1
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Howon Lee
Vanderbilt University
2
Capstone ELL Portfolio
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT ….……………………………………………………………………………….
3
Philosophy of Teaching …..…………………………………………………………………… 4
Artifact Introduction .................................................................................................................. 10
Reflection ………………………………………………………………………………………. 22
Appendix
1. Artifact A: World Village Lesson Plan ……………………………………………… 24
2. Artifact B: Decoding Archetypes and Applying Them to Lived Experiences
Lesson Plan ……………………….…………………………………….. 32
3. Artifact C: PowerPoint Slides of ELL Foundations Course Final Presentation …….. 37
4. Artifact D: Food around the world Lesson Plan …………………………………….. 38
5. Artifact E: Three Genre Lesson Plan ………………………………………………... 43
6. Artifact F: Procedure Lesson Plan …………………………………………………... 54
7. Artifact G: Student Analysis with Standardized and Authentic Assessments ………. 56
8. Artifact H: PowerPoint Slides of OWLS Written Language Scales Analysis ………. 68
9. Artifact I: Explore Paper …………………………………………………………….. 69
10. Artifact J: howonlee27.edublog.org ………………………………………………... 73
3
Capstone ELL Portfolio
ABSTRACT
This is my capstone portfolio for the ELL strand. The portfolio consists of three parts which are
1) philosophy of teaching, 2) artifact introduction, and 3) reflection. In the philosophy of
teaching, I discuss what my beliefs are about education by defining my context of teaching,
deliberating current issues of ELL education, and discussing my stance as an ELL teacher in
tandem with a literature review. In the second part, artifact introduction, I demonstrate my
professional competence by providing artifacts I have constructed throughout the teacher training
I have received at Peabody within each domain of the TESOL standards. I delineate what a
teacher who mastered each domain looks like and present two artifacts for each domain to
defend my proficiency in each area. The artifacts that I present are the composite of various
types of writing for various purposes: lesson plan, unit plan, presentation slides, analysis paper,
and a blog. In the last part, I reflect on the capstone experience by self-evaluating my
accomplishment. I narrate my strengths and weaknesses I have found through the capstone
experience, and ponder how I will develop the area I am less confident at. Furthermore, I
elaborate how I will apply my education at Peabody and capstone experience to my future
teaching. Lastly, I articulate how I will put efforts to be a better teacher by becoming a lifelong
learner.
4
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Philosophy of Teaching
I believe Horace Mann’s statement that “Education then […] is a great equalizer of the
conditions of men” still holds true today. In fact, as student demographics are becoming more
diverse in terms of ethnicity and socioeconomic background, the importance of education in
guaranteeing equal opportunities to all students has increased. As a future ESL teacher in a
secondary school setting, I identify my duties in alignment with the notion that Horace Mann
advocated. My mission as an ESL teacher will be to help students equip the linguistic tool,
English, to have the equal access to the content knowledge they need to learn with which they
can advance to higher education. To determine the most ideal form of curriculum and program
that best serves ELLs’ language and content learning, I will consider various factors such as
students’ and their communities’ linguistic and cultural background, language development
theories, and historical and legal setting. In the following, I will point out these factors and
elaborate on my stance toward them.
Students and Their Communities
Understanding characteristics of students and their communities should precede any
decision making for ELLs’ education because students are the biggest determinant in shaping
appropriate curriculum and program. In working with ELLs who are coming from a myriad of
different contexts in terms of cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic backgrounds, I believe that
teachers should be wary of considering them to be a “tabula rasa,” a blank slate. I am strongly
against the idea that limited English proficiency means the lack of culture and literacy and
therefore education should assimilate them to the language and culture of the mainstream. Rather,
I believe ELLs bring valuable “funds of knowledge” (Moll, Amanti, Neff & Gonzalez, 1993),
which add the merit of pluralism and diversity to schools. To discover each student’s unique
5
Capstone ELL Portfolio
funds of knowledge and incorporate them into my curriculum, I will develop and carry a tool kit
that contains strategies for understanding students and their communities. The tools will include
receiving notes from parents which introduce their children, getting students to write about their
heritage, holding bilingual meetings with parents, and so on. (Allen, 2007) One of the most
important tools will be the transnational and community literacies project (Jiménez, Smith, &
Teague, 2009) in which I will conduct research on students’ communities and then utilize the
artifacts I have collected in designing lessons. The lesson that incorporates findings from the
project will allow it to be culturally relevant which will let me build a meaningful relationship
with each student (Jiménez & Rose, 2010). I also hope that my classroom will be a place where
students validate their identity by feeling welcomed and accepted for who they are. As Nieto and
Bode (2008) recommend, I will create a physical condition that celebrates the diversified
classroom culture by displaying pictures, signs, flags and reading materials of multiple national
origins. Depending on student demographics, the physical setting as well as approaches to
understanding the students and communities would be updated accordingly every year.
