Nancy Cloud

Considerations when choosing text for ELLs

The most important things to remember when working with ELLs is that certainly you have to take into account their age or their grade level, but you also have to take into account their proficiency level, and as you go up the grades, the climb gets very steep for English language learners. They have to try to catch up with their age mates and their grade mates. And if they start at a low proficiency level, that’s a really steep climb.

So it does help also to consider their literacy in their native language and what kind of platform they’re standing on to go into literacy in English. And finally, it’s always worthwhile to use text sets with English language learners where they’re reading on theme so that they can get a strong grounding in a particular theme with rich vocabulary and background knowledge.

So, irrespective of the grade level, it’s really good to do text on a theme, consider proficiency, and consider literacy in the native language so that you know your starting place. But it’s also very helpful to use culturally responsive text because then they can really make sense of what’s going on in the text, and that aids all of the skills and strategies that you’re trying to teach them because the text is making sense to them in terms of the actions of the characters, the settings, the plots, and it feels familiar.

And that gives them confidence and courage going into the reading of English. [pause] So I think those are like really important things to consider, irrespective of the age of the learner or irrespective of the grade of the learner.

Why it's important to place ELLs in the appropriate grade level

One thing that can happen when you are looking at learners is you might worry, “Well, maybe they’re not ready for this grade level or maybe they’re not ready to work with their age mates.” And so a consideration that teachers have to have is to really place students in the appropriate grade level, it is a requirement of the ELL regulations that they be placed with their age mates and then the work begins at the teacher level to find the text that can work for the learner.

Certainly they can learn any topic that you put in front of them. Certainly they want to be with their age mates, they want to feel that they’re with an appropriate grade level group. And then we want to adapt the curriculum for their proficiency level.

And that’s why proficiency is the most important aspect to take a look at. And we can have a range of books on the same theme that are at different reading levels, and we have many tools now on the internet and other places where they vary the Lexile for us. We don’t even have to work to make it happen. So I think it’s really important to consider the social aspect of schooling, make sure that learners feel comfortable with the group that we’re placing them with, and also it can create problems as you go up the grades.

If you place them in a very low grade level early on, how do you make up for that later? So let’s say I take a fifth-grader and I put them with fourth or third-graders, what’s that going to be like later when they’re in the tenth grade but they’re two years older than all of the students that they’re placed with? This creates all kinds of social problems and so there’s absolutely no reason to do it. We can make the adjustment while placing them in the appropriate grade.

Reading instruction for beginner ELLs

For the entering or emerging student or in some states they’re referred to as beginner, we certainly want to use predictable or patterned text. And again, we want to use text on a theme. So as they learn the vocabulary that is associated with that theme and they continue reading books, the books make more and more sense to them because there’s many more words that now they know.

So I want to start with that predictable and pattern text. I want to have all cueing systems on. I want to make sure that there’s plentiful visuals. I want to make sure that they can decode the regularly decodable words. I want to make sure that there’s lots of the early sight words in the books, and there should be if I’m using patterned or predictable text.

And what I’m really working towards is to build confidence, but for English language learners, they’re trying to make sense of English. So the most important thing to them is to capture the gist of the text. And this is why it’s so helpful to do picture walks and to do read-alouds and to do shared reading and all of those tactics.

And I’m talking about any age learner who is an entering or emerging student. They need to come in the same way. And so here’s the challenge. We need to have age-appropriate material that is patterned, that is predictable, that has all the cueing systems. And I know that that material exists. So it’s really up to us to find that material.

At the secondary grades it seems to be a bit more plentiful when it comes to informational text, but I’ll start there. I’ll use the informational text. I’ll use that patterned or predictable text. I’ll use all the visual cueing systems that the text offers. Some of those texts are called photo texts because on one page there’s text and right next to it there is wonderful photographs that show everything that the text is saying.

And that allows an English language learner to compare the text to the picture, to start to make good guesses about what the words might mean, and that’s the process. If they are literate in their native language, they’re going to go rapidly through those early texts because they have a lot of skills that they’re bringing to the task.

So as the learners are older and they have more literacy skills, they’ll jump right through those emergent texts, but they have to start at the same place, patterned and predictable text, working on all the cueing systems in an integrated fashion within the text, and using texts that are all on the same theme because as they build the vocabulary in English, they’re going to expand their vocabulary. As they go across texts, they’re going to make better and better guesses, and the most important thing is they’re going to build confidence.

