Presenters:
- Amanda Kibler, PhD, Co-Principal Investigator, Oregon State University
- Karen Thompson, Phd, Co-Principal Investigator, Oregon State University
Featured Panelists:
- Shane Burchell, David Douglas School District
- Marleen Carroll, Sherwood School District
- Chrissy Chapman, Woodburn School District
- Robin Farup-Romero, Salem-Keizer Public Schools
- Ashley Harsin, Intermountain Education Service District
- Marcianne Koetje, Corvallis School District
- Melissa Locke, Springfield School District
- Toshiko Maurizio, Beaverton School District
- Karrie Woodruff, Corvallis School District
Host:
- Danny Torres, Senior Associate Director of Digital Media and Events, WestEd
Danny Torres:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the fourth session of our Where the Evidence Leads webinar series, where we’ll be presenting preliminary findings from IES-funded English learner research studies. The series is brought to you by the National Research and Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners. Today’s topic, Developing and Improving Integrated ELD Programs. We’re offering guidance for leaders. Presenting today is Amanda Kibler, co-investigator at the Center and professor in the College of Education at Oregon State University. We also have Karen Thompson, also a co-investigator at the Center and associate professor in the College of Education at Oregon State University.
We also have district leaders from the State of Oregon, who developed a guide for implementing integrated ELD programs across grade levels. They’ll talk to you about program structures, curriculum, instruction, and assessment for integrated ELD for among other things. Thank you all very much for joining us. My name is Danny Torres. I’m associate director of events and digital media for WestEd. I’ll be your host. Now, before we move into the contents of today’s webinar, I’d like to take a brief moment to introduce WestEd. WestEd is a non-partisan, non-profit organization that aims to improve the lives of children and adults at all ages of learning and development. We do this by addressing challenges in education and human development, reducing opportunity gaps, and helping build communities where all can thrive.
Now, I’d like to pass the mic over to Amanda. She’ll be introducing the session today and moderating our time for Q&A at the end of the session. Amanda, take it away.
Amanda Kibler:
Thank you so much, Danny, and welcome, everyone. We have an amazing set of… Our group today includes people from Oregon, people from around the country. We’re just so excited to be here with you today. We are sharing some guidance for leaders in developing and improving integrated ELD programs that has been developed over a period of time with a collaborative that Karen and I work with. So you’ll be hearing from us, but mostly, you’ll be hearing from our co-authors and panelists, who are serving as panelists. And these are some amazing colleagues of ours. Shane Burchell, Marleen Carroll, Chrissy Chapman, Robin Farup-Romero, Ashley Harsin, Marcianne Koetje, Melissa Locke, Toshiko Maurizio, and Karrie Woodruff, who you’ll be hearing from today, who contributed to our guide, and who will be sharing some of their expertise with us today.
And we also wanna thank additional co-authors who aren’t with us today, Jaclyn Bovee, Mauree Donahue Revier, and Julie Rowell. So it was an amazing group who brought their expertise and knowledge together to create this guide that we’ll be sharing with you. So we’ll be doing three things today. I know they’re all marked number one, but they do occur in order from one to three. So I’ll introduce our group and the guide itself. Then we’ll have an overview of three of the chapters in this guide with examples from our panelists and short Q&A for each section. And then, and we’ll have a full Q&A. So we’re going to start with a Zoom poll that Danny will be implementing.
And I believe that… So what we’re doing is, we’re kind of getting a sense of where your school or district, or if you’re in a state-level position is in its implementation of integrated ELD. So you should have seen a webinar poll pop up. Feel free to respond to that, and then we’ll get to see where we are. So take a moment to say, are you just beginning to learn? Are you taking some initial steps towards implementing this? Are you implementing it in some grade levels or schools, or is there a full school- or district-wide implementation? And Danny, you can just let us know in that when those results are ready. And we’ll be interested to see where everyone is in this process.
Danny Torres:
Sure. We’re at about 80% responding so far.
Amanda Kibler:
Awesome.
Danny Torres:
And growing, so.
Amanda Kibler:
Great. Thanks, everyone.
Danny Torres:
All right. I think we’ve hit the point. So I’m gonna end the poll now.
Amanda Kibler:
All right. That’s amazing. So as I think you all can see, we really have a, about over half of our group is implementing it in some grade levels or schools, and others at different levels. So we’re so happy to have you all here. I think there’s some great expertise in this Zoom room as well that I know we’ll benefit from. So thank you all so much for joining us today. A little bit of background about the group that created this guide. So we are a larger group called the Oregon Integration and Collaboration Collaborative. And we came together starting in June 2020, and have continued to work together to support the development and ongoing improvement of equitable and inclusive integrated instruction for EL-designated multilingual learners, as well as the collaborative teacher practices that really facilitate and make that integrated work happen.
