ECIS ESLMT Conference 2017

Schedule for the day:
8:30am: Buses pick up attendees from the Tivoli Hotel entrance. 

9:00-9:45: Arrive at CIS campus and visit the registration table, coffee available.  Tours around the new CIS campus

9:45-11:30am: Session 1 in your pre-conference room

11:30-12:00pm: Morning break with some light snack and coffee

12:00-1:30pm: Session 2

1:30-2:30pm: Lunch in the CIS Nordhavn canteen​

2:30-3:45pm: Session 3

3:45-4:00pm: Afternoon break with some dessert and coffee​

4:00-5:00pm: Session 4

5:00-6:00pm: Early evening cocktail event in the CIS canteen (free drinks and tapas) 

6:15pm: Buses pick up attendees and speakers from the CIS Nordhavn entrance.

6:45pm: Arrival back at the Tivoli Hotel

Schedule for the day:
8:30am: Buses pick up attendees from the Tivoli Hotel entrance. 

9:00-9:45: Arrive at CIS campus and visit the registration table, coffee available.  Tours around the new CIS campus

9:45-11:30am: Session 1 in your pre-conference room

11:30-12:00pm: Morning break with some light snack and coffee

12:00-1:30pm: Session 2

1:30-2:30pm: Lunch in the CIS Nordhavn canteen​

2:30-3:45pm: Session 3

3:45-4:00pm: Afternoon break with some dessert and coffee​

4:00-5:00pm: Session 4

5:00-6:00pm: Early evening cocktail event in the CIS canteen (free drinks and tapas) 

6:15pm: Buses pick up attendees and speakers from the CIS Nordhavn entrance.

6:45pm: Arrival back at the Tivoli Hotel

Do you have students at many different levels of language acquisition in the same class?  Do some of them sound fluent, but struggle to comprehend complex texts or produce grade level written work? This interactive pre-conference session will provide practical strategies for differentiating content lessons and scaffolds for students at different stages of language development.  You will leave with an understanding of language acquisition and actionable steps for supporting students in content and language classes.

Objectives:

• Experience and analyze differentiation strategies in model lessons.

• Identify the academic language demands of texts and coursework.

• Identify students’ strengths and language development needs for different classroom tasks and assignments.

• Develop scaffolds and supports in each language domain (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) for students at different levels of language acquisition including visuals, manipulatives, graphic organizers, cooperative learning structures, and sentence frames.
  
  

  Schedule for the day:
  8:30am: Buses pick up attendees from the Tivoli Hotel entrance. 

  9:00-9:45: Arrive at CIS campus and visit the registration table, coffee available.  Tours around the new CIS campus

  9:45-11:30am: Session 1 in your pre-conference room

  11:30-12:00pm: Morning break with some light snack and coffee

  12:00-1:30pm: Session 2

  1:30-2:30pm: Lunch in the CIS Nordhavn canteen​

  2:30-3:45pm: Session 3

  3:45-4:00pm: Afternoon break with some dessert and coffee​

  4:00-5:00pm: Session 4
  
  5:00-6:00pm: Early evening cocktail event in the CIS canteen (free drinks and tapas) 

  6:15pm: Buses pick up attendees and speakers from the CIS Nordhavn entrance.

  6:45pm: Arrival back at the Tivoli Hotel

Schedule for the day:
8:30am: Buses pick up attendees from the Tivoli Hotel entrance. 

9:00-9:45: Arrive at CIS campus and visit the registration table, coffee available.  Tours around the new CIS campus

9:45-11:30am: Session 1 in your pre-conference room

11:30-12:00pm: Morning break with some light snack and coffee

12:00-1:30pm: Session 2

1:30-2:30pm: Lunch in the CIS Nordhavn canteen​

2:30-3:45pm: Session 3

3:45-4:00pm: Afternoon break with some dessert and coffee​

4:00-5:00pm: Session 4

5:00-6:00pm: Early evening cocktail in the CIS canteen (free drinks and tapas) 

6:15pm: Buses pick up attendees and speakers from the CIS Nordhavn entrance.

6:45pm: Arrival back at the Tivoli Hotel

TPR Storytelling (TPRS) workshop outline:

TPR storytelling (TPRS) is a method for teaching foreign languages that has thus far been shown to be profoundly successful with students of almost all ages and all abilities. It focuses on language acquisition through Comprehensible Input. During this one-day workshop, you will acquire some Mandarin in a fun way, experience the magic of TPR storytelling, learn the 3 steps of TPR storytelling and practice some TPR storytelling strategies.  Dr. Stephen Krashen will be joining this workshop as a special guest.