Reading at an intermediate level

As our English language learners move up the scale of proficiency and let’s say if you’re in a WIDA state, they become developing or if you use another labeling system, they become intermediate. This is the time we really start working intensively on strategies because they’re reading more text, so more strategies apply.

At the early stages they use picture cues, they use the pattern to help themselves, they jump at sight words, but at the developing level or the intermediate level now they’re reading more. So now we want to teach them to be very active readers, to use an array of strategies. It’s also important to have less cueing systems, try to pull away some of those cueing systems and see if they can work with just the text.

But it’s also important to teach academic vocabulary very vigorously. And here we want to use somebody’s system. So, Elfrieda Hiebert has a system called Word Zone Words, the first 4,000 words that make up the bulk of English text, especially academic text. Dee Gardner has a list called Academic Vocabulary List, another 4,000-word list.

But they have like the smaller numbers, the first 1,000 words make up like 80 to 85 percent of text. I want to be after those words, and I want to be progress monitoring to say how many of those words does my learner know because I know the more of those words they know, the less they’re struggling to get through text, the more that they’re just reading automatically and then they can concentrate on the other key words that are more thematically related.

But I want them to be reading a lot, and I want them to be applying strategies, and I want to be teaching, like widening their vocabulary because comprehension rests on the words that they recognize. And when they read text that is very dense with words they don’t know, they can’t get any comprehension. So we have to be text analyzers.

We have to look at our text and go, “Hmm. For Carlos, how many of these words will Carlos know going in?” And I can’t teach them all so I have to decide, “Well, what are the most important words to front load and then what am I going to teach Carlos to do to get around all those other words he’s going to bump into that he doesn’t know?” So, being strategic is really, really important for English language learners.

And again, reading on a theme is going to strengthen them. So I never want to read a single title on a single topic and then the next day a single title on another topic. They need to get their grounding, and they need to read across books, and reading multiple texts on a theme is something that the Common Core wants us to do. So we’re not even marching away from the kind of instruction that’s being required in today’s classrooms.

Reading at the advanced level

Often when learners, English language learners become expanding or bridging in the WIDA system or advanced in other systems that might exist around the United States and all of North America or anywhere in the world, we think they’re done. We go “Oh, I’m so happy. Look how well they’re reading.” And we think that there’s nothing left to do, but there’s still a lot left to do.

And it really rests on finding out their interests. What are they interested in reading? Because the most critical thing I can do for readers at an advanced level is encourage them to do wide reading. The more they read, the more word conscious they are while they’re reading, the more they notice words they don’t know and they try to understand them and they have vocabulary notebooks and they’re working very actively. That’s what I really want to make happen.

I also want to teach them to handle text complexity. And when they get to that level, this is the time to work on fluency, knowing where to pause in a sentence while I’m reading, how to chunk language while I’m reading so that I read effortlessly and it all makes sense. And multiple readings can help with that because the first time through maybe doesn’t go so well, but if they re-read it, they will get stronger and they will get better and they’ll learn to do the phrasing in English.

And a really important point here is that reading is not oral most of the time. Reading is a receptive skill. And so it’s very helpful to English language learners to always let them read silently before asking them to read aloud so they can get the gist, so they can get their bearings, and to teach them to re-read themselves. Don’t just read the text once, read it twice.

And then also notice in between maybe the questions that you’re being asked or the things you’re being asked to notice about this text. The first read is to get your bearing. The second read is to be able to start to dig into the text. But it’s also important for them to start to use text as a mentor text and to notice author’s craft so that they can start to use some of the techniques that they see in what they’re reading in their own writing.

So at that advanced stage we really want to connect. It’s not — we want to do it at every level, connect reading and writing, but especially at the advanced level we want to start to really push hard behind these kids and definitely, definitely expand their vocabulary because how are they going to catch up to the 5 to 40 thousand words depending on grade level that their native-speaking counterparts already know? We’ve got to be really working on rapid expansion of vocabulary.

Teaching academic vocabulary

It’s also important to teach academic vocabulary very vigorously. And here we want to use somebody’s system. So, Elfrieda Hiebert has a system called Word Zone Words, the first 4,000 words that make up the bulk of English text, especially academic text. Dee Gardner has a list called Academic Vocabulary List, another 4,000-word list.

