10. Teaching ELLs - Self-Assessment Which of these is/are easiest for you? Why? Which of these is/are most difficult for you? Why? 7. Provide Opportunities for student-student interaction 4 3 2 1 0 6. Use a variety of scaffolds for the variety of learners in my class 4 3 2 1 0 5. Consider my own language and vocabulary to ensure that my students can understand 4 3 2 1 0 4. Examine text for language and vocabulary that may present challenges 4 3 2 1 0 3. Build Background Knowledge When Necessary 4 3 2 1 0 2. Access Prior Knowledge 4 3 2 1 0 1. Make sure students know and understand the purpose of the lesson? 4 3 2 1 0 Key Elements How Often Do I… Always Sometimes Never
Welcome slide. Audience: First year teachers, EC-4 grade levels, who lack experience teaching ELLS. Handouts: ELPS TELPAS: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing Assessment Tool A SAMPLE Lesson Plan
“ You're five years old and are competent in the use of English with other kids. You understand what people say to you and you can communicate with others. You’re about to start school. You're a little afraid and very excited… On the first day of school, you have a backpack filled with blank notebooks, pencils, and crayons. You know that those are the implements you will be using to learn how to read and write. A s you walk into the classroom the teacher begins to give instructions to the class. She calls out the children's names but she can't pronounce yours. The other children seem to know what's going on. They all know what to do, except for you. Are they laughing at you? Tears roll down your cheeks. Suddenly, you realize that learning is going to be much more difficult than you ever imagined.” (Bank Street)
Sojourners – people who are temporarily in the U.S. “ The dominant prevailing national education policy for most children in the nation including ELL students is No Child Left Behind (NCLB). NCLB requires all states to identify English learners, measure their English proficiency, and include them in state testing programs that assess academic skills. ELL students are expected to participate in regular state assessments in academic content with all other students’ starting in 3 rd grade.” (Kindler)
Most of the ELLs are born in the United States, and are concentrated heaviest in (6) states: AZ, CA, FL,IL, NY, TX. They constitute over ½ of all ELLs. (Kindler) “ Statistics show that by next year, 2010, over thirty percent of all school-age children will come from homes in which the primary language is not English.” (Bank Street) Clearly we need to shift paradigms a bit in order to prepare ourselves for the progression towards the marriage of ELPS and TEKS.
Statistics show that they were 800,000 ELLS enrolled in Texas schools. That equates to 1 in 5 students. 90% of the ELLs are Spanish speaking, but there are also many other languages represented in Texas schools.
In conjunction with other agency staff, student assessment staff will continue to rate and reinforce connections between ELPS, TEKS, TELPAS, and TAKS. English Language Proficiency Standards are in place to support the learning of English as measured on TELPAS, and the academic content as measured on TAKS. With regard to TELPAS, raters learn to directly assess how well students can use English to engage in academic instruction. (www.tea.state.tx.org) This understanding leads to understanding the need for linguistically accommodated instruction. At the beginning of the school year, teachers use the prior Spring’s TELPAS proficiency level ratings as a starting place to guide instruction. Throughout the year, teachers use the ELPS student expectations and PLDs to monitor progress and adjust linguistic accommodations accordingly. Administrators use TELPAS results to evaluate whether students are making appropriate progress in learning English. There is a TELPAS Reading Information Booklet available online through the TEA Student Assessment Division. It includes alignment with ELPS, and lots of examples of how TELPAS Reading tests measure ELPS student expectations and proficiency levels.
Briefly, what ELPS say about linguistically accommodated instruction: (read the slide) The goal is to ensure that ELLs are successful both socially and academically. Effective classroom instruction is expected to provide opportunities for ELLS to listen, speak, read, and write at their current level of English development, while gradually increasing the linguistic complexity of the English they read and hear, and are expected to read and write. (ELPS, 74.4 (a) (4) It’s the teachers job to determine the English language acquisition level of their students, and incorporate various techniques and methods to progress their ELLS closer to proficiency, again, both socially and academically.
