Link/Page Citation
THE WSLACO INDEPENDENT School District is located at the southerntip of Texas, only seven miles from the Mexican border, and 40 percentof its 18,000 students are English language learners.
With so many Weslaco students beginning school without any exposureto English, Superintendent Ruben Alejandro knew he had to do somethingdramatic to move the needle on achievement. To meet the needs of thesestudents, he has put together a comprehensive plan for ELLinstruction--the centerpiece of which is an early literacy program thatprovides access to an online library of digital books for the entireWeslaco community.
The initiative, called "Zero to Three Weslaco Reads," isintended to develop early literacy skills among children before theyeven enter the school system--and to encourage students to continuereading as often as possible through elementary and middle school.
"We needed to do something to build English vocabulary andcomprehension skills among our students as quickly as possible,"Alejandro said.
The challenges that Weslaco educators face aren't unique tothat district. Nationwide, nearly four and a half million studentsparticipate in ELL programs, according to the United States Departmentof Education, and this number continues to rise.
Here are three key ways that technology is improving instructionfor English language learners in Weslaco and many other K-12 districtsaround the nation.
Extending Learning
Although basic conversational fluency typically occurs in one totwo years, it often takes English language learners at least five yearsto catch up to native English speakers academically, said Jim Cummins, aUniversity of Toronto professor and ELL expert.
That's because academic language is more complex and lessaccessible than conversational language, he said: It contains manylow-frequency words that students find only in classrooms and in printedtexts, rather than in conversation with their peers.
Also, native English speakers continue to develop their proficiencywith academic English as students who are learning English are trying tocatch up. In essence, English language learners "have to runfaster," Cummins said, "because they're trying to chase amoving target."
Spending extra time developing English literacy skills during andoutside school is essential to this process, said Cummins, whor*commended that educators create more opportunities for what he calls"engaged literacy"--and technology can help by extendingstudents' learning beyond the allotted class time.
For instance, Weslaco's partnership with myON allows parentsand students to download digital books from myON's library of morethan 10,000 titles to any device for reading before, during or afterschool. About 70 percent of these titles are nonfiction, which helpsstudents learn the vocabulary they'll need to support academicdiscourse.
"We saw this as a great opportunity to help students buildtheir English literacy," Alejandro said. "We wanted to exposethem to the vocabulary they would need to be successful in school."
In Nashville, TN, nearly 14,000 students (about 15 percent of thetotal student population) are English language learners who speak morethan 130 different languages, said Kevin Stacy, ELL director forMetropolitan Nashville Public Schools. The district has outlined a $38million plan to meet their instructional needs. As in Weslaco, the planextends beyond students and out into the larger community--andtechnology plays a key role.
Metro Nashville holds frequent community nights in which it hostslanguage and literacy programs for entire families, Stacy said. Inaddition, the district uses cloud-based software such as ImagineLearning and Achieve3000 to support English literacy instruction, sostudents can access the programs from home as well as school.
Both Nashville and Weslaco have discovered that parents of Englishlanguage learners are taking advantage of online access to instructionaltools to advance their own English skills as well.
"We found that parents were reading the myON books after theirkids went to bed," Alejandro said. "Seeing parents developingtheir language skills was a big plus for us because it helps reinforcethe language for students at home."
Scaffolding Instruction
To support English language learners as they develop their languageskills, it's important for educators to scaffold their instructionacross the curriculum, Cummins said.
Technology can help teachers provide this scaffolding with handysupports that are embedded in the content, such as native languageassistance and pop-up definitions or visual demonstrations of keyvocabulary terms.
About 10 percent of the digital books within myON are available inSpanish or dual-language versions, and all titles include a built-indictionary and audio support that can be turned on or off. Students canhear the text read aloud as the words are highlighted on the screen, sothey learn to associate the written words with the sounds they arehearing, Alejandro said.
Metro Nashville is using Imagine Learning for literacy instructionas part of a station rotation and during intervention time forstruggling readers and English language learners, Stacy said. Theprogram includes a number of supports to help ELLs learn vocabulary withthe help of videos, pictures, glossaries and direct translations.