But they have like the smaller numbers, the first 1,000 words make up like 80 to 85 percent of text. I want to be after those words, and I want to be progress monitoring to say how many of those words does my learner know because I know the more of those words they know, the less they’re struggling to get through text, the more that they’re just reading automatically and then they can concentrate on the other key words that are more thematically related.

But I want them to be reading a lot, and I want them to be applying strategies, and I want to be teaching, like widening their vocabulary because comprehension rests on the words that they recognize. And when they read text that is very dense with words they don’t know, they can’t get any comprehension. So we have to be text analyzers.

We have to look at our text and go, “Hmm. For Carlos, how many of these words will Carlos know going in?” And I can’t teach them all so I have to decide, “Well, what are the most important words to front load and then what am I going to teach Carlos to do to get around all those other words he’s going to bump into that he doesn’t know?” So, being strategic is really, really important.

How classroom teachers, ESL specialists, and reading specialists can collaborate to teach reading

The role of the classroom teacher in teaching reading and writing to English language learners is the most important role, especially in the primary grades because they have the student all day long. We want to avoid the pull-out as much as possible and keep kids in an integrated setting where they’re getting strong support from the primary service provider, which is the classroom teacher. And as you go up the grades and you’re in middle and high school, that would be their English Language Arts teacher would be primary, but if they’re working with a team approach, which I hope they would be, then all of the people on the main team need to know how to teach reading and writing to English language learners.

And this is where the other people in the other roles can really give them wonderful support in a consultative role. That doesn’t minimize the importance of the other roles. So if you are an ESL specialist, there are times that the student really does need to be with you alone.

And so I am in favor of dedicated instruction from the ESL teacher or the second-language teacher or the bilingual teacher because there are times they can’t be integrated in the classroom and get their needs met. We need to know when they can and when they can’t and make good decisions for the learner. But we do need that specialist because they have the best understanding of the needs of English language learners.

And the other providers need to really respect the role of the ESL specialist, listen carefully to the techniques that they’re offering. They are a specialist in their field. They do know what they’re talking about with teaching reading and writing to second-language learners. So everyone is, has their own specialization. It’s not to minimize anyone’s background, but a critical person in that mix is the ESL specialist because they’re really looking well at the learner, understanding all of the needs that they have.

Likewise, the reading specialist has much to offer because they probably know the text. If there’s a book room in the school, they know the texts that are in that book room, they know what’s available. They also know a range of approaches to work with students that are not making it with the first approach that’s tried.

So we really want there to be deep respect between the classroom teacher, the ESL specialist, and the reading specialist for them to really trust and respect each other’s knowledge base, to rely on one another, to reveal to one another where they feel strong and where they feel weak and what they have to offer to each other.

But I view them all as having important roles, but they also need to divide and conquer. They need to decide, “What can go on in the classroom without me there and how can I support the classroom teacher to do that work?” Then they need to say, “What can happen in the classroom with me there?” and it won’t be disruptive to instruction and it will still meet the needs of the English language learner.

And when do I need to work apart and separately with the English language learner because I have something I really need to work on, and it can’t happen in the context of the classroom. So, what would such a thing be? Well, one of the things we know really matters to English language learners is oral language development. And often it’s hard to do a lot of oral language practice in a classroom setting.

It can be hard without being distracting to other learners. Maybe there are ways to do it, and if there are, by all means keep the student in the classroom, but what if there aren’t? What if the other kids are reading in reading groups and I need to do oral language practice? Well, we need to trust each other and know that’s the best use of instructional time right now for the learner to be with the ESL teacher or the reading specialist to work on X, Y, or Z.

But we need to also understand the challenge of fragmentation. I don’t want to pull the learner out, if there is a way to do it well in the classroom on the other hand. I don’t want them languishing in the classroom when I could be doing something very valuable for them in another setting for short bursts of time.

Collaboration between classroom teachers and ESL specialists

Many times when English language learners are enrolled in a classroom, they also have access to the ESL specialist. And often we try to figure out well, what is the role of each of those people. We want to make sure that the ESL specialist is not lost in the shuffle. And now there’s many collaborative approaches that are not being implemented well where it’s hard to get the two people together to collaborate in the co-planning, the use of space, how are we going to work together in the same physical space, making good use of that space.

Each person has something very valuable to offer, and I almost view the ESL specialist as like a coach and a mentor for the classroom teacher, and this is not to minimize the knowledge of the classroom teacher, but the ESL specialist, it’s right in the label, they’ve specialized in ESL. They have very intensive knowledge of how to work with English language learners. And so the trusting relationship that needs to exist between the classroom teacher and the ESL specialist needs to be very, very strong.

