“How Can Teachers Meet Common Core Standards With ELLs?”

1 Comment

1. 

   Diane Mora, ELL Instructional Specialist on December 30, 2014 at 12:21 am

   There is something fundamentally wrong with this question. It implies that teachers are somehow at a disadvantage because of having ELLs in the classroom. Standards don’t exist for teachers to meet them, standards exist to ensure that all students receive instruction that enables students to learn content sufficient to be competent and productive citizens, to have choices about college and career, and to become empowered, life long learners.

   Shouldn’t the question be “How can teachers equitably support ELLs in showing mastery of common core standards in an English-only education environment?” To that question, I would answer:

   1) Advocate for and develop multilingual formative and summative assessments.

   2) Advocate for and provide access to appropriate bi-lingual dictionaries, thesauri, and/or electronic translation tools in every classroom.

   3) Differentiate instruction and assessments.

   4) Create rubrics to support differentiation noted in number 3, above.

   5) Keep expectations high for all students by creating a very clear model of what mastery of any given standard looks like. Knowing what mastery looks like enables a teacher to distinguish content mastery from language proficiency, and create a model from which to backward design appropriate instruction, learning tools, and assessments that focus on content mastery not language proficiency.

   Please remember, teachers are not disadvantaged by having ELLs in the classroom, but any student in a classroom is disadvantaged when that student is not given the tools needed to access content productively and meaningfully, regardless of the content standard.

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