The Curriculum
I believe that adopting the “backward design” model for developing curriculum (Wiggins
& McTighe, 2005) is especially effective for ELLs due to their diversity of needs. According to
the “backward design” framework, curriculum designers should identify the desired result and
determine evidences by which learners’ achievement is measured first and foremost. To identify
the desired result, accurate information on ELLs’ entry English proficiency and cultural, socioeconomic background should be gathered. To precisely gauge English proficiency, the State of
Tennessee conducts Home Language Survey and ELDA. However, there is minimal information
on what students actually need to learn to succeed in the U.S. schools regarding ELLs’ home
6
Capstone ELL Portfolio
culture and societal context. To supplement this lack of information, I will derive nonconventional ways of reaching out to families of ELLs that Delgodo-Gaitan (1991) introduces. By
involving parents in designing curriculum, schools in California proved the enhanced educational
opportunities of Spanish-speaking students. Engaging parents in the curriculum design process
will not only heighten the cultural congruency of the curriculum but also encourage the continual
participation of the parents in their children’s learning.
The Choice of Program
Though programs for ELLs are usually determined by school committee, ESL teachers
should try to make their voices heard in the program construction process. As a firm believer of
effectiveness of additive bilingualism, I will be a proponent of programs that have language-asresource orientation (Ruiz, 1984) such as two-way immersion while dissenting submersion or
pull-out programs (de Jong, 2011). Furthermore, I understand that the right choice of program
does not necessarily guarantee the effectiveness of the program. For example, no matter what the
orientation of the program is, teachers need to let students’ L1 serve a multitude of purposes and
functions, facilitating students’ language and content knowledge learning (Lucas & Katz, 1994).
Townsend and Fu (2001) and Valdés (1998) bring up the cases of students who couldn’t succeed
in schools due to the lack of the institutional supports which validate students’ L1. To monitor
suitability of the program, I will closely watch my input and continuously measure students’
output with various methods so that I can identify what is the best program for my students,
which, I am sure, will vary every year depending on who my students are (de Jong, 2011).
Legal and Historical Issues
7
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Schmid (2001), recounting the history of the U.S.’s stance toward ELLs, notes that the
federal government has shifted its position, highly influenced by the economic and political
context of the time. Bilingual Education Act (BEA) which was enacted in 1968 and replaced by
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in 2001, had shown both assimilationist and pluralist views
toward bilingualism (Garcia, 2005). NCLB, on the other hand, strongly supports the
assimilationist’s view, putting a strong emphasis on testing and accountability. This trend forces
ESL lessons to prepare students for tests, rather than being a channel of validating students’
funds of knowledge and identities. Besides, under NCLB, schools in the state of Tennessee need
to adhere to English-only policy which hinders teachers from speaking students’ L1. As a future
ESL teacher, I see this condition as both a constraint and an affordance. Through classroom
observation experiences, I witnessed many teachers who still keep their lessons congruent to
students’ culture and utilize their L1 in certain phases of lesson. I will benchmark those examples
and make my own lessons as linguistically and culturally relevant to students as possible while
abiding by the policy.
Juxtaposed with BEA, judicial decisions of federal courts have discovered the violations
of ELLs’ rights and have dedicated in providing remedies. Lau v. Nichols case in 1974 and
Castaneda v. Pickard case in 1981 are two landmark cases that defined and specified what
limited-English-proficient (LEP) students rights are and what schools should comply to protect
those rights (Garcia, 2005). Though ELLs’ affordance to equal opportunity has widened through
these judicial decisions, there are still many rights that are infringed, especially for those students
from families with illegal immigration issues. I will keep myself aware of current immigration
issues such as Deferred Action in order to be able to provide necessary help to my students when
needed.
