Module One: Transcript
Table of Contents
Screencast 1: Freedom to Talk 2
Screencast 2: Guiding Questions and Objectives 2
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Screencast 2: Rationale, History, and Goals 3
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Screencast 4: Guiding Principles 10
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Screencast 5: Organization and Correspondences 13
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Screencast 6: Overview of Modules 21
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Screencast 1: Freedom to Talk
Welcome to the new English Language Proficiency Standards modules. These modules were developed as professional development supports to help you interpret and use the new ELP standards, which align with and support the development of the language needed to access the new college- and career-ready content standards. Before we get started, let’s take a look at this video entitled “Freedom to Talk”, created by Kenji and Luis Hakuta. It will introduce you to the historical decisions and policies that have led to the standards we now know today.
Screencast 2: Guiding Questions and Objectives
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Module One: English Language Proficiency Standards Introduction:
Guiding Question & Objectives
This module is the first of six professional development modules that address how to interpret and use the new English Language Proficiency or ELP Standards that were launched by the Council of Chief State School Officers, WestEd and the ELPA21 consortium in 2013. These ELP standards are the basis for the ELPA21 assessment system.
The main purpose of this first module is to introduce educators to the standards and provide a context for their creation, organization and use.
Slide 2
There is one guiding question to consider as you work through this introductory module.
• What should every educator working with students who are learning English, often referred to as English Language Learners or ELLs, know about the new ELP standards?
There are also several, more specific sub-questions about the ELP Standards that will be addressed throughout the module. These include:
• Why were they created? Who created them?
• How were they developed? Who is their audience?
• What do they entail and why?
• How do they correspond to content standards?
• How do educators begin to use them?
Slide 3
There are also four objectives for users of this module. At the end of the module, educators should expect to:
• Understand the rationale and history behind the creation of the new ELP standards
• Recognize how the new ELP standards are related to other college-and career-ready standards and how they are different from previous standards
• Identify the goals, guiding principles, essential components, and language used in the ELP standards
• Navigate the ELP standards document(s) and the subsequent modules
Screencast 2: Rationale, History, and Goals
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English Language Proficiency Standards: Rationale, History & Goals
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In this video we will introduce the new English Language Proficiency – or ELP – Standards, proving a rationale for their creation, some history about how they came about and articulating their goals.
There are, however, a few key points we want to make clear about the new standards before moving forward with their rationale.
First, they were developed for all grades levels, Kindergarten through Grade 12.
Second, the standards highlight a strategic set of language functions (What students do with language to accomplish content-specific tasks) and language forms (vocabulary, grammar, and discourse) that are applicable across all content areas and grade levels.
It’s also important to note that they are meant to guide both English language development and content teachers to fuel English Language Learners’ academic and language development. In other words, the standards are meant to be used by both ELD/ESL teachers AND content area teachers.
And finally, these standards were designed to support ELLs as they develop competence in the practices associated with English language arts (ELA) & literacy, mathematics, and science. So they are not separate from content area learning, but are instead designed to complement and support that work.
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So now, let’s talk a bit about the rationale for creating these new ELP standards.
The ELP standards were prompted by a shift in our country’s overall standards landscape. Said differently, in recent years the nation has shifted from focusing on discrete, disconnected, content-specific standards towards what are being called “college- and career-ready standards,” which emphasize analytical thinking, communicating, doing, applying, and using language for different audiences and purposes.
So whether your state uses the Common Core State Standards, the Next Generation Science Standards, or a more contextualized set of state-specific content area standards – chances are that these standards are somewhat new and can be categorized as “College- and Career-Ready.”
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And all of these new content-area standards signal a fundamental upward shift in the knowledge, skills, and abilities that students must develop in order to be college- and career-ready in the 21st century.
Also, they carry increased language demands across content areas. Meaning what students are expected to understand and do in the content areas is indelibly linked to the communication and articulation of their learning.
It’s important to note, however, that these new standards are not changing the essence of mathematics or science or even English Language Arts with respect to language.
These content areas have always been linguistically demanding. But while previous standards were largely silent on the kinds of language and analytical practices students need to perform in academic subject areas, the new standards make language demands and practices more visible and rigorous.
In other words, while language has always been integral to core content, now it is transparently so.
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Consider this description, which details what students should be able to do when meeting the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards:
Students can, without significant scaffolding, comprehend and evaluate complex texts across a range of types and disciplines, and they can construct effective arguments and convey intricate or multifaceted information. Likewise, students are able independently to discern a speaker’s key points, request clarification, and ask relevant questions. They build on others’ ideas, articulate their own ideas, and confirm they have been understood.
All the underlined practices here carry a high linguistic demand.
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Now consider this description of what students should be able to do when meeting the Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice.
Mathematically proficient students understand and use stated assumptions, definitions, and previously established results in constructing arguments...They justify their conclusions, communicate them to others, and respond to the arguments of others.
The story here is similar. Nearly all of the academic practices detailed in this description require students to comprehend and use specific types of language– and this is in math, which has traditionally been thought of as a “language-free” discipline.
