Turn to Others

 The second week of school for the 2025-26 season is already over. Momentum is building and routines are evolving. I wanted to mention about how appreciative I am of the other professionals I work with, and how they help me when I have some sort of pedagogical issue I'm wrestling with, to come up with solutions. Maybe by sharing it here, I can pay it forward and provide answers to others.

ESL Class - Over-Enunciating End Sounds

This is my second year as an ESL teacher, so I feel as if I have a bit more understanding of the role. It's less overwhelming, although I'm still not where I want to be yet. While conducting the oral communication diagnostic evaluations at the beginning of the year, I've noticed that a few of my students, when they speak, tend to over-emphasize the final sounds of words. This sometimes makes it hard to understand what they are saying. (For instance, if they said "I want to go to Starbucks", it might sound like "I want-tuh, to-ah, go-ah, to-ah, Star-ruh-Buck-uh".) I wondered if I was being too picky. I wondered how to help correct the speech pattern without dissuading them from talking in English. I spoke to two teachers, both with prior ESL experience. One (who I will not name because she is very private and asks that I don't refer to her directly on this blog), suggested that, when doing phonological word building, to start from the end of the word and work to the front, instead of the usual pattern of starting from the beginning of the word and working to the end. Another teacher, Connie Chan, recommended that I use a mirror in class. If I have students see what shapes their mouths are making when they speak, they will notice that lips tend to shut at the end of consonants and not re-open.

Library Class - Hyper-Focusing on Materials in Loose Parts Provocations

As I mentioned in last week's blog post, I launched some loose parts centers as part of my read-aloud for library. I collected more thorough documentation of the process and I saw that some of the students ignored the prompt and the book and concentrated more on using the loose parts present to make their own thing that had nothing to do with either the book or the prompt. For instance, when the prompt was "What is something special about you?", one of the students made an "emerald tree" (using green gems and wood sticks - a much more literal interpretation). I spoke to Matthew Malisani, one of our kindergarten teachers, who has extensive experience with using loose parts. He had several recommendations. (These photos below are of very good examples, where the students used the loose parts to represent their ideas in abstract ways.)

• I could provide "exploration time" with the materials, so that students could play with the materials uninhibited, so they could get a chance to express their initial takes on the materials.
• I could have a sample response begun at one of the centers that they could add to
• I could model for them how to use the loose parts as "more than just what it appears", and demonstrate how to show representational thinking (e.g. the sticks can be trees, but they can also be people's bodies, or roads, or ... )

ESL Class - Encouraging Risk-Taking in Writing Tasks

Some of my MLLs (multilingual learners) like to talk, and others are quieter. However, most of the students don't get excited about writing as much as I'd like them to be. I've always admired Kerri Commisso's "Try and Correct" sheets and chatted with her. She provided access to all of her files and I modified her Try and Correct sheets with MLLs in mind, adding an extra column for drawings or words in their home language. I also took a page out of Kerri's book and made their "Vocabulary Building Book" a separate folder, so that they could have their page open while working in a writing book or on another sheet. So far, it's going well.

Administration Team - Revising SIP Plans Realistically

On Friday, our school admin team, featuring my principal (who is also cautious when it comes to social media, so I won't name him here) and my fellow chairperson, Connie Chan, met together to iron out our new School Improvement Plan. The three of us really worked well together and got a lot done. We developed new plans that stem from our previous SIP goals and feel like they are possible to accomplish. We also decided to alter our PLC format this year, to allow for more cross-divisional groups and greater agency in professional learning. I'm excited to see how this might work this year.

ESL Class - Developing Long-Range Plans and Performing Diagnostic Assessments

Thanks to my Guidance Part 1 AQ, I feel as if I have a helpful new focus for my library long-range plans. (I will be using the four-question framework from the Ontario Ministry of Education document, "Creating Pathways to Success", for guidance and library work this year.) Last year, I was inspired by Julie Tran's FSL long-range plans, but I wanted something different. After attending the September PD session by TDSB's ESL Department, I think I want to try their new spreadsheet tool. It provides a place outside of TRELLIS (the ESL reporting software) where you can input a student's STEP level for oral, reading, and writing, and then it combines all of the individuals into a class profile, which indicates what focus points the teacher may want to pursue for instruction. The spreadsheet can seem a bit intimidating at first, but I think it may be useful for planning. As for the diagnostic tools, both the ESL department and Jenny Bird, our SERT, shared links to TDSB-recommended diagnostic tools. I will try some of these out and see how they go.

I don't want to turn all my blog posts into anti-AI diatribes, but I chose to ask real people rather than Gemini or CoPilot because I respect the expertise that these references had to offer. It would be an interesting thought exercise to ask a Large Language Model tool the same questions I asked my colleagues to compare the different answers. I also want to thank my sister for helping me with a non-school question that I had and walking me through the necessary steps. We still need people, but maybe GenAI can help support instead of replace these kind of consultations.