to be abundant. So language needs to be heard in many different ways in its complexity and in how we say words maybe figurative speech. So and also importantly language is interactive. It's it's not through one person and another. So we want to make sure that they have other communication partners. It's not just interacting through their sign language interpreter we want to ensure that they have that interactiveness for for communication. We and also we want to say that deaf and hard of hearing children they have similar benchmarks for for language acquisition. But only parents that give them a rich language environment at home is the key regardless of the means of communication. It's the richness. So and I like to talk about that foundation in home language as well. If students have that foundational home language it is easier for them to build subsequent languages. Because we only understand how languages work we do that once and then we build words on top of that. So it's definitely an advantage if the students have that. So family and cultural influences again I have foundation and home language right at the top and it's definitely an impact if the students have that foundation. It helps them build connections with their family. Their brain has already understand how to organize language. So I think that it's really key to support families in understanding that it is really important to have that foundational home language. Families need to view the school as a welcoming place for them especially for parents when they come from other places in the world. There may be different ideas about the role of the school. The school might be the place that just looks after your children and they own them during the day and the parents pick them up at the end of the day or they hop on the bus or walk home. Whatever the case may be. So to really get them to understand our culture I think about cultures the way we do things around here is that we see educating children as a partnership. Learning about a new school system is quite interesting. If you've ever done some research on a new school system it's quite interesting. Learning about a new school system is quite interesting. If you've ever done some traveling to other places in the world here we do things that are different. We have cooperative learning which they may or may not have that where the other children come from as an example. There's a language barrier as well so it's great if you have access to an intercultural consultant or an interpreter or somebody else in the community that can help sort of do that bridging that cultural bridging. So families also have the challenge of raising children who are negotiating more than one culture. The way they see different families do things might be different from their own family so that always kind of perpetuates really good conversations for why things happen and really to keep in touch with children. It's really important for families to belong to a supportive community to make those connections. You know what it's like when you go into a context that is unfamiliar and you feel a little bit isolated. We don't want that for our families so to help support that is a really nice thing to do. And for belonging to a supportive community that can also be for our deaf students belonging to the deaf community. And knowing that this deaf community has language and culture that are so strongly tied. So that's an important piece for our deaf students to know about this about these people and that they're free to communicate in a language that is consistent that they can access. And so in addition to communities that are around the world this deaf community does not have culture or sorry a geographic reference. So it's embedded in extensive history and heritage. So I just had to get that in there as well. Thank you. So thinking about the impacts regarding academics. A lot of these children are adapting to a different educational environment. It might be different for them you know how long they have to sit and listen or it might be different for them that we're doing cooperative tasks or inquiry based learning. Is there a lot of memorization involved. I know I've supported students who you know I always say wow they could almost memorize a textbook. I'm glad I didn't have to do that. I don't know if I would have finished university. Field trips is a foreign concept for some people coming from other parts of the world and is it safe to take your children in the forest and are the bears going to eat them. So again it's just that conversation. Also things that we think are simple is lunch routines. We've had families that don't send a lunch because they thought lunch was provided at the school and it's not neglect. It's just that information that sort of language and cultural barrier that happens. So just continue to work on building those bridges background knowledge. So it's so important to think that these students didn't have a lack of background knowledge they have different background knowledge. I know students that I work with will often say you know I'm really having a hard time with social studies because I have never studied Canada before. And why should they really know that much about Canada if they're from other parts of the world. They're probably studying the place where they're living right. And it's you know to build your background knowledge. Yes you need to have those experiences but you also need language to be attached to those experiences. So again that comes back to access. Do they have access to the language to to label those experiences. And so like 80 to 90 percent of our vocabulary is is learned by overhearing. So we overhear conversations. We overhear you know dad telling us to put the blue peg to put the tent up. So this we we overhear all this this language. And this means that sheer abundancy of overhearing these words in different contexts is how we build our repertoire. So when overhearing isn't the best way to access this vocabulary that development is is impacted. And again