The ESU 10 Title III consortium supports over 300 English learners and the educators that work with them. It is made up of 18 ESU 10 districts and 1 ESU 17 district. The consortium member districts are Gibbon Public Schools, Broken Bow Public Schools, Cozad Community Schools, Riverside Public Schools, Elm Creek Public Schools, Shelton Public Schools, Ravenna Public Schools, Sargent Public Schools, Overton Public Schools, SEM Public Schools, Burwell Public Schools, Central Valley Public Schools, Northwest Public Schools, Wood River Rural Schools, St. Paul Public Schools, Gothenburg Public Schools, Ord Public Schools, Loup County Public Schools, and Ainsworth Community Schools. Under the Title III grant there are a few required activities:
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Providing effective language instruction educational programs that meet the needs of English learners and demonstrate success in increasing: English proficiency and student academic achievement
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Providing effective professional development to classroom teachers, principals and other school leaders, administrators, and other school or community-based organizational personnel that is designed to improve the instruction and assessment of English Learners
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Providing and implementing other effective activities and strategies that enhance or supplement language instruction educational programs which includes parent, family, and community engagement activities and strategies that serve to coordinate and align related programs
To meet these requirements, the consortium is sponsoring several opportunities and resources during this grant year.
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Title III Zoom Meetings twice a semester after school. The consortium had the opportunity to meet on August 31 and October 5 to discuss updates from NDE and ESU 10, share resources and address current challenges. Two more meetings are scheduled in the spring on January 18 and March 8.
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The consortium is also holding two in-person meetings. The first meeting will be on December 10 and will focus on materials that are available. The second meeting will be on April 8. At the spring meeting, teams will have time to work on their program review and written summary reports which is a requirement for Rule 15.
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Virtual and in-person professional development in schools is also being provided when requested. Typically, this includes a small group consultation with teachers that directly work with English learners. The consultation provides an opportunity for teachers to ask questions, look through resources, and collaborate on best practices for supporting the English learners in their classrooms.
English Language Development (ELD) teachers also have access to several resources provided by the consortium to supplement the language instruction educational program.
ELD teachers can check out EL Achieve kits, they have access to ESL Library for lesson plans and resources, and several are using the program ELL Foundations to support the language learning for secondary English learners.
Raz-Plus ELL Edition is another popular resource to help encourage reading for elementary English learners. That program was added last year and has expanded to include more teachers.
There have been statewide trainings that educators from the consortium have been able to attend.
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Julie Wiese and I attended a conference in Omaha in November called Accelerate ELL Students’ Learning in Pre-K and Kindergarten. This conference provides resources to help support language acquisition to our youngest students.
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Mandi Morgan and I attended the EL Teacher Network in September with several other teachers from across the state. During the meeting we are able to collaborate on resources that are available to support English learners at all grade levels.
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I have attended monthly EL Coalition meetings. These meetings are made up of Title III Consortium directors and Title III Coordinators from districts.