So our group is comprised of EL/multilingual program leaders from 15 and growing districts, and as well as several of our education service districts. So here in Oregon are sort of our regional support centers and then university faculty. So as a group, we meet every month, we share resources, discuss problems of practice that our members bring up, network with our state offices, and also have research presentations, so we bring those worlds of research and practice together. So this is the larger group that started off the development of our guide. And so here is the guide itself. And you do see a link, it’s a DOI link at the bottom of the page. Hopefully, we can also get someone to drop that into chat for us, so a direct link.
And it was a core planning team from this larger group that last year created this guide. And we got feedback from our entire group as well as from multiple stakeholders, some of you may be here today, both teachers and school and district administrators, to really make this a useful guide for leaders at all levels. It was funded through a state-level grant, a partnership between the Oregon Department of Education and Oregon State University. And yeah, it’s really designed to help people at multiple stages of implementation, developing, refining integrated ELD programs. So please do grab that link. It’s freely available. Share widely. We really wanna make sure that this work gets into as many hands as possible.
So one of the things we decided early on that was critical was, how do we define integrated ELD? Because one of the things we realized was that depending on the conversation you’re in, who you are talking to, integrated ELD could mean wildly different things. And so part of our work was first to say, “What do we, as a group, feel that integrated ELD is?” And we consulted, we thought about our own, you know, practice and our own districts in areas. We also thought about how states, our state and other states, are defining integrated ELD and what that means. And so an amalgamation of all of those came together, and we distilled it into three parts.
And so in this first part, integrated ELD, we know that language and content are taught simultaneously and that ELP, or English language proficiency, and content standards together guide that, both the, or including planning, instruction, reflection, and assessment. Another element here is that the instruction amplifies opportunities for students to access, interpret, and produce language across the domains, and that that allows EL classified multilingual learners access to rigorous content learning and facilitating language development across the curriculum. So that’s our first part. The second part actually deals with, how do you do that?
So integrated models, as we define them, have basically three kinds of staffing options. Co-teaching, where there are two teachers working together, dually endorsed teachers, in which there’s one teacher who is certified in and providing instruction and content and the ELP standard simultaneously, and a consulting, in which a language specialist consults with students directly and/or with teachers on learning targets and planning lessons. So that was part of our definition. And then a final aspect of this relates not just to the ways that language and content are integrated, but the extent to which this is also a place to integrate students themselves.
And so part of our definition here is, whenever possible, integrated ELD classrooms include a diverse set of students who are EL- and non-EL-classified to create equitable learning environments and provide a range of peer models for language development. And what this exactly looks like is very contextual based on individual settings. But this idea that this linguistic heterogeneity is very beneficial for language development and academic learning is something that we thought was quite important. To set this out, we also discovered that is important as it is to define what integrated ELD is, you also have to define what it is not. And some of the key ideas that resonated with us was that it’s not a singular program model for all students.
It’s often situated in districts and even within schools within a larger set of options. So that can include dual-language bilingual education, dedicated ELD instruction, or newcomer options for some students at more beginning levels. And that those are all very thoughtfully planned and developed for students on an individualized basis. The other thing we thought it was important to note is that integrated ELD is not and should not be a sink-or-swim or anything-goes approach, in which students have to navigate the business-as-usual classrooms on their own and teachers are not really called upon to change their teaching. So we know that this is counter to judicial precedent, and then it’s not effective for language and content development.
On the other hand, at the same time, it’s not just an easy option for students to earn content credit, particularly at the secondary level. So we’re equally concerned that integrated ELD is a rigorous academic experience that truly promotes meaningful content learning, and it merits the awarding of this content credit. We also talked about the idea of sheltered instruction, and we’re saying that it’s not just sheltered instruction. We know that this term has been used for decades to describe classes that integrate language and content. But we have found that the overarching metaphor of shelter or protection can lead to an emphasis on segregation and remediation. So the intention of integrated ELD, as we think of it, is to broaden access and inclusion in academically rigorous learning spaces.
And then, finally, integrated ELD is not a means of sidelining dual-language bilingual education programs. It’s an option that can coexist with these programs and can offer an alternative when bilingual offerings aren’t possible. And dual-language bilingual education programs may also include and often do include integrated ELD as part of their overall bilingual program. Really briefly, the key features of the guide, if you’ve opened it up, you can see we have seven chapters. We’ll be talking about three of those today, and those are in bold. And throughout the chapters, you’re going to see explanations and suggestions based on any of our panelists’ firsthand experiences, online resources, as well as local examples and templates, references to research, checklists for teachers and administrators, and more.
So that’s kind of how we have designed and laid out our guide. This work also connects to our National R&D Center, through which we’re presenting today. So my colleague, Martha Castellon Palacios, and I are leading Study 2 at the Center, and it investigates co-teaching and related models. And we’ve done a national survey. We’re undertaking qualitative case studies of districts in various stages of implementing collaborative practices for integrated ELD. And you see on the list are our research questions to the left. And then to the right, there is a QR code as well as a Bitly link that will take you to the, it’s a Google folder with some of our materials inside of it. So thank you, Danny, for putting link to that, as well as there’s two alternative links for the guide, so we hope you’ve downloaded that.
