The goal of the ESOL program is to help the English Language Learners to learn enough English to function linguistically and culturally in the Somerset County Public Schools and in the mainstream of American Society. 

The mission of the ESOL Instructional team is to provide a high quality instructional program for all ESOL students in grades pre-K through 12 by developing a standards based English language acquisition curriculum and providing instructional support to ESOL teachers and other SCPS staff.

The curriculum is based on state and district standards for the language and literacy development of English language learners.  It is also based on research that supports learning language through academic content.

 Emphasis is placed on developing language in the four skill areas of reading, writing, listening and speaking, using methods specifically designed for culturally and linguistically diverse students.  Students are given opportunities to practice and apply language through interaction with adults and peers, hands-on learning experiences, and activities that promote critical-thinking.

LAS Links has been used annually since school year 2005-2006 to measure Annual Measurable Achievement Objective 1(AMAO) and AMAO 2.  All Maryland local school systems are required to use LAS Links and are not permitted to use other assessments. 

What is required of the state and local school systems to measure the child’s development and attainment of English proficiency?

Under the federal NCLB regulations for Title III, Language Instruction for Limited English Proficient and Immigrant Students, states must conduct an annual statewide assessment of English Language Learners (ELL) and local school systems are required to meet Annual Measurable Achievement Objectives (AMAO) for ELLs from kindergarten through 12th grade.

These AMAOs include:

Exemption of Recently Arrived Limited English Proficient Students

• Maryland exempts “recently-arrived” English Language Learners (ELL) or Limited English Proficient (LEP) students from one administration of its reading assessment during the first year of enrollment in U.S. schools per federal law.

• Maryland excludes the scores of recently arrived ELL students on state mathematics and reading/language arts assessments from one cycle of adequate yearly progress (AYP) determinations as permitted by USDE regulations and non-regulatory guidance.

• Maryland includes “former” ELL students within the LEP category when making AYP determinations in reading/language arts and mathematics for up to two years after the students no longer meet the state’s definition for Limited English Proficiency.

A Level 1 student is beginning to develop receptive and productive uses of English in the school context, although comprehension may be demonstrated nonverbally or through the native language, rather than in English.

Points to consider:

• Students tend to "straddle" phases; they do not completely move from one stage directly to the next.

• Depending on students' previous schooling experience, the time frame for learning language may be faster or slower.

A Level 2 student is developing the ability to communicate in English within the school context. Errors impeded basic communication and comprehension. Lexical, syntactic, phonological, and discourse features of English are emerging.

Points to consider:

• Students tend to "straddle" phases; they do not completely move from one stage directly to the next.

• Depending on students' previous schooling experience, the time frame for learning language may be faster or slower.

A Level 3 student is developing the ability to communicate effectively in English across a range of grade-level appropriate language demands in the school context. Errors interfere with communication and comprehension. Repetition and negotiation are often needed. The student exhibits a limited range of lexical, syntactic, phonological, and discourse features when addressing new and familiar topics.

Points to consider:

• Students tend to "straddle" phases; they do not completely move from one stage directly to the next.

• Depending on students' previous schooling experience, the time frame for learning language may be faster or slower.

A Level 4 student communicates effectively in English across a range of grade-level appropriate language demands in the school context, even though errors occur. The student exhibits productive and receptive control of lexical, syntactic, phonological, and discourse features when addressing new and familiar topics.

Points to consider:

• Students tend to "straddle" phases; they do not completely move from one stage directly to the next.

• Depending on students' previous schooling experience, the time frame for learning language may be faster or slower.

A Level 5 student communicates effectively in English, with few if any errors, across a wide range of grade-level appropriate language demands in the school context. The student commands a high degree of productive and receptive control of lexical, syntactic, phonological, and discourse features when addressing new and familiar topics.

Points to consider:

• Students tend to "straddle" phases; they do not completely move from one stage directly to the next.

• Depending on students' previous schooling experience, the time frame for learning language may be faster or slower.

LAS Links Curriculum "At a Glance"

LAS Links Instructional Guidance provide targeted lessons in reading, language arts, science, social studies, and mathematics, based on a student’s grade and proficiency level, allowing for student success in learning.

Five Grade Spans: K-1, 2-3, 4-5, 6-8, 9-12 (View Samples below)

• Volunteer Application

• Grades 6-8- Visit a National Park

• Grades 4-5- Why We Have Winter and Spring

• Grades 9-12- Adventures in Writing

• Grades 2-3- Yankee Doodle Dandy

• Grades K-1- A Fan Letter

• Proficiency Areas: Writing, Reading, Listening, Speaking, and Comprehension

• Language Measurement: Measures English-language and proficiency

• Compatibility: Instructional Guidance and Benchmark Assessments can be used with any English language proficiency test to meet state mandates

• Student Progress Monitoring:  Throughout the year, LAS Links Benchmark Assessments can be used to monitor progress students make in acquiring English language skills. This powerful tool allows teachers to correct areas of student weakness and build upon areas of strength.

