News Archive (2014):
October 28, 2014
The UW 2014 STARTALK Team attended the STARTALK Fall Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana October 24-25, 2014. Veronika Egorova and Svetlana Abramova presented on Working with Heritage Learners. You can access their presentation and download the handouts here. There were also many other excellent presentations from the conference, such as Mimi Met's and Laura Terrill's engaging presentation on "Designing Effective Lessons" and Greg Duncan's on "Checking for Learning."
August 15, 2014
Last day of the program! It is bittersweet to say goodbye to our students. At the closing ceremony, the Students were awarded the program completion certificates. The Slavic department Professor Valentina Zaitseva and a representative from the Russian consulate were among a few guests that addressed the Students.
August 14, 2014
After almost four weeks of hard work, the Students presented their final projects to their peers and family at the Student Conference. The event took all day. After lunch, our expert group chose three best presentations that are going to be shown tomorrow at the closing ceremony.
August 11, 2014
Today, the Students went to the Museum of Flight and became a pilot for a day at the Aviation Learning Center. After lunch, they had free time and got to explore the museum on their own.
August 5, 2014
Today, the Students took ACTFL OPIc (Oral Proficiency Interview), talked about construction and aerodynamics of a plane and built and launched their own rocket.
August 4, 2014
The Students took the Slavic Placement test to find out which level of Russian the UW Slavic Dept. would recommend for continued study of Russian at the UW (Russ 101, 102, 103; Russ 201, 202, 203; Russ 301, 302, 303)
August 1, 2014
Today, the Students went to Philips, where they learned about the company, had a video conference with leading Russian researchers at Philips headquarters in Briarcliff, tested Philips new ultrasound machine EPIQ, and head a quick tour in the Philips factory where EPIQs are put together.
July 29, 2014
After learning how to read a graph in Russian, the Students talked about stellar evolution and stages that stars undergo during their lifetime.
July 28, 2014
Today, the Students were working on their essays on Mars.
July 25, 2014
Last day of the Teacher Program!
For the Students, the first week of the program concluded with the trip to the Museum of Flight, where they participated in the Challenger Learning Center space mission to Mars.
July 24, 2014
Today, the Teachers presented their lessons that they developed during the program to our students. They each got to teach the same lesson several times and therefore had an opportunity to improve their lessons in action. And the student learned about exploration of Moon and Mars, navigation in space, commom traditions and superstitions of astronauts, and what food you can take to space.
July 23, 2014
The Teachers got to practice their lessons in front of each other today in preparation for the grande finalle of the program when they get to teach their lessons in the Student Program.
The Students designed and built model Mars rover and started working on their elective projects. This year, they had to chose beteen Linguistics, History and Culture, and Lego Robotics.
July 22, 2014
Today, the students learned about Space Race and chose elective projects which they will start working on tomorrow. The participants of the Teacher Program observed Space Race lesson and our students at work.
July 21, 2014
First day of the Student Program and the students are hard at work already taking Assessment of Performance toward Proficiency in Languages (AAPPL) test.
July 17, 2014
Today, the teachers observed RUSS 250 class at the Univeristy of Washington, taught by Professor Zaitseva. In the afternoon, they took the mock Washington Educator Skills Tests-Endorsement for World Languages (WEST-E), which measures the content knowledge required of candidates seeking a World Language endorsement to a Washington teaching certificate.
July 16, 2014
Full house in Denny 123! After discussing TELL and STELLA frameworks in class today, our Teachers welcomed their certified World Languages colleagues in TPEP(Teacher/Principal Evaluation Project) workshop "How to Score a Four on the State Eight" presented by Lynn Johnston.
July 15, 2014
The Teachers learned about performance-based assessment today. Michele Anciaux Aoki (World Languages Program Supervisor, OSPI, WA) talked about how to get a teaching certificate in WA State and Bridget Yaden (Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies and Language Resource Center Director at PLU) talked about TELL domains Collaboration and Professionalism.
July 14, 2014
Today, the Lead instructor of the STARTALK Student Program Svetlana Abramova shared her STEM lesson (Space Race) with the Teachers.
July 10, 2014
The highlight today was a trip to Museum of Flight where the Teachers got to experience the ALC and Challenger Learning Center.
July 10, 2014
It's day 2 and the program is in full swing! Today, the Teachers talked about backwards design for lesson planning and proficiency guidelines.
July 9, 2014
First day of the UW STARTALK Program Preparing Teachers for the 21 Century!
April 18, 2014
The UW STARTALK team organized an information session on Student and Teacher Programs. We were very pleased to have such a great turn-out!
March 4, 2014
Save the Date! We’ve just set dates for the three spring workshops on curriculum planning for teachers. Register at STARTALK Workshops.
February 22, 2014
The STARTALK team participated in the WAFLT Spring Regional Conference held at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. Michele Anciaux Aoki presented a series of workshops on Introducing The Keys to Planning for Learning and Svetlana Abramova and Veronika Egorova shared their experience working on the Dual Immersion Curriculum for Seattle Public Schools.
See Workshop ResourcesFebruary 18, 2014
The Language Learning Center at the University of Washington is proud to announce that they have received funding from the National Foreign Language Center under the STARTALK Program. The STARTALK Program is a Presidential Initiative that funds Summer Programs in critical languages seeking to expand and improve the teaching and learning of strategically important world languages that are now not widely taught in the US. For the fourth year in a row, the LLC will offer a Teacher and Student Program during the summer. This year we are expanding our Teacher Program and inviting teachers from Portuguese and Persian communities, in addition to Russian.
February 1, 2014
The STARTALK team attended USNA's February Teacher Training in STEM. The focus was on project-based learning and the skills required to build a SeaPerch and hands-on workshops on topics including organizing/creating a successful science fair, engineering design, applied math, energy and electricity, and robotics.
January 25, 2014
The STARTALK team in collaboration with a number of organizations at the UW and UW colleagues organized and held the Heritage Literacy Symposium. This was an interactive symposium designed to give practitioners from different languages a chance to share their experiences teaching heritage languages learners and also provide a great introduction to those who are just beginning to learn about the issues faced by heritage language learners. Read reflections on UW Symposium by Larisa Shuvalova, who graduated from our 2011 Teacher Program.