Special guest: Dr. Stephen Krashen, an enthusiastic student of Mandarin.  He will have a supporting role in the presentation, commenting on TPR Storytelling practice and how it relates to current research and theory.

TPR Storytelling (TPRS) workshop includes

A Mandarin Chinese demo

Theory and research about Second Language Acquisition (SLA)

Total Physical Response (TPR)

The three steps of TPR Storytelling

TPR Storytelling teaching strategies

Schedule for the day:
8:30am: Buses pick up attendees from the Tivoli Hotel entrance. 

9:00-9:45: Arrive at CIS campus and visit the registration table, coffee available.  Tours around the new CIS campus

9:45-11:30am: Session 1 in your pre-conference room

11:30-12:00pm: Morning break with some light snack and coffee

12:00-1:30pm: Session 2

1:30-2:30pm: Lunch in the CIS Nordhavn canteen​

2:30-3:45pm: Session 3

3:45-4:00pm: Afternoon break with some dessert and coffee​

4:00-5:00pm: Session 4

5:00-6:00pm: Early evening cocktail event in the CIS canteen (free drinks and tapas) 

6:15pm: Buses pick up attendees and speakers from the CIS Nordhavn entrance.

6:45pm: Arrival back at the Tivoli Hotel

Teachers are in the frontline in our changing world. We need a pedagogical approach that is open to other languages and cultures to deal with the new realities the changing world brings.

We need leaders and teachers who are prepared to push the boundaries.

What does being prepared look like?

Participants will be introduced to the ITLGs (the Interlingual Teaching and Learning Goals). Teaching & learning are grouped together because, with the Interlingual approach, the child and the teacher become involved in a more genuine, mutual learning process where each learns from the other. Children are allowed to use their languages as cognitive tools:  they can transfer skills, concepts and learning strategies across languages. We will reflect on how schools have to change in order to implement this notion, moving from theoretical statements to effective, everyday practice.

When Second Language Students join international schools at the secondary level without well developed academic English ability, they face enormous  challenges.  Outside of their ESL classes, they are faced continually with English at a high academic level in all subject areas.

How can we help them to access the curriculum content, increase their level of understanding and at the same time show that we appreciate and value their mother tongues?

How can we give their parents insight into what their children are actually learning?

Translanguaging opens up new opportunities for students (and their parents) in the twenty-first century - but of course we will still need the ESL and mother tongue  teachers!

• Multilingual Digital Storytelling in an International Classroom: Bringing Together Mother Tongue, EAL and Art As part of the Critical Connections II project run by Goldsmiths (University of London) and the British Film Institute, this poster will showcase an interdisciplinary engagement between languages and art in the production of a Croatian-English shadow-puppet film "Stribor's Forest" at the International School of London (Surrey, UK). The aim was to promote pupils' mother tongue, literary heritage, and their learning of English as an Additional Language through digital storytelling. In this poster presentation I will show the steps in the process of our film making, with insights from Croatian pupils and the school's art teacher. This poster presentation will appeal to teachers, researchers and curriculum planners interested in interdisciplinary engagement between multilingualism, creativity and digital media in an international classroom. The film (6 min) and a short documentary about the creative process during the film making will be shown on a laptop during the poster presentation slot. The film is available on YouTube - Stribor's Forest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRxmVaXwzkI

• This poster will present the findings of my doctoral research project which looked at the factors affecting academic language development of multilingual adolescents attending an International School. As Cummins originally pointed out the apparently well developed conversational skills of English language learners who seem to struggle in the classroom, continue to puzzle educators. My research provides a straightforward method to analyse students’ spoken language for academic elements and a system to investigate their background experiences both in English and languages other than English. Together this information helps to determine whether students may have underlying language or learning difficulties which need addressing. It is suggested these difficulties may be due to a lack of opportunities to develop academic language in any language. Demonstrations and video clips of students talking about their work will be available from the poster through the Aurasma App.

• Reading & Writing Workshop Considerations for multilingual, mixed-grade middle school students
  
  

• This poster will show how Learning Diversity and Inclusion is tackled by my English Acquisition department. We are an English medium MYP school with Phases 2-4 English Acquisition classes. Additional in-class support is offered to these students in other subjects. The majority of our EA students are native Arabic speakers.
  Using a matrix of Prior Knowledge, Concepts, Organization and Assessment, lessons are planned accordingly. I will outline how this is done and give an example of a unit of work we are currently working on with students. I will include student work to show the various stages. Our Arabic department ran a similar unit and I will include some of the collaborative materials used which fostered understanding across the dual-languages.