Also, the ESL specialist needs to listen well to the classroom teacher to hear the kinds of things that are not going well for the English language learner in the classroom or the concerns or worries the classroom teacher is having so they can design programmatic responses that start to make a difference for the kinds of challenges that the learner is faced with in the gen ed classroom.

So I see them as partners, partners that need to work together very, very effectively but each really respecting the knowledge of the other. In the primary grades the classroom teacher knows every subject. They’re teaching every subject to the learner. And the ESL specialist, unless they’re also certified as a classroom teacher, which is the case in some states, they may know ESL very well, but maybe they need the classroom teacher to help expose them to the demands of all of the subject matter in the core curriculum of the grade level in which the ELL is enrolled.

But they really need to have time to work together, they need to have space to work together. And who gives that to them? The administrators in the district. They have to set it up well so that they can really take advantage of each other’s knowledge and skills.

Native language literacy support

Sometimes teachers want to know, “Well, can I do this work in English or should I do it in the native language?” and certainly it’s always better if I could do it in the native language because then I’m building on an oral language base that already exists. And a further benefit is many languages other than English have what’s considered shallow orthographies, meaning they’re very regular systems and the sound symbol correspondence is very regular. It operates the same way all the time. So it’s fast to go into literacy.

English couldn’t be slower. English has a very deep orthography, and we’re always wading through English and all the variations for sounds and how I might, for example, spell the sound E. I might do EE. I might EA. I might do EI. It just goes on and on. English has so many variants for each sound.

So it’s always much easier if you start in the native language, but many times we don’t have that luxury because we’re getting kids from low-incidence languages where no one in the school knows the language. We don’t have teachers readily available who could teach literacy in that language. And even there I would say it’s still worth it if I could find dual-language books and let them work back and forth between the codes.

As they learn English, they’ll make good guesses about what their native language is saying. And we also need to look at the orthography to say are they coming from an alphabetic language or are they coming from a logographic language. So, many things to consider, but overall if I could start in the native language — and I’m a secondary teacher, I taught at the middle school level — I made the same decision for ninth-graders as I would urge you to make for first-graders, that it’s always worth it if you can start in the native language because they’re ready to go. They have the oral language base.

And yet if I’m, if I have to start through English, then I want the text to really support me. I want the strongest second language instruction I can deliver with the most supportive array of text behind the learner. I want a very strong whole language approach where I’m frontloading that oral language and background knowledge and reading many books on the same theme so they can get their bearings and they can start to build fluency and confidence.

Using native language as a resource

Sometimes teachers say “Well, they’re here now, so why should I pay any attention to their primary language? I don’t speak their primary language. Why should I even consider that? They need to learn English. I need to get them into English.” But we know that the native language, and this is well borne out by the research, that the native language holds an unbelievable power on successful English learning and literacy in English.

And where students have considerable primary language developed and primary literacy, if we can measure that coming in, we can predict who’s going to jump into English quickly and who might take a little more time to get into English and through English. So when learners come and they have a lot of primary language, they have skills built in their primary language. They have strategies in their primary language.

They’re active readers. They know what reading and writing are. And in many cases in the U.S. and in North America and many other parts of the world, the language that they know as their primary language shares an alphabet with English. So they’re bringing a tremendous amount to say nothing of vocabulary, the cognates that exist between their primary language and English.

So, to turn that off and say, “Click, we’re not going to use that,” it is actually — you can’t turn it off. The student is going to bring it anyway, just as we would bring English into any language that we’re going to learn. It’s a known skillset. We’re going to try to use it if we can to jump into the other language. So, it’s a bridge. It’s a tool. I can build a lot of background knowledge through the primary language.

And it’s a confidence booster. If I know that I can read and write in my primary language, I’m going to be fearless going into English, but if I’m weak in my primary language, I could be insecure going into English and then the teacher needs to know that and understand that they’re going to need to give me more support because I never had the chance to really develop my mother tongue before jumping into English.

But it’s always important with an English language learner and it doesn’t matter high incidence, low incidence. If I could know something about their primary language when they come into my classroom, it would be so useful to me.  And I do want to mention two tools here. One is omniglot.com, which allows you to look at the orthography of all the languages of the world so that you can see what the symbol system looks like and learn is it a syllabic language, is it an alphabetic language.