8
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Theoretical Understandings
The social developmental theory of Vygotsky (1978) is the broad, overarching principle
that helps me understand how students learn. In every lesson, I will gather as much evidence as
possible to correctly locate students’ zone of proximal development (ZPD). Understanding
students’ L1 and culture must be preceded through diverse approaches such as transnational and
community literacies project. (Jiménez, Smith, & Teague, 2009 ) Krashen (1987) brought
Vygotsky’s idea and adapted it to the field of second language teaching and learning, introducing
the concept of comprehensible input. For me, these theories signify the importance of two things:
frequent and precise assessment and immediate prescription of alternative method and material
for students. In my classroom, assessment will happen at all times, informally and formally. To
make sure that students are comfortable with expressing themselves and being evaluated
throughout the lesson, I will make sure that there is no cultural tension among students as well as
between the students and myself (Gutiérrez, Larson, & Kreuter, 1995). This is also important for
communicative language learning, which is characterized as authentic input and output of
language, to happen in lessons.
Conclusion
Secondary students advance to the society in the near future which makes it imperative to
equip adequate language proficiency. I believe that my job as an ESL teacher is to render ELLs
linguistic capital (Corson, 2001), and I will accomplish it not by acculturating them to the
mainstream’s culture but by allowing them to utilize their funds of knowledge which are rooted
from their L1 and home culture. I will be a transformational teacher who is always at forefront to
reach out to ELLs and their communities advocating their rights and needs.
9
Capstone ELL Portfolio
References
Allen, J. (2007). Engaging Families Creating welcoming schools: A practical guide to home-school
partnerships with diverse families (pp. 106-115). New York: Teachers College Press and
International Reading Association.
Corson, D. (2001). Language diversity and education. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, chapter 2 and 3,
pp. 16-65.
de Jong, E.J. (2011). Foundations for multilingualism in Educations: From Principles to
practice. Philadelphia, PA: Calson.
Delgado-Gaitan, C. (1991). Involving parents in the schools: A process of empowerment. American
Journal of Education, 100(1), 20-46.
Garcia, E. (2005). The policy debate and related policies regarding U.S. bilinguals. In teaching
and learning in two languages: Bilingualism and schooling in the United States. New
York: Teachers College Press.
Gonzalez, N., Moll, L. C., Floyd-Tenery, M., Rivera, A., Rendon, P., Gonzales, R., et al. (1993). Funds
of knowledge for teaching in Latino households. Urban Education, 29(4), 443-470.
Gutiérrez, K., Larson, J. & Kreuter, B. (1995). Cultural tensions in the scripted classroom:
The value of the subjugated perspective. Urban Education, 29 (4), 410-442.
Jiménez, R., Smith, P., & Teague, B. (2009). Transnational and Community Literacies for
Teachers. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. 53(1), pp.16-26.
Jiménez, R. T. & Rose, B. C. (2010). Knowing how to know: Building meaningful
relationships through instruction that meets the needs of students learning English.
Journal of Teacher Education, 61(5), 403-412.
Krashen, Stephen D. 1987. Principles and practices in second language acquisition. New
York: Prentice-Hall.
Lucas, T., & Katz, A. (1994). Reframing the debate: The roles of native languages in English-only
programs for minority students. TESOL Quarterly, 28(3), 537-561.
Nieto, S. & Bode (2008). Racism, Discrimination, and expectations of students’ achievement. In
Affirming diversity: The socioplital context of multicultural education, 5th ed. New York: Allyn
and Bacon.
Ruiz, R. (1984). Orientation in language planning. NABE Journal, 7 (2), 15-34.
Schmid, C. (2001). The politics of language. New York: Oxford University Press, chapter 2, pp. 14-31.
Townsend, J. S., & Fu, D. (2001). Paw's story: A Laotian refugee's lonely entry into American
literacy. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 45(2), 104-114.
Valdés, G. (1998). The world outside and inside schools: Language and immigrant children.
Educational Researcher, 27(6), 4-18.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes. (M.
Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, Massachusetts:
Harvard University Press.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: Association for
Supervision and Curriculum Development.
10
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact Introduction
Domain 1: Language
As a future ELL teacher, I believe that the most important content knowledge that I will
teach is the knowledge and skills of English language. An ELL teacher’s ability to construct
efficient instruction is enabled by the teacher’s understanding of English language as a system.