For instance, before students read leveled informational texts, keywords are clarified and defined in the student's firstlanguage--and this support is available for more than a dozen differentlanguages.
"Students coming in with low English proficiency can getinstruction on day I," Stacy said.
The district is using Achieve3000 as a resource to help olderstudents acquire more advanced literacy skills. The program is availablein four options: English immersion. Spanish immersion, dual language andEnglish with native supports.
By hovering their cursor over a word or menu item, students can seethe English or Spanish translation of the word--and as they readinformational texts, a glossary on the side of the page providesdefinitions and pronunciations for difficult vocabulary terms.
"No matter what level of proficiency they are at, students canget on and practice their reading skills," Stacy said.
Personalized Learning
Because English language learners come to school with verydifferent English competencies, technology's ability to quicklyhone in on students' skill levels and deliver precisely targetedinstruction is a huge benefit--allowing teachers to meet eachchild's needs more effectively.
The Edinburg Consolidated Independent School District in southTexas is using technology to help personalize instruction for its K-8students, which is having a "big impact" on English languagelearners in particular, said IT lab specialist Ita Pena.
Every elementary school in this 33,000-student district hasfederally funded computer labs that classes rotate through for 30minutes of daily math or literacy instruction. In kindergarten throughsecond grade, students use Waterford Early Learning software, Pena said.In grades 3-5, they use Pearson Success Maker, and in grades 6-8, theyuse iReady from Curriculum Associates.
Ail three programs contain built-in diagnostic tools to assessstudents' abilities and an adaptive instructional engine thatserves up lessons tailored to each child's specific skill level.What's more, the software's data dashboards help teachersclearly understand each child's progress, so they can intervenewith one-on-one instruction or additional support as needed.
This highly prescriptive instruction is helping English languagelearners close the gaps to their peers more quickly, Pena said.
In Weslaco, the myON digital library has students take an initialliteracy exam and surveys them about their interests --and then theplatform generates a personalized list of recommended books for eachchild, helping students choose titles at their reading level that willappeal to them. myON also tracks students' literacy growth andreading activity, helping educators group students by ability so theycan differentiate their instruction appropriately.
In Nashville, the use of Imagine Learning and Achieve3000 alsohelps teachers target their instruction more effectively.
"I'm a huge proponent of using technology for ELLinstruction," Stacy said.
"It's adaptive, so it's constantly assessing whereeach child is and what he or she needs. It's also veryengaging--and it helps teachers dial in their lessons for small-groupinstruction."
World Language Companies Target ELL Instruction
Many of the leading companies that make software for learning worldlanguages have targeted the ELL market with solutions intended to helpU.S. students who are not native English speakers enhance their Englishskills.
Cincinnati Public Schools' campuses, for example, are amongthe roughly 3,000 schools nationwide that are using Rosetta Stone'sonline English language modules for ELL instruction. And incollaboration with teachers and ELL coordinators in Hartford (CT) PublicSchools, Middlebury Interactive Languages has developed a series ofsupplemental online modules for English language learners in the middlegrades.
Bridging Communication Barriers
In Cincinnati, about 6 percent of the district's 33,000students are English language learners, but the city has seen"exponential growth" in this number over the last few years,said English as a Second Language (ESL) and Foreign Language ManagerMarie Kobayashi.
"Five years ago, we had probably half that population,"she said.
To meet the diverse needs of this student population, Ohio'sthird-largest school district has teamed up with a neighboring districton a state-funded grant project to offer Rosetta Stone's ELL andWorld Language programs to all students, staff and parents at no cost tothese users.
"Our staff need to learn how to communicate with Englishlanguage learners more effectively, and ELL families need opportunitiesto learn English so they can participate fully in their children'seducation," Kobayashi said.
Rosetta Stone's English Foundations content includes guidedlessons in a linear progression for students and others who are justbeginning to learn English. Its English Advantage content, designed formore advanced instruction, is presented as a series of flexible modulesthat teachers can customize and assign as appropriate, said Tanya Mas,Rosetta Stone's senior marketing manager for K-12 education.
Both products include instructional videos, and both use voicerecognition technology to enable students to practice their speakingskills and receive online feedback.