LAS Links Instructional Guidance:  Speaking 

1. Participate in diverse academic or social conversations, with attention to appropriate register, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation

   1. Provide information

   2. Express opinions and preferences

   3. Make requests

   4. Ask questions, request clarification, and negotiate for understanding

   5. Conduct transactions

       

2. Demonstrate knowledge related to diverse academic or social settings, with attention to appropriate register, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation

   1. Identify and object and describe its purpose or use, using words or phrases

   2. Identify an acidic or social situation and describe it, using sentences

3. Describe ideas, experiences and immediate surroundings in diverse academic and social conversations, with attention to appropriate register, grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation

   1. Describe processes

   2. Describe people, locations, and scenery to give directions

4. Speak persuasively in diverse academic and social conversations, with attention to appropriate register, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation

   1. Explain processes

   2. Compare and explain preferences

       

5. Talk in depth and with detail about diverse academic or social events, with attention to appropriate register, grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation

   1. Interpret, narrate, and paraphrase events, using visual information.

LAS Links Instructional Guidance:  Listening

1. Follow common, explicit oral directions to participate in diverse academic or social tasks

2. Respond to idiomatic expressions to participate in diverse academic or social tasks, including phrasal verbs with idiomatic meaning (e.g., give me a hand or settle for)

3. Demonstrate understanding of academic and social situations that contain diverse language genres, registers, and varieties

   1. identify purpose

   2. identify main idea

   3. identify supporting details

4. Interpret layers of meaning using critical listening skills and earning strategies in academic and social situations that contain diverse language genders, registers, and varieties

   1. make predictions based on known information

   2. make inferences based on known information

LAS Links Instructional Guidance:  Reading

1. Analyze words

   1. Identify rhyming words

   2. Apply letter-sound relationships to read English words

   3. Apply letter-sound relationships to read English phonemes

   4. Apply knowledge of morphemes and syntax to word meaning

       

2. Understand word meaning

   1. Classify words

   2. Demonstrate Vocabulary

3. Comprehend written material

   1. Demonstrate reading comprehension

   2. Identify important literary features of text

   3. Read critically and apply learning strategies to interpretation

LAS Links Instructional Guidance:  Writing 

1. Use appropriate grammar

   1. Singular and plural

   2. Subject/verb agreement

   3. Tense agreement

   4. Conjunctions

   5. Pronouns

   6. Prepositional phrases

   7. Auxiliary verbs

2. Use appropriate capitalization and punctuation

   1. Capitalize beginning of sentences and proper names

   2. Use sentence ending marks

   3. Use commas in series and dates

   4. Use apostrophes in contractions and possessives

3. Use standard sentence structure

   1. Differentiate complete sentences from fragments

   2. Use articles

   3. Form statements and questions

   4. Differentiate complete sentences from run-ons

   5. Use adjectives and adverbs

4. Write simple sentences to describe, narrate, or explain

   1. Write simple sentences to describe

   2. Write simple sentences to explain

5. Write expository compositions

   1. Write to describe, explain, report, compare, narrate, persuade, or express

Co-Teaching is a part of the general and ESOL collaboration to increase students with established English Learner Plans access to general education curriculum through joint accountability and ownership for planning and delivering instruction and assessment of ELL students.

One of the following may be used at any given time in the elementary and secondary schools where there are identified ELL students:

1 Teacher 1 Assist – one teacher is responsible for teaching.  One teacher circulates throughout the classroom monitoring progress and providing assistance to students as needed. 

• Assisting teacher will be providing ongoing monitoring of student performance (through ELP plan, asking clarifying questions, benchmarks or chapter tests, informal assessment) throughout the lesson.

   

Alternative Teaching – one teacher takes responsibility for the large group while the other works with a smaller group or one-on-one for a specific instructional purpose.

• Collaborative planning to decide on remediation for acceleration, assessment, or pre-teaching as needed.

Station Teaching – teachers divide content and students.   Each teacher then teaches the content to one group and subsequently repeats the instruction for the other group.  If appropriate, a third (or more) ‘stations’ could give students an opportunity to work independently in a small group(s), but all students receive instruction from both teachers.

• Classrooms are heterogeneous with flexible grouping.  Lessons will incorporate student participation through discussion and activities. 