If not, please let us know, and we’ll make that work for you. So, now, we turn to chapter two, and I’m going to turn this over to my colleague, Karen Thompson.
Karen Thompson:
Hi. So without further ado, we are going to get to hear from our wonderful panelists today, talking first about integrated ELD program structures. So in this chapter of our guide, we go into more detail about those three different structures Amanda just mentioned that are part of our definition. We talk about factors to consider for student placement and considerations for staffing and master schedules, and also funding to support integrated ELD. And we’re gonna hear first from Chrissy Chapman from the Woodburn School District. So I am gonna pass it off to Chrissy.
Chrissy Chapman:
Good morning, and thank you. So I’m the director of teaching and learning in Woodburn, Oregon, which is just south of Portland. And our district has about 5,300 students, and we are a pre-K-12 dual-language district with programs in Spanish and Russian. So just to give you a little context of where I’m coming from. We use two models in our district. We have dually endorsed teachers, which is our main approach to integrated ELD. And then we also used the consultation model. We started our integrated model on a small scale at the secondary level with a small number of language arts teachers. And we allocated a significant amount of support to these teachers, which included a year-long professional development plan, one-on-one instructional coaching, sub out time for planning, peer learning walks.
And we collected feedback from them and from students along the way to really inform the support. Initially, our classes only had EL-designated students in them because we do have a very high number of English learners designated students in our district. And so we were able to start kind of on the smaller scale, but this year, we’ve expanded the model to all of our secondary language arts teachers. So our classes are now integrated on the student level as well with designated and non-designated ELs in every class. So we’re continuing with a similar support plan this year that we had for the initial group. And we’re monitoring and adjusting as we go and really hoping to expand the model to other content areas in the coming years.
One thing to note is that we do still have ELD classes for newcomer students. So they have access to an ELD class and an integrated language arts class. And then, also, we did find we had some students who an integrated class wasn’t quite enough. And so, so there are some stand-alone ELD classes that can supplement the integrated classes. The other model that we use is the consultation model. We have language coaches who work directly with teachers, conducting coaching cycles with the teachers, co-planning, providing observation and feedback, providing professional development, modeling instruction. And we primarily use this for teachers who are teaching an integrated class and they’re working on getting their ESL endorsement.
I just wanna share quickly a lesson learned along the way is to really include teachers in that planning and visioning prior to moving into an integrated model. When we started it, we thought we had a lot of teacher buy-in, but as we went through it, we realized that while they were on board with the idea, they weren’t quite ready to jump into it. And so we had to really slow down our process and bring them alongside with us. And so my advice, if you’re just jumping into this, or if you’re already starting it, is to really work with the teachers to co-create this model with them. And so our district really made a commitment to multilingual education by prioritizing the allocation of resources and support for our dual-language and integrated ELD models. And I’m really excited to be a part of this work.
Karen Thompson:
Thanks so much, Chrissy. As I put in chat, please feel free to type in questions for Chrissy, and our other panelists will have time to answer one or two after each chapter section and more time at the end. So don’t be shy, ask away. Next up, we’re gonna hear from Marleen Carroll from the Sherwood School District. Marleen?
Marleen Carroll:
All right, good morning, everyone. I’m Marleen Carroll. I’m the assistant superintendent here in Sherwood, and my role oversees our multilingual program. Sherwood is about 35 minutes, 16 miles from Portland. So we’re a suburb of Portland, and we have about 4,500 students. And we really have embraced the co-teaching model here in Sherwood because it lends itself best to our student population and just how many students who speak a variety of different languages. And so we started doing this work with our leadership teams and focusing on our professional development for our language specialists. So, primarily, they were doing a pullout, grade-level course, and it wasn’t really organized by proficiency level, and that wasn’t feeling good for our ELD teachers or our students.
We weren’t really providing them with the language acquisition instruction that they needed at their level. And so that’s where we started our work, and we kind of went through some action research and landed with co-teaching model. And so one of the asks that our language specialists wanted from us when we were getting feedback from them is, they really wanted training. And so we took them through instructional coaching training with Jim Knight, so that they had language and they knew how to ask the right questions when they were doing co-teaching. And then we did multiple book studies around co-planning.
That’s really important to the co-teaching model, is, teachers, both the content area or the classroom teacher and the ELD specialist, they really need the time to co-plan and co-design their curriculum. And so that’s kinda where the leadership team and the master scheduling team came in, where we had to kind work together, is, how do we either provide collaboration time for these teachers to come together, or how do we provide extra duty time or PLC time for the teachers to come together to really share their expertise and plan for the students in mind? And so this looks different at all different levels. For our elementary schools, it is extra duty time once a week, they meet with their co-teachers to do co-planning.
At our secondary level, at our middle school, we’ve built in an additional period of collaboration time, where the teachers come together to do that co-planning. And those are the two areas that I would say have been the most important for us to focus on during our co-teaching time.
Karen Thompson:
Great. Thank you so much, Marleen. And last but not least, we are going to hear from Marcianne Koetje and Karrie Woodruff, who both work together in the Corvallis School District. So, Marcianne and Karrie, take it away.
