School Policies and Practices

Below are school policies and practices that support high quality learning.

• Schoolwide vision of high expectations for all students
• Curriculum offered to all students is based on the same standards
• All students are provided with equal opportunities to achieve at high levels
• All studwents are provided with equitable learning resources and high quality instruction
• Instructional time is organizer to enhance learning for all students
• There is ongoing professional development for teachers to support high quality learning for ELL students
• Schools support appropriate use of accomodations
• Schoolwide understanding of purpose and use of a variety of assessments
• Assessments are fair for all students. Guidelines are in place to avoid cultural bais
• Ass assessments are used to improve student learning

Lachat, Mary Ann (2004). Standards-Based Instruction and Assessment for English Language Learners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press

Effective Learning Environments

Effective learning environments for ELLs have several important practices:

- A comprehensive, school wide vision for developing a high quality education for ELLs

- A school wide approach used to restructure learning environments

- Effective language development strategies implemented

- High quality learning environments involve curricular strategies that engage students in meaningful, in-depth learning

- Innovative instructional strategies are implemented

Lachat, Mary Ann (2004). Standards-Based Instruction and Assessment for English  Language Learners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press

Assessment of English Language Learners

Colrin Colorado put together a video on assessing English Language Learners. The three top challenges for teaching and assessing ELLs include language, culture and prior academic experiences. In this video, Dr. Lorraine Valdez Pierce discusses the importance of classroom strategies for assessment.

http://www.colorincolorado.org/webcasts/assessment/

Effective Assessment

I recently came across the link below that discusses the importance of effectively assessing ELL students. This link shows wonderful examples that allow for ELLs to show what they are capable of doing. 
http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/tannen01.html

Games as a Formative Assessment

Dr. Broady posted an article that describes different forms of assessments that can be used in the classroom. I personally really enjoyed this article- it is one that is definitely worth sharing with the teachers you work with! This article provides a variety of assessment strategies that still provide measurable feedback. Standardized testing does provide feedback, however it does not cover multiple forms of intelligence. The assessments found are very engaging for all ages of students and are helpful at measuring your students' academic progress.

http://broadyesl.wordpress.com/2012/10/01/games-as-formative-assessments/

Standards Implementation Issues for ELL's

Most studies on school reform have not included ELL’s. Issues include developing academic and English proficiency, addressing the varied needs of ELL’s, or implications of emerging assessments. “The notion of ‘one size fits all’ will not work, and that even the most promising approaches to instruction and assessment cannot be offered uniformly to all populations” (46). There is also concern with the use of standards with students who have not developed full English proficiency. Standards implementation is based on if the teachers have the resources and know how to implement these standards. This does not take into account that some students aren’t ready to perform near proficiency level. Two challenges that need to be taken into account for ELL’s includes the wide diversity in language/literacy/skills, and the wide knowledge gaps in the education field. Schools are deficient to making sure ELLS are performing at high levels. To be completely honest, my school last year functioned this way. There was no accountability of ELL students performing at higher levels. This year, however, we have a new district coordinator and she has made sure to educate teachers and help move students forward. Standards- setting has given little consideration to how diverse students are. Applying standards fairly to diverse students requires attention be taken on to how these standards can be connected to instruction. This will help students with a variety of English proficiency levels to develop higher- level skills.

Lachat, Mary Ann (2004). Standards-Based Instruction and Assessment for English
           Language Learners. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press

Literacy Strategies for ELL's

Literacy can be hard for any student, let alone an English Language Learner. Erin White, of Purdue University Calumet, has created a slide show presentation that discusses the 8 areas of literacy strategies. It has wonderful ideas!

http://literacy.purduecal.edu/STUDENT/ewhite00/adobepresenter/index.htm

Challenges

English language learners face many challenges. The biggest challenges ELL students face include:

• Instructional needs being met due to cultural and linguistic diversity. Even though all students share the need to build proficiency, “they differ from each other in their country of origin, language and cultural backgrounds, socioeconomic status, family histories, length of time in the United States, mobility, level of education prior to immigrating to the United States, level of parent education, and educational goals” (22).
• Living in high- poverty areas can include inadequate employment opportunities, health and social services, as well as crime. These schools sometimes tend to emphasize on basic teaching skills instead of higher- order thinking, and have limited technology.
• Need to work towards English proficiency for both social and academic purposes. Teachers need to focus on connecting to prior knowledge, and if teachers don’t have an understanding of their students’ backgrounds, it can make it a challenge for ELL’s to understand the content.