In other words, an ELL teacher’s knowledge of phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and
pragmatics of English is the foundation of successful instruction by the ELL teacher. That is
because such knowledge allows ELL teachers to analyze students’ linguistic strengths and
weaknesses through formal and informal assessments. Based on the analysis, the ELL teachers
can construct language objectives of lessons. These successful lessons make up an effective
curriculum and a program that facilitates learners’ linguistic understanding.
Besides the knowledge of English as a system, a successful ELL teacher ought to have a
high level of understanding on first and second language acquisition theories. With such
understandings, the ELL teacher detects learners’ level of linguistic development, based on
which the teacher can devise lessons that deliver the right quality and quantity of content that
students can consume.
With that in mind, I introduce artifacts A and B. They demonstrate my knowledge of the
English language as a system and language acquisition theories as well as my ability to apply the
knowledge to design successful lessons.
11
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact A: World Village Lesson Plan (See p.24)
There are many possible methods of learning a system of a language. It can be learned
through overt grammar instruction which is called the grammar translation method. It can also be
learned through experiencing specific situations which is named the direct method. The method
of language learning that I believe most effective to learners is through participating in authentic
and genuine communications which is termed the communicative approach. By this method,
language learners engage in the communication with a concrete purpose in mind, which makes
the communication meaningful and goal-oriented. Lessons based on this method allow learners
fluent production of language as well as development of their receptive skills.
The lesson plan that I designed in March, 2012 for the Second Language Literacies
course is based on the communicative approach of language learning. The assumed learners of
the lesson are 6th ELLs from diverse backgrounds. I also assume a wide range of English
proficiency level in this lesson. The language objective that I established for this lesson is to
enable learners to use conditional sentences using correct frames such as “If the world were a
village, I would be….” and “If I could choose a role model of my country, it would be…”
Instead of teaching the rule of conditional sentences overtly, students are given the purpose for
and situation in which they should produce and articulate the conditional sentences. Students are
encouraged to use the correct form of conditional sentences by learning the differences in
meanings of the two conditional forms, past conditional and past perfect conditional, instead of
memorizing rules and terminologies. Activities such as KWL chart, creating and sharing students’
home-country’s profile and twitter talk as an exit slip allow students ample chance to receive and
produce language as well as learning a rule of the language. Their performances are assessed
formatively throughout the lesson by the teacher.
12
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact B: Decoding Archetypes and Applying Them to Lived Experiences Lesson Plan (See p.32)
This is the lesson plan I developed in the course entitled Teaching Literature and Media
to Adolescents in November, 2012. I had one of the most distinguished second language
acquisition theories, natural approach of Stephen Krashen (Krashen, 1987), in mind while I was
creating this lesson. Krashen asserted that the natural approach, in which students are given
genuine purposes of participation in communication, is the most effective way of acquiring a
second language. In this lesson plan which targets 9-12 grade Asian ELLs in a sheltered English
course, students are exposed to the topic, model minority, which is closely related to their lived
experiences. Considering that forming identities is one of the most important tasks adolescent
learners face, presenting the biases toward their ethnicity groups to them and having them
openly discuss it would successfully draw the learners’ participation. Learners’ language use
throughout the lesson is formatively assessed by the teacher’s observation of the learners’
participation in the group discussion and their worksheet completion.
Domain 2: Culture
Throughout the course readings, lectures, and field experiences, I have learned that
culturally relevant instruction is crucial to students’ success in learning. The key to construct a
comprehensive culturally relevant instruction is to deeply understand the learners. To be able to
understand the learners, the need for ELL teachers to understand different cultures that students
are coming from is imperative. Nashville area, being one of the newest shelters for refugees, is
rapidly becoming diverse in its demographic and culture. Teachers of such areas, especially
teachers of ELLs, should seek out for ways to reach out and experience students’ cultures so that
13
Capstone ELL Portfolio
they can adjust their lessons to be culturally responsive to ELLs. Lessons that are pertinent to
students’ cultures help students validate their identity. Taking cultural relevance into account is
also crucial to construct yearlong curriculum especially for schools with diverse population.