Marcianne Koetje:
Sounds great. Good morning, everybody. My name is Marcianne, and I am the multilingual programs and equity coordinator here in Corvallis. We are situated about an hour and 45 minutes south of Portland, and we have about 6,000 brilliant students in our district and across our state. And we also are a dual-language school, or a dual-language district, we have a K-12 program. I think the piece that I wanted to share is that our district has been undergoing co-teaching and integrated ELD for quite a while, and it really came from a strong belief in inclusionary practices, in wanting to make sure that our multilingual students had access to grade-level content, that’s really important, and grade-level peers.
So I’ll be briefly talking about elementary and what we’re doing at the elementary level. And then Karrie will be talking about secondary, what we’re doing at the secondary level. So at our elementary level, we have schools that have a high percentage of language learners. So we had to do things differently in those schools because we did not wanna have a pullout program. So what we have in those schools is, we have a co-teaching model where we have a language specialist who pushes in and supports the content teacher during whole group literacy time. In some of our schools, where we have lower percentages of language learners, we have what’s called pathways. So we have opportunities for language specialists to work with one content teacher per grade level and pushing in and co-teaching at those grade levels.
An important piece that I think you will hear from all of us is the importance of professional development; giving time for staff to learn about what co-teaching is and what it’s not; giving time for staff to plan, planning is really important; and also for areas where you are starting thinking about the coalition of the willing, so who’s willing to do this work, and who’s willing to get started? At the middle school, really briefly, earlier in the poll, some of you talked about that you’re in various stages of implementation of co-teaching, so are we. So, at the mid level, we are currently working with our administrative team to think about visioning, think about dually endorsed teachers, and thinking about what is it that the schools at the mid-level need to do in order to really launch this work at the mid-level.
So very excited about what we’re doing in Corvallis. And I’ll go ahead and hand it over to Karrie, who can talk about our secondary program. Thank you.
Karrie Woodruff:
Thanks, Marcianne. My name is Karrie Woodruff, and I work together with Marcianne, and I am an ELD specialist at the high school in Corvallis. And I used to teach at one of the elementary schools as a co-teacher, and so I brought that experience and then lots of research with me into my role at the high school. This is my second year at the high school, and it was an isolated ELD program, and we are in the process of becoming more integrated. We have a thousand students total, and about 100 are classified as ELs. Two-thirds of those are intermediate to advance, and they’re fully integrated already. Support comes from EAs and my consulting with their teachers. For the lower proficiency levels, I would say that we have more of a hybrid program right now, and that is aimed to support the newer students and launch them into the mainstream as soon as possible.
And this process, like Marcianne said, it involves PD, it involves time and multiple conversations. And I’ve been in this process for about a decade, but the teachers I’m working with, it’s new to them. And so Marcianne and I are constantly talking with staff, counselors, teachers, coaches, and trying to get them on board. So what are we doing for our program? Last year especially, I realized that there are complications at the high school level that don’t exist in other levels. It’s more rigorous, and the stakes are higher. And so our solution is to have a hybrid program. And so far, it seems good, but I imagine that as I spend more time with the high school, our program will evolve.
And so how that looks is, our newer ELs, that’s kind of the lower proficiency levels, are in designated ELD for the first part of the day. And we offer two sheltered classes, history and language. And those are aimed to help them develop language and prepare them, like, fill in background knowledge that they may be missing if they have inconsistent education. It is just at a pace that’s more accessible to them. And then, in those classes, I have assistants that are proficient in English, and they help me, they just participate along with the class. And when I put out an academic question or a task, they model the language, and they just help move the class along. They help negotiate language is what I call that, where they’re trying to be understood and help the students express themselves.
So I’m not the only language expert in the room. I enlist students to help me with that work. Last year, I also wrote a grant proposal for this concept called Lingo Lunch, and it’s just social, it’s to address the social-emotional aspect of these students. And so we invite administrators, counselors, teachers, friends, and it’s just to get to know the English learners and help them integrate into our community. This year, I plan to write another grant proposal that will continue these lunches, and then, also, we’ll do things that the students wanna do, like go to the musical together, and then have a discussion afterwards, or go to a student dance together. And it’s not just them as their own little community separate, but we invite other students to go along with us.
And I find that other students are very willing and interested, and they want to engage with the international students. And then, finally, the last thing I’ve done, which I’m excited about, is, I’ve rebranded our ELD department. I mean it is ELD, but I call us the Global Spartans. Spartans is our mascot, and I say we’re the Global Spartans. And so we have a logo, and it says our tenants, which are excellence, achievement, equity, and belonging. And these were all inspired by Michael De Sousa, who I heard at a conference last year. And so we have this logo, and I put it on correspondences, and I’d like to get T-shirts printed, not just for our students, but for teachers and other students. And it’s just to remind the community of the assets that students bring to our school and our culture.
So I could share a few other things that I’ve done or tried and some things that we’re thinking about, but I’ll leave it here for now. Thank you.
