English Language Learning

This practice guide formulates evidence-based recommendations for teaching literacy to English Language Leaners (ELLs) in the elementary grades based on the current body of studies for each area. The authors evaluated the effect sizes of interventions to measure their impact on programs and practices. The recommendations involve areas such as curriculum selection, sensible assessments for monitoring progress, and reasonable expectations for student achievement and growth, which would be helpful for curriculum directors at the time they make decisions about policy related to literacy instruction for ELLs in elementary grades.

This study investigated the utility of brief experimental analysis as a means to identify the most effective instructional components to increase reading performance for five English language learners. Using a multielement design, five reading treatments were administered one at a time with increasing language support. The researchers found that there were individual differences in response and all students responded to at least one treatment. Further, an extended analysis of alternating baseline conditions with the hypothesized effective treatment showed that selected interventions increased reading rates for four of the five participants over time.

Coaching is now widely understood to enhance performance beyond the athletic field, court, or track. Coaches in the business office, the boardroom, and the classroom change behavior by observing behavior. They ask questions that prompt people to analyze their own purposes and actions, offer suggestions for improvements, and after allowing time for them to act on new insights and learning, return to ask follow-up questions: What did you do? What did you learn?

How elementary schools focus their time and energies, and what resources they have for doing it, can make a powerful difference in the academic achievement of English learner (EL) students from low-income backgrounds, according to findings from this new analysis of data by EdSource.