ESL Program Equity Audit

Today, Holly Niemi shares her ideas on reflecting to prepare for the upcoming school year.

Summer is the perfect time for reflection.  This ESL Program Equity Audit is a great tool to guide that reflection in preparation for the coming school year.  I came across this meaningful exercise at a professional development I attended this past spring.  It came from the text by Alfred and Niño (2011) entitled Leading Academic Achievement for English Language Learners:  A Guide for Principals. My ESL colleagues and I found it a facile and enlightening way to view our ESL program and its future direction. The audit is a one-page document that considers six program areas:  role of ESL teacher, instructional materials & curriculum, professional development, assessment, ESL parent outreach, and teacher evaluation.  This is a wonderful starting point to gauge the access and rigor of an ESL program in light of the demands of the Common Core State Standards.  Additionally, the audit was a means to opening communication and collaborating between both ESL teachers and administrators.  As a group of ESL teachers, we completed the audit, and then later shared it with our school administration.    This audit could be used at both macro and micro levels: it allows for the consideration of the overall effectiveness of a district-wide ESL program or it can be completed at the school or grade team levels.   Overall, the audit allows for educators and administrators to prioritize their ESL program’s needs and begin taking action in the focus areas in order to maximize ELLs’ equitable access to the Common Core.

Download the Equity Audit Table here.

Top Ten Ways for ELLs to Beat Summer Backslide

Holly Niemi shares how she beats the summer backslide.

The downside of summer vacation is backslide.  Summer learning loss is an issue for many learners, especially English language learners. A variety of summer programs may focus on remediation, acceleration or enrichment, all of which will help ELLs maintain and improve the language domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing.

ESL Summer School may meet the language learning needs of ELLs with localized instruction. ESL Grants and Title III monies may help schools fund ELLs with this opportunity.

Summer Activity Camps may be offered through local boys & girls clubs or religious organizations. These camps may provide ELLs the opportunity to learn an instrument, play sports, or visit local attractions, all while interacting with native speakers. Depending on the organization, many of these camps provide financial assistance or reduced for those who qualify.

Job Shadow programs are offered by some businesses, Junior Achievement Program and county programs. This may help secondary ELLs maintain their language proficiency, while venturing into the business world and learning about potential future careers.

Summer Academic Camps may be offered through local colleges and universities. These camps focus on math, science and language arts. Often times, they are organized through the institute of higher learning’s teacher training programs.

Library Youth Programs offer a variety of weekly programs for ELLs, ranging from story time to crafts and games.

Phone Number & E-mail Exchanges on the last day of school will provide ELLs with contact information for their classmates. This way they can call or write their peers and perhaps even plan a time to get tougher in person.

Summer Field Trips are a great way to maintain contact with ELLs. They have a chance to reconnect with the teacher, as well as classmates. This can even be an opportunity to engage parents and families.

Television Programs in English may help ELLs maintain their listening skills, as well as reading skills when the closed-caption is activated. Teachers could recommend a variety of shows with the channel and time for ELLs.

On-line ESL resources may help ELLs practice their listening, speaking, reading, and writing from a computer. Here is a link to 50 resources that may prove useful to ELLs over the summer.

ESL Class Websites will enable the ESL teacher with the ability to post various informative pieces and ELLs to connect with other ELLs over the summer.  Posts could include reading material, articles, as well as English practice website links, as well as local community events that may interest students.

Feedback and Reflection

Holly Niemi offers ideas on how ELLs contribute to feedback and reflection at the end of the school year.

The end of the school year upon us.  It is important to take a moment to reflect on the variety of assignments, activities, and assessments completed over the course of the 2013-2014 school year.   Now is a great time to consider ESL class successes and areas of improvement, while they are fresh in mind.  Feedback and reflection from the ESL teacher’s point of view is critical, but it is essential to consider those impacted the most by instruction, the ELLs.  The feedback and reflection ELLs can provide about an ESL teacher’s instruction can be invaluable.  Their insight can help an ESL teacher improve and refine future teaching and learning.   Our high school requires each teacher distribute and collect a class evaluation survey for each student, including all levels of ELLs.  In order to do this with ELLs, my class evaluation was extremely visual by design, in order to maximize valid and reliable responses from ELLs of varying levels of English proficiency, ranging from level 1 to level 5 ELLs.   A sample of my ESL class evaluation is below.

The above ESL class evaluation took ELLs approximately 10 minutes to finish during class and was completely anonymous.  The advantage of an in-class survey is the high response rate and 100% student feedback.  Although, the downside may be that ELLs will not be as honest, but this can be reduced by having a guest teacher administer the survey, so the teacher of record is not present. It allowed students to provide feedback to quantitative questions consisting of a visual Likert scale response, ranging from a sad to happy face, as well as a mix of free-response qualitative questions at the end of the survey.   Questions 1-10 allow the teacher to calculate quantitative results and questions 11-13 provide the teacher with qualitative student data.  Combined, this survey affords the teacher feedback and reflection to set teaching goals and expectations for the coming school year.  Be prepared for both positive and negative feedback.  In any case, look for patterns and trends when identifying course strengths and weaknesses.

