1. Promoting Academic Literacy through Level- Appropriate Resources A Module for Full-Staff Professional Development Presented by the MPS ELL Department

2. Why Academic Literacy?

3. AYP Graduation Rate Percent of students ELL Drop- Out Rate= 28% THERE IS A GROWING “GRADUATION GAP” BETWEEN ELL STUDENTS AND ALL MPS STUDENTS: ELL GRADUATION RATE LAGGED BY 18 POINTS IN 2008* * District data includes MPS’ contract alternative high schools; counting only 7 traditional high schools, 2008 AYP grad rate was 72% for ELL vs. 88% for all = gap of 16 points Source: REA C. ELL student achievement 3

4. Percent of Students Meet or Exceed the Standards on 2007 & 2008 MCA-II Reading by Ethnicity & ELL Status (MPS) MPS’ ELL STUDENTS SIGNIFICANTLY UNDER-PERFORM THEIR NON-ELL ETHNIC COUNTERPARTS IN READING Source: REA (Strategic Plan For English Language Learners, 12/08/2008, MPS Office of Strategic Planning)

5. Length of Time that MPS ELLs Have Been Enrolled in a Minnesota School - Spring 2008 TEAE Reading NEARLY ½ OF MPS’ 3-12 TH GRADE ELL STUDENTS HAVE BEEN IN A SCHOOL FOR MORE THAN 5 YEARS; ONLY 8% ARE NEW Source: REA

6. A DISPROPORTIONATELY LOW PERCENTAGE OF ELL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ARE PARTICIPATING IN ADVANCED COURSES AND PRE-COLLEGE OPPORTUNITIES * Includes Honors, Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, Level 3 or 4 world language classes, College-in-the-Schools courses Sources: Student Accounting; REA 6

7. ONLY 1 PERCENT OF MPS’ ELL STUDENTS TAKING THE ACT/PLAN SCORE A 21 OR ABOVE, THE NATIONAL AVERAGE AND THRESHOLD SCORE FOR ADMITTANCE TO MNSCU 7

8. Our Job – To Change This … & We Know How

9. Academic Literacy To succeed in school, [ELLs] must acquire not just a conversational fluency but a deeper type of academic language that continues to develop long after many ELLs have been formally exited from ESL programs.

10. Academic Literacy Academic language is the language of books. It is the type of language necessary to successfully participate in, comprehend, and communicate in cognitively demanding and context-reduced, age- appropriate activities.

11. Academic Literacy & The Matthew Effect [For ELL students], the time spent on actual reading during reading instruction may be significantly less for those students who struggle the most with reading. Gambrell, Wilson, and Gantt (2001) found that during reading instruction, good readers spent more time actually reading in school, whereas poor readers spent more time learning about how to read and practicing isolated sounds and words outside the context of meaningful stories.

12. S O … WHAT DO WE DO ?

13. Provide Level- Appropriate Books

14. HuH? That’s It?!?

15. You’re all thinking you already do that. In fact, you might feel buried in books trying to differentiate your reading materials. And that’s true … but the point today is that we still might not be doing it enough.

16. If… “Academic language is the language of books.” It’s easier to … … talk about books, … listen to others talk about books, … write about books, … learn from books … … when you’re working with books you can read.

17. Readable vs. Unreadable (Technical Definitions)

18. Now it’s clear that we routinely require ELL students to work at or above their frustration level …

19. It’s part of the bind that ELL students are in …part of their need to catch up.

20. But … we should keep this in mind … … we might be asking ELL kids to do the (near) impossible … or at least really, really hard

21. Promoting Academic Literacy through Level- Appropriate Resources Which brings us back to …

22. My Goal: To Share FOUR Resources To Help You Support ELL Academic Language Development by Developing Resource Expertise

23. Resource 1: ReadingA-Z.com We have a District license for this! We paid $2,798 for the year (so you might as well use it all you can).

24. Click on “All Books”

25. Use a Correlation Chart

26. Find a related book at an appropriate reading level. For example, imagine you’ve got a kid in a Human Geography class. the class is reading from a grade-level textbook about the environments humans live in… the kid’s ELL Level 2, reading at around a 2 nd (or even 3 rd - grade) reading level … Question: Could a scenario like this happen in MPS District?

27. You support the student with a level-appropriate related reading.

29. And so on …

30. So …  Is this ideal?  Is the kid participating in the lesson?  Is the kid doing school-type (informational) reading related to the lesson?  Is the kid reading at an i or i+1 reading level?  If he’s involved in constructing meaning from an information text, is the kid developing his academic literacy?

31. Can you follow-up with all the activating strategies? From Language-Rich Classroom, Ch. 6 Pair share? Quick write? Quick draw? Hold ups? Networking session? 4 Corners? Likert Scale? Explain it to your neighbor? Transparencies?

32. Does this text lend itself to a healthy range of mental processes described in Bloom’s Taxonomy?

33. johnwolfe piqir458 1:30-1:40

34. Resource 2: www.edhelper.com This costs either $20 a year or about $40 a year … depending on whether you want the super- deluxe access (cp., the VIP Lounge) or the pretty- good-but-every- so-often-you- feel-excluded- from-the-cool- stuff membership (cp., the Cinnabon counter)

35. Same Deal … 2.6 grade level Information embedded in story format … so easier

36. Resource 3: Buy Books. Ask your school/ librarian/ department to order books to support the content taught. http://bookwizard.scholastic.com/tbw/homePage.do

37. Subject: Electricity

38. Resource 4: Your Librarian/Media Specialist

39. My Goal: To Share FOUR Resources To Help You Support ELL Academic Language Development by Developing Resource Expertise

40. How do you know what’s going to be taught at each grade level?

41. Someday … but for now … … you have to talk to your colleagues.

42. My Goal: To Share FOUR Resources To Help You Support ELL Academic Language Development by Developing Resource Expertise

43. Balance You could start doing this now … To make your staff more receptive in February

44. Because everyone should do this. Because supporting ELLs’ language development is everyone’s job.

45. Our Job – To Change This … & We Know How

47. The Presentation: What needs to change? For example