Even if they’ve only been exposed to it in the environment and they have never been taught actively to read, it’s still important. Those are the symbols they saw in their world. And another one is Words Their Way with English Language Learners, which teaches me about how to bridge from the primary language over to English.

So these are not the only tools, but these are some critical tools that can really help us when working with a second-language reader to learn ourselves. We have an obligation as teachers to know our learners and to know our learners’ language and to educate ourselves. And it’s fun. It’s fun to learn about their language. And we make better guesses about why they’re doing things when we’re trying to teach them to read and write. All of a sudden their behavior starts to make sense to us because we’ve taken the time to come to know something about their primary language.

Students with limited native language literacy

We are getting a number of students who are coming to us without literacy in their native language and for very good reasons. They’re coming out of war-torn countries. They’re coming out of rural environments where access to schooling is not plentiful. And so if we are getting students who come in and they do not have primary language literacy, it’s still the same type of approach that we want to use.

And I’m going to use an old label, whole language. We need to use a whole language approach with English language learners where we’re working on listening and speaking and reading and writing and all the cueing systems in a coordinated fashion, heavy use of visuals to help them make sense and make good guesses, and doing a lot of front loading, making sure that we pre-teach the key words in the text, that we work on sight words, the early sight words, and we make them ready for the text.

But then if the text is predictable and patterned, they will pick up the pattern and they will make it through that text with relative ease. So I think it’s just exposing them to what literacy is and understanding that oral language is the base for literacy instruction. And we have to work on the oral language first and then take them into print, just as we do with young children.

But these are not young children in many cases. These are older learners, so the themes have to be appropriate. We have to be teaching them sophisticated topics, things that teens or adolescents would be interested in, but if they come pre-literate, we also have to take the same approach to getting into the literacy, making sure that the texts are highly visual, they communicate important ideas, and they’re highly predictable, and that we work between all of the language systems as we’re in a text. So, we work on the oral language as we’re working on the reading and take it into writing.

Learning about students’ prior experiences

It’s always very helpful for a teacher of an English language learner to find out something about the child’s previous schooling. In many cases it might be a young child who they know is just beginning school. But even there, we want to ask the question has the child been to preschool or not. And this varies tremendously around the world, the age that students begin school and the nature of the schooling environment in their home country.

So this is something we want to educate ourselves about. what is schooling like in the home country? At what age do kids go to school? And at what age do kids leave school? We also want to find out if this is a rural kid or an urban kid and their access to schooling in their environment.  How frequently were they able to go to school? And was there a teacher at the school most of the time, some of the time? This is where we need to have good guesses about the type of schooling environment that they might have been involved with.

We also need to know this for another reason because their parents, even if they’re a young child, that’s the type of schooling environment they were in. That’s the type of schooling environment they understand.  And so that creates expectancies as to what they think schooling will be like in the U.S. and it helps us explain some differences perhaps to the parent in terms of, “No, your child can’t leave in the eighth grade. They need to stay until the twelfth grade.”

We also need to know what subjects are studied. And again we need to know about the orthography because if it’s a shallow orthography, it was learned rapidly in the early grades, and that freed the curriculum for many other subjects to be taught.  There are places in the world where kids study architecture because there’s space in the curriculum for that because they’re already learned to read. We are very bogged down in the United States with the teaching of reading, and it cramps the curriculum. And in some cases it dominates the curriculum in very negative ways because it’s taking away other subjects that students might have enjoyed learning about.

But it’s important for us to understand those differences in the schooling environment, also about promotional policies. Are they promoted to the next grade by an exam or are they promoted just based on age? We need to understand all of that so we can interpret the records that they bring. But it’s very, very helpful to know how much schooling they had because it helps us also understand their success or their failure in the context of how much schooling they’ve had.

Why ELLs struggle with reading

When English language learners are struggling, it’s important for teachers to know where to start. And so one place they need to start is by looking at everything else before looking at the learner. That means I need to look at my teaching and make sure that the way that I’m teaching reading and writing is appropriate for second-language learners, but most importantly I need to look at the text that I’m putting in front of the learner and really know how to look at the demands that are in those texts.

When I say demands, I mean the demand of the background knowledge that’s expected by the text. Is it reasonable to expect that this student who’s coming out of Guatemala would have the knowledge that’s expected by this text? I also need to look at the demands of vocabulary. How many words is this student going to bump into that they’re not going to know?

