Art Un ticle I.1 ited Sta In the ates News - Woodring College of ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

$Framework for Math - Western Washington University$

When the papers were read out loud, it became clear that students were using Spanishsound/symbol relationships to spell English words. While sounding out words is often useful inSpanish, it is a much less reliable strategy in English. Students would benefit from explicitinstruction in the similarities and differences between Spanish and English sound systems andtheir orthographic representations. In addition, more emphasis should be placed on theconceptual basis for English spelling patterns, as well as memorization of high frequency sightwords. Attention to how morphemes are combined to make different grammatical categories inEnglish is clearly needed (e.g., root word plus ing). Understanding the conceptual basis of words(e.g., root words, word families) would be more appropriate than memorizing lists of words. Thesemantic content of the students’ answers indicate that students need instruction to increaselexical variety, vocabulary specificity, and understanding of word forms. A study ofSpanish/English cognates would be one useful strategy, as would study of synonyms and theuse of a thesaurus.Analysis of students’ text comprehension patterns indicated that students were able to read at aninferential level with an appropriately leveled text, graphic support, and scaffold test structure.Students were able to use text information to take a variety of viewpoints and make plausibleextensions of text information and connect it to personal experience. The use of open-endedquestions gave specific information on what the students were getting from the text. In additionto revealing the students’ strengths, the test answers also indicated that students need more workon text analysis skills, such as identifying text passages that support ideas, building from recallof detail to inferences, and developing metacognitive skills for processing texts (e.g., usinggraphic organizers to track multiple characters, and comprehension monitoring).While the influence of Spanish was an obvious and expected feature of transition students’language, it is important to look beyond this developmental process in language acquisition tothe instruction students receive in both languages. Anderson and Roit (1996) point out thatinstructional practices can exacerbate the difficulties second language readers experience inprocessing text. They suggest that typical instruction for language minority students emphasizeshigh frequency nouns, verbs, and adjectives but ignores vocabulary that “carries much of thelogic of the language, such as negatives, conjunctions, prepositions and other abstract words” (p.298) that would enable students to process texts more accurately. Another difficulty bilingualstudents may experience once they are able to decode English text is the task of distinguishingimportant from unimportant text segments. Students struggling with text comprehension mayfocus on noticeable or dramatic portions of a text while failing to understand the relevance ofparticular text portions to the whole. This difficulty may also be instructionally induced when, inthe desire to encourage discussion, teachers allow students to engagein lengthy discussions about trivial aspects of a text.DiscussionThe development of the Transitional Performance Based Assessment was an effort on the part ofone school district to adjust its assessment practices to the local context. While the projectaffected only 89 students out of the nearly 600 who take the PBA at fifth grade, the issues raisedare pertinent to the assessment of all students, particularly those from linguistic and culturalbackgrounds.The creation of a specific test for transition students provided a great deal of useful information.Findings from the research project concluded that the TPBA showed that students whotraditionally performed poorly on district-wide assessments could successfully engage with© 2008 Dr. Catherine CollierAll Rights Reserved176
English texts and demonstrate progress toward the district’s language arts standards when theassessment took into account their unique language and literacy profiles and planned for theirlanguage development needs. The transition assessment, with its emphasis on assistedperformance, enabled the students to demonstrate their ability to comprehend English text. Eventhose students whose overall performance was low in the holistic scoring demonstrated ability togo beyond concrete responses on certain items.This detailed analysis of student performance showed that while difficulties with languageprocessing clearly affected performance, the specific difficulties with vocabulary, syntax,spelling, and text comprehension did not preclude engagement with text or larger ideas. In herreflection on the results of the assessment, one of the consultants noted:It’s so seductive to say “you better get the basics, the parts, before you get the whole” rather thanrecognizing that it’s kind of going backend forth between the two. That kids can deal with bigideas long before they have all the parts. A kid may have a lot of insight into character and misssome kind of a sequential thing. . . .The teachers got so much from the kids and I think it’sbecause of the format [of the alternative assessment], its nature, the kinds of things we ask kidsto do. We asked them to do fairly interesting and demanding things but [with] a lot of latitude forpersonal interpretation.The presence of knowledgeable scorers capable of interpreting students’ responses was a keyfactor in revealing the students’ strengths and weaknesses. Whereas similar performances oftransitional students on the district PBA in previous years might have been marked“unscoreable” due to the difficulty with conventions and language expression, these tests wereinterpretable by readers familiar with the developmental nature of second language acquisition ingeneral and the influence of Spanish in particular.As districts and states grapple with the challenges of equitable assessments for language minoritystudents, many questions remain unanswered. Specific questions about test construction andadministration exist alongside larger questions of the role of language in learning