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This Venn diagram, created by Tina Cheuk from the Understanding Language Initiative at Stanford University helps illuminate how linguistically demanding the new standards really are.
To create the graphic, Tina looked at the key practices in the Common Core math and English language arts standards, as well as the key practices in the Next Generation Science Standards, and mapped where they overlapped.
And while there’s a lot of information to be gleaned from this graphic, the main idea is that nearly all of the core analytical practices that go across content areas – the high leverage practices - such as argumentation, analyzing complex texts, supporting ideas with evidence are linguistically demanding.
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It’s also important to note that in the past, there's been a great deal of division between content and language teachers.
This made sense and was exacerbated by a standards paradigm that mostly kept language – with the exception of vocabulary – out of the realm of content standards.
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The new content standards, however, are very explicit that all teachers are teachers of language and literacy and that in order to be successful in disciplines, students need to be able to engage in rich language practices.
For example, students need to understand the discourse of specific disciplines and be able to read and comprehend complex text across those content disciplines.
Students also need to be able to explain their thinking, and to argue their point of view or their method for solving their problem. They also need to modify their language choices, depending on the purpose and the audience.
Students must also understand the typical text structure in different disciplines as well as be able to use complex sentence structures and to understand not just content area vocabulary, but general academic vocabulary that cuts across disciplines.
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But these changes reflect not only a fundamental shift in how content area learning is conceptualized and enacted in practice. They also reflect a shift in how language development and English language proficiency are depicted in standards and assessments in relation to content area learning.
Previously, English language development and content learning were framed as being in a sequential relationship. In other words, English language proficiency was something that students had to demonstrate before digging into deep content learning. ELP standards and instruction provided a foundation from which to approach content standards.
But now, the development of language and content instruction are more commonly portrayed as being in a parallel relationship. In other words, students develop their language skills while engaged in rigors content learning. Thus students identified as English Language Learners should no longer be foreclosed from content learning. Moreover, learning the language of the content is part and parcel of learning the content – for all students.
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But if the recently implemented college- and career-ready content standards are already linguistically demanding, why did we need new ELP standards as well?
Well, first off – while college- and career-ready standards carry rigorous language demands and identify necessary linguistic practices, they do not provide clear expectations of student language use, progressions, or competencies.
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Furthermore, previous ELP assessments, which were usually created on a state-by-state basis and hopefully based on corresponding ELP or ELD standards – had poor predictive validity for student performance in ELA and mathematics. Meaning there was little correlation between doing well – or doing poorly – on an ELP assessment and doing well – or doing poorly – in English language arts or math.
And finally, there was interest – particularly from states applying for waivers from No Child Left Behind requirements – in using ELP standards and linked assessments to measure the academic language proficiency needed for the content areas.
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And so the new ELP standards were envisioned with these goals in mind:
1. Create fewer, clearer standards with strategic correspondences to:
• CCSS ELA & Literacy
• CCSS for Mathematics
• NGSS
2. Specify key language functions that students must be able to carry out in discipline-appropriate ways
3. Express target language uses in clear and meaningful progressions
4. Enable collaborative use by both ELD/ESL and content-area teachers
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The result was 10 core English Language Proficiency Standards that were applicable across grade levels.
These 10 core ELP standards were then differentiated and broken down into progressions according to grade level bands, something that will be discussed in more detailed later on in this module.
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And by maintaining tight, strategic correspondence to the college-and career-ready content standards as well as specifying key, cross-cutting language functions, these 10 new ELP standards shift the focus from, “What language does a student have?” to “What is a student able to do with language within content areas?”
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This pictorial further highlights the changes between previous or older versions of ELD or ELP standards – which were typically created and implemented by individual states – and the new inter-state standards.
While old standards promoted using simplified texts and activities, the new standards advocate for intellectually challenging activities that include language scaffolds to promote access to grade-level texts and deeper learning.
In a similar vein, while old ELP standards adhered to a conception of language development that emphasized accuracy, vocabulary and correct grammar, the new standards focus on comprehension, production, and interaction.
Finally, old ELP standards were often seen as a precursor or “junior” to English language arts or literacy standards. In fact, some states didn’t even have ELP or ELD standards at all!
But these new standards – which are intended to be used by all ELPA21 member states – are not precursors, but on equal footing with content standards. As noted, they were in fact designed to correspond with college- and career-ready standards across all content areas to support ELLs’ academic language development and engagement in disciplinary learning.
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So now we know why the new ELP standards were developed and what they entail. But who developed them, when, and under what conditions?
In the Spring of 2013, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the same group that managed the development of the Common Core State Standards, commissioned the standards work to be done by WestEd and educators who are part of the ELPA21 consortium.
The Understanding Language Initiative at Stanford University was a significant thought partner in this creation process, as were other educators, who are part of the CCSSO ELL SCASS, which stands for the State Collaboratives on Assessment and Student Standards. The National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards & Student Testing (CRESST) at UCLA and the National Center for Educational Outcomes also contributed to the process.