how this impacts literacy in that when Shelley was showing you about Bix and kelp. And we can look at at Bix as that social vocabulary and language that provides that foundation and those structures for developing literacy. And those language related constructs come from from those areas as well as those code related constructs like phonology and phonetics. So learning a new sound system for for our yells and DHH students who may have challenging accessing some of those sounds. So when students have these missing elements or these challenging elements it it requires some some support. So with numeracy I like to refer to probably go to the next slide. I like to think about Dr. Heady-Rosing has done a lot of research about the language and literacy load in our other subjects. And I'm just going to take math first as an example. It's it's quite impactful when families know to really support that that numeracy. So how they can do that you know it's the real world math. Are we doing math in the cooking? Are we doing math with budget? How about math with grocery shopping? I know my dad used to make us fill out this little journal for mileage. My brother and I used to fight over it. You know, I'll do it dad for you. Yeah, he really had us wrapped around his finger. And then playing games is a really great way to I know that we're a cribbage family. We do that when we go camping all the time. There's puzzles and playing yacht sea is a great one. Other card games as well as encouraging families, you know, what are the games that you play? I'm sure there's a lot that I don't know about because I've lived in Canada my whole life. So when we look at the social emotional impact that communication is really heavily embedded in that language. So if we're proficient enough in a language, then we can be successful communicators in that language in those groups. And knowing that that social language can take some time in that Bix area. We want to make sure that they have those experiences for those various communication partners. And we really want to be aware that social isolation can happen for those students who don't feel like they have the proficiency in a language so that they can make those connections. And that kind of falls into identity. So students having an identity with a culture or a group of people really that identity is developed with an awareness that they are separate and unique individuals. But they can they can judge themselves by how others perceive them. And so we want to continue to encourage these these sense of belongings and acceptance. Identifying with groups of people that perhaps I may be in your similar culture, but to know that they because they like soccer there on a soccer team. So knowing that that can be various and to identify with with people that share the common language or interests and just giving them giving them those experiences. So Jackie asked me a question when we were putting this together she's saying are you typically seeing your L's gravitate towards other students who are from the same place or speak the same language. And yes, I definitely do see that all children definitely look for commonalities when initiating friendships. But we must never assume because a child comes from a geographically close place as another child, or if they speak the same language that they will be a friendship match. We don't want to make that assumption, but we do want to give them the opportunity of course. But in fact, in some regions of the world's group of groups of people who are in conflict and children can bring those sort of negative feelings with them when they immigrate to Canada. You know we can expect them to draw up what may have happened in their home country at the border. So that's something that we need to be aware of for those newcomers as well. Looking at adaptive skills for survival in a new context too. I just I'm going to say it again it's different in different places there may be issues with gender roles might be the first time these children have gone to school with males and females in the classroom. So we're always looking at ways to sort of bridge that culture. So now we're getting to the meat and potatoes of this with our strategies and resources. There are so many strategies and resources that Shelley and I have come up with. So we're just presenting a few here. We're going to have links embedded in our images or external links here, but just to let you know we didn't necessarily touch on the instructional strategies. But knowing that repetition and review is critical enhancing spoken information. So using those acoustic highlighting type of techniques of rate of speech ensuring it's not too fast. You're speaking making sure that you are highlighting important words such as put the red book on the table. You know and and using those super segmentals of the girl is walking up the stairs. So those are all important in in accessing and and ensuring that information of that of that language. And of course heavy heavy visuals. So again we thought as a strategy and a reason it's again getting to know your students so supporting success for children with hearing loss. They have a ton of questionnaires and collections of data questions that you can do to get more information about your students. So just click on to this website and you can you can locate and search for these checklists and these these lists on your own. So I have included pictures of two different questionnaires. One might be I liked the one that says welcome to our class and that one I found on teachers pay teachers which I find is a great resource. I like it because it asks about their interest. It has the medical questions on it. It has the language on it as well. So when we're thinking about sort of this interdisciplinary information that we need when we're dealing with an English language learner who is deaf and hard of hearing. The questions like that are super important. The one on teachthought.com the 26 questions I liked this one because I think it would be great for an older