• This poster will focus on creative ways to help students develop language and a love for language. This year we've developed an activity called DIY Language in preparation for developing it as a class. The purpose of the class is to introduce linguistics by helping students create their own, new, novel language. Students work together to create a lexicon and a grammar, using everything they bring to the table - all their languages, language study, and interest in how things are said. In the process we discuss how language works, how it may, or may not, affect how we think...as a culminating experience students create a skit in the language to perform for others. 

• The aim of this poster session is to share how to effectively collect evidence of student learning through anecdotal notes using Google Sheets. 

• Culture & Identity: Belonging Matters - Using the research by Professor Kathryn Riley to explore how to make sense of the global world, community and school. A project with a student leadership group: JSL International Ambassadors. (Years 5 & 6) 

• This Dual Language Foundation Group shows translanguaging at it's best. The perfect collaboration between day care and school allowing a smooth transition. International Education in Eindhoven was only provided from the age of 4. Where do children go before that age? Many children enter our English speaking classrooms after attending a Dutch day care. These children may have spent their first two years in a country only hearing their mother tongue. Then after moving to the Netherlands interacting with other children in Dutch at a day care setting and then expected to transition smoothly into our English speaking classrooms once they turn 4 years of age. 
  
  During the past three years we have tracked the students which have attended our Dual language foundation group and it is evident that their language skills have greatly benefitted. By the end of group 1 the majority of the students have exited our EAL programme and have reached the high ability group for Dutch as a foreign language, surpassing other student who did not attend the foundation group.
  
  Download the Aurasma app* to see a film of our foundation group in action. (*This will only work together with the image on the poster.)

Facilitators (and notes):
-Cooper, Antonia (International School of London, London)

• Various ESL/MT Conference sessions have addressed the importance of Mother Tongue teaching and learning to international students. If, as a result, there is now an increase in the number of schools offering MT, a discussion between MT teachers on the implications for curriculum design, teaching and learning as well as a number of other issues would be good:
  * Is there indeed an increase in the number of international schools offering MT lessons? If so what is the nature and frequency of the lessons being offered?
  *Do MT teachers in international schools see a change in the language proficiency of newly arrived students? E.g. is there still a large proportion of BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) learners, as well as CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) learners in their groups? How does this affect the delivery of the curriculum?
  *What would be a suitable curriculum? Should it include identity, culture, language skills…..? How, in what way, are students' culture and identity being addressed within the MT programmes? How (if at all) does this affect any prescribed assessment, if at all?

-Forde, Helen (American School of The Hague)

• Assessment and Accountability-Language and Learning Profiles: How do we communicate about our EAL/ESL learners to their teachers? How do we establish a language and learning profile? How do we determine what accommodations should be provided for our students? How do we make sure all teachers have access to pertinent information about their students?How do we assess EAL learners? How do we work with mainstream teachers to assess students' learning? How do we report to parents?

• Practices and Approaches: middle school teachers who have a role which is a combination of push-in and pull out will address these questions and more: 
• how do you collaborate for push-in sessions? How do you make the most of push-in time? How are pull-out blocks structured and how do they connect to the core classes? 

-McCarron, Margaret (American School of Bombay)

• Spanish teacher with an interest in ELL: this discussion will focus on the topic of how to develop a highly articulated Modern Language program that is proficiency-based.  The guiding questions include:
  --What do highly-articulated and proficiency-based mean?
  --What implications do they have for curriculum design and assessment?
  --What are the roadblocks to proficiency-based Modern Language programs?
  --What is the difference between thematic and topical units?
  --And how can teaching thematic units of curriculum support a proficiency-based program?
  --How can ELL program structures inform the development of a proficiency-based Modern Languages program?

• For heads/chairs of EAL/ESL:
  Should we be providing EAL or CLIL instruction?
  How do you decide if a student is ready for mainstream classes?
  What kind of in-class support do you provide?
  How do you work with Mother Tongue teachers?
  How do you track progress?

• Coaching- for ESL teachers who are also instructional coaches at their school. Guiding questions will be: What is the coaching model used at your school? How does your coaching impact the teaching and learning of ELLs in content classes? How do you effectively work with content teachers to support best practices of ESL teaching?
  

-Stewart, Susan (International School of London, Surrey)

•  Assessment & Accountability: Language profiling of students; How do you build up a profile of prospective/new students in order to advise on the best language choices? How do you track a student's path throughout their schooling? How do you ensure you have maximised their multilingualism in order to ensure future academic and/or social advantages?

