Presented by Brian Mowry, Ph.D., Author and Early Childhood Curriculum and Content Specialist, Frog Street Press; and Zulma Cifuentes-Pride, National Consultant, Frog Street Press
Moderated by Stephen Fite, President and Artist, Melody House Inc.

Sponsored by Frog Street

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Closed captioning will be added to the recording within 2 weeks of the live presentation.
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Preschool classrooms throughout the United States are becoming increasingly diverse. More importantly, such a demographical shift requires early childhood educators and administrators to embrace culturally relevant practices to help children develop positive social identities and accurate and non-biased language for talking about those differences.

This edWebinar attempts to address these goals by unpacking nine instructional strategies for supporting preschoolers’ language acquisition in a dual language setting. These strategies include: 1) translanguaging; 2) integrating content areas and vocabulary through anchor texts; 3) engaging children in dialogic reading; 4) conducting frequent comprehension checks; 5) incorporating total physical response; 6) modeling language through think alouds; 7) and implementing scaffolding techniques, including 8) visual cues and 9) think-pair-share.

We discuss how the preschool environment is well suited for the implementation of these strategies and how to further optimize this learning space for young children’s simultaneous acquisition of two languages. Our objectives are that participants will:

• Understand key stages of language and literacy development in preschool
• Identify the social-cultural and developmental characteristics of dual language learners
• Find practical ways to implement the nine instructional strategies presented to support preschoolers’ dual language acquisition

This edWebinar is of interest to Pre-K teachers, librarians, and school and district leaders. 

About the Presenters

Dr. Brian Mowry is the senior author of the Frog Street Pre-K Mathematics Program. He is a former bilingual preschool and kindergarten teacher with 25 years of experience in both teaching and teacher professional development in the Austin Independent School District. During this time, he was a teacher of the year recipient and awarded the Austin Association for the Education of Young Children (AAEYC) teacher educator of the year in 2011. He has presented at national conferences and earned his doctorate in curriculum and instruction at the University of Texas at Austin.

Zulma has over ten years of teaching experience in PK – 3rd grade, working with English Language Learners in a Bilingual and Dual Language setting. She has been a Consultant for 17 years, working as a National ELL Consultant, National Content Specialist, Instructional Coach, and Regional Consultant.

Zulma’s teaching career includes working in New York as well as in Texas. In Texas, Zulma was an Instructional Specialist, mentoring new-hire teachers and providing district-wide professional development. Other district responsibilities included Curriculum Writing for ELA and ELL.

As a Frog Street Press National Consultant, Zulma is able to support the needs of English Language Learners; specifically support any Language instruction and language interventions for young learners.

About the Host

Stephen Fite is an award-winning musician/writer for children, whose albums have received 18 nationally recognized honors. Suitable for the classroom, car, or living room, his upbeat brand of children’s music has been delighting students, teachers, and parents around the nation for more than three decades. He realized his love for music at a very young age while listening to Beatles LP’s at his aunt’s house shortly after the British Band Invasion of the ’60s. As a result, he shares that same passion for song with teachers and children through his writing, recording, and performance. Since the mid-80s, Stephen has performed concerts for over 800,000 children, as well as keynotes and workshops for educators throughout the United States. Follow Stephen on Twitter @stephen_fite.

Closed captioning will be added to the recording within 2 weeks of the live presentation.

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