ELP Standards Workgroup

Southern Oregon TeamElizabeth Prusko, Medford School District 549C

Sherry Watson, SOESDCarol Holm, SOESD

“Instruction for Diverse Groups of English Language Learners”

• Overall Message:– There are 5 “sound principles” put forth. All of them

address elements of effective Sheltered English Instruction (SEI).• Learning is always based on prior knowledge and

experience. ELLs must have equal access to knowledge that is valued in school. (Background Knowledge & Text Analysis)

• Language and cognition develop together and progressively. As ideas and relationships become more complex, so does language. (Scaffolding & integration of content and language objectives)

“Instruction for Diverse Groups of English Language Learners”

• The goal of learning is to develop the stance of generativity and autonomy. This is accomplished through apprenticeship in which the learner is invited to become a member of a community of practice. (Gradual Release of Responsibility & structured language practice)

• The goal of language use is to make it contextually appropriate; students need to be competent navigators within a range of different registers (1st: function; 2nd: ideas; 3rd: form)

• Assessment is integrated into the process of teaching and learning. Assessment-elicited information is used by both teachers and students to consistently keep learning moving forward. (formative assessment)

Key Factors or Discoveries Made by Authors

• Nothing new here…The principles in this article reflect effective SEI practices already represented in models such as SIOP, CM, GLAD.

It’s the authors’ view that, “for children entering school with little or no English, there is a pivotal role for

English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers, which is to develop students’ initial English language, both

social and academic, in deep, generative, and accelerated ways. Once students have reached an intermediate level of proficiency in English, further

development of the academic uses of language becomes the responsibility of every teacher.”

• What do the authors mean by “every”?– Content area teachers only? OR…– Content area teachers AND ELD teachers?

Key Factors or Discoveries Made by Authors

• If ELLs at Intermediate level or higher are only receiving instruction from content-area teachers in a SEI environment, does that mean…– they will receive ELD instruction from the content-

area teacher, or…– they will not receive ELD instruction at all?

Either situation appears to run counter to federal and state ELL program requirements.

Key Factors or Discoveries Made by Authors

• If ELLs at Intermediate level or higher are receiving instruction from both content-area teachers in a SEI environment and ELD teachers, that brings us back to…

The Instructional Blueprint for English Learners

 

Reading/ Lang. Arts

 

Math 

History/Social

Studies

 

Science/

Health

 

PE          

 

Art

Making Language ComprehensiblePurpose Provide language instruction early in the lesson and rehearsal opportunities to equip English Learners with language structures and vocabulary needed to express understanding of the lesson.

Content Language tied to content instruction (i.e.: vocabulary and/or language function such as summarize, compare).

Making Content Comprehensible Purpose Teach grade level subject matter content.

Content Grade level curriculum taught with instructional strategies that scaffold the content learning.

ELDSlice

PurposeDevelop a solid language foundation ContentFollows scope and sequence of language skills in functional contexts Organized by level of English proficiency

Instructional Blueprint for English Learners

Relevance to the Mission of the Workgroup

• Using the Blueprint for ELL Instruction from the EL Achieve professional development materials, the authors’ principles apply to the Making Content Comprehensible and Making Language Comprehensible sections, which run across the content areas.

• These are the same portions of the Blueprint that are addressed in the WIDA standards and current Oregon ELP to ELA Pathways document.

Relevance to the Mission of the Workgroup

• Other than a cursory mention of the “pivotal role” of “ESL” teachers for newcomers, the article did not specifically address the ELD slice of the Blueprint.

• Therefore, we do not see any relevance of the article to ELD instruction and the development of English Language Proficiency per se.

Relevance to the Mission of the Workgroup

• We are still unclear about the mission of the workgroup (ELP vs. ELA), which makes it difficult for us to comment further on it’s relevance to the mission of the workgroup.

• In closing, we think that the article could be relevant to the SEI portion of an ELL program, but not the ELD portion.