Keeping the diversity in mind, teachers need to schedule pre-instructional assessments of
students, home visits, parental involvement, and celebration of the diversity before a school year
begins so that they can incorporate the diversity to the curriculum in a productive way. From
designing lessons and curriculum to assessing students, teachers’ profound understanding of
students and benefit them to make the most appropriate decisions for the students.
Artifact C and D demonstrate my knowledge of aforementioned concepts and skills of
incorporating the knowledge when devising the lessons and curriculum.
Artifact C: PowerPoint Slides of ELL Foundations Course Final Presentation (See p. 37)
At the very end of the course, each of the students had a chance to present his or her
synthesis of their learning in Foundations of ELL Education course that I took in 2012 Fall
semester. My presentation was entitled “How to Understand ELLs: Sympathy vs. Empathy.” I
first delineated the difference between sympathy and empathy. According to that distinction, I
created the two categories which ELL teachers can do to sympathize and empathize with their
students. Then, I listed the readings, field trips, interviews, and other measures belong to each
category. I concluded that even though many ELL teachers can reach to sympathy level of
understanding of ELLs, they need to pursue the empathy level of understanding, which can be
reached by frequent, regular, and genuine communication and interaction with the students, their
families, and their communities.
14
Capstone ELL Portfolio
While I was preparing this presentation, I had ample chance to brainstorm what I will do
as an ELL teacher to empathize with my students. Given that their life experiences and cultures
are so different from my own, I will purposefully arrange the time for learning my students’
communities. I will visit students’ households, keep a cooperative relationship with students’
parents or guardians, and pay close attention to legal issues regarding my students. In that way, I
will be able to grasp what my students’ outside-of-school lives are like, which will allow me to
construct their experiences in school to be most relevant and meaningful to their learning.
Artifact D: Food around the World Lesson Plan (See p. 38)
When teachers are well aware of ELLs’ cultures and communities, they are able to
design and implement culturally relevant instructions. This artifact, a lesson plan that I created
for Teaching Second Language Literacies course in February 2012, shows my effort to make a
lesson to which students can relate. The topic of this lesson is culinary culture of different
countries. I chose this topic because food is the commonality among students of any culture
which allows every student to dedicate in the class discussion. Each student is posited to be an
expert, as if they are embassy of their country. Their reading materials differ according to
students’ country of origin: Mexico, Japan and Italy. After reading the materials which are about
the countries’ culinary culture, each student gives a presentation explaining their countries’ food
culture as a formative assessment. Their completion of the worksheet is also evaluated.
Domain 3: Planning, Implementing and Managing Instruction
Though teaching encompasses more facets than classroom instruction, it is obvious that
planning and implementing well-rounded lessons is the most crucial skill that an ELL teacher
15
Capstone ELL Portfolio
should equip. In order to plan an effective lesson, teachers should be able to design a lesson
backwardly. Namely, a teacher should determine a target behavior of students after the
instruction, decide how to measure the target behavior, and then arrange the materials and
activities that will enable students to master the target behavior. When determining the target
behavior, the teacher has to consider students’ level of accomplishment of the prior lessons,
context within the curriculum, and state standards or Common Core State Standards (CCSS)
imposed on the students. As they plan a lesson or series of lessons, ELL teachers need to
contemplate what kind of teaching methods he or she will adopt. I, as an ELL teacher, will posit
my teaching as an apprenticeship. I will constantly model cognitive and metacognitive strategies
when teaching target skills, reading, listening, speaking and writing, and give my students ample
chance to practice the strategies. I will constantly provide them with scaffolding and feedback in
the process.
A well-managed class is a prerequisite of successful instruction. In order to raise the
efficiency of teaching and learning to its optimum possibility, teachers need to set classroom
expectations and rules as early as possible. Besides, teachers need to explicitly teach the
procedure of classroom rules when it is needed.
Keeping the aforementioned topics in mind, I introduce Artifact E and F. Artifact E
demonstrates my ability to plan and implement a series of lesson using three different genres of
reading materials and multiple mediums of assessments. Artifact F is a plan of teaching a class
opening procedure which reveals my classroom management skills.
16
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact E: Three Genre Lesson Plan (See p. 43)
In their daily lives, learners develop literacy skills through many different types of media
including traditional text-based materials and well as non-traditional materials such as film,
graphic novels, magazines, and Web 2.0 tools. Since those are media that students are exposed to
and participating in on a daily basis, adopting these and drawing a seamless connection of
traditional and non-traditional materials is key to a successful lesson that gives learners a sense
of agency and connection to their lives.
