Succeeding with English Language Learners: The Reading Journey of 23 Kindergarten ELLs (ELD Levels 1-3)
Aketa Narang Kapur and Erika Barros
LATF Young Achievers
| English Language Learners represent the fastest growing subgroup in the state of Massachusetts. They also represent the lowest performing. Teachers, school administrators, parents, and students want this to change. Come and experience the journey of 23 successful kindergarten ELLs at Young Achievers Math and Science Pilot. You will watch and learn how more than 70% of these little scholars learned to read at grade level. Discover how they went from being the lowest performing kindergarteners to the fastest growing readers and learn how they will stay reading at grade level in subsequent years. You won”t want to miss this session!
The Young Achievers (YA) community felt excitement, fear, curiosity, and PANIC when they learned of this significant change. Teachers were excited to broaden the racial and ethnic composition of the student body. They were scared because so much had been publicized about the academic struggles of ELLs. The YA community was curious to meet our new students and to learn from them. And the panic? How would we get our ELLs to learn English well??? The two subsequent years were turbulent to say the least. The ELLs at Young Achievers were the lowest performing group in the building in reading, writing, and math in all grade levels. Something needed to change and the big question that kept arising was, “How do we instruct English Language Learners?” |
 Aketa Narang Kapur has 17 years of ESL teaching experience. Her classroom teaching experience has been in Dual Language Immersion and Sheltered English Immersion (K1-5), both of which have been cornerstones of her career. Aketa earned both a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology, Linguistics, and Spanish and a Master”s in Education with high distinction at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Aketa currently serves as the Language Acquisition Team Facilitator and ELL Coach at the Young Achievers Math and Science Pilot School. For the past five years, Aketa has mentored new elementary ESL and SEI teachers, and has presented and modeled best ESL practices for educators working in the Boston Public Schools. In her spare time Aketa enjoys hugging, squeezing, and kissing her two and four year olds!
Erika Barros has been teaching in the primary grades within BPS for the past 6 years both as a para and a classroom teacher. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in elementary education at the University of Puerto Rico. For the past year Erika has been instructing English Language Learners as the Kindergarten S.E.I. teacher at Young Achievers. Erika has implemented a variety of ELL interventions with her kindergarteners leading them to extraordinary academic success. Erika is committed to constructing dynamic lessons and ESL centers that enrich the language opportunities of the students in her class and at her school. Erika has collaborated with other SEI K-2 teachers at Young Achievers to improve the school”s SIOP instruction and ESL best practices. In her spare time Erika enjoys spending time with her family. |
The Genesis of Key SEI Centers
In the summer of 2013, SEI teachers conducted a detailed analysis of ELL data. Our ELL reading data was low. K and 1st grade ELL students exited the school year not reading even close to grade level standards. Seventy five percent of our ELLs (ELD 3-5) entered second grade at level D or below (kindergarten/early first grade). Over fifty percent of the ELLs (ELD levels 3-5) in grades 3-5 scored low NI or Warning on the MCAS.
We asked ourselves: Where do we start to change this data? Where do we begin to tackle such a serious issue? What grade should be the focus? The answer was to start right at the beginning. Kindergarten.Our rationale was to start our ELLs on the right track during their first year in school. We hypothesized that if we provided our kindergartners specific and targeted language-based centers then reading would improve. Improving reading in K would then set the stage for greater achievement in subsequent grades. Moreover, we felt confident that if we continued to build upon these key SEI language based centers in the first, second, and the third grades, the cumulative effect would only be positive in later grades.
Now that we figured out where we were going to begin, we needed to strategize the “what” and the “how.” What strategies and centers would increase language proficiency? What do these key SEI centers look like? Feel like? Sound like? How would we implement them?
