Planning for English Language Learners

Among my class assignments at my school this year is a 9th grade class that contains the students with the lowest levels of English in the grade. In fact, the class became notorious last year--their 8th grade year-- for having very undeveloped English skills, and some academic concerns across all areas of study.

Despite these claims and the class' reputation, I am looking forward to seeing what we can do this year. 9th grade is the year classes switch English Language tracks, from mostly acquisition and BICS (Basic InterCommunication Skills) English to a more academic focus or CALP (Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency) focus--no doubt, we'll have some big challenges. It is highly possible many students in this class will not be ready for the challenges of the material.

I expect to teach a unit this semester about HOME--which contains lessons about nomadic cultures, as well as home design and automation. The unit will culminate in a mini-project wherein students will design their dream home and present the home design to their classmates in a casual show and tell type of setting.

Because of the class' projected skills, I will expect to have students mostly in the following stages of Acquisition: Early Production, Speech Emergent, and Beginning Fluency. I doubt many students will actually be in the Pre-Production Acquisition stage, but may appear to be as they will not readily produce spoken or written materials for fear of being incorrect, as it is highly likely these students are aware of their language deficiencies as compared to their peers.

As the teacher, I will have to make sure I am scaffolding my language at all times and speaking in simple terms, clearly and slowly. There may emerge students with more advanced receptive skills than others, which I will strive to put in supportive roles assisting their classmates in understanding material and making applications (if it fits the student's disposition).

Let's examine the Reading lesson which describes futuristic technology people can use to automate their homes. Some objectives we have in this lesson include learning how to read and annotate, that is, make notes within the text to help us understand/demarcate what we consider important or requiring further investigation. Additionally, I hope to tie in content ideas from the reading into the Dream House mini-project at the end of the unit.

For the PreProduction learner: Reinforce vocabulary by creating picture/word matching cards. For selected vocabulary from the unit and the reading, offer a corresponding phonetic display and picture. The students then determine which pictures correspond to each word, and can practice using the phonetic display. This task can be made paperless and time-saving by using online flashcard creators such as Quizlet. The student then identifies each new word in the reading by using annotation methods, such as underlining or highlighting. The student reads silently or to himself/herself, reading aloud if comfortable.

For the Early Production learner: This student will still need vocabulary practice using flashcard activity from above. but they may be more confident in their speaking when learning the new words. A good activity may be to have them gauge their pronunciation using online tools, and paired with a PreProduction learner. They will go on to identify and annotate the text.

For the Speech Emergent learner: They will complete the vocabulary and annotation tasks. They will be asked to read sentences/chunks of text aloud that contain the target vocabulary. They will access prior knowledge by creating simple sentences from a prompt.

For the Beginning Fluency learner: They will recall equipment or terminology regarding home automation to access prior knowledge. They will create simple sentences from a prompt and share them with their group, or with the class. They will participate in the vocabulary activity, or be asked to develop their own vocabulary activity for their classmates. They will demonstrate annotation methods for the class and will be asked to expand on the topic as they are able.

Special Education Referral, International Edition

My next participant in my interviews comes from Taiwan and gives an international perspective to handling Special Education in systems outside of the United States.

Can you please introduce yourself and describe your professional involvement with education? How do you specifically interact with special education programs?

I am Josephine from Taiwan. My career as an English teacher began with 1 year teaching at Taiwan Matsu Dong Ying Junior High School. ... During my stay at Dong Ying Junior High School, I was engaged with few cases of "special kids" at school. Limited by its geographical isolation to the mainland Taiwan and comparatively small population of the school, the school failed to reach the minimum requirement of setting up a special education department. We were desperate for special education specialists to help us with some tough cases. And it turned out that teachers from other subjects had no choice but to cover for those special needs, which took away a lot of advantages of early treatments for the kids.

How do schools in Taiwan handle students with learning difficulties or other disabilities? Does the system have programs for special education? If yes, how are students identified for special education referral/recommendation?