And so sometimes the problem is not in the student, the reason that they’re struggling. It’s in the text that we’re putting in front of the student. So certainly we want to consider everything else first before considering that the problem lies in this student.

Making sure the text isn't in the way

If we have considered everything and now we are looking at the student, we need to do diagnostic teaching with really great text for ELLs where we know the text is not in the way.

What is a really great text for ELLs? A really great text for ELLs is a stage-appropriate text, a culturally responsive text, text on a theme where I can see if they get better over time as they keep reading text from the same text set, and I want to do diagnostic teaching. I want to see what makes a difference to the learner, what strategies I can offer them.

I also want to teach that first 1,000 words of vocabulary and I want to work on sight words and get a lot of those under the belt of the student. So I really want to be thinking about all of those things when I go into working with the struggling reader, but the biggest thing I’m after is confidence building. I need for that learner to have success. They have to be successful in my hands.

And so once they experience the success, they will engage more. If they struggle for a long time, I’m teaching them to avoid reading. So it’s really, really important that we have success-oriented interactions and that everyone working on reading with that student is on the same page and also that I know the status of the L1 (first language). That’s critical. Like how much is the first language developed before they come into the second because it predicts a lot.

So I really want to take baby steps early on, and then as they start to grow, I will push harder, harder, harder. But early on it’s really critical that they enjoy what they’re reading, that they feel motivated to read in English, that they have a wonderful positive experience in reading English, and also they can be listening to books. So they don’t have to be the reader.

They could be listening to books, having story enjoyment. And little by little they’re going to break the code with me. So it’s like really, really important that I use the best strategies designed for English language learners with the best texts that I can select for English language learners and make sure that as they go after text again if they haven’t had a good experience in the first go-around, that the second go-around is very success oriented. I don’t want them to stumble.

Problems will appear across languages

One of the challenges that we have in education is that we are supposed to do early identification of students with reading disabilities and reading challenges and learning disabilities and language disabilities, and we’re supposed to see those things early and do early intervention. And there’s a tension between that and feeling that all issues lie within the learner.

So we’re always living in that tension as teachers trying to decide where does the problem lie. Is the problem within the learner or is the problem with the text that I’m using, with the way I’m delivering instruction, with where I started working with this learner? So we have to be looking at everything, not just the student, and definitely we need to consider the status of the first language.

But this is where parents can really help us because they know their children, and if they express concerns about their child’s learning, we want to really listen hard. The best way to know if there is a disability within the learner is we would see it across languages. We would see it across settings. It wouldn’t just happen at school. It would also happen when they’re trying to process text other places, in clubs that they might belong to, at home with their family.

If they know how to read at any level in the native language, it would appear there as much as in English. So, we don’t want to suspect disability. We want to remember that reading in a second language is not a corrective approach; it’s a developmental approach. They’re developing for the first time reading and writing abilities in English.

So we don’t want to suspect disability, and we have no reason to believe that disability would exist at higher levels in English language learners than it does in the general population unless we know they come out of a traumatic situation in their home country, but we shouldn’t be suspecting disability and yet we’re challenged to locate it early if it does exist to make sure that we’re giving early intervention.

So the best way to work on this is diagnostic teaching and also to consider the status of the native language and to look for evidence of reading challenges across languages, across all of the languages that they know. If I’m dyslexic, it’s not just going to appear in English. It’s going to appear in Spanish or any other language that I know equally.

When I do that, I gain more confidence. When I only look through English, it’s kind of a weak way of looking, and that’s why we feel so insecure. And I think we should feel insecure. I think we should always be looking at ourselves as hard as we look at the student, and we should always be challenging ourself. That tier one intervention has to be dynamic. It has to be wonderful.

It has to be the strongest instruction we could possibly deliver, because then if kids don’t make it or they’re struggling, we can have more confidence that they need more intensive intervention.

Benchmarks for native speakers aren’t appropriate for ELLs

Right now because of response to intervention, or RTI, there’s a lot of progress monitoring going on in classrooms and especially in early grade classrooms and for a good reason. We’re trying to catch kids who might be having difficulty with reading as early as possible. However, one of the things we want to consider is are the measures that were designed for native speakers perhaps for these early benchmarking that we’re doing with learners appropriate for our English language learners?

