Equitable Access for English Learners, Grades K-6. Mary Soto
evaluate
Classroom activities for a compare/contrast matrix:1. This activity works well for comparing/contrasting two stories, characters, settings, historical events, or content concepts, such as climates, habitats, plants, animals, and so on.
Assessing Students’ English Language Proficiency
Teachers should be aware of their English learners’ English language proficiency as they prepare lessons and teach. In order to plan, they should have some idea of the types of support students will need and what students can be expected to do at the different levels. Different states (and sometimes districts) offer specific ideas for how to support English learners at various proficiency levels. Schools may also assess English learners’ proficiency in their home language using a scale similar to the ones above. If your school or district assesses students’ home language proficiency, collect that assessment data for your English learners. This book provides scaffolding activities for English learners; however, keep in mind that, for beginning or emerging English learners, extra supports may also be necessary. In addition, it is important to be aware that some students may have suffered trauma through displacement, violence, and discrimination. These factors also may influence students’ language development.
I-Search Project
Following the I-Search process of inquiry, search online to find out how your state or district determines language proficiency levels. Next, look at the suggestions provided for supporting English learners at those different levels. As you conduct this inquiry, answer the following I-Search questions:
1 What do I want to know about how to meet the needs of my ELs who are at different levels of English language proficiency?
2 What answers was I able to find in my search?
3 How can I record and use this information?
4 How can I share this information with others?
5 What did I learn about my students and about doing this kind of research?
6 What do I plan to do to differentiate instruction for ELs at different proficiency levels?
Like other strategies we suggest that you do, I-Search is an especially helpful strategy to use with students at more advanced levels of English proficiency.
Standards based skills: do research, use evidence to support ideas, create, summarize, explain
Classroom activities for an I-Search:1. This activity can be used for any topic students are studying. Students could be given the first five questions and changing the first and fifth questions to reflect the research topic: What do I want to know about …? What did I learn about …?
On Demand Writing Sample to Determine English Proficiency
Choose some English learners in your class you would like to know more about. Give them a general topic that students would have an opinion about. For example, you could ask them what they like to do outside school or what they like or don’t like about school. Then ask all the students to write in English about the topic for a set amount of time, but at least for ten minutes. These samples should give you a general idea of the students’ English literacy level. You can also ask students to write about a topic in their home language. Even if you can’t read what they write, you can gauge their general ability in the language based simply on how much they write. Looking at their handwriting in either English or their home language will also give you an idea of how much formal schooling the student has received. Usually, students who have attended school have been given some formal instruction in penmanship.
Teachers can share their students’ writing samples with other teachers to compare and contrast and analyze writing samples together. They can discuss writing samples, looking at students with same home languages and different home languages and considering students’ length of residence in this country and previous schooling. Teachers can refer to the proficiency level descriptors to determine their students’ written proficiency level.
Standards based skills: analyze, evaluate, use evidence to support ideas
Using Formative Assessment
The On Demand writing sample is a good example of formative assessment. Formative assessments are designed to help teachers determine students’ current ability in order to plan the next steps in instruction. MacDonald and her colleagues (2015) state that formative assessment “occurs in the midst of instruction and compares students’ ongoing progress to possible trajectories of learning. It can help identify the most productive next steps in instruction” (p. xi). Formative assessment is one component of an overall assessment system that also includes interim and summative assessments.
MacDonald and her coauthors describe a four-stage process they use to integrate formative assessment into teaching. The first step is to design and teach lessons that have a consistent focus on developing both academic content knowledge and academic language. These lessons have clearly stated language objectives. The second step is to sample students’ language by planning lessons during which students will produce language in oral or written form that can be collected. In the third step, teachers analyze student language samples. They use different tools to conduct their analyses and use this information to plan further instruction. The final step is to provide formative feedback. As MacDonald et al. comment, this stage is designed to
give students clear, progress-oriented, and actionable information about their language use—both what they’re doing well and what they can do to become more effective users of English—and to adjust instruction to meet students’ needs. (p. xix)
The four steps form a cycle. The teacher plans instruction, gathers language samples, analyzes the samples, and provides formative feedback.
Teachers who use formative feedback develop different tools to assess language for formative purposes. Three useful tools are checklists, rating scales, and rubrics. Checklists contain items that students or teachers can respond to with a simple “yes” or “no.” For example, with a checklist a student or a teacher could answer questions like “Did I use descriptive adjectives?” or “Did I write complete sentences that start with a capital letter?” Checklists are very useful when students self-assess.
A rating scale moves beyond “yes” and “no” to indicate how well something was done. For example, the teacher or a student could decide whether the writing contained many descriptive adjectives, some descriptive adjectives, or no descriptive adjectives. Similarly, the rating scale could ask if all the sentences were complete, most were complete, or some were complete.
Rubrics are more detailed than rating scales. They outline the criteria students should meet in different areas. Figure 1.9 shows a possible rubric for a short descriptive writing assignment.
Figure 1.9 Writing Rubric
Developing checklists, rating scales, and rubrics helps teachers make their expectations clear to their students, helping students know exactly what they need to do to succeed. These types of assessment can be used by teachers, by students working in pairs or small groups to assess one another’s work, or by individual students.
In many schools, student-led conferences are a type of formative self-assessment used so that students can explain their current work to their parents or guardians. Figure 1.10 shows one young student discussing his work portfolio with his mother.
Figure 1.10 Student-Parent Conference