student. It touches on some of the higher level thinking questions when you're really getting to know that student. A good strategy of course is to create a warm and welcoming environment. So really we want our students to see themselves positively. And so when we in my line of work self determination is huge. It's a theory of motivation and so it's really the precursor to self advocacy. You need to know what you want in order to ask for it. So that's about that self determination. So that's really important in creating a warm environment as well demonstrating appropriate literature that is more diverse. Has diversity of students and children in the stories. Maybe of a particular culture a culture that this student is is a part of. And also children who are wearing technology so that they can see themselves in stories or dealing with certain issues that they're confronted with. So we find that to be very valuable. So moving to language and literacy vocabulary strategies and resources. We've got five there. Oh keep going next one. We just have to find the right slide here. Thank you. So we've got some strategies here that are wonderful to implement in classrooms. I just sorry we forgot these ones back here. And so we represented these people these children in literature but really important is our role models. So having our students connect with other people who wear hearing aids or who sign. Also having deaf mentors for our deaf children so they can see people communicating like themselves. These deaf models may be teachers or they could be celebrities who knows. And we have deaf and hard of hearing skill shops that we offer for our deaf and hard of hearing students so that they can see other kids. Because most often kids see only grandparents wearing hearing aids. They didn't know that young children or even babies for that matter wear hearing aids. So really seeing themselves in a diverse group of people that are different maybe not in their school. They could be elsewhere in the community. Yeah and I think that role model definitely goes for the for the L's as well. Being proud that you have you know more than one language and not feeling embarrassed that you know I speak something else and it sounds different. Yeah. Sorry. Now we're going to get an hour on to the language literacy and vocabulary strategies and resources. So we're going to go through five of them. Go ahead. Okay. So the click the slide. There you go. Thanks. Pwim is the first one picture word induction model. So this one is beautiful because we have a big visual. Big visual. So the idea of this and if you click on the link I won't do it now in interests of time. But if you click on the picture at the top right with the multiple pictures it'll bring you to a link that explains the process. So the idea is you've got a picture you generate vocabulary you can talk about it multiple times you can write about it. Others can read about it. And I love this for students who are deaf and hard of hearing as well in that it gives a great conceptual picture. Right. So they can see what the big concept is and picking apart the ice and isolating some vocabulary so that they can understand that practice it and then see how it's put together. It's kind of like that part to whole or whole to part. And it's great. You can do this kindergarten to grade 12. Yeah. Unite for Literacy is a fantastic resource. It now has 41 different languages 41 languages. They're always adding languages. I was trying to say it was 36. But they also have ASL. So that's pretty exciting. And we just noticed the interpreter on the page is kind of below the words and the pictures you might need to scroll down for that. So also reading milestones is a resource. I have a for an overview of the resource. I have the link there. But most of you probably are familiar with this. And it's research developed for students who are deaf and hard of hearing but equally beneficial for our L's and other other students with different needs. And what is different from this resource is that it is language controlled. It has vocabulary that is picture supported and introduced before the stories. The vocabulary is repeated throughout subsequent stories and its sentence structure moves from simple to complex. So it is it is a nice resource that can be a supplementary resource or perhaps it is the students soul literacy program depending on their their needs. So this next one is an oral language strategy which as we know supports learning supports reading and supports writing. We're not going to do the link again in interests of times but please do go into this link. I've used it multiple times with professional learning opportunities. And notice how retelling a concept helps refine language and also in that link. If if you even Google this there's different retrieval charts and writing activities that can be done with this. And I just love it because it helps children develop language and it's a beautiful scaffold when children are talking back and forth and there's closed captioning on this. Picture dictionaries. I absolutely love an ESL picture dictionary. It supports categorical conceptual organization because they are organized in themes. So I find if you are writing about something in a classroom you can find the theme in the ESL dictionary open it up. There are your pictures. There is your there's your vocabulary support and there's sentence stems that children can use as well. So the scaffolds are right there for you. Some of them have dual language as well. You could find Arabic and English. There's Chinese and English. So I would definitely encourage you to have these in your classrooms. And it's great how it categorizes content areas. So that is fantastic. I just want to mention that if you were running out of time here but if you have questions maybe you could type those in now and we can get those to us before we're our time is ending here. So this is really important. It kind of is in connection with our Bix and kelp. So this is related to vocabulary and our the tier one vocabulary