And so I would respond to that with a resounding no because some of the measures that I see in the early grades are not appropriate for a second-language learner, and it makes sense why they’re not appropriate for a second-language learner.  Given that Spanish speakers make up a good proportion of English language learners in most of our districts and states, if you take the case of Spanish, a task like letter naming, if the learner comes in to an early grade, let’s say first or second, and they know the names of letters in Spanish, how would they know different names, the different names that we give those same letters in English? It’s inappropriate.

They have a name for the letter. It’s just not the name we’re expecting, and it’s also not important how you name the letter unless you are spelling out loud to someone to like, say, spell your name. That’s when you need a letter name. Otherwise, you never need a letter name. You just need to know how to decode it.

And another task that I find very inappropriate in the early grades for English learners is a fluency benchmark because why should a second-language reader be fluent? They’re not going to be fluent, just as anyone who’s ever studied a second language knows. And so to read fluently, that’s a later stage, a later proficiency expectation.  We can have a fluency expectation, but not until they’re intermediate or advanced.

And so what are we going to monitor, what should we monitor? Well, I think it’s appropriate to monitor sight word learning, regular phonetic decoding as it’s taught, maybe letter sound as it’s taught but not in isolation, and also comprehension is the most important thing to be monitoring and vocabulary development.

So if I have a set of vocabulary or sight words or regular phonics that I’m trying to teach, then I can monitor for the acquisition of that. Unfortunately, we have not set those benchmarks to know second language benchmarks, what would those be. And so we default to the native language benchmarks. And a real key here is to monitor who’s in intensive interventions, who gets categorized as in need of intensive intervention.

And so just using something like a fluency benchmark or letter naming, some kids are in intensive intervention because by the middle of first grade they haven’t met their benchmarks and they’re second‑language learners, yet it’s an inappropriate benchmark and they’re ending up in urgent intervention or intensive intervention in high proportions. So if you see in your district or your school a lot of ELLs in intensive intervention, it’s almost screaming at you. You probably have an inappropriate benchmark because look who it’s catching.

It’s catching this certain group, and that’s when we know there’s bias involved in the measure that we’re using. So I think it’s really, really important for reading specialists, for classroom teachers, for principals, for everyone to be on the same page as to what’s different about second-language reading so that we don’t inappropriately carry over benchmarks designed for native speakers who already have the oral language and are just adding literacy over to second-language learners who are developing all language systems: oral language, reading, and writing.

Choosing the best reading interventions for ELLs

When we’re considering interventions for English language learners, the most important thing is are they comprehensive. We have many, many discreet programs, separate phonics programs, separate sight word programs, and it’s that separateness which makes it very difficult for English language learners, the discreetness of our approach.

So if I just work on letter sound, it’s so discreet. It’s not really happening in the context of real reading. So, with English language learners we want a comprehensive intervention that is integrating all of the skill development within an approach which is focused on comprehension and enjoyment.

We need to be sure that the intervention that we’re implementing was designed for second-language learners and not for native speakers. We don’t want a native speaker approach which was just tried out with English language learners and it seems to work. We want to have assurance that the research base is really behind the approach that we’re trying.

So I think it’s really, really important when we’re doing intervention with English language learners who are struggling with reading to take a whole language approach and to really, you know, work on the skills that they need help with but within a story theme or within an informational topical theme, and then dig down in to the things that are challenging to them.

So what it requires of teachers is that we be able to design the interventions rather than buy packaged programs. In my experience, the packaged programs are — they work on one thing but not another, and it’s really important to remember that reading is an integrative act. They have to integrate all of the skills and all of the strategies. We don’t really know what’s carrying them through a text.

So we want to give them everything that might carry them through the text. And so I think we want to use programs that are very focused on building vocabulary, working on being a strategic reader, and definitely they need those bottom-up skills, but it has to be embedded within the context of thematic instruction. So, that’s what I think we’re looking for when we’re looking for interventions for English language learners.

The relationship between special education and ESL

When English language learners are struggling and we’re trying to figure out what to do to support them, sometimes a good way to start is to have the special educator collaborate with the ESL teacher, the reading specialist, and the classroom teacher. And some of the knowledge that a special educator might bring is child watching, noticing things that might be in the way of the English language learner.

I do think that they gain skillsets in that close‑up assessment of the learner and trying to tease apart what might be getting in their way, but also sometimes they have really strong backgrounds in learning style, approaches to the teaching of reading and writing, and they might know other ways in that the team has not considered. But certainly we don’t want to involve them too early imagining that there’s a disability in the learner before we’ve investigated all other possibilities.

