Mary is a renowned keynote speaker and literacy consultant who travels the nation to work with teachers, literacy coaches, school principals, and district leaders on various topics that focus on improving the literacy of English language learners. She is the author of Balancing Reading and Language Learning: A Resource for Teaching English Language Learners, K-5, which has become a staple for college courses and school districts across the country. She has been an educator for 30 years, teaching in large urban schools as a bilingual elementary teacher, a mentor teacher, and a reading resource teacher, being a literacy leader in her district of Santa Ana Unified and statewide in California, teaching ESL to adults, teaching as an adjunct professor in various California Universities, being a keynote speaker for large universities across the country including Teachers College at Columbia University, and consulting in some of the largest urban school districts in the nation, as well as providing workshops, doing demonstration lessons and working as a long-term consultant in school districts across the country who have been heavily impacted by the large influx of English Language Learners. Mary is also the author of numerous children’s books, a multicultural literature program, and she has adapted over 300 children’s books into Spanish.
View Mary Capellini's Resume/Vita, Publications and Workshops.
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Level: K-8
- Balanced Literacy for ALL Children
- Reading and Writing Workshops
- Integrating Literature and Reading Instruction
- Integrating ESL or ELD into the Literacy Block
- Using Nonfiction Texts to Increase Comprehension of ELLs
- Content Area Reading Instruction for ELL's
- Helping English Language Learners Meet and Exceed State Standards
- Designing Curriculum Based on Common Core State Standards
- Assessment of ELL's on an Ongoing Basis
- Guided Reading with ELLs
- Comprehension Strategies for ELLs
- Using Shared Reading and Shared Writing with ELLs
- How to Differentiate Instruction for ALL levels of ELLs in Mainstream Classes
- The Importance of Talk in the Literacy Classroom
- Motivating Children to Write Using Multicultural Books
- Bilingual and Dual Language Programs
- Parent Literacy and Parent Involvement
Balancing Reading and Language Learning: A Resource for Teaching English Language Learners, K–5
Workshops and Presentations are based on the needs of the individual schools, districts, county department of educations or educational consortiums, and university cooperatives. Workshops can be day-long, multiple-day, or year-long in-depth training with regular visits to the school. Some topics include developing a school-wide focus on improving the literacy of ELLs across all content areas, implementing a balanced reading and language program, improving the reading and writing workshops to help ELLs achieve, the importance of balancing the reading and the language needs of ELLs, focusing on talk in the classroom, differentiating for all levels of ELLs language and literacy needs, and motivating children to write their own diverse stories by using multicultural literature in the writing block.
In Class Demonstrations and Coaching can be planned within the staff development time to reinforce what is being taught. Read Aloud, Shared Reading and Guided Reading Demonstrations can be done in English or in Spanish K-6, and Mary also coaches teachers from K thru 12 grade on how to balance the instruction and how to differentiate for ELLs in their mainstream classes through a long-term relationship with the school and the teachers.
Mary has done workshops, presentations, in class demonstrations and coaching in some of the largest school districts in the country, including those who are heavily impacted by large numbers of English Language Learners in the cities of New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Weslaco, San Diego, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Albuquerque, San Francisco, Chicago, Oakland, and Phoenix to name a few.
Keynote Speeches or Featured Speaker sessions can be booked for conferences. Mary has been the Keynote speaker or featured speaker for the following:
At Large Annual Conferences:
American International College Annual Teaching of Literacy Conference
New York State Association of Bilingual Educators Annual Conference
Illinois State Reading Association Conference
California Association of Bilingual Educators Annual Conference
Dual Immersion Annual Conference, New York
Dual Language Education Annual Conference, New Mexico
California Reading Association Annual Conference
At Universities:
New York—Teacher’s College, Columbia University; New York University; Fordham University; Hunter’s College
Pennsylvania—Millersville University
California—University of California, Riverside; University of California, Irvine; Cal State University, Fullerton and California State University, San Marcos
At Conferences:
NCTE—Annual National Conference
IRA—Annual International Conference
CABE—Annual State, Regional and local conferences
NABE—Annual National Conference