ELL News Headlines

In this commentary piece, Claudia Weisburd, executive director of the Center for Afterschool Education at Foundations Inc., discusses the learning opportunities that after-school programs provide ELLs. She writes, "After-school programs are well placed to partner with schools to address these challenges…With its informal environment, learner-centered and project-based approaches, homework time, lower student-to-staff ratios, and greater interaction with parents, after-school offers richly different language-learning opportunities that complement ELL teaching and learning during the school day."

Abbe Harman dangled her purple flippers just above the sea-foam water as dozens of string rays, a three-flippered turtle, and a blind zebra shark glided beneath her. After some adjusting, she pulled down her white-rimmed face mask and plopped in to the 260,000 gallon tank at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, kicking gently toward a concrete observation deck where four classes of third graders were waiting. On deck above some of the ELL students didn't realize the diver tucked into the black and blue wet suit was one of their teachers. By the time they've made it to the basement of the aquarium, however, each pupil had excitedly figured it out.

Oregon's first organization dedicated to helping Latino students graduate from high school, learn English, and become community leaders decided this week to close its doors because it didn't have enough money to support its programs. The Oregon Council for Hispanic Advancement conducted some of the first research about the presence and needs of the fast-growing Latino population in Oregon. The council served more than 1,000 Latino students throughout the state last year.

Scottish teachers are having to cope with unprecedented numbers of pupils who have difficulty speaking English following a sharp increase in immigrants and asylum seekers. The Scottish Government is facing urgent calls to provide more funding to train language support specialists after new figures showed the number of pupils not fluent in English rose by 62.5% between 2006 and 2007. The most significant numbers of new immigrants come from Poland, with Polish now the second most commonly spoken language after English in 16 local authority areas. Punjabi, Urdu, Cantonese, and Arabic are also common.

A federal appeals panel ruled Friday that English-language instruction law is so flawed that it "may well retard or reverse whatever progress has been" made in the instruction of more than 134,000 Arizona children who are struggling to learn English. However, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said two changes in the measure could bring Arizona's long-running dispute over English-language instruction to a conclusion.

Ines Mevs has a soft spot for struggling students — especially those with a language barrier. So it comes as no surprise that she is an English teacher for ELL students. Mevs, a teacher in Florida's Boca Raton Community High School, has gone a step further, though, and recently wrote a workbook to help her students develop literary skills. Her book is titled <i>Think Write Book: A Sentence Combining Workbook for ELL Students</i>, and guides students through grammar, usage, and the conventions of writing. Mevs has also published a teacher edition of the book featuring the research base for her instruction strategies.

When Juana Francisco started kindergarten at Lonsdale Elementary, she spoke only a few words of English. She was one of two or three Latinos at her school. Last August, half of the school's kindergartners were from Guatemalan or Mexican families, according to the principal. Tennessee has one of the fastest-growing Hispanic or Latino populations in the nation, right behind Arkansas, North Carolina and Georgia, and the number of international students in Knox County Schools has doubled in the past decade, to roughly 2,000. While all international students aren't all Latino, they account for about 60 percent of those in English as a Second Language classes in the district.

A traveling photo exhibit called "<em>Querer Es Poder</em>: 50 Examples" is being promoted to help motivate more students to pursue a higher education as part of California State University at Fullerton's 50th anniversary celebration. <em>Querer es poder</em>, which is Spanish for "if you desire it, you can achieve," is the message being sent out by the exhibit, which features 50 successful Latinos who have graduated from CSUF.

Representatives from Colorado's Mesa County Valley School District are sharing their strategies for a challenge facing many of the state's school districts: How to graduate more of its Hispanic students. A program providing extra support in the form of a liaison to the students most at risk of dropping out of school, as well as their families, was implemented four years ago in the district, and now serves as a model for other districts around the state.

Here's a new and significant research finding that won't surprise many of No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) school-based critics: high-stakes, test-based accountability — exactly what the law promotes — has a direct, negative impact on graduation rates. That result, from a new study out of Rice University in Houston and the University of Texas-Austin, flies in the face of NCLB's aim: to improve schools and create more equitable educational success for minorities. Indeed, each year 135,000 students leave Texas public high schools ahead of graduation, and a disproportionate number are African American, Latino, and English as a Second Language (ESL) learners.