EL Happenings
Volume 4 Issue 3
Teacher Feature-SIOP Component-Interaction
Task card example: https://mrelementarymath.com/task-cards/
Rotations
Structured Tasks
Reflection
Students reflect after two rotations in an "onion ring" about today's lesson on theme. The inside and outside circles give a definition of theme and one example from today's text. Then the outside circle moves around two students, and new partners share again. Another great way to have students interact with their new learning!
Teacher Takeaway for Secondary
SIOP Feature: A Variety of Questions or Tasks That Promote Higher-Order Thinking Skills
How do you think critically? Start by asking yourself a variety of questions.....this cheat sheet may help model the who, what, where, when, why and how with older students! This visual may help our EL students ask the "right" questions to think critically and not have to spend the time thinking about what question to ask. Click on the picture to make a copy for yourself:)
Have students struggling with reading in high school? This blog post has great reminders about 4 strategies that are key to focus on with those students. Make sure we are providing models and plenty of opportunities to predict, infer, summarize, and question. What other skill can you think of that would improve comprehension for our students?
Teacher Takeaway for Elementary
SIOP Feature: Scaffolding Techniques Consistently Used, Assisting and Supporting Student Understanding
How often do we ask students to improve writing without being able to give them concrete ideas of HOW to do that? Both of the links below (you can also click on the pictures) have examples of graphic organizers that might make it easier for our students to follow the process of writing because the thinking is made visible.
Recent and Upcoming Holidays
Many countries do not celebrate Halloween. Please speak with your students about their right to participate or not. Some universal signs for not participating are: closed doors, lights off, blinds drawn, and not answering the door.
Compliance Corner
Perry Township's rigorous monitoring system includes benchmarks for expected growth in acquiring academic content knowledge twice during the academic year after quarters one and three and take appropriate steps to assist students who are not making adequate progress.
The formal process of monitoring level 5s maintains robust documentation for our EL and content teachers to monitor former English learners. This documentation must include essential data such as the student’s grades in each content area, scores on district and state assessments and standardized tests, and teacher observations of student strengths and weaknesses in each of the four language domains and each academic subject.
This monitoring system for former English learners must be in addition to general academic monitoring provided to all students, and must be conducted in collaboration with English learner and general education staff.
After the two‐year monitoring period, we must ensure:
- Former English learners who have been reclassified as fluent have full access to mainstream curricula
- Any academic deficits resulting from lack of English proficiency have been addressed and remedied
- Any recurring language needs identified through the monitoring process have been addressed and remedied
- Former English learners are meaningfully participating in the standard instructional program in a manner comparable to their native English speaking peers.
The Indiana Department of Education has a responsibility to monitor local education agencies to ensure that current and former English learners have meaningful access to grade‐ appropriate core content and language instruction. They have provided additional guidance regarding monitoring and exiting English Learners from EL programming and services in the video below. This module reviews the processes for exiting a student from the EL program, the required two-year monitoring process for students who have exited, and cases where a student could re-enter an EL Program.
Parent Liason Update
District EL Coaches
Nichole Seal
Email: nseal@perryschools.org
Twitter: @NicholeSeal2
Email: jtidd@perryschools.org
Twitter: @JJTidd