1 / 13

Best Practices For Adolescent ELLs Gina Considine

Best Practices For Adolescent ELLs Gina Considine. A Challenging Population. Meeting the needs of English Language Learners is one of the most complex challenges teachers face. Plyer v . Doe ensures an ELL’s right to an education.

latoya
Download Presentation

Best Practices For Adolescent ELLs Gina Considine

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Best Practices For Adolescent ELLsGina Considine

  2. A Challenging Population • Meeting the needs of English Language Learners is one of the most complex challenges teachers face. • Plyerv. Doe ensures an ELL’s right to an education. • No Child Left Behind says that after one year of enrollment, ELLs must take statewide assessments and the results are counted. • ELLs are often viewed in schools as a drain on limited resources. Adding to this challenge is little or no English, interrupted schooling and limited literacy in their first language.

  3. Who Are Adolescent ELLs? • Newcomers- immigrants who arrived within the past 5 years. • 57% of learners identified as limited English proficient were born in the United States. These students often achieve oral proficiency, but lag behind in their ability to use English for literacy and content learning. “In reality, there is a patchwork quilt of English Language Learner profiles – a quilt rich with diverse life experiences, but loosely woven with common learning needs.”

  4. Ells bring with them different life experiences • Filip entered U.S. schools in 9th grade • coming from a high-level academic school • in the Czech Republic. He gained a • command of academic English within 2 • years. • Ben came to the U.S. from Sudan at age • 16. He experienced civil unrest and • interruption in formal schooling, which • resulted in limited foundation in literacy in his first language.

  5. Promising Principles and Practices • Schoolwide, Team-Based Support • Do educators in your school assume shared responsibility for the achievement of English Language Learners? • ELLs need access to full resources of the school. • Create cross-disciplinary schoolwide teams • Common planning time to meet regularly to discuss • plan integrated projects, address student concerns • and monitor student progress.

  6. A Dual Curriculum • Does your school provide a curriculum that promotes • the language development of English language learners as well as their general academic needs? • ELL curriculum must include a detailed developmental sequence for learning the English language in social and academic contexts. Careful attention should be given to second-language • development. • This curriculum must address the additional time it • will take for these students to concurrently master academic literacy and content.

  7. This curriculum should not only include specialized • language instruction in each subject area, but • also academic cohesion words and phrases (thus, • therefore, as a result of) and specialized • academic process words (define, enumerate) • Finally, ESL students need “safe space” • opportunities not just to read and write the • language, but to practice the spoken language of • academics.

  8. Global Community Classrooms • Does your school district integrate English language • learners who are recent immigrants, segregate them • in self-contained classrooms, or find a middle • ground? • Some researchers are concerned about segregation • because of the lack of interaction with U.S. born • peers. This may lower academic standards for • achievement and opportunity, and lack of access • to social networks.

  9. ELL Cluster Model • Globally focused- group of content area teachers are trained in ESL. 1/4 to 1/3 of students are ELLs and the remaining are native English speakers. The class is conducted in English, but aides who speak the ELLs’ native language may assist. • Native English speakers in cluster classrooms benefit from the diversity that is brought into class discussions. • Instructional techniques support learning for every student such as increased use of visuals, deeper • development of background knowledge, and more • student interactions.

  10. Extended Time to Learn • Has your school district explored ways to use all available time in ELLs’ school day for effective instruction? • Flexible student pathways – extended school year or day schedule, night and weekend classes, or simply a plan that enables a late entry ELL to stay in high school longer. • We should not assign ELLs with high academic ability to remedial classes. This will slow down their progress.

  11. Individual Progress Records • Does your school maintain (and make easily available to teachers) records of individual ELLs’ linguistic and academic history and ongoing progress? • Mainstream teachers need to learn about the language and academic backgrounds of the ELLs in their classes. • Many times schools label ELLs by their lack of English and not by their actual individual learning needs.

  12. Moving Beyond the Labels “I still dream of a kumbaya moment when ELL teachers from the east and west and everywhere in between will gather together to agree on the terms that define our field, our learners, and our programs. If we look beyond the labels, however there is surprising agreement in what constitutes best practices for English Language Learners.”

  13. Bibliography Rance-Roney, Judith. Best Practices for Adolescent ELLs. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

More Related