Fortunately, Taiwanese government has been promoting the importance of special education by all means, specifically to say, for both the disabled and also gifted. The ministry of education has been holding events, seminars and teacher development workshops to improve educators' skills, ensure parental participation, provide medical assessments and medical care.

What are the signs of a struggling student?

     As a general educator, I learnt a lot from professional developments workshops and frequent connection with my co-workers on how to tell a student is probably suffering from disabilities but wasn't obvious enough to be assigned to a special class. Subtle observation is highly required on every single individuals in my class. There are some aspects to look into, for example, their learning abilities comparing to others, interaction with their classmates, test results, handwriting in their assignments, and interpersonal interaction with the teachers, etc. A decent amount of observation will help to exclude the possibilites of the fact that they are just acting out or reacting weird because of emotional unstability.

     One of my 5-year-old student has surprisingly low level of speaking ability. He talks like a 3 year-old boy. He couldn't give proper answers to simple questions and failed to focus on the person who is talking to him. When he wanted to draw people's attention, he would always talk to people with very limited sentence patterns repeatingly, like, what's the color of it? Is it red? Is it black?

     Another student in my grade 8 class seemed to suffer from emotional disorders and ADHD, he couldn't help himself from swearing nonstop for 2 hours, attacking classmates and teachers, and always bombing his father with filthy statements, which sounds just like what a normal punky self-centered teenager will do, but he is a bit too much and it doesn't really look like it's just because of hormones.

Are there alternate methods of instruction tried out before referring the student to special education? If yes, what are they?

I believe there are. But I have to admit that it's a little bit of out of my reach.

Are there any other things you would like to add about the education system in Taiwan, and how it handles students with disabilities and special needs?

Despite the overall efforts of the government, private institutions and social resources, we are encountering the shortage crisis of educators and specialists that are willing to devote themselves into special care areas. According to the ministry of education, in the year 2013, there were 258 special educators vacancies waiting to be filled in. Ridiculous ratio of special educator to disabilities is indicated as 1:38.

----------------------------------

Josephine's answers provide a good perspective into the handling of Special Education students and programs in other countries. It seems refreshing to be made familiar with Taiwan's programs for special education, as we have seen in discussions with the TN Cohort this week, not all Asian countries/societies have the same progressive ideas about serving individuals with disabilities and other barriers to education.

In addition to her personal insights, Josephine was able to direct my attention to the Ministry's Profile on Special Education, found here: Ministry of Education, Republic of China (Taiwan)

The Special Education Referral Process

Special Education in the United States has many benefits for parents and children--educator/school system interventions, which can occur at any stage in a child's development, combined with systemic support and a solid policy for developing solutions to a child's barriers to education, ensure that children in the US education system receive the best possible care and involvement throughout their school years. While not perfect--controversies attached to over-diagnoses of certain conditions in early childhood come to mind--at the core of these practices is an overarching directive of civic responsibility to publicly provide education for all children despite the presence of many barriers.

With such policy in place, it stands to reason that there is a thorough and transparent process through which a student is identified and referred for Special Education services. I had the benefit of speaking to a friend and colleague and current professional in the field who will be identified as AM.

So let's take a look at the process: how do students get referred for Special Education services? Many times, barriers to learning, particularly developmental, sensory, or motor impairments are identified quickly in the early childhood developmental stage. Older children who have already been in school for a few years are most likely to be referred by their parents for Special Education Services. Once the referral is made, a case management team usually consisting of a general and special educator, possible attendant evaluators, administrator, parent, and in some cases where age appropriate, the child/student themselves completes an evaluation stage, wherein a child's eligibility for Special Education Services is determined.

It is very important at this stage that the child's symptoms of a disability or learning barrier/condition be shown to tangibly and adversely affect the child's learning. If this determination is made, the team meets again to develop an IEP (Individualized Education Program). After an IEP is developed, it is the team's responsibility to implement the plan and put modifications and/or accommodations in place to help the student succeed in their education. IEP teams have regular meetings to tracks the progress, and are reviewed/updated at least once annually. IEP meetings can take place at any time, especially if the parent requests one.