Overall, the ELLs’ opinion of the class can help inform future teaching and learning to benefit both the ESL teacher and ESL students.

Making Graduation Momentous

Holly Niemi on making graduation momentous

Many of my ELLs are some of the first in their family to graduate from high school.  They are proud of their accomplishments, as are their families, but they are not as familiar with American graduation traditions.  The month of June is filled with many seniors’ open houses and graduation parties, but this is not the case for my ELLs.  I want them to have a graduation to remember, so as an ESL department, we host an annual “Senior Showcase” that celebrates, and is a tribute to, our graduating seniors.  The ESL teachers and ESL underclassmen plan the graduation celebration.  Underclassmen ELLs divide celebration duties: making invitations, compiling a guest list, selecting music, preparing gifts, making a video featuring our graduates, and a video highlighting our school year, as well as booking an event room in the school, planning the menu and decorating. 

Invitations & Gifts

Our seniors are the guests of honor, but other guests include current ELLs, monitored ELLs, and exited ELLs, some American students who collaborated with us throughout the year, as well as administrators and teachers.  Each person receives a hand-delivered invitation made by our ELLs.  On the day of the celebration, our ESL seniors come to the front of the room when their names are announced during their part of the video to receive gifts.   We used PTA funds to purchase each senior a journal that every underclassmen ELL signed and wrote a personal congratulatory message, as well as a CD containing a copy the ESL Senior Showcase video and annual ESL photo highlights. 

Photo provided by Holly Niemi

Celebration Entertainment & Festivities

We book a large event room in the school.  We take one period to set up, one period for the celebration, and one period to clean up.   We decorate each table with a tablecloth and flower arrangement, borrowed from the cafeteria.  As the ELLs enter the building, they deliver their food, which is labeled and set out.  ELLs and their parents graciously donate enough food to serve 100+ guests. 

Photo provided by Holly Niemi

 As the students enjoy a variety of ethnic cuisine, we play a video compilation of senior interviews.  Each senior’s country, flag and short farewell speech is set to music.  The end of the video highlights our field trips, excursions, and various activities from the past school year.  A short clip is provided below.  

This is truly one of the highlights of the year for our ESL program.  It gives our ESL seniors a chance to be recognized and our underclassmen ELLs a chance to show appreciation.

Photo provided by Holly Niemi

Components of Cross-Cultural Competencies in Action: Part 2

In this second of a two-part series, Holly Niemi shares how her school celebrates cultural diversity.

An earlier blog entry entitled Part 1:  An Introduction of Cross-CulturalCompetencies provided readers an introduction of the four cross-cultural competencies, including awareness, knowledge, skills, action and advocacy.  Now, Part 2 takes the concepts a step further and puts them into practice.  Here are a variety of different initiatives and programs to increase cross-cultural competencies.  While reading, be cognizant of which level of cross-cultural competencies each practice represents.

Cultural pride on display

First, our school showcased ELLs’ cultural pride in a prominent area of the school. Our display case highlighted ethnic clothing, jewelry, and food, as well as photographs of cultural celebrations and traditions of our ELLs' native countries.  Additionally, a picture of the showcase and an article explaining of its contents were posted on the school blog. (This is an example of Knowledge).

Student collaboration

Second, we created, developed, and implemented an ESL and foreign language collaboration during National Foreign Language Week that aimed to celebrate and strengthen cultural diversity in our school. ELLs shared their unique perspectives and vast world knowledge as they taught small groups of foreign language students cultural dances to music from their native countries, then spoke on a panel about their culture, beliefs, heritage, perspectives, and experiences. (This is an example of Skills).

Student collaboration

Furthermore, the foreign language students participated in classroom activities in order to build prior knowledge before our cultural dance lesson and panel discussion.  The pre-activities included an empathy building simulation, as well as a Venn diagram exercise comparing and contrasting immigrants and refugees.  (This is an example of Awareness and Knowledge).  Additionally, after the program, some foreign language students volunteered as student tutors in the ESL classroom, where as others took a more active role of reaching out to ELLs in their content area classes and around the school.  (This is an example of Action & Advocacy).

Third, we planned a collaborative field trip between our ELLs and gifted learners. ESL plans an annual field trip that is always to a new destination, this year’s trip was to a local history museum. In order to maximize ELLs' time at the museum, ELLs were assigned to groups with a gifted learner serving as the group leader and museum tour guide. This helped ensure that ELLs found their way around the new environment in the allotted amount of time and completed their scavenger hunt. Most of the gifted learners had been to the museum before and those that had not were fluent in English so that they were able to read the exhibit descriptions to ELLs in simplified English.  (This is an example of Skills and Action & Advocacy).

World Affairs Council

Next, the World Affairs Council, a local non-profit organization in our area, presented to our ELLs and 10^th grade World Cultures classes on the topic of   “Understanding Contemporary World Religions.”   The ESL department organized this event in order to promote a deeper understanding of key contemporary international issues.  This collaboration connected our ELLs and over 200 students in the World Cultures classes in panel discussions. (This is an example of Awareness, Knowledge, and Skills).

