Updated: Feb 14, 2024
Researchers Sharon Vaughn and Catherine Snow have both been involved in designing interventions to support adolescent students’ reading and learning of social studies content.
Professors Vaughn and Snow will give specific examples of the curricular content and classroom practices that have shown work well with adolescent learners, and of the kinds of adaptations that make this same deep and engaged learning accessible to second language speakers of English.
Both would argue that the best way to support reading skills is to leverage engaging content and big, important, discussable questions. These questions generate authentic opportunities to read for information and to prepare oral and written position statements. Supports that striving students, especially DLLs, may need to succeed in these lessons featuring active learning and conceptual approaches include: orienting questions, academic vocabulary, good language models, tasks that help them integrate the new information with existing conceptual structures. In addition, all students need to see the relevance of the learning to their own lives.
Includes Analysis of Digital Learning Resources & Current Federal Legislation
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WASHINGTON, DC, Feb. 18— Today, the Center for the Success of English Learners (CSEL) released a report on educating English Learner students (ELs) during the pandemic. The report provides recommendations for state and district level educators to ensure that equitable and meaningful educational access and engagement for EL students is happening remotely.
The report also examines:
Current federal legislation that authorizes funds for a variety of activities that could be used to support ELs and their families;
The impact of remote learning on EL students and their teachers; and
The potential and limitations of using digital learning resources (DLRs) to educate these students.
Another major highlight of the report is up-to-date state-by-state level information about policies and resources related to remote instruction and assessment for ELs with links to these resources.
This report is the first of many resources CSEL plans to release over the next 5 years to support English learners, their communities, and their teachers. The report, “Improving Remote Learning and Assessment for English Learner Students,” can be view and downloaded for free on the Center’s website, www.cselcenter.org.
About the Center
The Center for the Success of English Learners (CSEL) is a new national research and development center working to identify and remove barriers that continually keep English learners (ELs) from accessing the general curriculum. Funded by the Institutes of Education Sciences (IES), the Center delivers support for middle school and secondary English learners and teachers by developing and providing actionable, research-based resources and an engaging array of events for educators, administrators, and policymakers.
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For more information, please call Trey Calvin at 202-362-0700, or email at info@cselcenter.org