[MOSAIC] comments on NCLB----low test scores--LONG

[Katduhay at aol.com]

Hi Olga,
I feel your frustrations as I have them too.
I loop 2nd-3rd grade in a school in Hawaii that has the largest ELL 
population. This year I'm teaching 2nd and I've only 3 native English speakers.   The 
rest of my classes comprises students whose L1 is Marshallese, Chuukese, 
Filipino (Tagalog and Ilokano), Samoan, Tongan, and Laotian. Because of NCLB's 
punitive measures, we're deemed a "failing" school although everyday I see my eager 
students make approximations towards reading and writing in English. My 
little Marshallese boy beamed with pride this past week because he was able to say 
the ch digraph (the language distance between Micronesian and English is so 
far apart that many of them have great difficulty articulating the consonants).  
 But this, in the eyes of federal law, is not considered "student 
achievement."   Your question regarding how do we bring a child whose second language is 
English (L2) on par with a child   whose first language is English (L1) was 
our point of contention when we saw our state assessment test.   It's written in 
English with complex sentence structure, some questions having multiple 
choice answers each 2 lines long (that even befuddled us teachers), no visuals or 
realia to accompany the text, etc.....all this flies in the face of years of 
research on how to effectively teach English language learners.   And yes how 
generous that the NCLB gives our non-English proficient (NEPs) and 
limited-English proficient (LEPs) students 2 years to acclimate before they're "thrown" 
into our school's count, but this too flies in the face of ELL research that it 
takes anywhere from 4-7 years for a child to be English proficient because of 
all the factors affecting second language acquisition (motivation, L1 
development, language distance, access, age, learning style, etc).   I always found it 
ironic that the Feds are telling us to make sure we adopt "empirical, research 
based" practices when the principles on which NCLB is founded and the one 
sole assessment we are required to administer isn't "research based" itself.   
The state assessment we give is itself invalid because of its bias towards our 
linguistically and culturally diverse students.   To expect my new student from 
Chuuk who speaks not a word of English, to attain 90% proficiency in the 
reading section of our state assessment is beyond comprehension.

But like you, I'm not an "excuses person" so we paid more attention to our 
ELL student population in the development and implementation of our 
comprehensive school reform efforts (our school adopted the America's Choice school 
design).   Because of this and the NCLB's mandate to choose research based practices 
, we've implemented Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol SIOP Institute 
- Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol.   We're responsive to this 
because it is not another "add-on" but rather a lesson planning model which allows 
us to continue our use of the reading strategies put forth in Mosaic as well 
as our Phonics Study (Pinnell & Fountas) in our Readers Workshop, while at the 
same time the SIOP lesson model makes sure that we implement the 8 components 
found effective for English language learners. In component 1 (Lesson 
Preparation) of the lesson plan we make sure to incorporate both the content 
objectives and language objectives.   I state language objectives, particularly 
predicting/visualizing/questioning/clarifying/summarizing/making 
connections/inferring/sythesizing, even in math, science, soc st, music, art, and PE so that my 
students can access the academic language found in these content areas.    I 
incorporate component 2 (Building Background) by explicitly linking these 
concepts to my Micronesian, Polynesian, and Asian students' experiences.    The 
other components of Comprehensible Input (making sure I explain academic tasks 
clearly, speaking at a slower rate with simple sentence structure, and using a 
variety of techniques such as TPR, visuals, realia, gestures, etc), Strategies, 
Interaction, Practice/Application, Lesson Delivery, and Review/Assessment are 
all incorporated in the SIOP lesson design.

What's the best thing about our SIOP professional development sessions?   It 
totally validates all the effective instruction we were already doing at our 
school before NCLB-- but now, we are all consistent across grade levels as to 
implementing sound and research-based components for our ELLs.   We just got 
our quarterly benchmark assessments (our students are tested at the end of every 
quarter leading up to the state assessment given in March) and after we 
studied our students' scores, we were content knowing that our ELL population made 
gains in reading and math, albeit small, but still it's progress in our eyes. 

kat 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
2/10/07 1:14:31 PM, ozreynolds at sbcglobal.net writes:
> 
> And I am not an excuses person but I really don't want
> to become a "practice for the test type teacher". 
> So if anyone has any suggestions-please let me know.
> It's a dilemna because there's a belief that if we
> train low socioeconomic children to do worksheets and
> practice taking tests and improve scores it translates
> into becoming good learners. 
> How do we honestly bring English Language Learners on
> par with English only speakers? 
> Can I realistically expect my ELL first graders to
> perform as well as my only EO student???
>