Understanding World Religions

Last, to extend the “Understanding Contemporary World Religions” program, the World Cultures classes visited the ESL classrooms to explore world religions from the perspective of our ELLs. ELLs shared about their religious beliefs and customs.  World Cultures students traveled from station-to-station to complete their religious “passports” on Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Multi-denominations.  ELLs prepared brief presentations and stations for the World Cultures classes. The project allowed ELLs to interact with native speakers in a leadership role while increasing their English language proficiency, as well as allowed the World Cultures students the opportunity to gain a first-person perspective of contemporary world religions. (This is an example of Knowledge and Skills).

Overall, these initiatives aimed at promoting diversity and inclusive practices that will expand our students’ experiences and encourage cross-cultural awareness and highlighted cross-cultural competencies.
All photos provided by Holly Niemi.

An Introduction of Cross-Cultural Competencies: Part 1

In this first of a two-part series, Holly Niemi shares how she increased student and staff cross-cultural competencies in her school.

Photo provided by Holly Niemi

With the growing diversity in public schools, it is imperative that teachers and students develop and increase their cross-cultural awareness.  Increasing and managing cross-cultural interactions can be a challenge for any school, but by building on the components of cross-cultural competencies, this process can be readily developed.  Increasing the students’ and staffs’ cross-cultural competencies will enable them to more effectively interact with people of different cultures, most importantly and directly English language learner (ELL) populations. 

One professional goal I set for myself this year was to increase the students’ and staffs' cross-cultural competencies in our high school. To begin with, I explored and expanded my understanding of the concept of cross-cultural competencies.  After some research and reading, I came to the conclusion that the components of cross-cultural competencies are four –fold: awareness, knowledge, skills, action and advocacy.  Each component builds on the next and becomes progressively more complex.  The first level is awareness, which is gaining an understanding of one’s self, one’s socialization, stereotypes, beliefs and cultural norms.  The second level is knowledge, which is learning about others whose experiences and values are different from one’s own.  The third level is skills, which is gaining experience in cross-cultural interactions.  Lastly, action and advocacy is being able to make changes beyond individual relationships that create a lasting impact on society.  Combined, these four components result in a deeper understanding of different cultures and world views.

In my past experience, I have seen a variety of activities, programs, and initiatives geared toward awareness and knowledge, but not building and continuing to skills, action and advocacy.  Therefore, my professional goal was to implement change at the skills, action and advocacy levels to increase our school's cross-cultural competencies.  Look for Part 2:  Components of Cross-Cultural Competencies in Action to see how this theoretical concept can be put into practice for increasing schools’ cross-cultural competencies.

Holly Niemi Shares How Her Students Are Stars...Video Stars

Let Video Star kick start you into the last marking period of the 2013-2014 school year.  This app is a free and easy way to enhance any lesson.

I’ve included two different videos* as examples of Video Star’s capabilities.  The one video shows a montage of various ESL classes’ Video Star projects and the other video is one completed Video Star project in its entirety, both created by Levels 1 and 2 ELLs.  Video Star is a great way to present material visually to music.  I have used it as a culminating extension project to complement the end of the unit assessments to Edge Fundamentals.  The objective of the video project was to give students the opportunity to respond orally and in writing to the unit’s essential question.

Here is an overview of my experience using Video Star.  First, each class nominated songs that supported the unit’s theme.  For example, one unit’s essential question was entitled “What does it take to survive?”

Students suggested songs like Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Queen’s “We Are the Champions.”  After reviewing audio clips of the nominated songs, each class voted to choose which song would accompany their video.  Next, I printed the lyrics to the song for us to analyze together in class.  Then, students brainstormed how we would visually interpret and conceptualize these lyrics into a music video that was connected to the multiple texts we read throughout the unit.  After that, we organized and plotted all the ideas on the whiteboard to create a loose script to follow and the students signed up for various video performance roles.

The next day, it was time to shoot the videos as a class with my iPad.  Some students were so excited with this new app, they created their own videos with their iPhones. With the lyrics on the Promethean board, we shot each clip verse by verse and scene by scene until the song was complete. The next day, each class participated in a video share and watched all the Video Star videos.  While watching the videos, they had the task of answering the unit’s essential question in writing that we later discussed in a Socratic seminar.

In addition to supporting the curriculum and integrating technology, this lesson was both rejuvenating and motivating.  I found the benefits of Video Star to support the common core insofar as analyzing and interpreting meaning across genres, connecting meaning to multiple texts, as well as responding to the essential question, collaborating with others, and integrating new technology.

Day 1 (5 minutes): Students nominate songs that support the unit’s theme.
Day 2 (45 minutes): Students vote on which song will be used in the Video Star production.
Students analyze the meaning of the song lyrics and look for connections to the unit’s texts and essential question.
Students brainstorm video sequence ideas.
Students sign up for video performance roles.
Day 3 (45 minutes): Shoot the video.
Day 4 (45 minutes): Students share Video Star videos in class, respond to the essential question, and discuss their answers in a Socratic seminar.

*It is important to note that I have pixilated, darkened, and blurred the videos on purpose in order to mask the identity of students.

WIDA offers this blog post as a resource for educators.  It is not intended as an endorsement or recommendation.