The Centers
Deciding on the key SEI centers in the fall of 2013 involved exploring and understanding the performance definitions of the different ELD levels in the WIDA Frameworks (World-class Instructional Design and Assessment). Knowing what students needed to do in reading, writing, listening, and speaking to progress to the next ELD level helped us understand differentiation. In order to help all ELLs, especially our ELD 1 and 2 students, we learned we had to provide them different scaffolds so that they could perform on similar tasks to our ELD 3-5 students. For example, if we wanted our ELD 1 and 2 students to understand and explain the life cycle of a butterfly using simple sentences and targeted vocabulary then we needed to provide practice, structure, and the right scaffolds for them to achieve that goal. In a similar vein, if we wanted an ELD Level 3-5 student to understand and explain the life cycle of a butterfly but using complex sentences and targeted vocabulary then we would also need to provide practice, and structure. But the scaffolds would differ.
The other key piece of information we wanted to keep in mind was that language is assessed across content areas such as math, social studies, and science and across the language domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. If we wanted our ELLs to succeed in later grades, language centers during ESL not only had to be differentiated but also had to encompass these content areas and language domains.
With a lot of thought, the Young Achievers SEI team began to implement key SEI language based centers during the fall of 2013. The centers were embedded in a social studies or science content-based theme. Although all SEI classrooms utilized some form of these centers, the K2 classroom was chosen as the focus for the LAT to monitor for the next three years.
K2 SEI
After deciding that we would be focusing on K2 SEI, Erika Barros (classroom teacher) and I met to explore the following questions before implementation:
- What is the focus of each SEI language based center?
- What do we expect each student to do in the center and why?
- What are students” short term and long-term goals in that center?
- What scaffolds do we provide for different ELD levels? How are we going to assess and provide feedback to each student?
- How will we keep track of our data and share with the other teachers?
- How are we going to teach in the center and how is center time going to be structured in ESL?
- What are our expected outcomes for the whole class?
During this journey we are hoping to share with everyone the answers to all the questions above through our reflections, videos, and presentation. We will all learn what worked and what did not work for our students. Moreover, we will explore what we still need to improve today to succeed with English Language Learners. Stay tuned!
BLOG POST #2
By Aketa Narang Kapur and Erika Barros
Literacy Centers are typically at the heart of most kindergarten classrooms. This is no different for SEI classrooms, but what we discovered in our work is that careful thought must be put into the purpose and design of centers for English Language Learners. In our last reflection piece we narrated the genesis of key SEI centers that have led the kindergarten ELLs (ELD 1-3) at the Young Achievers School to success. In this piece, we would like to provide you with an explanation of three key centers that we feel have had the greatest impact on our students:
- The Writing Center,
- Modified Guided Reading and Extension Activity Center, and
- The Phonics/Word Study Center.
Through our explanations and the short video below we hope to highlight our learning of how the purpose and design of these key centers for English Language Learners are different from centers for Non-ELLs.
Succeeding with ELLs-K Journey from Aketa on Vimeo.
Guiding Questions
- What did students do in this SEI center and why?
- What were the students’ short-term and long-term goals in that center?
- What scaffolds did we provide for different ELD levels?
- How did we assess and provide feedback to students?
|
The Writing Center |
Student Expectations |
Scaffolds |
Feedback and Assessment |
|
The writing center”s focus is to help ELLs first construct simple sentences (first goal) followed by expanding those simple sentences into complex sentences with more detail (second long term goal). We chose this particular focus because our ELLs were struggling with reading, understanding, and writing complex sentences in later grades. We wanted to be deliberate in introducing the concept of a sentence starting in kindergarten, helping students understand that a sentence has nouns, verbs, adjectives, and prepositional phrases. The noun part tells us “who” and the verb part tells us the “what” is happening, etc.
