What is the best way to help our ELs? What can we do to support our English Learners to make progress? These are the typical questions that I hear from campuses and teachers. One of the first things that I ask teachers, coaches, and administrators to do is to describe or tell me about their English Learners. Many times I have been given weird looks and am asked to clarify my question. Once we talk about the group of students and look into their history, we tend to figure out that there are multiple groups of English Learners. Furthermore, each group has different type of challenges and diverse needs. Newcomers might be new to the US, but have had consistent and high quality schooling in their home country. Newcomers might come from a country where they only had sporadic schooling. Long-term English Learners (L-TELLs) might be Beginners or Intermediates in English Language proficiency, but sound like their grade level peers in social settings. L-TELLs could have been part of a bilingual program or been part of an ESL pull-out program. Refugees could be dealing with emotional distress and anxiety that causes their affective filter to go up. Students with Limited of Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE/SLIFE) are probably not used to being in school every day, every week, and for an entire school year. There are numerous effective instructional strategies that can be used to support our ELs, but they are most effective when we know the story of our ELs.
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