Meeting the needs of EAL Students

Some of you reading may not know that I am a lower elementary EAL teacher at my current school.  My school uses a pull-put method, so I have my students for two periods a day, though I really do my best to ensure they are supported all day.  

One of the tools I use to support my students is the WIDA test (https://wida.wisc.edu).  I administer the test twice a year to properly assess my students’ English language proficiency and determine where I really need to focus my systems of support. However, after a couple of years working with this test, I really started to think I wasn’t doing enough with the data, and I worried that my students’ needs weren’t being met outside of my room as best as they could be.  I was concerned that other teachers who didn’t know these kids as well as I did were struggling to reach them consistently.  I started to brainstorm ways that I could make the WIDA data more accessible for all members of my school faculty, so that as a faculty we could really support EAL kids across the board. 


I wanted to create something quick and easy to understand for my colleagues, so they could better understand my kids at a glance.  I decided to create a template that I could use as a ‘Learner Profile’, updated twice a year after WIDA testing, that was accessible to all staff in our shared Drive.  I utilized the data from the WIDA test, and the WIDA ‘Can-Do’ Descriptors (https://wida.wisc.edu/teach/can-do/descriptors) to ensure that the profile was based on data, and not only my observations.  However, there is one section that is more anecdotal, but it describes the students interests etc, which I hoped could be used by other teachers to spark conversation, or plan more targeted lessons incorporating students’ interests.  I’ve included an example at the bottom here to give you a better idea of what I am talking about, and there’s a link to download a blank template if you want to give it a try as well.  


Ill be sure to give you updates as to how this is working for my colleagues and let you know if it seems to be helping to better supporting my students on their EAL journey.  If there’s any other EAL teachers out there reading this, please share your thoughts or suggestions on what works for you.     


Link to download the Learner Profile template : https://tinyurl.com/kellyhoganwida



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