Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

How to help ESL students improve writing skills

Learning a new language is challenging, requiring a student to master four basic skills–listening, reading, speaking, and writing–from scratch. And it becomes even more challenging for ESL learners.

Not only do they learn a language but they also have to deal with other school subjects in it. And while listening and reading aren’t that difficult to conquer (both are passive skills about consuming the language, so they are easier for students to handle), active skills like speaking and writing are another thing:

Why is writing so critical for students to master?…Read More

BOOKR Kids Enters US Educational Market With BOOKR CLASS Next Generation ESL Learning App For Classrooms And Families

BUDAPEST/LOS ANGELES (October 1, 2021) – An acclaimed and multi award-winning English As A Second Language (ESL)appin daily use with over 20,000 classrooms across Europe is launching in the US.  Produced and distributed worldwide by Budapest-based EdTec leader BOOKR Kids ( For Schools – BOOKR Kids) BOOKR Class combines original animation, music, interactive games, storytelling, animated flash cards with 4,000 words and a vast library of children’s books from prestigious publishers including Oxford University Press, Albert Whitman & Company and Blue Apple Publishing to deliver a first-of-its-kind ESL tool for both classroom and home use.

According to BOOKR Kids Founder and Chief Executive Officer Dorka Horvath, BOOKR Class underscores the unique effectiveness of ability digital media as ESL learning tools for the classroom.  “The digital world is constantly evolving, and students nowadays are constantly connected to digital media. Thanks to these many digital stimuli, their stimulus thresholds have risen, making it an increasing challenge for teachers to arouse their students’ interest and maintain their attention. Immersive and interactive, digital learning tools can encourage new levels of creativity and concentration in the classroom,” said Horvath. BOOKR Class presents storybooks in a highly engaging format to focus on reading in English.  Contemporary children’s literature combined with the use of advanced digital technology allows unprecedented opportunity for interactivity and engagement.  “Experiential learning is the future of education.  Children have always been naturally curious and motivated by interactive activities, making them perfect partners for digital educational platforms. Experiential learning can induce curiosity and excitement, creating a dynamic learning environment that engages children by tapping into their natural abilities.”

Organized in multiple levels that specifically address all age groups from kindergarten through eighth grade, BOOKR Classutilizes Accidental Learning as a basis for its comprehensive approach to teaching English.  A burgeoning new category of instruction, Accidental Learning occurs when the student is immersed in a range of activities and experiences outside of the scope of traditional instruction that leads to learning.  BOOKR Class promotes learning English vocabulary and structure as a by-product of enjoying the app’s diverse interactive elements.  To continuously measure each child’s reading ability, BOOKR Classemploys Lexile® Framework for Reading learning measurement technology. …Read More

Rosetta Stone Announces Winners of the Emergent Bilingual Educators of the Year Award Program

Rosetta Stone Inc. announced the 10 winners in its first Emergent Bilingual Educators of the Year award program. A total of $20,000 in grant donations and $75,000 in subscriptions to the Rosetta Stone® English for Education language learning program were awarded to teachers of English learners (EL).

Victor Machado, an ESL teacher at East Side High School in Newark, New Jersey, won the $10,000 grand prize, along with a schoolwide semester’s subscription to Rosetta Stone English. The two runners-up are Timothy McGrath and Virginia Valdez. McGrath is a K-5 ELL teacher at West View Elementary School, a small inner-city school in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Valdez is a kindergarten teacher at Minnie Mars Jamieson Elementary at Chicago Public Schools. Each won $5,000 grants as well as the schoolwide semester’s subscription to Rosetta Stone English.

Machado was nominated by the Bilingual Department Chairperson Brian Donovan who submitted an essay describing how Machado helps his students. Donovan wrote of Machado: “He is able to synthesize all the tools required to educate a student and turn his class into a fun engaging ESL lab, where technology is used to leverage student achievement and where students take ownership of their education.”…Read More

Pearson unveils tablet ELL assessment system

The new ELL assessment system targets speaking, reading, writing, and listening

ELL-tabletA new tablet-based assessment developed by Pearson will specifically target English Language Learners (ELLs) in order to help them build English language skills and succeed on summative assessments.

With the assessment system, called TELL (Test of English Language Learning), students watch video clips and interact with pictures and words, then answer questions out loud. They listen, write, read and speak—all with no mark-ups or grading by teachers. TELL screens, diagnoses and monitors each ELL student’s progress throughout the school year. Responses—written and spoken—are automatically scored by Pearson’s automated scoring technologies

Fully scalable, TELL can be used with just one student at a time, a small to large group, or for whole-class administration at the school or district level. The assessment covers all four foundational language skills—listening, speaking, reading and writing and is aligned to standards, such as Common Core.…Read More