"The biggest challenge that students have when they arelearning a new language is the fear of speaking in front ofothers," Mas said. "Our voice recognition technology allowsstudents to practice their speaking in a comfortable environment thatremoves this fear."
The content covers all four domains of language instruction,Kobayashi said: speaking, listening, reading and writing. It also goesdeeper than what she called "survival English" to address theacademic language that students must learn to be successful.
Because the content is cloud-based, it can be accessed from anycomputer with an Internet connection--and there are apps for using thecontent on a smart phone or tablet as well.
Cincinnati is in the second year of using the content as asupplemental resource, and educators report their students are learningEnglish more rapidly, Kobayashi said. What's more, hundreds ofstaff members have accessed the world language content to forge strongerconnections with their English language learners.
"In the past, our staff have felt helpless not being able tocommunicate with families in their own language," she said."Now, we see them trying to talk with families. That'ssomething you can't measure, when you see a family come in and thelook on their faces when someone welcomes them in their ownlanguage--when they know they're in a place where the staff isdoing everything they can to make their child feel welcome."
Teaming Up for Success
Hartford Public Schools has the largest percentage of Englishlanguage learners in Connecticut, with close to 20 percent of studentslearning English as a second language.
These 3,700-plus students come from very diverse backgrounds andspeak more than 80 different languages, and they are often a verytransient student population --which creates a significant challenge forthe district, said Monica Quinones, director of ELL services.
"We wanted a solution that could help meet the needs of ourmost challenging ELLs with a curriculum that was delivered on gradelevel, and not watered down," Quinones said. "We also wantedto take a blended-learning approach that would offer content indifferent modalities, while giving students the flexibility to work attheir own pace."
District leaders turned to MIL, which developed a series ofsupplemental online modules for ELLs in grades 4-8 with input fromHartford educators. Hartford middle schools have used theseinstructional resources during their intervention blocks and inself-contained ESL classes within the pilot schools.
The curriculum aligns with themes the students already arestudying, such as habitats and environments, inventions, naturaldisasters and mythology, as well as the Common Core standards. Each unitincludes project-based activities to build students' reading,writing, speaking and listening skills.
"We wanted to ensure that students were learning bydoing," said Aline Germain-Rutherford, MIL'S chief academicofficer and a tenured linguistics professor at Middlebury College."We have tried to scaffold the activities so they can adapt tostudents at different levels."
The modules focus on helping students develop the academic Englishthey'll need to succeed in school. Research suggests that Englishlanguage learners have the most success when they see their culturalidentity affirmed and can relate their own experiences to thecurriculum--and this idea is reflected in the content as well.
As students progress through the units of study, they areaccompanied by a virtual companion who encourages them, suggestslearning strategies and offers support. Students can choose theirvirtual companion from a range of ethnically diverse characters.
MIL has made its new middle school ELL curriculum available toschool districts nationwide, and, with Hartford's help, the companyis now developing additional ELL content aimed at high school students.
An evaluation of Hartford's use of these materials, conductedby researchers at Johns Hopkins University, found a steady increase inthe English language assessment scores of participating students. Justas importantly, the attendance of English language learners is upsignificantly in the pilot schools--suggesting students are moreengaged.
"Students have appreciated the blended-learning lessons, whichthey can complete at their own pace," Quinones said. "Theyhave developed pride and confidence in their learning."
Dennis Pierce is a freelance writer who has been covering educationand technology for nearly 20 years. He can be reached at[emailprotected].
Nationwide, nearly four and a half million students participate inELL programs, according to the United States Department of Education,and this continues to rise.
Although basic conversational fluency typically occurs in one totwo years, it often takes English language learners at least five yearsto catch up to native English speakers academically.
"I'm a huge proponent of using technology for ELLinstruction. It's adaptive, so it's constanly assessing whereeach child is and what he or she needs, It's also veryengaging."--Kevin Stacy, ELL director for Metropolitan NashvillePublic Schools
----------
Please note: Illustration(s) are not available due to copyrightrestrictions.
COPYRIGHT 2016 1105 Media, Inc.
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 2016 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