and tier two is more related to what we hear through social language. So it's more language that we would overhear and we would develop as part of our foundation of language because it's more high frequency. It's not really taught. It's it's acquired and that tier two vocabulary tends to be more of those adjectives. So instead of just milk as a tier one it's chocolate milk. So it's more of those describing words that tier three vocabulary is very specialized more academic and subject specific. It's what teachers teach in school. So we want to make sure that that the students have that foundation that conceptual understanding those synonyms of the tier one vocabulary in order to meet the needs of that tier three vocabulary. And vocabulary can be supported through pre teaching. Pre teaching is kind of our number one as as Shelly says to we even did it for this presentation. We did some front loading. Yes, we did. So pre teaching is kind of our number one strategy because we know that vocabulary needs to be supported with more intentional direct support. And that's so that they can build those those foundations those language foundations to build a strong literacy foundation. And here's a rationale about why pre teaching is supportive because it demonstrates the the greatest rate of vocabulary recognition. And I think graphic organizers pretty much everybody knows about them. What I would like to add, you know, from the ESL perspective is it's also nice to have the translation there. I think our Google translate is getting a lot better. Sometimes if they know the concept of perimeter, but they just need the word what does it mean in my language that can decrease a lot of cognitive load for them. It's like, oh, that's what it means rather than trying to, you know, pull all kinds of different straws to figure out what the word is visuals visuals visuals on the wall everywhere. I like the accountable talk sentence starters. Children can refer to them having a visual schedule makes them feel that safety, because they know the routine. And then we've got some vocabulary words with the pictures there. I think I think the one message we wanted to deliver about this is it's really important to model as a teacher how to use these when they're on your wall. We don't want to but we're busy people we don't just want to put pretty things on our walls we need to we need it to be interactive for those educational times. We also have additional strategies as well but we want to make sure that we're we're basing it on an asset perspective for these students so having them present about themselves and other students can be presenting as well, but letting them know about maybe where they're from and how best they communicate and that what technology they're using communication tips as well. We even find that this is truly an example of an asset perspective is having Christa thought of this is having a party for students who are new to amplification and just throwing a party and how special the student feels and how they are related as what by the rest of their class it's we've had a few situations where it's been extremely positive even up to grade five. Who doesn't like a party. We did talk a little bit about the self advocacy as well. Total physical response. Put your actions with your words. You can do that with stories you can do that with explaining concepts. That is huge. If you Google total physical response it gives you all kinds of really good video clips demonstrating how that's done and information. Knowing that social emotional vocabulary. I've just given one of my favorite new resources here and a link. This is the I series. Catherine Mary Catherine Bailey McKenna is a psychologist from Calgary Board of Education and she has done this based on all kinds of research including Dr. Bruce Perry's work on trauma. These are lovely books to use probably at the elementary level. We're going to quickly run through our case study. But we have Rita and I mean I don't want to read from the slide but she's 15 and enrolled in grade 10. She was programmed in grade six last school year in the Philippines. She was diagnosed with a severe sensory neural hearing loss and unsure of when she was initially diagnosed. She has been an inconsistent inconsistent user of her hearing aids due to bullying. She arrived to to Canada in September of last year. So parents had already lived here in Canada. Parents say that her use and understanding in the first language is quite limited. Her sister's in her same class and is progressing her sister but and Rita is in level one ESL but is not progressing at the rate that the teachers would hope that she would. So we have to wonder what information do we need to help support this child. I've kind of categorized it again thinking about sort of a trauma informed questioning style. Building the relationship and the safety first is key. That's what the first three bullets do. And then learning about her history because there may be some other pieces that we need to know about to support this child. Okay, we could go to the next slide. And then this is just some more information. Who was her caregiver in the Philippines? I think is important. You know what she might just simply be really really missing. Who was the mother or father figure for her? And then, you know, does she have that hearing amplification? Is that all in place? Does she have Alberta health care? Who's doing the medical follow up? Do they need some help with that? Do you need help with parent teacher meetings at the school? Have you had one yet? What are the routines at home? Because these parents remember Rita from when she was younger. Kids need different routines and they need different ways of communication as they get older. So that's where they have to learn about each other. And I think these are really nice guiding questions for, I mean, in Edmonton Public, we're lucky to have ESL consultants. There are an Edmonton Catholic as well. But if you're in other regions, rural regions in Alberta, it might be nice to