Karen Thompson:
Thanks so much, everyone. We’re gonna take just a couple minutes for one question. There are a bunch of great questions that have come up in chat, and please feel free to keep typing them, and we’ll have more time for Q&A at the end. But I’m wondering if any of you could speak to, we got a couple of questions about funding. What are funding sources, particularly for co-teaching, to make that model viable? Or just anyone who just spoke who wants to just say a little bit more about funding? If you can just turn your camera on and chime in with just a few thoughts about funding for the professional learning components or just for the model itself.
Chrissy Chapman:
I can share a couple of things. We really look at multiple resources to fund. We require teachers to get their ESL endorsement and like for the sub out time and the learning walks and things like that. Depending on what we’re doing, we use Title III funds, we used ESSER funds, which, unfortunately, have run out. We use special state school funds. We’ve used Title III, I mean Title II and Title III. We’ve used Title I as well. And so we really just look at all of the financial resources that we have in the district. And because we’ve made a commitment to our dual-language and integrated models, it makes it much easier to prioritize those things first when we’re looking at, you know, what we’re funding across the district.
And so it’s really an agreement that we have at the district level and across the district that these are programs that we want to allocate resources to. And so, so we just look for any possible funding source that could support this work, and we figure out like, you know, where to plug all the holes with it.
Karen Thompson:
Thanks so much, Chrissy. I think in the interest of time, we’re gonna go ahead and move on to our next chapter, but again, we’ll keep your questions in mind for Q&A at the end. So our next chapter, chapter three of our guide, is focused on curriculum for integrated ELD. And in that chapter, we talk about the importance of attention to both language and content standards, the importance of cultural and linguistic responsiveness. We also touch on classroom assessment practices in integrated ELD, and also curriculum adoption for integrated ELD. So we have two wonderful panelists who are gonna speak to this topic today, and first up is Toshiko Maurizio from Beaverton. Toshiko, take it away.
Toshiko Maurizio:
Yes. Hi, good morning. My name is Toshiko Maurizio, administrator for multilingual programs here in the Beaverton School District. Just for context, Beaverton is the third largest district in Oregon. We have over 100-plus languages spoken in our district. So we are culturally and linguistically diverse. We also have over 6,100 EL classified students in our district. So beginning in the 2019 school year, we launched a complete redesign of our program models at the elementary level. This was as a result of conducting a multi-year study on the correlation between student achievement and the program models that we had implemented. The results of the study indicated that dual-language and co-teaching programs had a higher correlation to student achievement than pullout models.
So then we started a collaborative model pre-pandemic, we tried it out during the pandemic with remote learning, and then post-pandemic. After reviewing our reading data for multilingual learners, we had to relaunch our collaborative model district-wide, and then this time, with a laser-light focus on Tier 1 and the core using also a comprehensive MTSS framework, and this is the work that we are currently engaging in this year, particularly with MTSS. We realized that in order to strengthen Tier 1 and the core, we had to look at how we were adopting curriculum and selecting these materials. So, last year, we engaged in a year-long adoption process for language arts, and we decided to do a joint adoption for English language development because there were so many overlapping standards and targets.
And this is our implementation year of this joint adoption. We selected curriculum and materials where language-rich strategies, lessons, and scaffolds were all embedded into Tier 1 core curriculum. We provided collaboration, co-teaching training to classroom teachers and ELD teachers within the context of the curriculum we adopted. ELD teachers also were included in the trainings for Tier 1 core. They received copies of teachers’ guides. The curriculum we adopted also has a strong structured literacy or foundational literacy component, which our ELD teachers are working alongside our classroom teachers to deliver these lessons. We are trying to be very, very intentional in elevating the status of our ELD teachers, and at the same time, enhancing the skillset of our classroom teachers in learning how to use these language-rich strategies in the classroom.
As with any collaborative model, you heard about co-planning and how critical that is, we understand that there’s no co-teaching or collaboration without co-planning, and that is very, very essential. So we are supporting co-planning time and collaboration time if it’s not already built into the schedule using Title III dollars. We have also great level cohorts at the elementary level that we’ll be meeting soon to work through the implementation of the curriculum. We are also being very, very careful and intentional that newcomer supports that we provide align to our Tier 1 and the core. The other thing that we did that was very, very different than in previous years was that we adopted curriculum that had a Spanish component for our dual-language schools.
We sought out curriculum that was authentic and not just translated curriculum directly from English. So our dual-language schools will be using both the English and Spanish curriculum. We’re also working on biliteracy maps through grades K through five. We are still working through the curriculum implementation as well as our collaborative model at all levels, but what we learned was that language should be embedded in all content areas as much as possible. We are currently engaging in our secondary language arts curriculum adoption process this year, and again, doing this jointly with English language development. We hope to do joint adoptions for all other content areas in the future, as this is the most efficient way to support our multilingual learners district-wide. Thank you.
Karen Thompson:
Wonderful. Thanks so much, Toshiko. And next up, we are going to hear from Robin Farup-Romero from the Salem-Keizer School District. Robin?