-van Tongeren, Saskia (International School of Brussels)

• An after-school Home Language programme in International Schools: topics include:
• -The benefits & challenges of an after-school home language programme versus a home language programme as part of the day
• -How will the school's curriculum be transferred to the after-school programme and vice versa?
• -Which teaching practices and approaches will resonate best with the students?
• -How do international schools organise a Home Language after school programme ( costs, differentiation, teaching styles and competing with less academic activities offered after school)?

• Practices and Approaches: Looking at case studies of second language students who struggle and determining how best to support their learning.

• International schools have significant populations of multilingual children with complex language and educational histories due to families’ often-frequent relocations. This round table will explore some of the unique characteristics of high socio-economic, transient, multilingual children by posing discussion questions that come from recent sociolinguistic research on language variation and exposure, as well as psycho- and clinical-linguistic research. We will discuss how international educators work with families and clinicians to diagnose language disorders in multilingual children, as well as highlight the various factors that can contribute to both over-and under-identification of language disorders in this group. In addition, we will analyse the role of teachers in supporting the needs of multilingual children with suspected language disorders, and the many professional challenges they face. Many of the speakers you have selected for the conference have researched or recently presented papers and published articles on topics that deal with multilingualism and language development. I believe that a round table that addresses multilingual children and the topic of language disorder identification and support will provide attendees with a forum to reflect on this nuanced issue. 

• Accessing the curriculum, valuing Mother Tongue and inclusivity: how do we work together to include English language learners from day one? The EAL team at Leipzig International School has implemented a collaboration and co-teaching model in which EAL and classroom teachers collaborate in and out of the classroom to support English learners. In this roundtable discussion we are interested in sharing ideas related to this teaching model, in particular: How do you get started and how does the model evolve? What does this model look like in and out of the classroom? What challenges and benefits are presented? And most importantly, how does it support the creation of multilingual classrooms and guide teaching and learning?  

• Parent education: parents as partners and supporters of multilingual
  education- how can we trigger off their interest and support?
• Through this discussion we are going to create a forum for sharing different
  parent education programs which help parents develop an understanding
  of the values of multilingualism and home languages maintenance.
  How can we, as educators, actively engage parents in the development of
  multilingualism both at home level and within the school community.
  The journey of the Bilingual School of Monza towards meeting such a goal
  will be shared and some concrete examples of “parents as advocates of
  multilingualism” will serve as evidence.

• A practical session on ICSZ's model of integrated EAL support in the Early Years/Kindergarten. This discussion will explore our school’s Reggio/PYP model in the Early Years, and the way EAL support functions as an integral part of the classroom experience through collaborative co-teaching models and inclusive practice.  Participants would be encouraged to share their experiences/questions/etc. See support material/PPT here.

• Assessment & accountability: this discussion will focus on promoting raising the achievement of bilingual learners through:
  -the power of formative and summative assessment to provoke positive teacher conversation about learners and pedagogy
  -the power of accountability measures (such as inspection and performance data) to raise expectations of achievement for bilingual learners 

As a highly diverse and multicultural international school with 80% non-native English speaking students and a robust Mother Tongue program, NIST introduced a literacy initiative designed to bring multiliteracies and a sense of identity into our elementary classrooms through the lens of reading and writing. With the support of a Literacy Coach and visiting experts, we reviewed our current practice from Early Years to Year 6 and found opportunities for translanguaging, identity mapping, and exploring culturally relevant texts that offer mirrors, windows, and doors for children to see themselves in the world around them. By redesigning our approach to reading and writing workshop, we systematically uncovered the cultural and linguistic assets that our multilingual students bring to the classroom, making the learning experience more authentic and responsive for all students.The success of this project relied on the successful collaboration between homeroom and specialist teachers, school leadership and our parent community.

My presentation is geared towards ESL and Homeroom teachers. It is based on my successful practices with the children ages 3-6, which will be profiled in my contribution to the new edition of the book by Prof. Roma Chumak-Horbatch "Linguistically Appropriate Practices" and who will also present at the ECIS ESLMT Conference in Copenhagen in 2017. I hope that after my presentation, the teachers will take to their schools and start implementing many different strategies to welcome their multicultural and multilingual students, celebrate their cultures and enrich their learning.

The time of English only classrooms is long over. After welcoming children’s mother tongues into classrooms, it is now time to welcome the whole child into your classroom! Today's world and the children who live in it don’t always have a black and white, easy-to-define language profile anymore. For after school MT programmes, often your passport or the languages your parents speak are your criteria for entrance into these programs. As the international community becomes more global, and more people come to live outside their national boundaries for extended periods, our children's languages and identities expand further and change. Children’s core identities are becoming more complex and their language backgrounds more diverse.

