Teachers who work with English as a Second Language learners will find ESL/ESOL/ELL/EFL reading/writing skill-building children's books, stories, activities, ideas, strategies to help PreK-3, 4-8, and 9-12 students learn to read.

A bilingual site for families and educators of English language learners

Assessment and English Language Learners

Assessing English Language Learners

Welcome to Colorín Colorado, the leading website for teachers and parents of English Language Learners! Here you'll find lots of articles, resources, and ideas to support ELLs at school and at home.

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Assessment and English Language Learners

This month we focus on assessment and English Language Learners. While we don't have state — or district — specific information on assessment, we offer some tips and resources to help you navigate your way through ELL assessment! More assessment resources for parents will follow throughout the month.

These include:

ELL Assessment Webcast

Colorín Colorado's Assessment of English Language Learners webcast includes recommended readings, suggested discussion questions, sample assessment tools and a PowerPoint presentation highlighting the main points of the discussion with Dr. Lorraine Valdez Pierce.

ELL Starter Kit for Educators: Tools for Monitoring Language Skills

Inside the ELL Starter Kit for Educators, you'll find the following downloadable monitoring forms, which you can feel free to print and share:

  • Overall Language Performance
  • Oral Communication Skills
  • Reading Skills
  • Fluency Skills: Expressive Reading
  • Use of Comprehension Strategies

For Parents: An Introduction to Standardized Testing

These articles explain basic features of standardized tests, suggest questions parents might ask their child's teacher about testing, offer ways that parents can help their child prepare for testing, and provide a number of ideas for encouraging learning throughout the year.

Testing: A Brief Introduction

Parents' Guide to Standardized Testing

Parent Tips: How to Help Your Child Prepare for Standardized Tests

Highlights

Asian Pacific Heritage Month

Going Home, Coming Home

Colorín Colorado celebrates Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! Check out our Asian Pacific American booklist, as well as this author interview with Janet Wong from Reading Rockets.

Book of the Month
Baseball Saved Us
By Ken Mochizuki

Baseball Saved Us

During World War II, Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps. Isolated and bored, baseball became a life and soul-saving pastime which successfully brought very different people together. Darkly hued illustrations evoke the difficulty of the time, based on the author's family story.

Special Feature: Mother's Day
Tortillas and Lullabies/Tortillas y cancioncitas
By Lynn Reiser

Tortillas and Lullabies/Tortillas y cancioncitas

A young girl describes the way that generations of women in her family passed down their routines and traditions, from making tortillas to picking flowers. The vivid illustrations evoke Central American folk art and complement the graceful text presented in Spanish and English.

This month's features

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the Assessment of English Language Learners

As controversial as the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) law has been, one positive outcome is that ELL student achievement is included specifically in the law, and educational leaders are focusing their efforts on meeting the needs of students who are learning English as a second language. For families of ELLs, NCLB includes provisions for family involvement and communication in a language they understand, especially in regard to informing parents of the kind of ELL support their child will receive.

Writing a Winning Essay

As part of assessments and/or high school graduation requirements in many states, students must pass a writing test. For ELL students, the writing test often poses one of the biggest challenges in testing and in meeting graduation requirements. In this month's Bright Ideas article, we offer a strategy for overcoming those obstacles and writing a strong five-paragraph essay. The article outlines the process from start to finish, starting with helping students develop a deeper understanding of writing test requirements to planning, organizing, and editing the essay's final draft.

Don't miss

From National Geographic: High-Low Materials for Achieving Content Literacy

National Geographic School Publishing

National Geographic's School Publishing Division has created a number of dynamic resources with ELLs and struggling readers in mind. These include science/social studies leveled readers (available in English and Spanish) and age-appropriate classroom magazines.

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