ESOL Conference

I am surprise how the conference this year has added more technology into the sessions to help with supporting the ESOL this year.  There is a program that has been around since 2006 called Imagine Learning.  If you haven't heard of it, its a program to create a lesson geared towards the students learning level and language level.  I was very intrigued with giving the students a pretest, and displaying only the standards and skills the students needs to grow.  It also goes back to the same skill for the students to master if they have not.  For the students who are ELLs, they have two ways to give the students directions in English and their native language.  As the students continues with the lessons, their native language directions gradually be less and less until English is the primary language for the directions.  This program goes through phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, shants and songs for Pre-K through 6th grade. It will also display data for each student's progress as well as the class. If you want to look at it, http://www.imaginelearning.com/.

There was another session I went to that went over Lexile, Public Sources and Published Materials.  This was good as well.  This went over the websites that I should have familiar with but I am glad I learned about it.  The public sources went over a variey of sites to get ideas and materials for a lesson.  There were sites that was great for sharing lesson plans and getting ideas for a variety of lessons from different subjects.  These are some of the sites:
http://www.lexile.com/
http://www.classicreader.com/
http://www.awesomelibrary.org/
http://www.eduref.org/
http://www.aesopfables.com/
www.rif.org/educators
http://artsedge.kennedy-center.org/educators
http://www.literacyconnections.com/
http://www.readwritethink.org/
http://www.teacherplanet.com/

This was a good conference to come to.  I am glad to see that technology is working its way to ESOL.