Students with level 4 or 5 LAS scores and who are reading on grade level should be considered for step-down services.  These are students that should be functioning well in the classroom without daily ESOL support.  Their goals should be mostly related to writing and content areas.  

At the beginning of the year, it is recommended to meet with these students twice a week for 30-45 minutes depending on the student, grade level, goals and scheduling considerations.  Then, students can step down to receiving services one day a week.  Students may need to receive more services for a short period of time to assist with difficult papers or projects.  Pull-out or plug-in services may be offered depending on the student needs and your schedule. 

 Students who have exited the program will receive consult services.  The ESOL teacher will remain in constant touch with the classroom/content teachers to assure student success.  Student writing samples will be collected monthly to monitor continuous growth.  ELLs will have an accommodations plan available to them based on their individual needs and are in compliance with the approved list to choose from.

The importance of the mother tongue:

The most important message can be summarized in one sentence:

ESL students learn English more quickly and effectively if they maintain and develop their proficiency in the mother tongue.

How does the mother tongue help the learning of English?

Research* has shown that many skills acquired in the first language can be transferred to the second language. So, for example, if your child has developed good reading skills in Spanish, he/she is likely to be able to apply these skills when reading English. (One useful reading skill is the ability to guess the meaning of unfamiliar words from context. Another one is the ability to decide which new words in a text are important to look up in the dictionary and which words can safely be ignored.) For this reason it helps if you can encourage your child to read good fiction and non-fiction in her own language. Similarly, the skills of being able to plan out a piece of writing or develop an argument in a persuasive essay can be applied in the second language once they have been learned in the first.

What are the other reasons for maintaining and developing mother tongue proficiency?

Firstly, many children in schools plan to return to their home country at some point to continue their education there. This is a strong reason to make sure they do not have gaps in mother tongue language or cognitive development. And secondly, ESL students who turn against or otherwise neglect their mother tongue can often suffer from problems of identity loss or alienation from their parents, and from their grandparents or other family members in their home country.

How can ESL student’s best develop their mother tongue proficiency?

Parents can make sure that they have good reference books at home - in the native language. Students should be encouraged to read good literature and to discuss school work. Some of the long summer vacation could be devoted to mother-tongue learning and reading.

The advice on this page is so important that it is repeated in the yellow text below. [Scroll down to see the advice ingraphic form.]

Your children will learn English much more effectively if they continue to develop their first language at the same time.

* "In early stages it [reading in the first language] can profoundly accelerate the development of reading ability in the second language."

This is true because:

• reading skills transfer from language one to language two

• reading provides knowledge of the world that makes second-language texts more comprehensible

• the pleasure of the reading habit itself transfers to the second language

Krashen, S. (2004) The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research. Heinemann. Portsmouth.

The importance of the mother tongue

• With one wheel (one language), you can go from place to place.

• With one big and one small wheel (one good and one not so good language) you can go farther and faster.

• With two equal-sized wheels (two strong languages) you can comfortably go anywhere you want!

[Illustrations reproduced with the permission of Professor J. Cummins.]

Quick Tips for Supporting K-12 Newcomer ESL Students

In The Mainstream Classroom

1. Sensitize mainstream students to the newcomers’ challenges.

   1. Prepare English-speaking peers of a newcomer.

2. Ask your students to imagine that their parents took them to another country to live.

3. Brainstorm with them how they would feel.

   1. Be aware of the effects of culture shock.

Children may demonstrate physical alignments or display a wide variety of unusual behavior such as tantrums, crying, aggression, depression, tendency to withdraw, and sleeplessness.

1. Create a nurturing environment

   • Give lots of encouragement and praise for what the students can do, and create frequent opportunities for their success in your class. 

   • Be careful not to call on them to perform alone above their level of competence.

2. Establish a regular routine for newcomers

   • At first, everything will be chaotic to your newcomers. 

   • Give them help in organizing time, space, and materials. 

   • Give them a copy of the daily schedule. 

   • Tape it to their desks, or have them keep it at the front of their notebooks. 

   • Send a copy of the daily schedule home so that parents can help their children feel more connected to the classroom.

3.  Engage newcomers in language learning from the beginning

   • Here are some ways to actively engage your newcomers in language learning.

     • Copy Work

   • Have students copy alphabet letters, numbers, their name, your name, the names of other students in the class, and beginning vocabulary words.

   • Have them draw pictures to demonstrate comprehension of what they are copying.

     • Rote Learning

   • While this is not popular in American schools today, it is common in many other countries. 

   • Initially, parents and students often feel more comfortable if they can see some kind of end product. 

   • You may wish to have students learn sight words, poems, chants, songs, lists, and spelling words through rote learning.

