Emerging
Expanding
Bridging
If these terms are different from the ones you use, don’t worry, as the general concept of chunking proficiency into broad stages is the same. Figure 1.1 is a quick guide to help you connect terms for proficiency levels in this book to ones you might use.
Figure 1.1 English Proficiency Levels
Note: ELD = English Language Development, ELPA21 = English Language Proficiency Assessment for the 21st Century, ELPS = Texas English Language Proficiency Standards, and TELPAS = Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System. WIDA is the name of the organization formerly known as World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment.
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Language Assets:
The term English learner refers to English proficiency level only. It doesn’t tell us anything about how many other languages a student speaks, understands, reads, or writes. Some ELs are bilingual. Other ELs are trilingual! Some ELs are academically proficient at grade level in their primary language. Some ELs are experts at translating on the spot, a complex and creative skill. Some ELs have oral fluency in another language but don’t have academic literacy in that language as they have only attended school in English.
In an ideal world, schools help every student be fluent and literate in multiple languages. I certainly wish my local K–8 school provided my own monolingual sons the opportunity to build literacy in multiple languages. I grew up monolingual with a deep desire to be able to communicate in Spanish. U.S. schools didn’t help me realize this vision, but thankfully I had the opportunity to immerse myself in Spanish-speaking communities in the United States and to live and work in both Mexico and Guatemala long enough to think, dream, and express in two languages. I am grateful I lived and worked a year in China, long enough to learn basic communication in Mandarin Chinese—and to experience what it is like to be an outsider to the dominant culture, illiterate in the dominant language of my environment. I became multilingual to expand my world, connect to people with different backgrounds, and see beyond the norms of my home community. Imagine if every child had the opportunity to build such global competency in school!
Research shows that effective bilingual programs are among the most powerful ways to ensure ELs thrive with academic English and rigorous core assessment in English (Thomas & Collier, 2002). Bilingual programs that are systematically and strategically structured to reflect the best practices in the field do not slow English literacy or language learning at all. On the contrary, they accelerate it.
Even if you, like most U.S. teachers, teach ELs in an English-only context and only speak English, you can still build on your EL students’ language assets. In Chapter 2 and throughout this guide, you’ll find strategies to value and build on students’ primary language(s) in your everyday teaching.
Every Student Is Unique
Every classroom population is unique. Every school population is unique. When we communicate with broad labels like “EL,” our classrooms include a wide range of students:
Students who speak English as their only language (EO)
Students enrolled in Gifted and Talented Education (GATE)
Students with individualized education programs (IEPs), enrolled in a resource specialist program (RSP), or receiving special education (SPED)
Students who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch (students from low-income households)
Students whose families move across state and national borders for work (Migrant Education Program participants)
When we look beyond labels to get more personal, our classrooms include a wide range of unique personalities, interests, experiences, strengths, and needs. Students often fit the criteria for more than one acronym (e.g., EL and GATE) and defy the definition of each broad category in their own unique ways.
What About My Students Who Aren’t ELs?
This is a great question most core teachers ask when we talk about EL instruction. It’s important because most core classrooms include both ELs and non-ELs.
A common assumption is that to use EL-specific strategies we need to work with ELs in a separate group and get the rest of the students to do something on their own. That’s one approach but not the one I emphasize here. In this book, I emphasize teaching the entire class to the high-level expectations of your content and literacy standards and then personalizing instruction based on the unique strengths and needs you identify as students engage in your lessons.
It is not productive to assume that one strategy must be used for all ELs and not for other students. Collaborative conversations, for example, benefit everyone every day. Linguistic scaffolds, such as linguistic frames (aka sentence frames), can benefit some ELs and hinder others. It all depends on the task and the students. The key to effective teaching of ELs (and all students) is engaging students in a productive challenge, observing them, and then designing or refining teaching to meet their needs.
You will notice that even though this book emphasizes ELs, many of the specific scaffolds and strategies will be valuable for helping all students grow their skills with academic literacy and communication:
Students not yet at grade-level expectations in literacy
Students new to making and justifying academic claims
Students who are silent in class or dominate conversations
Students who use informal language in academic communication
Students needing more precise word choice or sentence variety
Students who benefit from peer conversations to build background, deepen understandings, and build proficiency articulating complex ideas
It is likely that every student in your classroom will benefit from strategies and scaffolds in this book. It is also likely that when you pay close attention to your goals and your students, you notice that ELs and non-ELs may need the same lesson or support. Other times you notice that some ELs need specific attention in one area that other ELs don’t need. What support is needed will always change based on the goal, the students, and what they have just learned.
This is why I don’t answer the question “What about my students who aren’t ELs?” with a specific instructional recipe. Instead, I honor your professionalism as a teacher to reflect continuously on the following questions: What are my goals? What can my students understand and do related to my goals? What instruction and supports will I provide to ensure student success? This flip-to guide helps you engage in this continuous process of reflective teaching to ensure all students, including all ELs, thrive.
Teaching Beyond the “EL” Label
Categories such as “English learner” help us group similar needs together and also are often very limiting. When we overgeneralize what students need based on the categories we assign to them, we typically end up teaching in the dark. By “teaching in the dark,” I mean we make an assumption and teach to the assumption, not to the students.