There are many challenges ELL students face in the classroom. I believe a part of the challenges these students face is a teacher’s lack of awareness for these students’ needs.

Reading Assessments

 In this video, Dr. Lundgren discusses the importance of using valid and reliable assessments for your students. Often teachers find themselves using basals, modeling, and examples that aren't necessarily useful for diverse populations.

Strategies

Listed below, you will find strategies to promote student understand of classroom communication:
- Restate complex sentences as a sequence of simple sentences
- Avoid or explain the use of idiomatic expressions
- Restate information as a slower pace
- Pause often to allow students to process what they hear
- Provide explanations of key words and special technical vocabulary
- Bring in objects, photographs, or other materials to explain content
- Use visual organizers and graphics to organize and illustrate key points
- Provide an outline of a lesson that students can review
- Allow time for students to discuss what they have learned and to generate questions about areas that need more clarification.



(Zehler,1994).

Traditional Testing Culture vs. Today's Assessment Culture

Traditional Testing Culture
Traditional Testing Culture allows for students to be ranked according to their mental capacities. It allowed for sorting and tracking of students, and schools weren't being held accountable for learning and academic success for all students. Traditional testing discriminated between high and low scores, so that scores could be easily discriminated to compare students. It believes that intelligence and learning capacity were fixed traits that could be predicted. Therefore, the test was to rank students for the purposes of comparison and rank. In this, schools were not held accountable for the learning and academic success for every student. The quality of education was undermined by testing policies. These students were denied the opportinuty to develop the capacities needed to succeed. The testing culture also didn't stress complex and rich ways of demonstrating learning. It only focused on a narrow range of cognitive abilities. The students who scored low were mostly poor students, or ESL. These rankings put these students in low- level classes.

Today's Assessment Culture
The assessment culture focuses on high standards and education for all students. It deemphasizes ranking students against test norms, and emphasizes on improving student academic success. This should have been the main focus all along. The assessment culture uses tests as a tool, and determines whether all students are hearning at higher levels. This year, our district has put a major emphasis on higher order thinking- and not just for the "brightest" students. It shows an understanding of how students learn, and that intelligence is multifacted and not just a fixed trait. Student proficiency cannot accurately be ranked according to a single dimension.

 

 

The Testing Culture	The Assessment Culture
- Unitary, fixed trait	- Multifaceted, developmental
- Based on a measurement model that treats abilities as relative positions on a normal curve	- Based on a standards model where achievement is criterion- referenced
- Emphasizes accuracy, speed, and easily quantifiable skills	- Focuses on student performance, not just content domain
- Testing and instruction are separate activities	- Regards assessment as central to instruction
- Determines how students rank and compare to others	- Determines how students perform relative to standards of excellence
- Focuses on a narrow range of cognitive abilities	- Emphasizes complex ways of demonstrating learning
- Uses test results to sort students into classes and courses	- Uses assessment results to improve teaching and learning

In my opinion, the difference makes a huge difference to ESL students. It is not fair to compare students based on an assessment, especially when ESL students can have different language barriers they are facing. Our school recently did away with MAP testing, and I am honestly a little relieved. It isn't fair to put all students in front of an assessment and rank them, when there are many different factors. Today's assessment culture shows how students' academic performance is relative to the content, not in relation to others. It is more important to see that the students understand the content taught. I personally believe that assessment needs to drive instruction. We need to use assessments to move our students forward and focus on their academic success.

 

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Home Language Surveys

As a teacher, you always send out home language surveys at the beginning of the school year. To be completely honest, I was never sure what was actually done with the results from that after I sent them to the office. This past week, I finally understood what school districts do with the results from these surveys. In Montgomery County, if the student's home language survey indicates a home language other than English, students are given the w-apt screening (wide screening for placement into ELD program). If the student passes the w-apt and is in kindergarten, the student must remain in the program untill passing the access in January. If the student is in any other grade and pass, they are marked ifep (initially fully English proficient) in infinite campus.