Robin Farup-Romero:
Great. Welcome, everyone. My name is Robin Farup-Romero, and I’m the multilingual programs administrator for the Salem-Keizer School District. We’re the second largest, really, an urban district in Oregon, in Salem, Oregon. And our program model, we also have a pre-K through 12th-grade dual-language program model. So integrated ELD takes place in our dual-language program model as well as what we call our ESOL strand model K-12. And we actually have dual-language in 32 of our 62 schools, K-12. As we’ve really looked at curriculum, we’ve focused on making sure that we are developing integrated ELD unit maps, so that we can really use almost any language arts curriculum to ensure that students have access to their core content classes with ELD integrated, where we focus on a portion of that literacy block or literacy time using the ELD standards.
So our current curriculum at elementary is ReadyGen, and at the middle school, it’s HMH. But what we’ve done is develop unit maps that are side by side. They have both Spanish and English. So we address the ELA and SLA standards, and the ELP standards. So what we’re ensuring that we’re doing in our curriculum is to connect those ELP standards directly to what students will need to access the text. We use constructing meaning as a basis at our secondary level to help teachers plan and develop those unit maps. And at the elementary level, we have a biliteracy model, so we support both our ESOL and our dual-language teachers through training from the BUENO Center, really, using really strong foundation in oracy.
One of the things that’s been really important for us is ensuring that within the language arts standards and the LP standards, students have an opportunity to practice speaking, listening, reading, and writing, again, in the context primarily of language arts, but we also train our content teachers at the secondary level in constructing meaning, so that they can also integrate the LP standards and language practices within their core content. We have three newcomer centers, two at the high school, one at the middle school. And we do use a specific curriculum called HMH Language Launch, and, but we in really focus to ensure our students, probably 80% of our recent arrivers are Spanish-speaking.
So they also are able to access the dual-language program if there’s one in their building or within their feeder school system. In terms of assessment, we’ve begun to use a product called Flashlight360, which allows teachers to post prompts, again, directly related to the language arts standards, but focusing, in terms of content, but focusing on the ELP standard in terms of what we want students to develop in their language. The teacher posts a prompt, and the students do speaking and writing exercises, and then they’re able to progress monitor that. To support this, we have a K-12 ELD leadership team with some of our folks who are trainers of constructing meaning or building leaders.
And we meet once a month to continue to look at, we revise ELD units, we look at the systems of support district-wide to ensure that students have access to their core curriculum with the daily integrated ELD.
Karen Thompson:
Thanks so much, Robin and Toshiko. So we have lots of people with interest in the materials you’re talking about. And so I think, for a quick question, Toshiko, someone was wondering in chat just what you adopted, they thought it sounded great.
Toshiko Maurizio:
No, I was trying to be very intentional not to mention any, but Robin did. And I just realized that we both adopted HMH curriculum, so we did that, and we also did, adopted the English 3D Language Launch, which we’ll be receiving some professional development on.
Karen Thompson:
Great, thank you. And yeah, for anyone, our district panelists are pretty googleable, I think, so I bet that they would be willing to follow up. Robin, there was another question about whether the curriculum maps you were talking about might be available. So I just encourage people to follow up with anything that sounds of interest. I know. There are many resources in the guide. In the appendix, you’ll see a lot of things, and you can likely track down our panelists too. So thank you, everybody. We are going to move on to our third and final chapter that we’re talking about today.
This is chapter four of our guide, Instructional Strategies and Models for Integrated ELD. In this chapter, we talk about key elements of effective integrated ELD instruction, and then we talk about structures and supports for each of the program models, the different structures for integrated ELD, so structures and supports for co-teaching, structures and supports for dually endorsed teachers, and structures and supports for consultation. So we have two wonderful district leaders to talk about what this looks like in their districts. And we are going to start off with Shane Burchell from David Douglas School District. Shane?
Shane Burchell:
Okay. Hi, everyone. So just to give you a little bit of background, my name Shane Burchell, I’m the assistant administrator of multilingual programs here in David Douglas. We are a district located in outer Southeast Portland. We have just under 9,000 students, and currently around 2300 active multilingual learners and a wide variety of languages. I last looked yesterday, and I think we are up to 68 different languages. So gonna talk a little bit about instruction and our model, and how instruction, and what we do to really amplify instruction in terms of our integrated ELD model. And so I’m gonna focus specifically on the elementary part of our model and what we do to support language. So we have our EL specialist at the elementary level, they’re called language development specialists, and they’re instructional coaches.
And so their role is to mentor, consult, co-teach, but most of all, just to be instructional coaches. And the way that they do that is, essentially, to connect within grade-level collaboration team meetings. In addition to that, we have set aside collaboration team meetings, and then we have what are called language support days. And language support days are where we have for each grade level. We bring them together, and we focus in on instruction and different elements of instruction. So we have topics that we’ve developed. So there’s gonna be a topic around knowledge of proficiency.