|
In phase I of the writing center we expected students to use the sentence frame, “I see a (the)__________” to construct a simple sentence. We built students” concept of a “noun” or “object.” We expected students to successfully copy the sentence frame and insert a noun from a word bank with pictures related to the content-based theme of the ESL block or pictures of words that reinforced the phonics lesson of the week. In phase II students were still building the concept of a noun. But now we changed the sentence frame by changing the subject. Instead of “I”, we used children”s names in the class. So Josey sees a ________. Ed sees the___________. In Phase III students learned to distinguish between nouns and action words or verbs. The sentence frame changed by giving students choices of different action words: I ________a banana. I eat a banana. I see a banana. I like a banana. I have a banana. In phase IV students learned that a sentence needs nouns and verbs to make sense. It must have a subject or noun part (who) and an action part (what is happening). A sentence tells us who and what. Currently our students are in Phase IV. See video of students in centers working on writing complete sentences. In phase V students will learn how to add on to their sentences through conjunctions, adjectives, and prepositional phrases. |
Newcomers-ELD 1: For students who have never been to school and have very limited English comprehension we provided the following scaffolds:
|
Students received feedback on their writing when they were in the writing center from one of the adults in the room. When giving feedback, students were asked to read their sentences. We asked students to identify the noun (parts) and action words. Each feedback session asked students to correct CPS or Capitals, Periods, and Spaces. |
|
Modified Guided Reading with Extension Activity |
Student Expectations |
Scaffolds |
Feedback and Assessment |
|
Modified Guided Reading (MGR) is a key component of a SEI classroom. The key components of MGR include reviewing key vocabulary, confusing words, and/ or grammatical structures within the text. A modeled reading of the text by the teacher and oral comprehension questions follow. Students then read the text aloud (chorally) with the teacher and then independently. Students should do an extension activity following their MGR lesson. The short-term goal of the extension activity is to reinforce reading fluency, newly learned vocabulary, grammatical structures, and comprehension. The long-term goal is for students to internalize these language skills so they become better independent readers. |
-During extension activities students were asked to re-read their book to themselves, with a partner, or to an adult. ELLs need more repetition of their reading to build fluency and comprehension. -Students were required tocomplete the extension activity. Activities varied from graphic organizers (what can owls do and what can”t they do), to written (drawing) responses to comprehension questions, or sequencing of key events using pictures from their book. The extension activities allowed ELLs the time to consolidate their learning. Even though teachers can be eager to start a new task, it was important for our students to complete work! |
Newcomer-ELD 1: Students still re-read their guided reading book. But they were given simpler sentence frames, sentence strips, or pics to finish their activity.
Newcomer-ELD 1: Used sentence strips or pics from their books to finish chart or graphic organizers. ELD 1.5-3: Students used their books to find evidence and write the sentences in their chart. See below for examples. |
Each week, students were given running records to help monitor progress. Monthly reading goals were set for each student. Progress in reading levels indicated that our MGR instruction was working. |
|
Phonics/Word Study |
Student Expectations |
Scaffolds |
Feedback and Assessment |
|
No kindergarten classroom would be complete without phonics or word study instruction. SEI classrooms are no exception, BUT the design of phonics instruction is slightly different. We already knew phonics instruction HAD to be contextualized for our ELLs. Meaning had to accompany the learning of sound letter correspondences as well as sight word mastery. Not only did we use pictures to help students in phonics and word study instruction, but songs and videos were also incorporated. See video of class reviewing sight words with catchy song. Our ELL students also needed A LOT more repetition in phonics/word study instruction. In their centers they often had to complete many activities requiring them to read their sight words (or letter sounds), build them using magnetic letters, and then write them. |
In their centers students were required to:
|
The scaffolds:
|
Weekly assessment of sights words and phonics. Students were told what they needed to improve and parents were sent home a note letting them know what material had been mastered and what needed reinforcement. For Ex: If we expected 100% mastery of the first 20 K high frequency words by end of November we told students and parents, then updated them weekly on students” progress. Our long term goal for all of our students was 100% mastery of ALL K words and beginning of 1st by end of the school year. |
For More Reading:
http://responsiveteacher.wikispaces.com/file/view/The%20Equals.pdf/44501333/The%20Equals.pdf
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/19757
BLOG POST #3
By Aketa Narang Kapur and Erika Barros
It is now June. End of year assessments have been administered. You may be wondering, how did our ELL kindergartners perform? Before we share our data, let”s recap our last two posts.
