This is helpful information for the EL teacher because now she knows that Marco doesn’t have a strong literacy foundation in his home language. These are definite areas of need for Marco, which will have a significant impact on his English language acquisition. The results indicate that Marco is performing well below grade level in terms of reading fluency, which allows staff to predict that his comprehension of grade-level text will also be low. The staff members decide that assessing Marco on the Grade 6 form of CBMreading English is inappropriate, given that Marco is not performing on grade level in his home language in reading.īased on Marco’s data, it seems like there may be some underlying concerns with sight words and decoding in Spanish. The Spanish-speaking staff member uses earlyReading Spanish subtests to confirm this need: earlyReading Spanish – Decodable Words and earlyReading Spanish – Sight Words. To better understand Marco’s literacy skills in his native language, one of the Spanish-speaking staff members assesses Marco with the CBMreading Spanish measure. Since the school has a high Spanish-speaking population, there are several licensed staff members who speak Spanish.
Based on a home language survey and a brief family history conducted by the school’s family liaison, it is clear that Marco’s mother is still in El Salvador, and the EL teacher suspects that Marco may have limited prior schooling there. Marco is a sixth-grader who arrives at a K-8 school from El Salvador with his father. Using Assessment to Determine Content Knowledge in Native Languages Marco
There are several reasons why educators use assessments across multiple languages, ranging from achieving a greater understanding of students’ language proficiency levels or content knowledge to accurately classifying a child as having a disability. Let’s take a look at each of these reasons with related scenarios. Why and How Educators Use Assessments Across Multiple Languages for English Learners Keep reading to learn why educators should assess English learners in both their native language and target language and what educators can glean from this data. In fact, this is a common practice in many schools with formal bilingual programming, and Hamayan and colleagues recommends for this to occur on at least an annual basis (2013). Not only is it valuable to have information on students’ oral and written proficiency with both languages, but it also provides schools with the opportunity to show how much they value the home language and its relationship to becoming proficient in English. Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, in order for English learners (ELs) to qualify for special education services, schools must make every effort to assess this population not only in English, but also in their native language. While this is more or less a requirement for ELs suspected of having a disability, it is nevertheless a sound practice to periodically conduct oral and written language proficiency assessments in students’ native languages.
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