ELL: What I know, what I don’t know, and a few Big Picture items
Note: These are a few reflections from the first weekend of this class. It started out as just being notes, then I thought I would just leave in the big picture items and not bore you all with the gory details. If you’re interested:
Things I know about ELL
- Language is only one barrier for monolingual students and English language learners alike.
- Kids are at many levels of understanding of the English language.
- It’s a long ways from Room 20 to the ELL room at my school.
- I know that I don’t know a whole lot about ELL, and particularly for being in a school with nearly 50% bilingual students.
Things I want to learn about ELL
- Who is a good fit to run an ELL program?
- At what point does a student exit ELL?
- What are some effective strategies for running an ELL program?
- How do you measure a successful ELL program?
- How does a good newcomers center work?
ELL means “English Language Learners”
LEP means “Limited English proficiency”
Other terms of second language acquisition:
- Culture shock
- Silent period
- Comprehensible input
- Affective filter — The wall that a learner will put up depending on his or her anxiety level
- Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS): These are the basic, almost rote-like words and phrases that ELL students will develop and utilize in order to communicate wants and needs. Even with a good vocabulary, comprehension will be low for these students.
- Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP)–The ability to use language to communicate higher thinking
SIOP: Sheltered Instructional Observational Protocol
The federal government says we may include ELL programs in school. The State of Oregon says we must.
Special education testing needs to be in native language! This almost seems like a no-brainer, but many times it doesn’t happen right away. Unfortunately, the testing of many ELL students can be delayed due to second language concerns.
Changes in ELL are occurring almost constantly! It’s important to stay abreast of new ELL law and implement accordingly.
Program model should include both content and language acquisition support. State funding is dependent on this!
A successful ELL model at one school may not work in another setting. Needs and available resources will largely dictate how individual programs are implemented.
Here are my links for EDAD 615 at del.icio.us
Coming up: Book review for The Inner World of the Immigrant Child, by Cristina Ioga. And maybe–just maybe–a podcast. More later.
Question for school administrators outside of Oregon: What does ELL look like in your school setting?
February 13th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
This is wonderful! One clarification, “The federal government says we may include ELL programs in school. The State of Oregon says we must.” The Feds require programs if you have ELL students as does Oregon. The ELL plan (Title III requirement) is required of all schools so there is a plan in place when ELL students arrive. Oregon is ahead of many states on this mandate which is why it seems like it’s an Oregon law.
I love the idea of documenting your thoughts as you progress through your program. When I think of the mounds of paper I have stacked about (in case I ever need them) I cringe to realize that had I created what you have here I would have easy access to my ideas and notes without climbing through the stacks. I think I should get this started…thanks for one more item on my “to do” list
Heidi
February 13th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Heidi. Perhaps I should look through my handouts from class a little more closely. Maybe you could touch on it next time our class meets? I had assumed that the key word in the fed law was “may”, but I am probably wrong about that. This ELL fog is slowly but surely beginning to lift, and by the end of next weekend it should be a bright sunny day!
Let me know if you need help setting up a WordPress blog some time and I can take you through the steps. This is a great way to interact with other administrators in and out of the area.
February 14th, 2007 at 10:12 pm
Rick,
I am glad to see that you are actually getting a class in ELL instruction. When I went through my program, no such class. Everything I learned was on the fly.
ELL is a difficult program. There are so many more things than language, with culture being one of them and parent involvement being another. These three things combined make for a difficult positive learning experience.
Thankfully the district I am in, PVUSD.net, has much support for it’s ELL students.
In my district a student exits ELL status and becomes reclassified when they reach certain criteria on the state exams and on the CELDT (California English Language Development test). The goal for the district is to have all ELL students reclassified within 5 years of their entry date into the district or USA.
Unfortunatley this is a daunting task, due to the 3 factors I mentioned above. Again, my school has a Bilingual Resource teacher, whose main job is to combat those three items listed above. The BRT’s job is to transcend both cultures, in our case mostly Hispanic, to increase parent involvment and give the students support in their native language and new language. We are lucky at our school to have someone who is a go getter and takes this position very seriously.
I will close by saying that to run an effective ELL program you need to have teachers who understand what and who ELL students are. YOu need to have a way to assess them and keep track of them other than the yearly state tests and you need a BRT type person to get the parents involved. These are things that have been key for us to implementing a successful ELL program.
Brian
February 15th, 2007 at 6:24 pm
Hi, I’m an educator from California, and because I came in later than Brian, teaching of ELLs was embedded in my credentialling program.
I can see from your “notes” that you are taking a class based at least in part on Krashen’s work, which is good. What amazes me is how much these students learn and how quickly they learn it. Here is a cite from Wikipedia leading back to Rethinking schools (an excellent resource) on the California courtcase (federal decision) that cemented bilingual/ELL instruction:
Much of what Brian says is correct, but individual districts within the state can set their own criteria. My district has a very high criteria for re-designation (Advanced level on CELDT and Proficient on grade-level state testing). In addition, they have increased the difficulty and grading criteria for the CELDT test. Our Title VII teacher seemed to feel that this was because a large number of students were being exited in upper elementary, only to fall behind in Middle School when they no longer received ELD/SADIE support, so they are keeping them in ELL programs longer in the hope that they will not backslide.
February 15th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
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