There are many purposes for which assessment is used for in regards to English language learners, “ Classification, program placement, monitoring of academic progress, and reclassification” are among just a few. (Syrja, 2011,1105) One of the biggest of the four is “Program Placement”. In order to place a child you must see if they need a program.
Once a parent informs a school that a the child speaks another language other than English, a “Home Language Survey” is administered. If the survey results come back that the child is anything, but proficient in the English language a “State Language Proficiency assessment” will test the level of acquisition. In other words is the the child in the Preproduction, Early production, Speech Emergence, intermediate fluency and advanced fluency. Later an administrator will establish what level there writing, reading, listening, and speaking. (Syrja,2011).
. Besides an assessment evaluating for initial placement it also is used place a child in the right ELL classroom.(also known a ESL) This assessment is as important as the first one. This is because the needs of a child are always changing. In this case the assessment is used as a monitoring tool(Syrja,2011).. Not to say that monitoring should not be conducted by a teacher because it is strongly advised that the teacher does.
After the child is placed in a class based on his or her assessment results, a teacher’s challenges begins. Lots of times a teacher does not know what the child acquisition levels are . This results in many teachers making the misconception that if a child is leveling at a high level in one domain then all there domains should be as well. Unfortunately, this misconception brings with it the ability to not under...
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... goes unseen. Many parents of ELL can bring about their own experiences and feeling about literacy and schooling.. This helps schools dramatically who do not have a ELL program or even those who do. This is because teachers can have a better understanding of what and does not work through the mouth of adult who are ELL, or LTEL use to be ELL. The parents are also a good tool because all strategies are based on research and opinion, instead parent insight takes you to the source. (Panferov, 2010).
Not only does the parent help the school, but the school can help the parents. By parents taking part in different aspects of the children learning; wither through events, meeting, or on the phone, The parent is able to learn strategies to help their child. They also can learn more about areculture and share their culture at the same time. (Panferov, S.2010)
We as educators must first develop reading skills for our ELL students so that they will get in the habit of reading and writing. We must also look at different avenues to increase their literacy skills. We must work on the strengths of our ELL students. When we work on what our ELL students already know then we can help build upon students learning from multiple languages. We can even have the ELL students share their native language with other students. This can help make learning interesting when they share their cultural background.
In pursuing my ELL endorsement, I found it to be very beneficial to interview current ELL teachers. They shared their insight and expertise in this field. I interviewed the middle school ELL teacher at my school, an upper-elementary ELL teacher and early-elementary teacher in my district. I asked twelve questions that pertained to their experience teaching ELL. These responses are valuable to future ELL teachers and general education teachers who teach ELL in their classrooms.
De Houwer, A. Two or more languages in early childhood: Some general points and practical recommendations (ERIC Digest). Washington, DC: ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics. (1999)
...ls accountable by requiring that all English learners be tested annually (“Bilingualism for Children,” 2004).
Effective partnerships between families and school emerge from a mutual trust, respect and understanding of each other’s values and goals. By maintaining such partnerships, we create a healthy environment for children to develop. All families have something unique to offer and educators need to recognize this and make the most of it by incorporating all families into the school community.
Sociocultural influences on ELL students are very strong; some families feel that their social life is a major part of their culture. The use of bilingualism is someone that is fluent in two different languages. An ELL students home language can be quite different than English. The students’ family may have no desire to speak English. This cause many learning delays because of the lack of practice. The parental and community resources for English acquisition in my area are scarce, but they did locate an amazing website for ELL families. The school district around me can improve their home and school relationship by getting the families more involved in their child’s education.
When observing and studying ELLs, there are many advantages and disadvantages in a classroom and school for these students. In the classroom, ELL students have many individual opportunities to develop their literacy, especially in small reading groups. English learners also, are pulled aside by an ESL teacher during class hours to focus on reading and writing skills of English. According to Netten, Droop, and Verhoeven (2010), reading is “an activity which benefits from practice” (414). Many of these students struggle to become literate at a young age, but the more practice they receive the better they will become when focusing on developing literacy. Also, ELL students have an advantage when learning two languages because this makes them bilingual. The goal of bilingual education is to develop
It is important to maintain children’s home language as it may help them learn and understand a second language. Barratt-Pugh (2000) discusses the benefits of bilingualism and maintaining it through early childhood settings, also mentions the concerns families have for their children maintaining two languages through schooling. Research within the article states that children who speak more than one language will have a higher level of understanding literacy content, form, genre, as well as understand the differences and translating within both languages. This demonstrates a contrast of strengths and experiences with literacy (linguist...
However, the problems inherent in the American school system are too complex to be solved purely by money. Without interested parties watching the consumption of money, resources are consumed unwisely. A new arm of the executive branch should not be formed to act as a school watchdog, at the least it seems this would unnecessarily complicate things. Instead, the solution lies in the activity of parents in the school carefully observing the condition of the building, classrooms, and teachers. Parents should be directly involved in the school and should provide the initial stimulus.Only afterwards should the govern...
...or parents to become actively involved in their child’s academics. Research supports that as a child ages parental involvement decreases, this is a vast problem that through communication, school activities, sending parent notices, and etc. could be fixed.
child’s ability to learn are used more at the expense of others. Unfortunately, despite the benefits
... with curriculum an appropriate bilingual standards. For example the native language is used for minimum 50 percent of the time and it has to be use the entire academic year. These scenarios make very challenging to satisfy the expectations of the standards measured in the Bench Mark Assessment test because traditional bilingual programs have to divide the language instruction by percentages either Spanish or English. Then the validity and reliability of Bench Mark Assessment is affected, and the data is used to track the progress of failure of the bilingual groups.
The ability to test a student’s language skills is essential to have as a teacher. Over the years, classrooms have become much more diverse with a wide variety of impairments being presented on a daily basis. Often, these disabilities contain a language impairment that appears as a side effect of the main disability. Unfortunately, assessing language is not as easy as one may think because it is not clearly defined and understood. Kuder (2008) writes that “…language is not a unitary phenomenon- it is ‘multidimensional, complex, and dynamic; it involves many interrelated processes and abilities; and it changes from situation to situation” (pg. 274). Language also develops at different times for different individuals, thus making language assessment an even harder task for test administrators to grade and evaluate. In order to further understand the language impairment that students present, teachers need to be aware of appropriate language tests that could be administered. In order to assure that the best language test is being issued to a student, several various tests exist to choose from. To test a student’s overall language capability, a comprehensive language test, such as the Comprehensive Assessment of Spoken Language (CASL) or the Oral and Written Language Scales (OWLS), could be administered. If a teacher wanted to test a specific language skill such as pragmatics, phonology, syntax, or semantics, the teacher would need to find the best test for the student’s unique situation.
parents to get involved in their child’s education. Nothing affects the academic outcome for a child as much as the involvement of a parent (Bourquin). Mom and Dad are the most influential position to shape their child’s future. Parents have a greater opportunity to make a difference, teach, model and guide their children’s learning more than anyone else (Bourquin). Involvement allows parents to communicate with teachers about their child’s learning style and characteristics.
The teacher will also make norm-referenced and criterion referenced interpretations of assessment through this website. They have graph and color-coded bands that show widely held expectations for children’s development and learning. The teacher will use this website and graph to communicate twice a year with the parents about the child’s strength, weakness or any area of