     • The Class Authority

   • Each newcomer has many strengths that he or she can share with the class. 

   • When appropriate include them as resources so they too can be seen as important members of the group. 

   • Areas of expertise might be computers, math, origami, art work, etc.

4. Recruit volunteers to work with newcomers

5. Use recorded material

Coming soon!

Adopted English Language Proficiency Programs identify published programs that have been purchased for schools with Teacher’s Guides, Student Books, Assessments, and other instructional materials.  A curriculum has been adopted for the beginning and intermediate levels of ESOL.

Annual Measurable Achievement Objectives
AMAOs are set annually by the Maryland State Department of Education that specify the percentage of ESOL students yearly who are:

AMAO I:  expected to progress toward English language proficiency

AMAO II:  attain English language proficiency

AMAO III:  demonstrate adequate yearly progress in reading and math at the county level

Adequate Yearly Progress
Under the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, each state establishes a definition of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) to use each year to determine the achievement of each school district and school in reading and mathematics. States are to identify for improvement any school that does not meet the state's definition of AYP for two consecutive years. Adequate yearly progress is designed to ensure continuous improvement each year toward the goal of 100% proficiency in 2014.

Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills
The language of face-to-face social encounters.

Cognitive-Academic Language Proficiency
A term for abstract academic knowledge.

English Language Learner
An ELL is a student who uses a language in addition to or other than English.

The ELL Plan is an accommodation(s) document for ELLs in the ESOL program.

English Language Proficiency
ELP is the degree to which a student is able to use standard American English as a language of instruction.

ELP Programs are curricula developed to prepare a student to be able to use standard American English as a language of instruction.

English as a New Language
A term used by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards in place of ESL or ESOL.

English for Speakers of Other Languages
This term is used to identify the programs, staff and students served by the Division of ESOL Programs.

ESOL assessments are designed to measure the English language proficiency (ELP) of ESOL students at all proficiency levels in grades prek-12.

ESOL Measurement Topics and/or ESOL Rubrics should accompany these ESOL assessments for scoring purposes, and should be used to provide feedback to ESOL students. All ESOL assessments have been aligned to the Maryland State Department of Education’s ESOL State Curriculum and English/Language Arts State Curriculum.

Essential questions are focus questions for a unit of study.

One or more questions posed to parents and students upon entering a local school system in order to determine the language or languages spoken in the home.

A student comes to a Maryland public school with an interruption of 6 or more months in schooling in the student’s home country.

First or home language

Language Assessment System Links
LAS Links is the state-mandated test of English language proficiency administered to grade K – 12 ESOL students annually each spring. LAS Links results are used to demonstrate the progress SCPS and Maryland State ESOL students are making towards proficiency in English. Assessment results are used by ELL Teams to help make decisions as to each student’s participation in the ESOL program.

LAS Links Placement Test is the state-mandated test of English language proficiency administered to grade K – 12 ELLs entering SCPS. Assessment results are used by ELL Teams to help make decisions as to each student’s participation in the ESOL program.

Limited English Proficient
An acronym used at the federal level to describe English language learners who participate in the ESOL program. 

1. was born outside the United States or whose native language is not English;

2. comes from an environment where a language other than English is dominant; or,

3. is an American Indian or Alaskan Native and comes from an environment where a language other than English has had a significant impact on the student’s level of English language proficiency

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001
NCLB expands the scope and frequency of student testing, revamps accountability systems and guarantees that every teacher is qualified in their subject area. It requires states to make demonstrable annual progress in raising the percentage of students proficient in reading and math.

PreLAS is the test of English language proficiency administered to pre-kindergarten ELLs upon entry to SCPS and to pre-kindergarten ESOL students each spring. Assessment results are used by ELL Teams to help make decisions as to each student’s participation in ESOL programs.

Real life objects used as visuals in language instruction.

Reclassified English Language Learner
A RELL is a student who has exited the ESOL program within the last two years and is a part of the ELL subgroup for those two years.

The RELL Plan is an accommodation(s) documentation for ELLs who have exited the ESOL program within the last two years.

A teaching approach during which ELLs receive language instruction through content area subject matter with teacher scaffolding.

Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol
A research-based model of sheltered instruction.

(7) Languages Represented in Somerset County Public Schools (SY: 2009-2010)

Crisfield High School
Spanish

Greenwood Elementary School

• Arabic

• Urdu

• Spanish

Princess Anne Elementary School

• Urdu

• Arabic

• Swahili

• Turkish

Somerset Intermediate School

• Spanish

• Arabic

• Swahili

• Turkish

Washington High School

• Spanish

• Arabic

Woodson Elementary School

• Spanish

• Mayan

• Chinese