This artifact, Three Genre Lesson Plan is a unit plan designed for the course entitled
Reading and Learning with Print and New Media in March 2012. This unit plan is conceive for
an 8th grade English Language Arts class with ELLs. After analyzing state standards, I
determined the target behaviors that I want my students to achieve after learning this unit, which
are 1) students can identify the characteristics of three different text genres, graphic novel,
narrative essay and film, 2) students can differentiate ways of writing to adjust to a variety of
medium of writing and 3) students can create a working definition of “humanity” which is a
repeated theme of three texts. Reading materials of three different genres, Maus: A Survivor's
TaleⅠ by Art Spiegelman (graphic novel), The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (narrative
essay), and La Vita é Bella (Life Is Beautiful) by Roberto Benigni (film), students are
encouraged to discuss characters of different genres and they solidify their understanding by
transforming the text into different a genre. Learners are given chances to use a diverse medium
of communicating their opinions such as twitter and blog posting, which are intended to serve as
evidences for assessment at the same time. As an ending product, students create their own
working definition of humanity by finding evidences from each material. Students’ performance
17
Capstone ELL Portfolio
is assessed formatively throughout the unit and their level of accomplishment of the objectives is
reflected on planning of the next unit.
Artifact F: Procedure Lesson Plan (See p. 54)
This artifact is a plan of teaching the procedure of how to begin a class. I developed this
lesson plan for Advanced Teaching in Secondary Schools course in February 2013. Setting
expectations clearly and teaching how the expectations are met explicitly raises the efficiency of
the instruction. In this artifact, I aim to teach learners the procedure of beginning a lesson which
has three steps: 1) get their own textbook, workbook and journal from the bookshelf, 2) check if
they have a pencil and if their pencils need to be sharpen; if they don’t grab one from the shared
pencil case and if the pencil needs to be sharpen, do so, 3) begin writing the journal about the
given topic which is displayed on the projector screen. Though the procedure might seem basic,
teaching it and automatizing the process will make a significant difference in terms of the saved
instruction time and heightened attention level of students at the beginning of a lesson.
Domain 4: Assessment
There are various ways to assess students’ performance as well as ways to utilize the
results of assessments. A common dichotomy of assessments is dividing them into normreferenced and criterion-referenced tests. Norm-referenced tests generally have high reliability
and are easy to administer whereas criterion-referenced tests generally have high validity and
usually require more time and contextualizing process to administer. Norm-referenced,
standardized assessments are most commonly done in today’s elementary and secondary schools
and they are almost always high-stakes; though degrees vary, important decisions regarding
18
Capstone ELL Portfolio
students, such as placement, reclassifications, and admission, are made based on the standardized
assessments. Newly entering ELLs to the state of TN are required to take series of standardized
tests such as TELPA, TCAP or ELSA, ELDA and so on which function to monitor students’
academic and language growth. Those standardized tests, however, neither provide
comprehensive information on learners’ growth, nor create a positive washback effect on their
future learning. Teachers of ELLs, therefore, must be able to utilize appropriate criterionreferenced, authentic assessments to balancing with norm-referenced, state-mandated tests.
Considering the aforementioned points, I present Artifact G and H. Artifact G describes
my in-depth analysis on an ELL by using pre-assessments, standardized assessments and
authentic assessments. Artifact H demonstrates my ability to analyze a commercial assessment,
OWLS Written Language Scales.
Artifact G: Student Analysis with Standardized and Authentic Assessments (See p. 56)
This artifact consists of two part of the analysis project which I wrote in February 2013
for the course entitled Assessment of ELL. In part Ⅰ, I describe the context of my target
student’s learning which is a high level English language development class at Glencliff High
School. Then, I depict the learner’s cultural and linguistic background by analyzing the results
of the pre-instructional assessments which are Identity Questionnaire, Home Language Survey,
Oral Language Survey, and Literacy Survey. For part Ⅲ, I constructed and conducted an oral
language proficiency assessment, and I measure her oral language proficiency using the
observational protocol, Student Oral Language Observation Matrix (SOLOM). Additionally, to
measure the student’s lexical knowledge, I use Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test
19
Capstone ELL Portfolio
– Spanish Bilingual Edition, which is a norm-referenced assessment, and compare the
result of it to that of an authentic vocabulary assessment, Vocabulary Knowledge Rating
Scale.
