—Leslie Nabors Oláh (2008)
Why This Book?
How do I reach every child? I am driven by this question, and have been since the very first day I became a teacher decades ago. I teach because I want to make a difference. I teach because I love the “aha” moments when a student suddenly understands or excels in a new way.
No matter what I teach or who is in my class, there is always a universal truth: Students are unique. Students come to me with a wide range of interests, abilities, strengths, and challenges. They learn in different ways. No one lesson or strategy is ever the perfect solution for every child.
This is what I love about teaching. It’s also what can make me feel overwhelmed when I am the only teacher in a whole class of students trying to personalize teaching for every child. The need to differentiate teaching is real in any classroom, whether or not we have English learners (ELs) in our class.
For that reason, you will find the strategies in this book valuable for helping you reach all students.
That said, this book is about more than just good teaching. It specifically empowers you with the most effective, research-based instructional practices to help you ensure ELs thrive with rigorous academic language and literacy learning.
Helping Every Teacher Excel Teaching ELs
Three in four U.S. classrooms have at least one student who is an English learner. Even in schools with EL specialists, ELs spend the majority of their instructional day with core teachers. EL excellence with rigorous content learning requires every teacher to be an effective teacher for ELs.
In my international work as a literacy specialist, EL specialist, and professional learning leader, I see a need for what I have created in this book. It is a breakthrough guide, unlike any EL strategy book to date. Here are four reasons why:
PRACTICAL: Unlike other EL books that focus on theory, this book emphasizes daily action. The flip-to organization helps you apply research-based approaches to everyday teaching.
RIGOROUS: Unlike EL resources that water down academic expectations, this book helps you raise expectations while personalizing teaching to ensure ELs (and all students) thrive.
INTEGRATED: Unlike EL resources that emphasize EL strategies in isolation, this book helps you integrate EL strategies into core literacy routines to meet college and career readiness standards.
STRATEGIC: Unlike EL resources that prescribe strategies as the solution, this book helps you use (and lose) strategies in a reflective process of inquiry about impact.
Based on your role, you will appreciate this book for different reasons.
CORE TEACHERS: You want to find the strategies you need, when you need them. I wrote this flip-to guide to make your job easier. It doesn’t add to your plate but helps you amplify the impact of what you teach every day.
EL TEACHERS: This book helps you build academic language directly aligned to the types of listening, speaking, reading, and writing tasks that are often most challenging for ELs in core classrooms. If you co-teach and collaborate with core teachers, this book helps you get specific together about goals, where ELs are in relationship to those goals, and what specific strategies to use to ensure their success.
TEACHER LEADERS and COACHES: You want to empower your colleagues with strategies and pedagogy to raise student achievement. Use Sections I–III to build teaching capacity in strategies to value, engage, and support ELs with rigorous learning. Use Section IV as a flip-to reference to address your highest-priority literacy goals.
ADMINISTRATORS: You want to prevent long-term ELs. You want to increase student engagement, raise literacy achievement, and ensure all learners thrive with collaboration, critical thinking, and other 21st century competencies. Engage teachers in using Chapters 2–7 to build essential mindsets and strategies to engage and support ELs. Use Section IV as a go-to resource to address high-priority goals for EL achievement through rigorous expectations, active engagement, data-driven differentiation, and reflection to refine teaching for impact.
TEACHER EDUCATORS IN HIGHER EDUCATION: You want to ensure every new educator is fully prepared to thrive teaching English learners and Standard English learners. Use this book to help preservice teachers translate theories of language acquisition into classroom-based mindsets and actions. Facilitate collaborative opportunities for teacher candidates to use this resource to co-plan, co-teach, co-observe, and co-reflect on impact to build both their acumen with strategies and their self-direction as lifelong learners to always use formative data to refine teaching.
Who Are ELs?
An English learner is a student who speaks another language besides English and has yet to demonstrate full proficiency in English on local measures of English proficiency. Students classified as “EL” are as diverse and different from one another as any students in your classroom. ELs come to school with a wide range of home languages, cultures, and proficiency levels in English. Some ELs speak no English; others have high levels of oral proficiency and only need support with academic language and literacy to thrive in schools. Other terms we often use to communicate the diversity within school EL populations include the following:
Newcomer: An EL new to U.S. schooling with emerging English proficiency.
Reclassified Fluent English Proficient (R-FEP): An EL student who was reclassified to fluent based on local criteria including multiple measures such as an English proficiency exam, writing samples, standardized tests, and/or teacher discretion.
Long-Term English Learner (LTEL): A student who has been in U.S. schools for six or more years and has not been reclassified to R-FEP. Note this definition varies by region. LTELs, and students at risk of becoming LTELs, make up a significant percentage of the EL population in many regions. In California, for example, where LTEL is measured as 7+ years in California schools, 74 percent of secondary ELs are LTELs (Californians Together, 2015).
Standard English Learner (SEL): A student fluent in an English dialect with rules of grammar and syntax that are different from Standard English. African American Vernacular English, Chicano English, and Hawaiian Pidgin are three examples of primary languages that are cultural and linguistic assets for SELs in the United States.
Student With Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE): This term refers to a small percentage of the EL population who have limited or interrupted formal schooling in their native language and are below grade level in most academic skills. Reasons for limited formal schooling vary widely by students who may be refugees, migrant students, or students who have had limited opportunities for schooling in their home country due to location, poverty, or other variables.
Seal of Biliteracy Students: Many schools, districts, and states in the United States now award a Seal of Biliteracy to recognize students who have studied and attained proficiency in two or more languages by high school graduation. Both ELs and students who begin school only speaking English can strive for this accomplishment! Dual-language learners are students learning in two languages on a path toward biliteracy.
What Is English Proficiency?
English proficiency is what we call the continuum of how well a student understands and communicates in English. Imagine a color spectrum from light blue to medium blue to dark blue with every subtle shade of blue in between. Language proficiency is a similar concept, only instead of color it is a continuum of many subtle shades from no comprehension or use of the language to full academic proficiency to communicate effectively listening, speaking, reading, and