Reaching English Language Learners: Day One

-

This episode focuses on how teachers can better welcome and support English Language Learners from the very first day of school. Many educators want to help multilingual students thrive but aren’t always sure what to ask, how to plan, or how to build connection quickly. Andrea Bitner shares practical, experience-based guidance to help teachers create inclusive classrooms where every student feels seen, valued, and capable.

What You’ll Learn
In this episode, you’ll learn how to:

  • Ask students what name they prefer and ensure it is pronounced and used correctly

  • Learn about a student’s previous school experience to better understand literacy and learning needs

  • Partner intentionally with English Language Learner teachers to plan supports and accommodations

  • Recognize that limited English does not equal limited intelligence

  • Ask families which language they prefer for school communication instead of making assumptions

  • Maintain a learner’s mindset by continuing to grow through collaboration, conferences, and shared practice

Show notes and resources:
https://www.coolcatteacher.com/e924

Speakable: Today's Sponsor

This podcast is sponsored by Speakable. Want to bring daily speaking practice to your classroom without adding prep or grading?

Speakable helps language teachers assign speaking tasks, give instant feedback, and leaders can track progress, all with tools aligned to ACTFL and WIDA standards.

✅ Instant AI grading
✅ No setup or training required
✅ Student data and growth insights

👉 Explore how Speakable works, whether you're a teacher or a school leader, you'll find the right place to start.

 

Check out this episode!

Popular posts from this blog

122 For You: Cool Cat Teacher's Favorite Apps, Software, and Sites

-
Image
These are my favorite apps, software, and sites for managing my life, home, classroom, and more.  Hope you enjoy and hope you share yours in the comments. Calendaring 1. Google Calendar Google Calendar is now and has been my calendar of choice for about a year and a half. I have a personal calendar for me that is set up to send me a text message at certain times before I have to be somewhere because I always forget what time it is!  My family and each child has a calendar (I set the kids appointments to automatically show up on the family calendar), and I use Google cal for my classes .   Each class and major project such as netgened has a calendar and I embed these calendars in all of the Nings, blogs, and wikis as needed to keep people apprised of what is happening. I print these calendars out for my classes and for the refrigerator! The greatest addition to the calendar is that now I keep my 5 most important calendars on my Apple iPod touch 16 GB (2nd Gene...
Read more

RSS your family: Rapidly Synchronize Sanity

-
Image
OK. The verdict is in, my husband and I both rate the Airset calendaring service a 10! We have used its powerful features and RSS to Rapidly Synchronize our Sanity ! Everyone loves it, from the 9 year old to the 39 year old! We have three children, ourselves, a plethora of community activities, and an extended family to keep up with. I was updating calendars and reprinting them every second and they were still outdated. Three weeks a go, I'd had it! My sitter is moving to greener (or saner) pastures and I was so overwhelmed! I spent about three hours researching family planning tools and looked at Trumba , Remember the Milk , 30 boxes , MyHomePoint , and Airset . I tried and set up calendars in a few. Here is what got me excited about Airset: RSS feeds - All of them have this ability. I have my children starting up on a simple Google start up page which shows them their g-mail account and blogs of note (some I write just for them). Using RSS, my children now see their ...
Read more

Wikis, Blogs, and Podcasts this week

-
I have learned so much this week. Today, I have been in a collaborative teaching workshop which has just confirmed many of the tools that we're using in the classroom. I was so dissapointed that none of the teachers had blogs and weren't using wikis. I think we'll begin to see that changing. Here's the synopsis of my learning experience this week: 1) Podcasting using Odeo I worked out the kinks with my children at home, but I'm planning a switch to Odeo for recording and making podcasts for simple things. I recorded two ways with my nine year old. You can hear our rough but final product: Cool Cat Kidcast #1 - Gmail Cool Cat Kidcast #2 - Airset for keeping the family calendar The first one we recorded by calling a phone number. It was very easy. I can easily see how in the future, students will phone in oral reports from home for homework and they will be sent to the teacher for a listen. What a great things for auditory learners! The second podcast we reco...
Read more