Literacy Volunteers of Putnam has gone through the normal amount of change in the nearly three decades of its existence, but maybe none quite like 2009. First, they had to find a new director. Then, for the first time since its inception, the volunteer organization learned it could no longer call the Putnam County Library its home because the library needed the extra room. Working on a budget, the free office, telephone and Internet had been very important to the organization. As if a foreshadowing of things to come, their telephone quit working.

Immigrants to the United States can use the help offered through the literacy program. Literacy Volunteers has a program called English as a Second Language, or ESL, for people who are new to this country. They have little education in their own country and have had no classes in English must learn to write checks, fill out job applications, voter registration cards or any number of forms. Even immigrants who have had a good education in their own country and can read and write English might want help with conversational language. These students benefit from going to a grocery store and discussing what is on the shelves. The student can learn to converse in English and also learn about the culture. (more…)

Children who speak English as a second language now make up almost 27 per cent of pupils in one Black Country borough, according to new Government figures.

In Sandwell schools, 26.9 per cent of children have a different mother tongue, while in Birmingham the figure is 41 per cent of children and in London and Slough more than half of children speak a different first language. Across the country, English is a foreign language to more than one in seven primary youngsters, almost half a million.

In other areas, including Leicester, Luton and Bradford the proportion is approaching 50 per cent.

The figures released by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, highlight major demographic changes over the past few decades. (more…)

During a recent administrative inspection of the Seoul Office of Education, Lee Su-jeong, a Seoul Metropolitan Council member representing the Democratic Labor Party, said that some U.S.-owned and other international schools had become “royal academies” for the children of wealthy Koreans.

Teachers at international schools are also required to be involved in various extracurricular activities and participate in a myriad of other activities as well ― such as marking tests and meeting students ― in addition to their basic duty of teaching.

Your basic English academy or government-sponsored public school teacher, among other things, has access to a lot of ESL (English as a Second Language) material online or from other sources, has the freedom to be creative, and is required to maintain a semblance of order in the classroom ― but is not responsible for a student’s grade. (more…)

World Language, ESL, and Bilingual Supervisor Priscilla Russel, described the goal of LEAP (Learning English Across Programs), a literacy-based program for English Language Learners from entering K to grade 12, as “helping English language learners keep their language skills sharp during the summer by meeting daily for four weeks in the morning at Community Park Elementary School. We especially welcome English Language Learners who will enter the Princeton schools in September. LEAP participants meet from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., and then a cohort of 8th through 12th graders stay for lunch and Math LEAP, which meets three days a week until 3 p.m.”

The District also offered a federally-funded Chinese Immersion program under STARTALK, the newest component of the National Security Language Initiative (NSLI), which seeks to expand and improve the teaching and learning of strategically important world languages that are not now widely taught in the U.S. (more…)

When Jeannette Sgambellone found out there was money available for Lakewood Schools to hold an ESL summer school session for the first time, she and her fellow district English as a Second Language teachers rallied into action.

Because the district didn’t know for sure that federal Title 1 funds were available for the program until after school let out in June, the teachers had to go the extra mile to notify families of the opportunity. “We went door-to-door to our families,” said Sgambellone. Because many of the families have little or no English proficiency in the household, the only way to let them know about the session was to tell them face-to-face. (more…)

In some areas, pupils who can talk English are now a minority. There are 14 council areas in London where more pupils speak a foreign language than English, while in Slough, Berks, only 45% of youngsters speak the native tongue.

The shocking figures have been blamed on Labour’s immigration policies, which have seen the number of foreigners settling in Britain soar from 48,000 a year in 1997 to 237,000 in 2007.
Other areas that have huge numbers of non-English speaking child-ren include Leicester, Luton, Bradford and Birmingham. (more…)

This will be the second year of a four-year grant that seeks to keep students with disabilities and English-as-a-second-language learners in mainstream math classes, said middle school Principal Christopher Herdman. The district had received a $800,000 state grant in order to have team-teaching in its math classes from fifth through eighth grades over four years.

Last year, the district started by having a regular education and special education teacher team-teach two fifth grade math classes. This year, the same will be offered in two sixth grade classes. This will be added in the following two years in seventh and eight grades. (more…)

• FCAT Writing and Assessment: The writing essay portion of the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, given in the winter to fourth, eighth and 10th grades.

• FCAT Reading and Mathematics Sunshine State Standards: State tests given in the spring. Reading and math is given to grades 3-10; science and testing on the Sunshine State Standards is given in fifth, eighth and 11th grades. A retake is offered for older students who performed poorly on earlier FCAT.

• Naglieri Nonverbal Ability Test (NNAT): Second-graders are tested in March to see if they are gifted.

• Comprehensive English Language Learning Assessment (CELLA): An English proficiency test in April for English as a Second Language students. Students who perform well may leave ESOL courses. (more…)