In response to a growing urgency within our school, we felt that our access criteria to MT programmes no longer met the needs of our international students and their families. As we have been spreading beyond EAL settings, trying to drive mother tongue inclusion further into the curriculum, we felt a change to our MT definition was unavoidable. We would like to share our experiences with you on adapting policies to include the whole child and everything they bring into our school. Affirming identity is one of the most crucial aspects needed to impact student learning, giving them the opportunity to be successful people with strong sense of themselves and where they come from. Let’s match our languages programmes to our international students and their lived experiences, which exist beyond the borders of their passport and not the other way around.

In this visual and interactive talk Joris Van den Bosch, a secondary EAL teacher from the British School of Brussels, will present to you a wide range of his student-approved original classroom activities across the different language skills and subjects in which home languages are used to enhance academic word acquisition and general English language learning. These will be applicable to any ESL/EAL and mainstream classroom even if the teacher does not have a language in common with her or his students.  He would like all teachers to adopt some of these L1 activities, and material writers to start including them in teacher guides and resource books. Not only will this benefit students’ language development, it will enhance your learners’ self-esteem, enabling them to feel valued and to see themselves as linguistically talented.

Please find examples of my L1 activities on: https://joriseal.wordpress.com/

The role of parent participation has been underscored in education research and teachers are actively encouraged to make connections with parents.  I'll share the organization strategies for an interactive bookclub involving parents as well as discuss how to prepare for the collaborative relationship opportunity that results when parents are active participants.  An outcome of the project has been the creation of three different book clubs (in the children's mother tongue) lead by the parents who participated in the initial book club.

• Facilitating home language use in the classroom lays the foundation of aquisition of other languages.
• Home language acquisition is linked to cultural identity. 
• Schools can play a significant role in the prevention of home language loss.

The Power of a Fully Integrated Mother Tongue Programme

In this presentation we will share our school's Mother Tongue practices developed over 40 years at the International School of London. They are guided by a strong commitment to support students' mother tongues, their cultural and identity perceptions and international-mindedness, so as to help students function in and create a better world.

Session goals:

We shall share with our fellow-educators some of the main arguments in favour of a Mother Tongue programme which is fully integrated into the mainstream curriculum. We will show how the centrality of the Mother Tongue programme has had a strong influence on the whole school direction, ethos and recruitment. Also how globalism is presently impacting our multilingual classrooms.

In this sharing session teachers of young children will have the opportunity to discuss and share their adoption and implementation of multilingual pedagogy. Discussion topics will include successes and challenges of opening classroom doors to children’s home languages, embracing English-plus teaching, children as language teachers, moving beyond the one-time multilingual activity trap, partnering with non English-speaking families and keeping multilingualism alive.

In many dual language programs, instruction in the two languages is provided by different teachers, thus requiring close coordination. This expectation provides teachers with an opportunity to ‘walk the walk’ of the third goal of cross-cultural competence by learning to work effectively with someone else who may have a very different work style and/or communication style. Grounded in the Guiding Principles for Dual Language Education, this presentation provides strategies and materials to help coordinate instruction in six domains: classroom management and organization, literacy instruction, content instruction, assessment, parent communication, and logistics and planning.

• A "lively" Arabic Inquiry approach: this poster highlights our "lively" Arabic approach this year. We are trying to introduce Arabic to our diverse 1st and 2nd grade RAS children. Keeping an Inquiry framework, we want the learner to make real life connections, be invited to something enjoyable, investigate with another learner, then take action individually.We will showcase examples from lively units we created from students' connections and real life experiences.

• Reading & Writing Workshop Considerations for multilingual, mixed-grade middle school students
  
  

• This poster will show how Learning Diversity and Inclusion is tackled by my English Acquisition department. We are an English medium MYP school with Phases 2-4 English Acquisition classes. Additional in-class support is offered to these students in other subjects. The majority of our EA students are native Arabic speakers.
  Using a matrix of Prior Knowledge, Concepts, Organization and Assessment, lessons are planned accordingly. I will outline how this is done and give an example of a unit of work we are currently working on with students. I will include student work to show the various stages. Our Arabic department ran a similar unit and I will include some of the collaborative materials used which fostered understanding across the dual-languages. 

• This poster presentation relates to the sub-theme "Practices and Approaches." The aim would be to show how adding overarching language objectives to a content area unit can help to enrich the unit and elevate the academic language of all students (not just ELLs). The poster would show the unit's language objectives organized around the content objectives, supporting documents for each language objective (student and teacher references), and student work. The unit plan cover page is on this link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JzcOA9yIROgWtRkGVAhVekYG7x6pdduPRoBPtIwVi2s/edit Each language objective (in red) links to a "Language Target" with additional information and scaffolds about the language target.

