There's so much to learn from each other this year! This certainly includes how to adapt GLAD® strategies for online applications. We have had so much fun creating mini tutorials featuring one or more GLAD strategies! Check it out! 

You can see this and many others in the Community feature of the year-long Path to Proficiency. We post new App tutorials monthly and sometimes twice monthly. We also post weekly within the 6-week Acceleration online PD.  

 Time is running out to join us for these timely and valuable online PD opportunities. The registration deadline for the 2020-2021 school year is Monday, November 9th!  

Your biggest fans! 

Jody & Sara 

nextstepsprojectglad.com 

[email protected] 

Asset-based instruction and ensuring equal access for all students are cornerstones of the OCDE Project GLAD® model.  

In order to create an inclusive environment with equal access, the teacher has to consider: 

• Logistics - where students are seated and who they're grouped with
• Relationship building - student to student, teacher to student, and with families
• Pedagogical considerations - using best practices to make content accessible for your grade level. 

During online learning, technological access creates an added challenge to equity.  

Districts are already struggling with hardware and internet access for all students and staff. But that's not all. The very practice of a video conference in a synchronous digital classroom is creating issues of inequity. Now that the classroom is being brought into the home, our homes and the homes of our students are front and center and all of the inequalities can be visually witnessed by all.  

How can teachers engage students in a ...

The Project GLAD® model embeds classroom, team, and individual management strategies that create interaction in the classroom. Students practice language with teams and partners. They move around the classroom to bring oxygen and glucose to the brain that stimulates thinking. Students are provided daily opportunities for decision making and problem solving. Respectful, interactive, language-rich classrooms are the result.

 How can teachers move interactive management practices to an online setting?

 In our GLAD® classrooms we create heterogenous mixed ability groupings of 3 or 4 students. These teams allow students to put heads together and share their thinking, listen to others’ thinking, reading, and problem solving, as well as come up with team responses for reporting out an answer.

When teaching in an online setting, the teacher would create a list of heterogenous grouped students, but instead of seating students together in a classroom setting, these students would participate...

Preparing for the new school year means paying more attention to your physical space and structures for student interaction than ever before. Each school has chosen a plan for physical distancing and now it’s your job to make that happen. All those great cooperative learning strategies you’ve been using will need some rethinking, too.

Can you do GLAD® in a physically distanced classroom?

There are many options for schools to bring students back safely. The CDC’s recommendation is a plan called the Bubble Strategy. This strategy limits exposure to an isolated population reducing the risk of transmission to the rest of the school.

The same group of students would stay together all day in the same classroom with the same teacher(s). They would eat lunch in the classroom and would forgo specials, like library and PE. One iteration of the Bubble Strategy even calls for students to isolate with this group for recess.

We have an idea to take the Bubble Strategy one step further to ...

The creativity and accessibility of online tools and apps is stimulating, invigorating and downright addictive.  The choices can sometimes be overwhelming!  

During the past couple of  months, we've been working with teachers in our online Next Steps with Project GLAD® Acceleration Community to brainstorm simple ways of connecting the apps you're already using for distance learning with the Project GLAD® strategies you know and love.  

We’d like to share some of the ideas for apps other teachers use.  

Have fun with this!

Perhaps you have other ideas and suggestions - let us know! We love to grow with you!   

App / Features / Strategy 

QR codes -  Use phone camera to scan and open a website 

• Observation Charts
• Chants
• Any strategy for processing and extensions

Padlet - Embed, Post, Link, Collaborate

• Inquiry Chart
• Team Tasks

Kahoot, Poll Everywhere - Polls, Quizzes

• Prediction/Reaction Guide
• Graffiti Wall

Power Point slide show, Google slides - Can record slid...

In our March Monthly Tips we talked about using the Interactive Journal as a way to connect with students and build relationships even when we’re apart. This month we’re focusing on connecting remotely with our ELs to integrate SEL into our language development lessons. 

 During the past several months, social emotional learning (SEL) has taken on greater importance. For some, interacting with our students and creating a feeling of safety and security has been the primary focus of our online interactions, before we can dive back into academic content.  

 Use this as an opportunity to put aside your regular curriculum and find out what your students are interested in knowing more about. Are they interested in sports, music, current events, fashion, or animals? This connection of relevance is a great launching pad for language lessons.  

The Project GLAD® model advocates for a focus on strong oral language development to build a foundation for reading and writing.  

 We use the EL...

 April 2020

During trainings when teachers ask about our stance on using GLAD® strategies electronically, we always reply that the sky is the limit.  Use your imagination, current apps and available hardware when transitioning to electronic use of the strategies.  

The caveat would be to make sure a language functional environment is intact. When the computer is turned off, where is the content and language scaffolding coming from if not on the walls? 

In today’s world of virtual classrooms, we advocate for the use of recorded input charts for direct instruction of content and language.  

Consider recording yourself doing a pictorial on an 81/2 x 11 paper. Include all the key steps in delivery that you would normally do in person: 

• Say it with me 
• Gestures 
• Paraphrase and define vocabulary 
• Color coding 
• Say what you are writing and drawing, and  
• Add in 10/2s - direct students to turn to someone at home to discuss the prompt or reflect and write their response in a lea...

We're thinking of you and want to support you any way we can as you support your students! 

We're all under a tremendous amount of stress right now as we navigate this pandemic, professionally and personally. The families and students we serve are feeling the stress, too. Those of us entrusted with community leadership positions: first responders, health care professionals, religious leaders, and teachers share the responsibility of caring for others at the same time caring for our families and ourselves.  

 Interactive Journals can be a way to stay connected with your students and provide an outlet for them to share what's on their mind, even remotely.  

 Image by Jody Bader www.nextstepsprojectglad.com 

“While we minimize our physical connections, it is essential that we maximize our emotional connections. We can all help our loved ones every day, electronically.” Gov. Jay Inslee 

Consider setting up electronic journals. You might try google docs or creating a free email account...

We love collaborating with language specialists during GLAD® trainings!

At the beginning of the week they consult with us on how to focus their energy and where to start.

By the end of the week they teach us new answers to the age old question:

"How do I manage the prep for GLAD® when I have several different classes/groups?!"

The following are ideas we have gleaned from professionals in the field, like you.

1. Start by partnering with a like-minded GLAD® trained teacher. 

Push-in to their classroom, or better yet, embark on co-teaching during your times with their students. Find ways to share the load and try new things.

For example, the classroom teacher does an Input chart and the language specialist leads the ELD review with a small group or a word card review with the whole class. Collaborate to find other ways to focus on the language demands of what is going on in the regular classroom through GLAD® strategies. 

2. Select only 1 or 2 of your classes to start incor...

Blurting here, blurting there, blurting, blurting everywhere!

You are not alone. Every classroom is filled with internal and EXTERNAL processors.

How do we meet the needs of both?

How do we encourage a language rich environment where students are talking but not blurting?

First, resign yourself to the fact that a GLAD classroom is a noisy classroom. Scary sentence, we know. But it's language with purpose: guided, rich, surrounded with support and focused on the topic at hand.

GLAD classrooms have parameters in place to structure language and provide the internal processing and wait time other students need.

Ready to tame the blurting beast?!

Consider these 4 TIPS to promote language acquisition while taming the blurting beast:

1. TALK IT OUT

Language acquisition requires talking - LOTS of talking!

Either we provide structured time to talk or our external processors will incorporate it themselves. Consider going through your lesson plans for the week and intentional...