And one thing we definitely want to avoid is seeing it as either/or. It’s either special ed or it’s ESL or I don’t think it’s ESL, I think it’s special ed. Well, when did the English language learner stop being an English language learner? They’re still an English language learner. The ELL things still apply whether they’re in special ed or whether they’re in gen ed.

So we want to make sure that whatever we offer them still has the ELL lens on it, that we’re still noticing their needs as a second language learner, but then on top of it if we can intensify other things like learning style approaches or some other diagnostic capability that the special educator brings to the situation or maybe knowledge of materials that might work with the learner, we want to integrate all of that together, but we want to make sure it’s compatible.

We don’t want to use a special ed methodology that’s incompatible with the needs of an English language learner such as just working on sound symbol correspondence for a half hour because that’s too discreet. The English language learner is needing to make sense of English always, and comprehension is always important. It should be reading, that they’re enjoying where they’re learning about something. It should be meaningful. Meaning-centered instruction, not discreet drills that they’re doing on a computer or anywhere else.

So, when we bring those two worlds together, we need to find the crossover compatible methodologies, of which there are many. So just to give an example, whole-body learning. Whole body learning or multisensory learning is something that comes straight out of special ed, and it’s very compatible with teaching a second language learner to do total physical response, to learn the oral language.

It fits very nicely and also working on the meaning of words, making sure that they really have clear meanings and not fuzzy meanings, we work on that in special ed and we work on that with English language learners. So we want to bring those two worlds together but in a very, very compatible way.

Everything that’s in special ed is not appropriate for English language learners. I have to know what the appropriate things that I can take out of special ed and they carry very nicely over to the English language learner. Likewise, there could be methodology that I know from the ESL world that isn’t being used in special ed and needs to be. So I need to make sure that everybody is informing everyone else, that we’re getting that crossover knowledge that we need, and we’re knowing what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate for a given learner.

Special education is not always the answer

Sometimes when teachers go to a team meeting and they’ve tried a lot of things in the general education classroom, they say, “Well, what would it hurt? I think they need to be in this other program because at least they’ll get something.” But the something that they might get if the special ed teacher has not worked with English language learners or is not well-informed about the needs of English language learners, the something that they’ll get might not work at all because it’s not the correct approach.

So that’s why I think RTI holds a lot of promise, but the tier one interventions have to all be things that we know have a research base for English language learners and not just jump to special ed as having all the answers, to not just place kids in programs to feel like you’ve done something.

Placement is not an intervention in and of itself. Intervention is carefully crafted for the learner no matter what setting they’re sitting in. And so what’s important is the quality of the intervention I’m offering, not who’s offering it, where it’s being offered. And so we want to make certain that we know the research base of how to teach reading and writing to second‑language learners, and we intensify that.

And if they need to be in a smaller class size so that I can intensify it, I shouldn’t need to move into special education to intensify my intervention with an English language learner. I need to consider all the conditions that might make a difference for them but stick with research-based approaches for second-language learners, making certain that I really know that research base.

Support from administrators

I view the building administrator and even district administrators as instructional leaders. And so they need to really understand the difference between teaching reading and writing to native speakers and teaching reading and writing to second‑language learners because they need to, when they observe instruction in the classroom and they evaluate instruction in the classroom, they need to know what good instruction looks like for English language learners.

The other role that they have is as a mentor to teachers and also as the — as an instructional leader to provide the kinds of administrative supports that are necessary, budgetary supports so that appropriate material can be bought for English language learners that is stage appropriate, that is level appropriate, that is grade appropriate.

And they need to provide the space for collaboration and co-teaching. They need to understand the demands. Don’t just ask people to collaborate and co‑teach and give no administrative support time to that endeavor. It needs time. It needs support. And when they evaluate teachers, they need to know what high-quality instruction looks like.

So they also need to look at their teachers in their building and know who needs professional development and coaching in their classroom because they’re not quite understanding everything that’s important when teaching reading and writing to second language learners. So they need to have the best eyes when it comes to quality instruction for English language learners.

They need to understand the research base, and they need to educate themselves. If this is not a specialty that they have but there’s a lot of English language learners in their building, well, that’s a good professional development opportunity for them as well to grow in that area, to become the specialist that the building needs so that when they do learning walks, they’re looking for the right things.