• The aim of this poster session is to share how to effectively collect evidence of student learning through anecdotal notes using Google Sheets. 

• Culture & Identity: Belonging Matters - Using the research by Professor Kathryn Riley to explore how to make sense of the global world, community and school. A project with a student leadership group: JSL International Ambassadors. (Years 5 & 6) 

Facilitators (and notes):
-Cooper, Antonia (International School of London, London)

• Various ESL/MT Conference sessions have addressed the importance of Mother Tongue teaching and learning to international students. If, as a result, there is now an increase in the number of schools offering MT, a discussion between MT teachers on the implications for curriculum design, teaching and learning as well as a number of other issues would be good:
  * Is there indeed an increase in the number of international schools offering MT lessons? If so what is the nature and frequency of the lessons being offered?
  *Do MT teachers in international schools see a change in the language proficiency of newly arrived students? E.g. is there still a large proportion of BICS (Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills) learners, as well as CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) learners in their groups? How does this affect the delivery of the curriculum?
  *What would be a suitable curriculum? Should it include identity, culture, language skills…..? How, in what way, are students' culture and identity being addressed within the MT programmes? How (if at all) does this affect any prescribed assessment, if at all?

-Forde, Helen (American School of The Hague)

• Assessment and Accountability-Language and Learning Profiles: How do we communicate about our EAL/ESL learners to their teachers? How do we establish a language and learning profile? How do we determine what accommodations should be provided for our students? How do we make sure all teachers have access to pertinent information about their students?How do we assess EAL learners? How do we work with mainstream teachers to assess students' learning? How do we report to parents?

• In connection with Culture and Identity as well as Practices and Approaches, this discussion will address how Language Coordinators facilitate IB SSST Literature (SL) particularly for minority language speakers.

• Research as professional development: for those with research centers in schools or those that aspire to create research centers to drive professional development. 

-McCarron, Margaret (American School of Bombay)

• Spanish teacher with an interest in ELL: this discussion will focus on the topic of how to develop a highly articulated Modern Language program that is proficiency-based.  The guiding questions include:
  --What do highly-articulated and proficiency-based mean?
  --What implications do they have for curriculum design and assessment?
  --What are the roadblocks to proficiency-based Modern Language programs?
  --What is the difference between thematic and topical units?
  --And how can teaching thematic units of curriculum support a proficiency-based program?
  --How can ELL program structures inform the development of a proficiency-based Modern Languages program?

• For heads/chairs of EAL/ESL:
  Should we be providing EAL or CLIL instruction?
  How do you decide if a student is ready for mainstream classes?
  What kind of in-class support do you provide?
  How do you work with Mother Tongue teachers?
  How do you track progress?
  

• The role of administrators in establishing a positive school ethos conducive to
  multilingual practices and behaviours.What are our challenges and success stories?
• Through group discussion we are going to collaboratively problem solve ,
  share, learn and celebrate! Please bring your own success stories and
  challenges to this session and be ready to share with concrete and concise
  examples.

• Coaching- for ESL teachers who are also instructional coaches at their school. Guiding questions will be: What is the coaching model used at your school? How does your coaching impact the teaching and learning of ELLs in content classes? How do you effectively work with content teachers to support best practices of ESL teaching?

-van Tongeren, Saskia (International School of Brussels)

• An after-school Home Language programme in International Schools: topics include:
• -The benefits & challenges of an after-school home language programme versus a home language programme as part of the day
• -How will the school's curriculum be transferred to the after-school programme and vice versa?
• -Which teaching practices and approaches will resonate best with the students?
• -How do international schools organise a Home Language after school programme ( costs, differentiation, teaching styles and competing with less academic activities offered after school)?

• Practices and Approaches: Looking at case studies of second language students who struggle and determining how best to support their learning.

• International schools have significant populations of multilingual children with complex language and educational histories due to families’ often-frequent relocations. This round table will explore some of the unique characteristics of high socio-economic, transient, multilingual children by posing discussion questions that come from recent sociolinguistic research on language variation and exposure, as well as psycho- and clinical-linguistic research. We will discuss how international educators work with families and clinicians to diagnose language disorders in multilingual children, as well as highlight the various factors that can contribute to both over-and under-identification of language disorders in this group. In addition, we will analyse the role of teachers in supporting the needs of multilingual children with suspected language disorders, and the many professional challenges they face. Many of the speakers you have selected for the conference have researched or recently presented papers and published articles on topics that deal with multilingualism and language development. I believe that a round table that addresses multilingual children and the topic of language disorder identification and support will provide attendees with a forum to reflect on this nuanced issue. 

