The Burning House And Success With Ells

By Author: Amandda
Total Articles: 59
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(1)The Burning House
Students are writing again. I can hear the sounds of words, and phrases, and sentences being drawn out upon the surfaces of paper. They are discovering the similarity of color shared by the lamp on my desk, the gently swaying flame of the candle, and the chalk rendered flames of fire engulfing the image of the house on the gallery wall—the color is yellow, ranging from near white to the soft yellow of a rose, from muted amber to the boundary line of orange. They are Omega Replica Watches thinking of Anne Bradstreet and her burning house, a tale that has survived nearly four hundred years. Some of them are recalling their own fires; they have a lot to say. They are writing in the light of these three vessels and the light that has pushed its way through the blinds covering the two windows of this room. We hear others talk, in other rooms, but we are silent. Our voices fall onto the page with a quiet ease, like wading into the water of a lake late in a summer evening when the air is cool and the water is warm. We will go as deep as we can ...
... in the light of these lanterns.— Kevin Marshall Chopson.

(2)Success with ELLs
For many schools, it's that time of year again: the time when teachers, administrators, and students are focused on end-of-year assessments. Similar to the way that retail outlets place Halloween decorations on the shelves before Labor Day, the K—12 education worlds starts preparing for end-of-year assessments earlier and earlier. My high school—age students were given their state English exam in January of their junior year so that the district could focus on students who failed or received a grade that is considered "too low." The hope is that through this focus, these students will pass or do better during the June administration of the exam.

Those of us who inhabit the world of education know that we live in an assessment-driven field. The educational landscape is becoming packed with standardized, external assessments, and some states test children every year from kindergarten on. This focus on standardized assessments is a double-edged sword: On the one hand, stakeholders, students, and teachers need to understand how students are doing, what their level of mastery is, and what improvements can be made in terms of programs and instructional services. On the other hand, high-stakes standardized assessments have served to narrow the curriculum (teach to the test) and remove much of the creativity that has been a hallmark of good teaching. We also know that some people are good test takers, and others are not. In a case like this, the assessment results tell us about the test taker's skills as a test taker rather than anything about their Omega Speedmaster Replica content knowledge and skills. And what if the student gets the right answer for the wrong reason (a guess on a multiple-choice exam) or the wrong answer for the right reason (a question that is subjective or creates a dissonance between a student's knowledge of the world and what the test manufacturer believes to be the one right answer)?

And what about ELLs? In the past, many states provided exempt status from high-stakes content assessments for ELLs who had been in school in the United States for less than three years and had not yet achieved a determined level of proficiency in English. However, after NCLB, most states exempt ELLs from content assessments for one cycle at most, and ELLs are included in a district's Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) report. While this has increased accountability in terms of teaching ELLs, content programs are often still developed without proper consideration of the needs of ELLs. This creates a situation where the exams may not be giving accurate information about the performance of ELLs.