Another topic is around learning intentions and how language and content blend together, and how you have to address all of those functions of language and where you amplify that. In addition, we have one that’s called output, and that’s on authentic student talk and really going back to amplifying that language. And then probably our biggest one that we keep returning back to is what we call talk time, and really going back and forth with how do we increase student talk time. And that becomes the key focus during integrated ELD, is, where does that interaction happen, and what are all those various talk routines that we can use to develop those routines to amplify that?
In addition to that kind of element and instruction, we also go over all the opportunities for like that scaffolding and really getting into specifics around where do we have visual supports. And so we have this integrated ELD kind of, we do have this set aside time during the day in terms of this master schedule. But in addition to that, the language development specialist team, they also then go through where do we find connected opportunities for like math or for science, or whatever the case may be. Where do we review those same routines and interactions for all of our students? And then, finally, just that idea of backwards planning.
And so our language development specialist team, these instructional coaches, working with, at the district level, working with all of our mapping process that happens, being able to make sure that language is a key component of all of those maps that are happening. But then for individual planning, they’re meeting with and collaborating with those grade-level teams at their buildings to then go back and check where do we make sure that we are addressing all of that kind of essential language support? Okay, thank you.
Karen Thompson:
Thanks so much, Shane. We are going to finally hear from Melissa Locke from the Springfield School District. Melissa?
Melissa Locke:
Good morning. My name’s Melissa Locke, and I am with Springfield School District here in Oregon. I’m the federal programs and grants coordinator for the district. We are mid-size district, we have about 9,000 students, and we’re located about two hours south of Portland. And of our 9,000 students, about 650 of them are active multilingual learners, so about 7% of our students. We are still very early in the learning and implementation phase of integrated ELD, with pockets of success as we continue to develop our approach and our structures. And I just wanted to echo some of the earlier shared sentiments of, you know, working with the willing. If you’re not sure where to start, that’s always a good place.
And then developing that mentality that every teacher is a language teacher. The first kinda key point I wanted to emphasize regarding instructional strategies for integrated ELD is that it isn’t one more thing that we are expecting teachers to do. In fact, many of our educators are already employing strategies that align well with integrated ELD principles. And what we are finding is that by making some small adjustments, such as incorporating visuals or adding sentence frames, or working out the academic language objectives, these existing strategies can become significantly more effective for MLs with very little change to what the teacher is actually doing. It’s just kind of adding that layer of extra thought for our multilingual learners.
And our district’s ELD teachers are evolving into this role of being a language specialist that can support the classroom and the core content teachers into adjusting those strategies as needed. We’re developing their skills and their confidence to be able to guide those conversations and ask the right questions, to get our teachers thinking more about language as they’re planning and as they’re reflecting on their data. Our language specialists engage in structured consultation and collaboration opportunities with core and gen ed teachers. And again, this gives time and space for that ongoing instructional assignment to meet the needs of our MLs.
And in addition to collaboration and co-planning, this partnership can also include co-teaching, which we’re not really there yet, but also mentoring, modeling, and coaching, which are things that our language specialists are starting to do with our gen ed teachers. And then, finally, something that we’re doing that’s really tangible, because we always know teachers want something really tangible, is, our language specialists have been developing a series of slide deck resources that we’re calling Multilingual Moments. And each slide deck will provide a 10- to 15-minute snapshot of structured instruction or a practice with a specific strategy.
And our language specialists are developing these, we teach them to each other, and then they can take them back to their building for a monthly plug-and-play option for building-level PD around effective strategies for MLs. They’re developed for gen ed teachers and content teachers. Ultimately, we would want to be differentiated then between elementary and secondary, but they’re very early in development. But we’re excited to be bringing those up.
Karen Thompson:
Thanks so much, Melissa. So I applaud all our panelists for fitting so much into a short time. I think we’re gonna go ahead and transition into general Q&A. So all the panelists are welcome to turn your cameras on. And I have two questions that I’m gonna start us off with. And feel free to keep typing questions in chat. We’ll try to figure out where the most critical, burning areas of interest are. This is a really meaty question that Mary Martinez Wentzel asked in the Q&A. She’s the director of Multilingual and Migrant Ed in Oregon. And she’s saying, “I noticed that some states, such as California and New York, require a designated ELD program in addition to any integrated ELD support. How do you distinguish between the integrated ELD models in use in these states and those being implemented in Oregon districts that are independent of a separate ELD program?”
So there was another question in chat about how students get designated ELD. In Oregon, there is no explicit requirement that students have designated ELD plus integrated ELD. Students need to be having access to content that meets the ELP standards, but there’s no specific designated ELD requirements. So I don’t know, Amanda, if you wanted to start us off there, maybe some things from your national survey or other work you’ve been doing to think about these differences across states? If you wanna chime in, and then I welcome any district leaders to share thoughts about this as well.