Through my exploration of the topic of Personalized Education and its role in Special Education, to the Special Education Referral Process, the functional advantage for the Special Education student to be given a personalized approach to meeting their learning objectives is clear. Both Educators that spoke highly emphasized the importance of parental involvement in all stages of developing intervention strategies, being active in determining IEP goals, learning environment modifications/accommodations, and getting connected with extra services.

But how are Special Educators supported in their works with students? AM states administrative directives for Special Education have differed for her depending on the location in which she's been teaching:

"The rhetoric is always around “closing the gap.” ... In New York, there was a huge emphasis placed on test scores. Special educations students had to pass the same regents exams at the end of high school if they wanted a diploma. Otherwise they were given an “IEP diploma” which pretty much meant they couldn’t go on to any higher ed and limited job options. We definitely pushed our sped kids to test well.

In WI, I’m finding that the directives for special ed are more lax [sic] when it comes to academic performance. A student with an IEP will get a high school diploma if they attend school until graduation, regardless of grades or performance. When we look at standardized test scores here, special ed scores are looked at as a data point but my principal doesn’t pressure me to meet outrageous growth goals. However, [the School District] is in the process of redefining how they manage student behaviors. We talk a lot about how minority students, especially those with IEPs, are suspended more frequently than their peers. [School District] also pushes for full inclusion, meaning students with profound autism and/or an emotional/behavioral disturbance are placed in general education settings ... In summary, [School District] places more of an emphasis on inclusion and managing behaviors. "

Taking this into account, administrative directives for special education can play a huge part in how a Special Educator might approach her job. You might even argue that administrative directives are  the "objective zero" of a possible personalized learning approach, inasmuch as they have already "personalized," in a sense, their district or institution's Special Education priorities.

From there, the customization of education continues with a child's IEP and the implementation of what are known as SMART-- Specific, Measurable, Appropriate, Relevant, and Time-Bound-- goals.
AM provides an example of a goal she has written for an IEP: "...with support from his teacher, G will learn and apply math problem solving strategies in order to solve whole number, mixed number and fractional math problems using the four operations with 80% accuracy." This goal (applied to this student's plan in the area of Math) asks for measurable progress in specific areas that are appropriate for the student, relevant to the student's specific troubles at school (math scores), and can be time-bound in terms of the greater IEP's time frame for achieving objective such as these--perhaps in a 3-month period, an academic quarter, or semester.

AM remarks that the implementation and achievement of IEP goals is easier to obtain when general and special educators work together to develop the student's learning and coping mechanisms.

"Co-teaching works really great when it is done well. Ideally the gen. ed teacher is the content specialist and will determine what needs to be taught and the sped [sic] teacher is the learning specialist and will work on different ways to convey the information. This works well for me in the Math class that I co-teach, for example. I’m not an expert on the subject but I am good at figuring out different projects or methods for students who learn differently to use to grasp the same concept."

We can see the specialty in the profession emerge at this point, as the educator will further personalize a child's education experience by pinpointing the most successful methods for the student to process, store, retain and produce information related to subject curriculum.

And personalization of learning still doesn't quite stop there, at least when taken on a case basis. When asked to recount an example of what she would consider a "success story" in her particular category of education specialty, AM says:

"Honestly I prefer to focus on small victories when working in special education. Things like a student finishing their classwork independently or being proud of an essay they completed really make my day. I helped a student write an essay about a passion of his and we showed it to his mom at an IEP meeting. He was so proud and that was awesome. I feel like a lot of special education is about consistent support and positive reinforcement. "

General outcomes and success can be achieved and celebrated and can still remain valuable milestones in a person's education or career--but the cases and situations specific to your success and learning, in any role or at any stage, is perhaps the more meaningful outcome we're searching for in striving to achieve a personalized approach to education.

Finally, how does the process look to a general education teacher? My next post will examine general education approaches to classroom interventions, and the special education process.