When it comes to educating ELLs everyone must be in on the responsibility. This includes school leaders, administrators, and teachers. 1. Ells are most successful when their languages and cultures are utilized as a resource for further learning. This requires making strong links in the learning chain that connect home, school, and community. To make this happen, you need to know your students. Really know them; know their strengths and their areas of need; be tuned into them so you can listen to their use of oral language and understand their grasp of language structures, because knowing your students well will help you when you begin to prepare instruction. 2. It’s important that educators validate the prior knowledge and experiences of the ELL student. As educators, we will want to show an interest in the child’s first language. 3. Its also important that we understand and respect the hard work that is necessary to master a new language. 4. To successfully educate ELLS, we need to be both up to the task as well as qualified for it. This means that we must be prepared and willing to work with them. Be proactive. Attend in-services and professional development classes like you are doing now. But don’t stop there; attend assessment training, attend TELPAS rater training too; it will help you internalize what ELPS proficiency levels (PLDs) mean and why they are important. Teachers who are attending rater training are getting professional development on the PLD portion of the ELPS in addition to assessment training. (http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/resources/conferences/esl/Apr_09_TitleIII_MI_ELL.ppt#38) Talk to people who already have experience teaching ELLs – they can tell you a lot about what works and what doesn’t, they can suggest other professional development classes and perhaps recommend reading material to help you. Check the internet and bookstores for literature that can help you. Just GOOGLE the words English Language Learners and you will receive 5.2 million choices! Success for your ELLs begins with you…
(At this time an assessment would be handed out and attendees would take some time to break into groups and complete is. Then everyone would regroup, share results, followed by a short Q&A.) The assessment is meant to get the new teachers thinking about their own strengths and weaknesses. A Self Assessment is coming around. Let’s break off into groups of 4 for about 10 - 15 minutes and work together to complete the self assessment. I will notify you when we are approaching the final three minutes. Q&A - 2 questions at the bottom of slide
The following quote is from http://www.nmsa.org/portals/0/pdf/publications/On_Target/diff_instruction/diff_instruction_3_differ.pdf I found this quote online: It’s an example of a differentiated classroom. “Walking into Ms. Gage’s sixth grade English class, a visitor sees six students seated around a listening center playing a tape of The Outsiders while they complete a graphic organizer comparing Ponyboy’s experiences to their own . Another group of six students is seated in a literature circle discussing the Themes of the different novels they have read independently. The teacher is in the front of the room with six students conducting a mini-lesson on narrator’s point of view using the overhead projector . The remaining four students work independently on self-selected anchor activities related to figurative language.” A lot is going on in this classroom. Ms. Gage has incorporated several activities and strategies into her English lesson and her students are engaged in meaningful learning in many different ways. She seems to have planned the activities so that there is a clear purpose for each, and all students are developing their knowledge and skills according to the TEKS. Anyone of these activities could also have been structured to accommodate her ELL students.
The following quote is from http://www.nmsa.org/portals/0/pdf/publications/On_Target/diff_instruction/diff_instruction_3_differ.pdf (An example of traditional teaching) “ In Mr. Bland’s sixth grade English class, in a school several miles away in the same school system, all 28 students are seated in rows facing the teacher who is explaining the use of “who” and “whom”. Following this activity, students take turns reading aloud from The Outsiders, a novel the teacher has selected for the whole class. All students will then answer the same set of comprehension questions.” Not everyone is paying attention, and it’s a sure bet that many of the students will not learn anything.
“ Each time you provide a student with extra help, more time, or a modified assignment, you’re differentiating instruction. All good teachers, whether they realize it or not, differentiate to some degree.” (Diane Heacox, Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom: How to Reach and Teach All Learners, Grades 3-12) Let’s say you have assessed your students informally; you were watching them and while doing so, collected data regarding their strengths, weaknesses, areas of need, interests and readiness levels; now perhaps you are wondering how will you address the various needs of your students and plan lessons to accommodate them? Differentiated instruction is one way to address them. According to educator, author, and speaker, Carol Tomlinson, at its most basic level differentiated instruction means “shaking up” what goes on in the classroom so that students have multiple options for taking in information (content), making sense of ideas (process), and expressing what they learn (product). What are some things that we can differentiate? The Sources, processes, and the products. We can differentiate what is being used to teach the content. Varying your sources will help with what you teach. Some examples of this are the internet, and students own cultural stories. Processes include strategies and structures. How you teach the content can have a big impact on students ability to understand and comprehend. Knowing what interests your students will help you to plan how to best reach and teach them. How do you want your students to show you that they have mastered the skill that was being taught? What products will students use to demonstrate their knowledge? Maybe they could complete a graphic organizer that compares or classifies, or they can construct a chart, or a diagram, or a timeline, or they could give an oral presentation, or create a poster report that they can share with the class. You may also want to think about which products would work best for ELLs who may have limited proficiency with the English language.
After we have assessed our students and have given much consideration to how we want to differentiate based on their needs and skills, we will want to develop a lesson plan. Planning instruction with ELLs in mind requires being “clear about our expectations for student learning and how to differentiate and scaffold instruction based on language proficiency. In other words, we should not plan simple lessons or rely on a number of instructional tricks or strategies. Instead, we should determine the outcomes of our lessons via the standards, determine what evidence we will accept that students have achieved the expectations, and then determine the different kinds of supports we will use for students at varying levels of proficiency.” (Wiggins and McTighe). Research “clearly establishes that teacher expectations do play a significant role in determining how well and how much students learn.” (Bamburg (1994). Highly effective teachers refuse to alter their attitudes or expectations for their students – regardless of race or ethnicity, life experiences and interests, and family wealth or stability.” (Omotani & Omotani, 1996). Lesson plans should be purposeful, and they should align with the content standards for the grade level. The anticipatory set is the opening that should invite students into the content. The instruction piece should be modeled when appropriate and frontloaded when the instruction could be extremely challenging to many of the students. Guided practice involves scaffolding or coaching students through the steps they need to take to achieve the goal, while slowly reducing the support so they can eventually perform the task on their own. Independent practice is a time for students to apply their knowledge. Assessing how students performed the task and taking time for reflecting will aid in planning future lessons.
Each ELL student must achieve their fullest potential in learning and communicating effectively in the English Language. This slide is a top ten list of bilingual teacher, staff developer, and elementary school principal Mary Waldron. Mary believes that teaching and learning are dynamic processes and that what applies to students applies to teachers as well; students are constantly developing their understanding and skills, and teachers are constantly developing their understanding of how students learn and constantly developing skills to teach them. Learning is a lifelong process for all of us. Mary ends her top ten list with a quote by Roland Barth; “Let us constantly juxtapose the way things are with fresh visions of what they might become.” Stay fresh! And thank you for your time.