keep these questions on hand. So looking at ideas for support, we want to reassure that the teacher that remember developing this kind of vocabulary will take some time. And it's not that they're not going to get there. They will reach those milestones. It will just take some time and some support. So we want to make sure that this collaboration is happening with the learning team. And we want to ensure that there will be some support for Rita in the form of an EA, knowing that she's needing that level. We want to make sure that the school staff is ready for her to work with an EA. So first, foremost, is that access to a language that she is accessible to her. So when we look at those receptive skills, so she has hearing aids, she wears them all day. Maybe we would do an auditory training program. We can look at something that might take her through those listening foundational skills. Because in order for us to listen to learn, we need to learn to listen. So that's what the point of those exercises would be. And perhaps, you know, sign language could be very supportive in the school. There is a signing EA that can maybe bring some support through a visual mode for her to access some higher level vocabulary, or even just vocabulary that is more communication, more related to social communication. So, and this is all supportive for developing her language skills. Is there an SLP involved that can be supportive? Really not letting her feel socially isolated. So how can we include her with peer groups? In what way can we maybe structure the vocabulary, the language in those peer groups? Being very cognizant of that social emotional impact. And when we're selecting activities for and tasks for modifying her academics is looking at, is there a real life connection? Is it meaningful? How much exposure to this vocabulary will she have ensuring that she'll hear that vocabulary in those repetitions at home and at school. So an example is, you know, Canadian studies in grade 10. It's on the history of Canada. Well, how meaningful is that for someone who just arrived to Canada and this is a newcomer. Perhaps maybe we should look at like looking in her neighborhood in her city that she lives in Edmonton and looking at points of interest in Edmonton. What are the activities that we can do? What's the climate? Where are places we can eat? And also maybe an idea for support would be using the reading milestones. I know that I always say if you are going to do the ESL assessment, if English is one of the languages that this child is going to be learning, make sure that hearing technology is in place first. We want to make sure that we get the best baseline possible. And then you can look at, okay, what are the strategies that could come out of the ESL assessment to help support this child? And then you've got a baseline. So you might want to repeat it in a little bit. Is what I'm doing effective? You know, you're doing that evidence-based teaching. Ideas for support continued. I like to give the links to the Alberta ESL benchmarks. They now have ICANN statements, which I'm really happy about. That'll make a lot more sense to share with children when they're involved in their own assessment. The Supporting English Language Learners websites has a mirad of fantastic ideas for support for English language learners as well. And of course, looking at maybe we'll, as I said, Rita will need an EA and looking at that top of the tier support for that intentional teaching of vocabulary and those specific resources. So we just want you to take away a few messages from our presentation. And really we have three. So the first one is, Ensure the student can consistently and completely access their first language and their second language. So from an ESL perspective, I think comprehensible input. And really the impact on the development of language and communication. It's not just an addition for these students. It's actually logarithmic. It's exponential. It's a multiplier. So on the third point here, we just need more research in this area because of the multiple impact that it has on these students. So we hope this has inspired you to maybe pursue some further learning. But I hope it was effective for you. We're just going to be looking at any questions that have come up. I have two questions at the moment and they're really about the same thing. They're just wondering if the presentation will be shared out to them so they were able to explore the links that you've talked about. Yes, they will. They'll be on the ERLC website. I think if you were to just search for this title, the unique learner challenges of deaf and hard of hearing students, you'll be able to get our presentation and then those links. So some of those links are embedded in some of the images and some of them are external. Oh, and they're wondering how they can get a copy of the PowerPoint. Okay, maybe they could email Sarah Burns and Sarah will send you out a copy. Any other questions? Not at the moment. Okay, I'm just going to do a little bit of housekeeping. This is Sarah's asking me to share with you a reminder of the follow up PLC for April. Oh, sorry. Sorry, there's, we're not, this is January that we're in. Okay, so for the February PLC with Connie Mayer questions for reading and writing and literacy for February 27. And if you, if you were a part of her presentation last year, Dr. Connie Mayer presented on the principles into practice language and literacy programs for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. We will have a half an hour to address questions in the beginning of this presentation. And then we'll be looking at an hour into writing literacy strategies. So for students who are deaf and hard of hearing. So that's kind of great to have that follow up from, from the reading to the writing. So yeah, that's just the reminder. Okay, so thank you everybody for joining us this afternoon. Sorry, we took a little bit more time. But we will get this presentation to you if you have not yet received it. Have a good evening. Thank you.