This project enlightened me that authentic assessments can give teachers more specific
information on students’ language development. As an ELL teacher, I will make an assessment
plan as I play a yearlong curriculum taking both norm-referenced and criterion-referenced
assessments into consideration. Furthermore, I will make necessary modification considering
individual learner’s needs.
Artifact H: PowerPoint Slides of OWLS Written Language Scales Analysis (See p. 68)
In the same course, Assessment of ELL, I gave a presentation on my analysis of a
commercial language proficiency assessment, OWLS. I particularly focused on the written part
of the assessment. The presentation encompasses the overview and description of the OWLSWritten Language Scales as well as in-depth analysis of the assessment including the reliability,
validity, affordances, constraints, and application of the assessment.
As I was preparing the presentation, I developed my skill of reading and interpreting a
commercially developed language assessment. With this skill, I will be able to choose the most
appropriate commercial assessment for my students in the future, considering its reliability and
validity, and practical aspects which are administering age range, cost and time.
20
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Domain 5: Professionalism
ELL teachers are expected to be an expert of their field, and this can be interpreted in
many different ways. First, understanding historical context as well as political background of
ELL’s learning context is an important aspect for ELL teachers. Knowing how the discourse
over ELL education has changed and developed over time and how that shaped today’s ELL
educational environment allows ELL educators to deeply understand the affordances and
constraints they encounter. Recognizing affordances and constraints leads ELL teachers to
choose the best program and create the most effective curriculum. Second, ELL teachers should
be resourceful in terms of teaching methods, technologies, kinds of assessments that can be
chosen from to different needs, supporting routes for students in legal need, ways to reach out to
students’ home culture, and so forth. Lastly, ELL teachers need to be lifelong learners who
collaborate with their coworkers to seek out for better ways to teaching, discover new materials
and technologies, and share classroom management tips. Through these endeavors, teachers can
raise lesson effectiveness as well as their professionalism as effective teachers.
Artifact I: Explore Paper (See p. 69)
In Foundations of ELL Education, I wrote this Explore Paper. In contains my analysis on
historic and judicial cases regarding ELL based on the class readings, and interpretation of
current ELL educational context. In this paper, I express my opinions to improve ELL
educational environment in the state of Tennessee: the testing for initial identification of the
ELLs need to be more precise, continuous support for the transitional LEP students (T1, T2)
should be mandated by the state level, and the number of students that one ELL teacher has
should be lowered so that teachers can make a meaningful relationship with each learner.
21
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact J: howonlee27.edublog.org (See p.73)
For today’s tech-savvy learners, providing various channels of student to student and
student to teacher communication as well as routes through which students can engage in
assessments are encouraged. Especially for ELLs, who are in the process of developing English
and learning different register of language when using different media, giving them multiple
chances to participate in web 2.0 communication is a beneficial skill for both learners and a
professional ELL teacher. With artifact K, I demonstrate my competency in creating and
designing a blog that matches the theme of the reading material. The blog plays a threefold role:
it allows students to access to the main material, provides extra recourses that students need as
supporting materials for completion of their final assignment, and acts as a space where students
can upload their assignments and share them with other student letting the educational
experience be cooperative.
22
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Reflection
The capstone experience endowed me with an opportunity to synthesize as well as reflect
on my study of English Language Learners at Peabody. The five domains which are Language,
Culture, Instruction, Assessment, and Professionalism are the five indicators based on which one
can determine teacher effectiveness.
As I was preparing artifacts for each domain and writing introduction of each artifact, I
could identify some aspects that I was strong at and the aspects on which I needed more
professional development. The aspects I believe I am strong at are Language and Instruction.
Though it was difficult to find the artifacts for the Language domain because I was exempt from
the linguistics course of the program, I could still provide evidences that demonstrate my
foundational knowledge of language as a system and first and second language acquisition
theories. It was possible because throughout the courses I have taken at Peabody, I have
reaffirmed the importance of establishing concrete language objectives considering linguistic and
language acquisition theories. I am confident to say that I am capable of setting concrete and
approachable language objectives across disciplines. As for the Instruction domain, I feel wellprepared through the practices of creating lesson plans I have done for many different courses.