and theresponsibility of schools to prepare all students for equal participation in society. In spite of itsunanswered questions and unmet challenges, this assessment project can inform other districtsfacing similar challenges of equitable assessment. Its results give us a regard for the complexitiesof making sense of the performance of English language learners on assessments in English.Questioning the Rationale of the TPBARegardless of the strengths shown in the students’ performance, many critics argue that while wemay be sympathetic to these features of second language acquisition, the students musteventually perform proficiently in English and efforts such as these to document their strengthsin the transition phase diverts attention from the pressing need to move these students forward inEnglish proficiency. Goldenberg (1996) for example, questions the appropriateness of programstructures that are specifically designed for students making the transition from primary languageto English reading. He cautions “perhaps reifying transition—making it into an explicit phase ofstudents’ school program—is precisely the wrong thing to do” (p. 357). He contends that thewide variability in the rate and manner of second language acquisition argue against structuringformal transitional programs.Secondly, he suggests that schools that fail to provide a gradual shift in language instruction andinstead abruptly move students to English language instruction before they are prepared may inlarge part socially construct the “transition” period of second language acquisition. Herecommends instead a model of gradual transition that would provide primary language support© 2008 Dr. Catherine CollierAll Rights Reserved177
Page 2 and 3:
"Those who arrive by age 12 or 13 m
Page 5:
Article I.2 Are Signed Languages "R
Page 8 and 9:
Biological analyses of the status o
Page 10 and 11:
and beyond, speaking and signing ch
Page 12 and 13:
Conclusion: Are Signed Languages Re
Page 14 and 15:
Article I.3 The Interpreter: Has a
Page 16 and 17:
A few weeks earlier, I had called F
Page 18 and 19:
“We struggled even getting to the
Page 20 and 21:
herself by strapping a cassette rec
Page 22 and 23:
In 1998, after nine years as the ch
Page 24 and 25:
momentary burst of excitement that
Page 26 and 27:
can shape core grammar. Because the
Page 28 and 29:
The authors compared animal and hum
Page 30 and 31:
monkey moved. He followed it with h
Page 32 and 33:
delight, fear, laughter, and surpri
Page 34 and 35:
Piipaío in a hut: Pirahã huts typ
Page 36 and 37:
LEP students, and equitable organiz
Page 38 and 39:
4. Second language development crea
Page 41 and 42:
curriculum or "teaching to the test
Page 43 and 44:
portfolio work was scanned and stor
Page 45 and 46:
experiences of many groups of stude
Page 47 and 48:
While not disagreeing that interpre
Page 49 and 50:
sound educational practice, however
Page 51 and 52:
arises from the efforts to abstract
Page 53 and 54:
Article II.2 Cross-Cultural Communi
Page 55 and 56:
males who can serve as positive rol
Page 57 and 58:
Understanding another culture is a
Page 59 and 60:
Pets and AnimalsWhich animals are v
Page 61 and 62:
to teach standard English is reflec
Page 63 and 64:
Asking personal questions of a pers
Page 65 and 66:
Using Cross Cultural Communication
Page 67 and 68:
Why Do Nonstandard English-Speaking
Page 69 and 70:
Before beginning to teach standard
Page 71 and 72:
• Negative attitudes toward low p
Page 73 and 74:
New standardized tests and assessme
Page 75 and 76:
Each of the behaviors listed above
Page 77 and 78:
Article II.3 Hard Work Hypothesis:
Page 79 and 80:
each point higher in SES, students
Page 81 and 82:
This case does not provide strong s
Page 83 and 84:
Article II.4 Language Acquisition a
Page 85 and 86:
1992, p. XI). These researchers, wh
Page 87 and 88:
comprehend a word within a specific
Page 89 and 90:
more to the truthfulness of the chi
Page 91 and 92:
This idea of “semilingualism” c
Page 93 and 94:
Article III.1 A Brief Description o
Page 95 and 96:
take different lengths of time to c
Page 97 and 98:
example, should involve the same co
Page 99 and 100:
As with all stages of BICS acquisit
Page 101 and 102:
Assessment techniques at stage 3 ca
Page 103 and 104:
different. Therefore, the social di
Page 105:
integrative motivation. Basically,
Page 109 and 110:
(Ellis, 1985; Hakuta, 1986). Howeve
Page 111 and 112:
that sociocultural processes have o
Page 113 and 114:
Article III.3 How Children Acquire
Page 115 and 116:
phonetic units (unique to signed la
Page 117 and 118:
Article III.4 Toward a Sociocultura
Page 119 and 120:
emember is that the fundamental goa
Page 121 and 122:
The best practices models can be th
Page 123 and 124:
By focusing on the dialectic betwee
Page 125 and 126: intergenerational wisdom shared by
Page 127 and 128: Daily Realities RecappedThe above v
Page 129 and 130: traditions. At a time in our histor
Page 131 and 132: We will now look at two examples of
Page 133 and 134: Speakers communicate fluently, main
Page 135 and 136: question the effects of such attitu
Page 137 and 138: Article IV.3 Culture Change: Effect
Page 139 and 140: and psychological characteristics o
Page 141 and 142: Contraryto what wewere expecting, t
Page 143 and 144: Article V.1 Assessment in ESL & Bil
Page 145 and 146: vocabulary does the student lack?Is
Page 147 and 148: whether they are LEP and to provide
Page 149 and 150: Fourth, ESL and bilingual program s
Page 151 and 152: competent reader/writer. All versio
Page 153 and 154: Table 1Comparison of Recent Accultu
Page 155 and 156: unilinear model, which measures the
Page 157 and 158: an English-only instructional progr
Page 159 and 160: Article V.3 Assessment of English L
Page 161 and 162: 8. Change answers only for a very g
Page 163 and 164: Riles, 1979; Jose P. v Ambac, 1983)
Page 165 and 166: proficiency is often underestimated
Page 167 and 168: Finally, when second language reade
Page 169 and 170: for their decisions, noting issues
Page 171 and 172: As mentioned above, when the transi
Page 173 and 174: ather than generic adjectives and t
Page 175: their imagined points of view. Ther
Page 179: using inter-district teams). In the
show all

Art Un ticle I.1 ited Sta In the ates News - Woodring College of ...

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?