• Connecting Students to the World of Research:   As an innovative initiative that gives interested Grade 8 and 9 students the opportunity to conduct cutting edge research, the Research Institute at the ISL Surrey has started a pilot research project. The project focuses on Bilingualism / Multilingualism, a key area of strength and expertise within its school community. Engaging with an academic researcher as a role model/mentor and two research facilitators from the school, the students will experience the whole process of conducting a research project. The students will produce an article for inclusion in a relevant publication and present their research findings to various audiences. The aim of the session is to share this experience and discuss potential of such initiatives in the context of an international school, and how they may empower the student. Research Institute 

• This session will focus on assessment and intervention practices to encourage the academic language development of multilingual students. My doctoral research was a multiple case-study looking at the background factors affecting the spoken academic language development of adolescent International School students. This work drew on 25 years of experience working in International Schools in Europe and South-East Asia as a teacher and educational psychologist. It includes the longitudinal study of students from Grades 5-12. The proposed discussion relates to the ‘language needs or special needs’ question which was the particularly popular Teachers for Teachers session at the last ECIS ESLMT conference. Topics for this Round- table might be: Language needs or special needs? How do we assess whether students have had the opportunity to develop AL in any language? What is the place of home language development alongside the targeted instruction of academic language in the primary language(s) of schools?

• Assessment & accountability: this discussion will focus on promoting raising the achievement of bilingual learners through:
  -the power of formative and summative assessment to provoke positive teacher conversation about learners and pedagogy
  -the power of accountability measures (such as inspection and performance data) to raise expectations of achievement for bilingual learners 

• This discussion will focus on the possibility of setting up a network of schools who actively support mother tongue within the curriculum. Could such a network regularly share their practices with one another and also provide information for our exiting families who are seeking a school with similar mother tongue support? Could we dream big, and imagine having a recognised "stamp of approval" of a "mother tongue/home language expert school"? 

In ALP, high school students (aged 14-16) inquire into their MT and learning by doing linguistic research: from formulating a research question + hypothesis about their learning in MT and Academic English, through developing a method of testing their hypothesis by collecting experimental or corpus linguistics data, to analyzing the results and applying them to their own learning in a presentation at a student conference at Charles University in Prague (in front of a panel of experts). They summarize their findings in an academic paper published in a proceedings book.

• Aims and outcomes/evidence (if any)

Aims: To promote evidence based reflection on the role and importance of MT in learning.

Outcomes: Student presentations (videos and ppts), papers (proceedings book), and reflections (electronic surveys); => case studies on how using MT texts & corpora in learning can improve understanding, as well as data on how MT skills & identity are influenced by international education in L2. [word count: 150]

Footnote:

This (ALP) project is in its fourth year now (2016-17). We have published about ALP in peer-reviewed publications (one example: https://research-publishing.net/display_article.php?doi=10.14705/rpnet.2015.000311 or here). Interestingly, this project was inspired by Jim Cummins' presentation at the 2011 ECIS ESLMT Conference in Dusseldorf, Germany.

You can follow presentation slides here.

Examples of student work and student reflections

How can Secondary teachers measure students’ understanding beyond tests and essays? Assessment in many Secondary classrooms requires a high level of English proficiency many English language learners have not acquired, preventing these students the means to participate actively in class and demonstrate their learning. Using multimodal tools, this project seeks to create culturally inclusive classrooms that document students’ thinking and learning through the use of Harvard University’s visible thinking routines and various technology tools. The presenter will share students’ learning from English as an Additional Language classrooms and Content classes. Participants will engage in workshop activities that explore thinking routines and technology tools they can use in their schools to engage and assess English language learners.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that at the end of 2015 an unprecedented 65.3 million people were displaced from their homes, forced as a result of war and persecution to seek protection elsewhere.  Half of those displaced were children.  

The global impact of this mass displacement has brought about new challenges to societies participating in refugee resettlement. One important area of concern in many of the resettlement countries is the education of students with limited or interrupted formal education or SLIFE.  Years of migration and/or years of residence in refugee camps have resulted in limited access to formal schooling for many refugee students, and it is the educational needs of these students that this proposal seeks to address.  

More here

Susan Stewart, Head of Languages at the International School of London (Surrey), presents regular workshops entitled ‘Raising your Bilingual Child’.  These workshops are open to parents, extended family and school staff, as well as external professionals and parents from the local community.  The workshops aim to dispel the many common myths surrounding bilingualism, and deliver a clear message on how to ensure that the process of acquiring two or more languages simultaneously should be a natural and positive process for all. As an international school, with 17 mother tongue languages taught as part of the curriculum, ISL Surrey has become a valuable community hub which supports bilingualism, given the lack of such provision in local state and private schools.

