ELL News Headlines

Story time is a classic part of the school day for the nation's youngest learners. Before they can read, preschoolers and early elementary school students sit with teachers and watch and listen as stories are narrated to them. Besides learning new vocabulary words and starting to connect written and spoken language, they learn to love stories and build a foundation for reading that can serve them for the rest of their lives. Melissa Malzkuhn has developed a new way for deaf children to get the same benefits of story time through an app.

While seeking Betsy DeVos' approval for its federal Every Student Succeeds Act plan, Florida ventured that the state's English-only laws would provide it cover from a new federal push on English-language-learner education. The gamble paid off. Florida, home to an estimated 300,000 English-learners, will not translate its state tests into Spanish or any other language. For some states, developing tests in languages other than English could prove costly.

In the seventh, and final, Education Week installment on the growth in dual-language learning, a pair of state-level administrators advises schools stress the importance of training and supporting educators who are training students to read, write, and speak in two languages.

In this sixth Education Week installment on the growth in dual-language learning, a former principal touts the benefits of learning two languages—and two cultures.

In this fourth Education Week installment on the growth in dual-language learning, one expert explores how his district recruits and retains teachers who are fluent in two or more languages. 

In this third Education Week installment on the growth in dual-language learning, one expert advises schools to provide immersion education for as many students as possible.

There's a strong and growing demand for schools to provide instruction across grade levels and subjects that leads to students who are bilingual and biliterate. In this second installment on the growth in dual-language learning, one expert advises schools to take a year to plan a new program and to commit to a multi-year endeavor to teach students to read, write, and speak fluently in two languages. Rosa Molina is the executive director of the Association for Two-Way & Dual-Language Education, which provides technical assistance and professional development to two-way immersion programs in California and the Western region of the United States.

Krista Holland wanders past huddles of people at a storm shelter in Chapel Hill, N.C. Some are wearing Red Cross vests; others are in bathrobes and pajamas. The Wilmington principal is looking for any of her students who may have evacuated to the shelter before Hurricane Florence made landfall. Holland worries about the uncertainty her students are facing. Over a week after the storm made landfall, more than 60,000 North Carolina students are starting another week without school. Holland also evacuated, and has been staying with family in Raleigh. Friends who stayed behind have told her her home is mostly unscathed, and her school, Anderson Elementary, has some water damage. "Nothing that can't be cleaned up and repaired," Holland says, "and it probably will not take long. ... The lack of a sense of normalcy for the kids, I think that's where my heart aches the most."

Elam Reyna sat through her first parenting class, filled with worry. The housekeeper from Guatemala was adjusting to being a day-to-day mother, nearly 13 years after leaving her home country and placing her two sons and their baby sister in the care of her grandparents. Now the boys had made a similar journey, fleeing gang threats. They were struggling to become a family again. Elam Reyna — who asked to be identified by her middle name and only part of her last name because she is in the United States illegally — was determined to bring order to her home and be a good mother, even if seeking help with her sons could jeopardize their chances of staying in the United States.

In her middle-grade memoir Path to the Stars, Sylvia Acevedo draws a straight if improbable line from her childhood as a Mexican American girl in New Mexico through a career as a literal rocket scientist to her current post as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA.