[Amy Kerr]

I would also like to know what other schools do.

We currently have a referral process where the students need to have been learning English at school for at least 1 year before we’re able to refer a child for learning support services, to allow time to settle into our school and to gain access to more of the language. However, sometimes there is an obvious need for learning support before that time.
We also have to prove that we have done several interventions before a referral process, but what our interventions are would look very different from teacher to teacher.
Every week, there is a rotation of ‘kid chats’ on a Monday after school, where the homeroom, EAL, learning support teacher, counselor and admin come together for 30 minutes to discuss a child who is in the learning support system. This is to keep everyone on the same page with strategies that work/don’t work, updates on any interventions, and often includes a pre-meeting before we meet altogether with parents. Notes are always taken and kept on PowerSchool for these meetings. However, due to the number of students that are in the system, we often don’t have time to meet altogether more than twice a year. We keep up-to-date through daily corridor chats and our shares anecdotal notes sytems.

[expired-member]

Hi Amy! Thanks for the reply! This is all helpful knowledge.

Our Primary Levels:

We divide our EAL students into 4 levels. The last level is the level of students that need support, but often learning support students are there as well. It is hard to distinguish.

Level 4 student support:

– I (EAL Specialist) attend the planning meetings for the three year groups that I support (year 4 – 6). We do not give support to the younger year groups for EAL (reception to Year 3 – for similar reasons to yours as letting them settle, but also because those younger years to receive significant scaffolding from their teachers). In those planning meetings, I offer differentiation strategies and materials for the teachers to use. (it is up to them to use it)

– I do small group parallel teaching 1 – 3 times a week with the teacher of a class, depending on class needs

_ Students attend a weekly home room boost (10 – 15 minutes) where I focus on pre-teaching words. Although now I am considering turning those to doing Quill targeted activities and upskilling teachers to pre-teach instead.

– Level 4 students meet with me 1 time a week 1:1 for a quick conferencing session where they do a subject journal activity at home and we review it together.

These are the current assessments that we do, but as we get rid of the Oxford test, there is no assessment that assesses listening?

We also will not have a standard test that carries from primary to secondary to track long term growth.

What are your thoughts on this?

[expired-member]

My school is looking for a diagnostic tool for English as an Additional
Language (EAL) learners.

1. The test being Australian/American/British does not matter as we use Australian tests FIRST to monitor students who are not proficient before we run EAL specialist teacher administered tests

2. The test should inform what concepts need to be targeted in EAL interventions.

3. The test should help us differentiate students who are ELL vs. students with special learning needs that are not ELL (dysleia, ADHD, etc.)

What We’ve tried:

• Oxford English Learners
• Writing Samples
• Quill – Language/Grammar

[Celina Mathews]

Hi, Sarah.

We currently use WIDA as our primary assessment tool to gauge support levels. It provides us with data on all 4 language domains. The WIDA Framework also has WIDA Can Do’s which frame students language proficiency in a positive light. We can use these to identify appropriate (at-level) tasks to provide opportunities of growth within their ZPD. We can also look to the next level of the Can Do’s to scaffold a task so that we can build students up into the next level. It does take some serious diving in, and co-planning to bring about the differentiation on this level. WIDA also has the English Language Development standards that can help us integrate language standards in unit plans within various content areas. It helps in creating a unit/lesson goal which brings language learning to the table during co-planning.

We also use MAP Reading, MAP Language Usage, and report card data to identify common trends – this also allows us to triangulate our data. We bring everything to the table during a data review session with the whole EAL team. As we also co-teach, we have anecdotal data from our own classroom experiences. At our data reviews, we review students in our EAL program one by one and make shared decisions on placement within the program, candidates to exit the program, and referral to the Learning Support (LS) team if we have concern that language learning is not the sole challenge for the learner. For example, if a student is starting to plateau, we can discuss reasons why this might be happening. Or, if we have identified concerns with writing, specifically letter order, we can bring our learning support team into the conversation. Based on collaboration with the LS team, parent conferring and/or external assessments might be next steps. This component is dependent on the concern, evidence, recommendations from our learning support team, and collaboration on how we as a team can support the learner.

[expired-member]

Thanks for all the information! This is helpful.

How long does it take for students to take the WIDA test typically?

Is this for primary or secondary?

Does your school also do additional tests in the mainstream course?

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by  expired-member.

[Amy Kerr]

Hi,

We have used WIDA for years but this year we have moved away from it and we are trialling The Bell Foundation. We think the Bell is more holistic in it’s approach and provides us with continuous feedback throughout the year. WIDA still has some great resources, so we’re still utilizing some aspects.

I like the tiered system in the document you posted, Sarah. I’m curious about the use of grades to determine support. What are the grades in Reading/Writing/Listening based on? Is this for primary school?

We don’t grade students as some will have different outputs in different genres of writing and in different school disciplines depending on their interest and motivation, so we use a very flexible model based on need at the time. However, this does mean our form of supportive can be more subjective at times, which is a problem for consistency.

Amy