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A whole school working towards effective instruction and assessment for EAL students
Kerrilyn Thacker says collaboration between departments is key
One wonderful thing about international schools is their diversity. Students and teachers with varied cultures, languages, beliefs and backgrounds work together with the objective of academic success for all. While this provides many opportunities for learning, two major challenges occur. Firstly, content teachers are not usually suitably trained to provide instruction that supports students learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) (Ottow, 2019) and, secondly, professional development has typically been ineffective at changing classroom practice (Wiliam, 2007).
Antwerp International School (AIS), inspired by a four-day WIDA Institute (WIDA, 2019a) and armed with the knowledge of the features of quality professional development (Yaron, 2017), took action to plan a year-long focus on effective instruction and assessment for EAL students. AIS was founded in 1967 in the suburbs of Antwerp, Belgium. We currently offer the International Baccalaureate through the Primary Years Programme, Middle Years Programme and Diploma Programme to approximately 370 students from 40 nationalities. In August 2018, AIS moved towards
a more focussed and strategic approach to professional development. This included the formation of teacher-driven Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) (Du Four et al, 2016; Solution Tree, 2019). These were non-hierarchical groups in which teachers worked on an area of interest for the entire school year with the objective of improving student learning. Small groups of teachers targeted their ability to use formative assessment, feedback, differentiation and assessment diversity to promote student learning. Others focused on ways in which they could improve students’ approaches to learning, such as critical thinking skills, research skills and self-management skills. While the initiative was driven by a group of teachers who developed protocols for the PLCs, the school’s management provided the structure to allow these groups to be successful by setting aside scheduled time for meetings throughout the year. The PLCs laid the foundation for the action plan that would be developed to improve instruction and assessment of EAL students.
The Inspiration of the WIDA institute
During that first year of PLCs, two EAL teachers attended a fourday WIDA Institute. As a member of the WIDA International School Consortium (WIDA, 2019b), AIS was committed to using research-based standards and assessments as well as developing inclusive models of support for EAL students. While AIS had been using the WIDA Measure of Developing English Language (MODEL) for over five years as a placement tool for EAL students and to monitor annual progress, we did not feel that we were utilising the WIDA Framework optimally. The four days of the WIDA Institute modelled best practice, provided opportunities for collaboration, and allowed time for consideration of actions we could take to move our whole school forward in its delivery of inclusive instruction for EAL students.
At the start of each day at the Institute, a brilliant cooperative learning jigsaw activity was conducted in which the WIDA Essential Actions (Gottlieb, 2013) were discussed. We brought that activity back to AIS and conducted the same task over four weeks with the other member of the EAL team, the Primary School Principal and the Secondary School Principal. This created a common understanding of the fifteen ‘evidence-based strategies for educators to apply in implementing standards-referenced, language-centred education’ (Gottlieb, 2013:10) and the conditions required for EAL students to be successful in English-instruction schools. This led to an action plan agreed upon by the EAL Department and the two principals. Discussions took place about how to realise the action plan, and the whole-school goal emerged: ‘Teachers will use the WIDA framework to differentiate instruction and assessment through understanding the language proficiency levels of their students, understanding the language demands of their lessons and using three different kinds of scaffolds’ (see Figure 1).
Structuring the long-term and short-term goals
Knowing that one-off professional development was unlikely to change classroom practice, the EAL Department divided the whole-school goal into chunks. Smaller, achievable short term goals (STG) were created. This would allow for a sustained focus on effective instruction and assessment for
EAL students for the entire year in a similar way to the PLCs which were now established at the school.
We planned the year around an initial whole-school oneday WIDA workshop ‘Differentiation for Linguistically Diverse Students’, which was held on 16 September 2019. The short term goals were selected based on the content of the workshop so that we could continue to connect learning to the workshop throughout the year. It would allow us to build on a shared understanding of what EAL students require to simultaneously acquire academic language while learning grade-level content. The short-term goals cover the most essential information that teachers need to know about language to provide instruction for EAL students (Ottow, 2019). These were sequenced in such a way that they built on the knowledge, understanding and skills of the previous short-term goal. For example, teachers need to be able to analyse the language demands of a lesson before they can select appropriate scaffolds for the lesson.
We were fortunate to have developed the EAL action plan with our Principals as their support was key to planning the year, as was the dedication to the sustained focus from all levels of administration. The Primary and Secondary School Principals coordinated to allocate common time throughout the year for teachers to work towards the short-term goals. Chairs of Departments and Programme Coordinators also agreed to support the EAL goals through discussions within their departments. It was amazing to see an EAL whole-school goal supported by all levels of the school’s structure!
Structuring the sessions
The majority of the whole-school goal would be targeted during the Tuesday afternoon 75-minute faculty meeting time. As each short-term goal was linked to a task that teachers were required to complete, it was considered
essential not only that teachers received the relevant information but also that they had time to work towards completing the task. The EAL team also wanted to use strategies of effective professional development, such as modelling best practice, encouraging collaboration, incorporating active learning and being content focussed (Darling-Hammond et al, 2017). With this in mind, each session has been planned to allow for a variety of groupings (whole school, ability-based, grade-level clusters, mixed primary-secondary or discipline-based), a range of strategies to present information (direct instruction, cooperative learning activities, teacher-led inquiry) and a balance between theoretical and practical tasks.
The future
The EAL Department has led two sessions so far: one on asset-based student profiles and the other on planning a lesson incorporating the four language domains. Teacher engagement during the sessions has been positive and it has definitely provided teachers with the opportunity to collaborate across grade levels and discuss issues that impact EAL students. We have already started to develop a common language to discuss EAL students. In particular, teachers have begun to use more descriptive, assets-based language to share what students can do in grade-level classes. Looking forward to the rest of the 2019-20 school year, and years to come, the process has firmly reinforced that collaboration across all levels of the school is essential to establish more effective instruction and assessment, and to meet the needs of multilingual students and international schools.
References
Darling-Hammond L, Hyler ME and Gardner M (2017) Effective Teacher Professional Development, Learning Policy Institute. Available at: https:// learningpolicyinstitute.org/product/effective-teacher-professionaldevelopment-report (Accessed: 16 October 2019) Du Four R, Du Four R, Eaker R, Many TW and Mattos M (2016) Learning by Doing: a Handbook for Professional Learning Communities at Work (3rd edition). Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Gottlieb M (2013) Essential Actions: A Handbook for Implementing WIDA’s Framework for English Language Development Standards. Wisconsin, US: Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium. Ottow SB (2019) The Language Lens for Content Classrooms: A guide for K-12 teachers of English and Academic Language Learners. West Palm Beach, US: Learning Science International. Solution Tree (2019) About PLCs, All Things PLC. Available at: https://www. allthingsplc.info/about (Accessed: 16 October 2019). WIDA (2019a) International Institutes, WIDA. Available at: https://wida.wisc. edu/grow/international/institutes (Accessed: 11 November 2019). WIDA (2019b) International Schools Consortium, WIDA. Available at: https:// wida.wisc.edu/memberships/isc (Accessed: 16 October 2019). Wiliam D (2007) Changing Classroom practice, Educational Leadership, 64, 4, 36-42. Available at: http://rapps.pbworks.com/f/Julia%20Articles%20 ASLI%202011.pdf (Accessed: 19 October 2019) Yaron L (2017) The Five Ws of Quality Professional Development, Education Week. Available at: https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2017/05/09/thefive-ws-of-quality-professional-development.html?cmp=eml-eb-popweek +05192017&M=58006538&U=1351704 (Accessed: 16 October 2019).
