The ELPS—English Language Proficiency Standards The English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS) were approved by the State Board of Education on November 16, 2007, and replaced the ESL TEKS during in the 2008-2009 school year, and may be found online at http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter074/ch074a.html#74.4 And http://www.englishspanishteks.net/administrators/standards/elps.asp

What are the ELPS? Part of required curriculum for each subject including proficiency standards and level descriptors

What are Level Descriptors? Basic generalizations that apply to the student’s capacity for language usage and are meant to be taken “holistically” rather than as a checklist/ rubric Beginning Students- few simple conversations Intermediate Students-requests clarification, needs adaptations and supports Advanced Students-seeks clarification with some processing time Advanced High Students- longer discussions on unfamiliar topics

What does this mean? ELLs need social and academic English language proficiency to be successful. ELLs must READ, WRITE, LISTEN, and SPEAK in increasing complexity.

What are the District’s Responsibilities? Identify students’ proficiency levels Provide linguistically accommodated content instruction Provide linguistically accommodated content-based language instruction Focused, targeted, and systematic language instruction for beginning and intermediate ELLs (Grade 3 or higher)

What do I need to do now? TEACH students language and strategies to use when they don’t know what to say.

Strategies to Encourage Proficiency Encourage students to speak in complete sentences. This should be the culture of the classroom. Provide sentence “stems” for all students as part of a Tier I RTI strategy. Use response signals for students to monitor their own comprehension (thinker’s chin, thumbs up).

What Else Can We Do Now? Use strategies for pre-reading, during reading, and post reading: Pre-reading: Set a Purpose for Reading , Preview the Text , Activate Background Knowledge , Predict Reading: Cross-check , Reread , Predict and Confirm , Skip, Read On, and Go Back , Connect Background Knowledge to the Information in the Text, Think About Explicit and Implicit Information, Stop and Review, Post-Reading: Retell and Summarize, Use a Graphic Organizer, Draw Conclusions, Reread, Discuss and Respond, Write to Support Understanding, Predict and Question

Encourage Whole Class Participation It’s all about accountable talk!

Engagement Make sure you ask every student in the classroom to participate. Turn to the person next to you and discuss a strategy you will use this year in your classroom to ensure whole class participation.

Lesson Plans Are All In My Head! Lesson planning is essential in order to differentiate instruction!

Good Teaching Is Something We Already Do! Prompt elaboration Use effective questioning strategies

Formative Assessment Turn and Talk: Tell your shoulder partner what the ELPS are, and what part they must play in our HISD classrooms?

Think-Pair-Share Turn to the shoulder partners next to you and discuss how these strategies will help your ELLs in your classroom.

Confused? Don’t Be! BE AWARE of the linguistic level of your students! Plan accordingly!

Assessment Time… Turn to the person next to you and explain to one another what the ELPS are, and what we are expected to do in our district to incorporate them into our lesson planning and teaching.

Questions? Let’s take a short break and then discuss the relationship between the ELPS and TELPAS