The aim of this session is to highlight the importance of creating a shared understanding of the process of language acquisition and resulting multilingualism.  It is when schools work in partnership with families, that we ensure that the benefits derived from exposure to different languages are maximised.

This presentation will focus on methods of supporting students with special needs within language learning classrooms. Often times it is challenging to identify whether a learning disability is present when a learner is acquiring an additional language. This project will highlight several case studies of students learning English and experiencing difficulties socially and academically.  The emphasis will be on utilizing culturally-competent strategies for collaborating with families and school professionals to clarify a student's strengths as well as needs. The session will share examples of strengths-based approaches which successfully supported individuals and families within international schools.

The aims of this session are to:

- explore  the meaning and relevance of cultural competence

- share strategy models for collaborative practices with families

One of the challenges for teachers in multilingual classrooms, where English is the primary medium of education, is to meet the English language needs of students for whom English is a second (or subsequent) language, while at the same time building on those students’ prior knowledge, lived experiences and language. At the same time, we need to take into account that educational outcomes for all students are likely to be increased when they are engaged in an intellectually challenging curriculum. To be successful learners, therefore, all students need planned, targeted and ongoing support to meet the language, literacy and learning demands of all areas of the curriculum.

We will meet in the front entrance of the Tivoli Hotel at 18:15. Then as a group we will walk a short distance to the nearby harbor. At 18:30, our transportation (a canal boat) will depart. We will have a guided, night tour of Copenhagen for one hour.

At around 19:30 the canal boat will drops us off at one of the coziest places to eat at in Copenhagen, Papirøen. 

Copenhagen Street Food on Papirøen (Paper Island) in Copenhagen is the city's first and only genuine street food market. In the small food trucks you can get delicious sustainable street food from all corners of the world overlooking the city's waterfront. There is something very Copenhagen-like and something very foreign about Copenhagen Street Food. There are scents of Korean and Mexican as well as Italian and Danish food from the small colourful food trucks, but the place has a distinct Copenhagen feel to it.

There are food trucks, coffee, beers, and drinks. Some food trucks serve organic food, but the priority is that the food tastes good, is made from scratch, and it must be sustainable, meaning for an example that the ingredients are not transported over long distances, but are local produce. "Genuine, honest and aesthetic" is the motto.

Please check out more information about Copenhagen Street Food on Papirøen here.  

Each participant will receive some vouchers to use and buy their own food and drink from the many food stalls (around 20). In addition to the vouchers, you will also get some complimentary drinks (a welcome drink + some wine). 

We will have a reserved spot for our whole group to eat, chat and network. We have the reserved spot for two hours.

At around 21:20 we will make our way back to catch our canal boat back to the hotel which leaves at 21:30, no tour this time. We should arrive back at the hotel at around 22:00 if not sooner.

Globally, there is an increasing focus on the critical role a child’s mother tongue/home language plays in cognitive and linguistic development. It has also become a growing concern in international schools, with new research supporting the need for international schools to improve or develop provisions to ensure that all students continue using their mother tongue for learning at school, in systemic and systematic ways.

The issue for international schools then, is not if they should support the mother tongue languages of their students, but a more complex how should they support them. Given the diverse and super-diverse nature of most international schools, this question has no easy answer. An area of research and practice that has been increasingly of interest in this discussion is translanguaging. Bringing translanguaging into the spotlight as an ideology of multilingualism is a step forward in understanding normative multilingual practices, but bringing it into the classroom as a vehicle for integrating mother tongue languages requires more than ideology. This session will look at the practical aspects of planning for translanguaging in international schools, in particular looking at the structures of the PYP as a framework for understanding effective translanguaging pedagogy. Participants will leave will a clear vision of why we should translanguage in international schools, as well as how we plan for effective use in the classroom. 

What kind of people are we educating?

Children need to understand from an early age that being a polyglot is not only a desirable outcome of education but also an achievable one. The building blocks for a better world must be seeded in Early Years.  We must enable children to see themselves as agents of change, capable of understanding world views.  Openness to other languages is essential.

In this session I will introduce The Glitterlings – a series of nine stories for the Early Years that develops biliteracy engagement, a positive sense of self and creates an affective bond between child and books. We will consider how parents can become co-educators in this process.

‘The Glitterlings is a unique resource because it helps young children begin the journey towards national, international and intercultural-mindedness, empowering them with the skills they will need to play their part on the plurilingual and pluricultural global stage.’
John Dabell