Getting Our ELLs
Ready
for High Stakes
Assessments
Magda Sakaan
Katy Yates
One of the most important elements
of language that we focus on as ESL
teachers is VOCABULARY
DEVELOPMENT!
“Knowing a word is not an all-or-nothing phenomenon. Word
learning happens incrementally; with each additional
encounter with a word, depth of understanding accrues. Dale
(1965) posited the existence of (at least) four incremental
stages of word knowledge.
Stage 1: Never having seen the word before
Stage 2: Knowing there is such a word, but not
knowing what it means.
Stage 3: Having context-bound and vague knowledge
of the word’s meaning
Stage 4: Knowing the word well and remembering it”
(Katherine A. Dougherty Stahl, Marco A. Bravo)
“An important aspect of direct vocabulary
instruction is selecting appropriate terms to
teach. Beck and her colleagues (2002)
designated three tiers of words: basic words like
clock, happy, and baby are in Tier 1; more
advanced general academic or literary words like
coincidence, absurd, imaginative, commercial,
muscular, duplicate, and restrict are in Tier 2;
and domain-specific words such as pronoun,
algebra, isthmus, and quark are in Tier 3.”
(Marzano, R, http://soltreemrls3.s3-website-uswest2.amazonaws.com/marzanoresearch.com/media/documents/reproducibles/voc
ab-common-core/basic-terms-and-phrases.pdf)
 Academic
Vocabulary is essentially comprised
of 2 subsets
Content or Domain Specific
&
ASSESSMENT
VOCABULARY!
These are the words your students will need to
know to succeed in taking the TCAP and other
high stakes tests.
 These are the words that we often overlook
because they aren’t domain specific.
 These are the words that will solve the
problem argued by most ESL teachers… “How
can they answer the question if they don’t
even know what they are asking??”
 These are the words that require explicit
instruction initially, and then implicit
application, daily.

Evaluative/Task Words Students Should Be Familiar With
Analyze
Systematically and critically examine each of the facts.
Compare
Show how the facts or ideas are similar.
Contrast
Show how the facts or ideas are different.
Define
Set forth the meaning or make something clear.
Discuss
Present a detailed argument or consideration.
Evaluate
Determine the value, significance, or worth of.
Identify
Establish the essential characteristics of.
Illustrate
Make clear by citing examples.
Interpret
Present the subject at hand in understandable terms.
Infer
Draw a conclusion based on given facts; predict, generalize.
Justify
Show or prove to be right or reasonable.
Sequence
Arrange in meaningful order, beginning to end.
Summarize
Explain the main points.
Synthesize
Combine the parts into a coherent whole.
Trace
Review in detail, step by step.
http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/a-test-takers-vocabulary-for-social-studies
1. At the end of the passage, why does Rosa change her mind
about Tomas?
2. Ray wrote this journal entry. It contains mistakes.
Read the entry and answer numbers 28 through 35.
3. Before Olivia presents her speech, she would like to meet with
her friends about her idea.
Which is not an example of good behavior in a group activity?
4. What happens after Risha finds the wood in
the garage?
5. Which word is a synonym for the underlined word?
6. Which section of the passage explains why the surface
of the ocean freezes?
 Find
opportunities in which to infuse the
assessment vocabulary into daily interactions
with all in the classroom
 Examples:





Desks in rows and columns (clarify)
Partition your students into 2 lines for the
bathroom.
Ask students to get a pencil from the caddy that
contains your supplies.
“Make sure that you clear off the surface of your
tables.”
Use Accountable Talk…always.

What we do…
We create our exit tickets prior to our lesson plans for
proper backwards planning. The exit tickets are
multiple choice and we often use the CPS clickers to
collect the data quickly and efficiently.
 At the end of the week, the students get the same
questions, with the same content, but reformatted
into a TCAP format.
 This gives them exposure to the content, the verbiage
and the format they will be seeing on these
assessments.
 Essentially, we eliminate the variable of unfamiliarity
to get a more accurate sense of their content
knowledge.


First, we did a little research in order to create an accurate sentence
stem bank…
 We
re-format the content we assessed
throughout the week using the sentence
stem bank to ensure our students are being
regularly exposed to assessment vocabulary.
Re-Formatted
Original Exit Ticket
 We



all use exit tickets to…
…evaluate the effectiveness of our instruction
…assess a student’s level of mastery over the
content
…determine whether or not there is a need for a
re-teach.
But we can also use them to familiarize our ELLs
with standardized testing formats, more
specifically, the TCAP (or ELSA)
Test Taking Vocabulary
http://teachingtoday.glencoe.com/howtoarticles/a-test-takers-vocabulary-forsocial-studies
Marzano, R
http://soltreemrls3.s3-website-uswest2.amazonaws.com/marzanoresearch.com/media/documents/reproducibles/voc
ab-common-core/basic-terms-and-phrases.pdf
http://www.tn.gov/education/assessment/achievement/ACH_Gr4_PT_set1.pdf
Contemporary Classroom Vocabulary Assessment for Content Areas, Katherine A.
Dougherty Stahl, Marco A. Bravo;
https://steinhardt.nyu.edu/scmsAdmin/uploads/006/716/Stahl%20Voc%20Assess%20
RT.pdf