On Saturday March 10, Professors Elizabeth Ijalba (QC), Patricia Velasco (QC) and Catherine Crowley (CU), in collaboration with the New York State Association for Bilingual Education (NYSABE), welcomed 85 teachers (pictured above) from bilingual programs at New York schools—including PS 16, PS 165 and PS 32 to Developing Literacy Skills for Bilingual Children (Spanish-Chinese and Korean). The free event held on the campus of QC focused on targeting predictors of reading success for children whose base language is Spanish, Chinese and Korean.
The 8:30 am until 12:30 pm workshop covered three topics:
Effective Parent Training for Diverse Emergent-Bilingual Children: Use of the Home-Language within a Transactional Model that Includes Explicit Teaching. The Case of the Latino, Chinese, and Korean Communities.
Spanish Literacy Development in Early Childhood: Phonemic/Phonological Development, Vocabulary and Production of Oral Narratives.
Developing Vocabulary Skills: Evidence—Based Approaches for Late-Elementary and Middle School Bilingual Students.
The event was centered on pre-requisite skills bilingual children need to develop literacy successfully. The number of attendees was a pleasant and humbling surprise to Velasco, co-organizer of the workshop. “We thought that we would have only about 40 people, but instead we had 85,” she reported. “Bilingual teachers are deeply committed to providing the best practices for their students. They were willing to give up their Saturday morning to attend this workshop and they were an attentive and interested audience. It was also evident to Elizabeth Ijalba and to me, that Queens College is at the center for fostering multilingual and multicultural education.”