In our very first reflection piece we explained the urgency of starting our work in Kindergarten to help ELLs succeed:
In the summer of 2013, SEI teachers conducted a detailed analysis of ELL data. Our ELL reading data was low. K and 1st grade ELL students exited the school year not reading even close to grade level standards. Seventy five percent of our ELLs (ELD 3-5) entered second grade at levels D/E or below (kindergarten/early first grade). Over fifty percent of the ELLs (ELD levels 3-5) in grades 3-5 scored low NI or Warning on the MCAS. We asked ourselves where do we start to change this data? Where do we begin to tackle such a serious issue? What grade should be the focus? The answer was to start right at the beginning. Kindergarten.
In our second post we discussed how Key SEI centers helped our Kindergartners progress.
|
Writing Center |
Modified Guided Reading (MGR) |
Contextualized Phonics |
|
The writing center focus was to help ELLs first construct simple sentences (first goal) followed by expanding those simple sentences into complex sentences with more detail (second long term goal). |
The areas of focus in MGR included: 1) Reviewing key vocabulary, confusing words, and or grammatical structures within the text. 2) A modeled reading of the text by the teacher followed by a choral reading by students 3) Teacher modeling of how to answer comprehension questions. 4) Students answering comprehension questions and doing an extension activity. |
Meaning accompanied the learning of sound letter correspondences as well as sight word mastery. Not only did we use pictures to help students in phonics and word study instruction, but songs and videos. |
In this last post we would like to share the impact of our work and begin to discuss what other factors contributed to our success and where we were not successful.
First, our fabulous news!!!!
This year our K SEI classroom is exiting 70% of ELD 1-3 students at Independent Level C (Kindergarten benchmark) and 30% at level B. Last year only 30% of kindergarten SEI students ELD 1-3 exited reading at level C!
Other Factors that Contributed to this Success
There were other factors that were essential in helping our students move. The biggest factor was teacher commitment and the belief that ELLs can succeed, along with communicating that with parents. Please see the video below of kindergarten teacher Erika Barros talking about parent engagement.
Family Engagement from Aketa on Vimeo.
Another factor was constant progress monitoring with data. We will talk more about this at our presentation with our data artifacts, but here is Erika summarizing her data methods.
Data Inquiry from Aketa on Vimeo.
Areas to Improve
In teaching and learning there cannot be success without failure. Failure sometimes is a catalyst for greater change and greater learning. Although our kindergartners made fabulous progress in the area of reading, our data also indicates that they are still struggling with higher order thinking tasks and questions. On our teacher created higher order thinking assessment for ELLs (based on ANET) we noticed only 35% of students were able to successfully answer 2 out of 3 higher order thinking questions. We discovered that we have to put in just as much work developing higher order thinking skills as building concrete literacy skills. And this work has to begin in Kindergarten as we enter the age of the Common Core and WIDA.
We are now in the planning stages of phase II of key SEI centers that include a particular focus on building higher order thinking skills.
Our presentation
When we received this grant from the BTU we were ecstatic. The excitement was embedded in this desire to share what is working with our English Language Learners at Young Achievers. We are excited to continue this sharing at our presentation on June 17th, 2014 at the BTU where we will review our Key SEI centers and data monitoring process through interactive activities. We will also highlight the learning trajectory of two very different students to illuminate how differentiation is possible within the Key SEI centers. More importantly we will answer any lingering questions! Thank you for being a part of our learning journey!!!!
Related Information
-
On Thursday, October 6th, educators, students, parents and community allies mobilized in over 200 cities to stand up…
-
Add your photos December of the December 16th Visibility Action below! We are asking BTU members…