Amanda Kibler:
Yeah, and I’ll be brief, just that, you know, that there are state-level differences. And I think how we conceptualize what ELD is, and, you know, does it have to be separate for it to be ELD, or can it all be learned through an integrative program? So I think that’s one thing to think about, as well as, and I think there’s some lovely examples in our guide of the ways districts often do have some designated courses for some students, but not all students, especially those with the upper proficiency levels, will have that designated. So it’s not that they aren’t present in Oregon, but they are not required for all students. So, yeah, I’ll pass that off to our panelists to see some of the ways they’ve been thinking about that in their spaces.
Robin Farup-Romero:
For Salem-Keizer, we do have a continuum, so I didn’t share, but we do have what we call an ELD level one and two. Particularly that ELD level one really focuses towards many of our recent arrivers. And then it’s an ELD, they call it 2 or a 1-B course for students who are still in that emerging, and we designate in terms of based on their ELPA scores, if they do go into that standalone ELD class. So, typically, students who are a level one, or, you know, not quite making progress to a level two, and they would still also have a language arts class with integrated ELD, but then they would have that other standalone ELD at the secondary level. At the elementary level, it is all integrated.
Karen Thompson:
Any other panelists wanna chime in with any thoughts about designated ELD time? It’s a meaty topic. I just wanted to also add that in our guide, we do have, in the appendix, additional definitions of integrated ELD. We have our definition, but then we do have definitions from other states or other entities. So there is variation. There is not, you know, consensus in the field. And we welcome all of these ideas as we all work to figure out together what works best for students, and which students in what context as well. Okay, the next question I wanted to ask, Theresa, I believe, asked this in chat a while back, specifically, she was talking about the systemic shifts necessary to implement integrated ELD and the challenges of doing that, in particular when you have a relatively low percentage of students who are classified as English learners.
So let’s say if you have 10% of your students who are EL classified, how do you make the systemic shift? So I wonder if any panelists might have hopeful stories for her. That’s what she was asking for, just any words of wisdom there about systemic shifts generally or, and then, also, specifically systemic shifts in low-concentration contexts.
Marleen Carroll:
I can speak to this a little bit. We have low concentration of English learners. And some of our systemic shifts went around thoughtful planning in advance. So we spent two years at least, I mean there was some times during our COVID time that we were planning for this. And there were a lot of conversations. And what we landed on was clustering many of our students. And then if they’re clustered in a classroom, then, one, that teacher and the co-planner, the ELD specialist, they really do build a pretty deep relationship over time. And then, you know, both teachers are usually willing. We take volunteers to do that work, and that helps with the systemic shift, right? Once you get one and then another, and they see how great it is to have a co-teacher, it kind of catches on. So that’s kind of how we approached it.
Karen Thompson:
Thanks, Marleen. Anyone else wanna chime in? Karrie?
Karrie Woodruff:
Yeah, hi. Well, I was part of a committee in our high school. And we were supposed to kind of think about professional development and the goals of our school. And someone mentioned that they would like to do something about the ELs, which I was really happy about. That was great. My concern is that some teachers don’t teach that many ELs, and they might dismiss such a professional development. And so, of course, I’m very excited about focus on ELs, but my preference is to say, well, these approaches for ELs are good for, you know, they’re universal, so let’s focus on these skills and strategies that are critical for ELs and then also would help students on IEPs. So we kind of just, I don’t wanna water down or dilute, you know, the importance of strategies for ELs, but to make it more broad and applicable to every teacher, just thinking about the different kinds of learners that these things that they’re doing, it would help a lot of students, so.
Karen Thompson:
Thank you, Marleen and Karrie. In the interest of time, we need to wrap up, but I just wanna mention one final thing about our guide. Hopefully, many of you were able to access it and can download it, and look at over in the next few days. I just wanted to highlight that at the end, we have key checklists for people in different roles, like classroom teachers, content teachers, language specialists, towards the end of the guide, before the appendix. So that could be a great way to start in the guide, to just get key tips and checklists. We are going to… We really appreciate you being here. And as we’ll put a link to the R&D Center website in chat in a minute, where you can access some of the other research that Amanda mentioned.
And I’m gonna pass it back to Danny. Thank you very much for participating and for your great questions. And we hope you find the guide useful.
Danny Torres:
Well, thank you, Karen and Amanda, and to all of our panelists for a great session today. And thank you to all of our participants for joining us. We really appreciate having you here. For those of you interested in learning more about the Center at WestEd, visit the Center website at elrdcenter.wested.org. That’s E-L-R-D-C-E-N-T-E-R.wested.org. And feel free to reach out to our panelists via email if you have questions about the Center or the study. And you can also sign up for our monthly email newsletter.
To reach Amanda by email, you can reach her at [email protected]. And you can reach Karen Thompson at karen, K-A-R-E-N, .thompson, T-H-O-M-P-S-O-N, @oregonstate.edu. And to sign up for our email list at the center, that’s E-L-R-D-C-E-N-T-E-R.wested.org/contact. And there’s a form there you can fill out to subscribe. And again, that URL is E-L-R-D-C-E-N-T-E-R.wested.org/contact. With that, thank you all very much. Have a great day.