ELL News Headlines

The country has made “incremental progress” reducing racial and ethnic disparities in early childhood, but stubborn differences remain for children of color, according to a new report released this week.

Imagine your child has broken a bone. You head to the emergency department, but the doctors won’t prescribe painkillers. This scenario is one that children of color in the U.S. are more likely to face than their white peers, according to new findings published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.

A Note from Karen: The following post is a sponsored post and it is the first time a post of this nature has appeared here at Teen Librarian Toolbox. As the mother of a kid with dyslexia, I believe in the importance of large print as an accessibility tool.

In a nationwide study conducted by Project Tomorrow^Ⓡ, teachers noticed significant improvements in both literacy skills and student mindsets when introducing ELs to large print. While 50% of teachers reported increased reading comprehension and enhanced overall reading fluency, 47% also said EL students had greater confidence in their reading abilities when reading large print.²

A whole book about a bunch of kids washing rugs with their grandmother? Author Astrid Kamalyan says she'd understand if you heard that pitch and thought, "Huh?" But — of course — it is so much more than that. "It's actually a book about Armenian joy and the beauty of Armenian family," says Kamalyan. "It has so much of what made our childhoods so happy."

If teachers provide appropriate scaffolds, experienced multilinguals like Min Woo are capable of learning new content in English in grade-level content classes. As experienced multilinguals reach higher levels of English proficiency, their English development needs become less obvious, but the academic language demands continue to increase.

When students at Mercer County Intermediate School returned to in-person learning during the 2021-2022 school year, school counselor Amy Riley noticed heightened anxiety among the third through fifth grade students in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. Riley attributed this change to isolation, economic disadvantage, and increased social media use during the pandemic. During remote learning – which lasted from March 2020 through June 2021 – some students would be home alone all day because their parents were essential workers; others told Riley that they had one or two parents out of work.

The U.S. has nearly 41.8 million Spanish speakers, giving it the fifth-largest population of Spanish speakers in the world, according to data from Spain’s Instituto Cervantes. In Texas, where roughly 40 percent of residents are Hispanic, nearly 1 million students in public schools are English learners who speak Spanish at home.

An Iowa principal who put himself in harm's way to protect students during a school shooting earlier this month died Sunday, a funeral home confirmed. Caldwell Parrish Funeral Home & Crematory confirmed the death of Perry High School Principal Dan Marburger after the family announced it on a GoFundMe page.

Nancy Frey, Alejandro Gonzalez Ojeda, and Douglas Fisher create an environment to ensure belonging for multilingual learners in schools and classrooms.

Today’s post on Larry Ferlazzo's Education Week blog is the second in a series on the hot-button issue of differentiated instruction.