Literacy theories concerns cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies especially hone my
lesson planning skills. Besides, teaching demonstrations I have done in courses as well as in my
practicum experience developed my skills of lesson implementation. When it comes to
classroom management, practices I have had in Teaching in Secondary Schools course were of
great help.
23
Capstone ELL Portfolio
However, I realize that I will continue develop in all five domains as I actually work in
field, especially in the domains of Culture and Assessment. Though I learned theories and
research of understanding students’ culture and utilize the knowledge to design lessons, I am left
wondering how the knowledge of ELLs’ culture can be aligned with CCSS across disciplines.
Depending on content matters, cultural capital that ELLs possess can or cannot be validated.
How do ELL teachers address this issue to become advocates of ELLs and their funds of
knowledge? As for the dimension of assessment, though I have a toolbox filled with possible
assessments that are available for ELL teachers, I wonder to what extent a teacher’s authentic
assessment would count when administrative decisions are made.
I believe that these inquiries should be answered as teach in the field and grow
professionally. Based on what I have learned and experienced at Peabody, I will work to be a
teacher who can inspire students and draw their potentials to the highest so that they can be
successful in school as well as life. To reach to that goal, I will be a lifelong learner who learns
by cooperating with other teachers, acquires new technologies by seminar opportunities, keeps
up with current issues in education as well as ELL teaching and learning field by attending
conferences and gathering resources.
24
Artifact A: World Village Lesson Plan
Ⅰ. Setting Scenario
In Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, they have a summer school for all the ELLs in the school
district. The class of 6th grade is composed of twenty students. Though there are students from different
backgrounds in terms of social, cultural and economic environment, most of the students are from
immigrant families who are newcomers of the U.S. The general purposes of the summer ESL school are (1)
to let ELLs have more exposure to English language so that they can enhance their English proficiency in
four skills, and (2) to help them embrace multicultural environment and have global perspective. This is a
very first lesson for the summer school.
Ⅱ. Master Plan
Twenty 6th grade ELLs of different ethnic/cultural/linguistic background
90 minutes
Smith, D. J. (1944). If the World Were a Village (2nd ed.). Tonawanda, NY: Kids Can
Textbook
Press
A video clip(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtYjUv2x65g) and a script of it,
Supplementary Materials
PPT slides, Worksheet, Word cards, IPad, Twitter
Focused skill
Reading and Speaking (in conjunction with other two skills: listening and writing)
Vocabulary to learn
population, billion, million, imaginary, represent, greet
Desired Results
Target
Class Time
Language Objectives
Students will be able to…
1) learn how to predict the meaning of new vocabulary
2) write and speak the conditional expression such as “If the world were a village, I would be….” or “If I could
choose a role model of my country, it would be…”
3) differentiate important sentences from supplementary sentences and using the important sentences, make a
short narrative summary of a text.
Content Objectives
Students will be able to…
1) be familiar to the concept of global world.
2) activate their schema, draw internal questions on the topic external and find the answers by reading.
3) embrace and appreciate the value of diversity in the classroom and furthermore, the society.
4) aware that world has limited sources and not all of the people in the Earth are enjoying them.
Social Interaction Objectives
Students will be able to…
1) break the ice and get to know each other through the activities.
2) work together to achieve information from each other so that they can achieve a given goal.
2) collaborate to achieve one goal that is to find out the most important sentences from a given passage.
Higher-Order Questions
1) What does it mean to live in a global world?
2) Living in this society, What do we take for granted? What should we be thankful for?
3) What can we do to help those people in terrible conditions in other parts of the world?
25
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Assessment Evidence
Language Objectives
1) See if all students are actively engaging in the whole-class activity of work prediction.
2) Check the worksheet for the personal profile and choosing one person from their country who represent their
nation activities.
3) Observe groups while they are in the jigsaw activity in which students will collaboratively figure out what are
the most important sentences.
Content Objectives
1) Check students’ understanding gradually developing as the class goes by and the final twitter comments they
will make about global world.
2) Check the KWL chart on the worksheet.
3) By asking whole-class questions such as “Isn’t it amazing to have this variety in one classroom?” or “Isn’t it
so wonderful that there are so many different languages spoken in this world?”, check constantly if students
are constructing positive attitudes towards diversity.
4) Observe groups when they are in the jigsaw activity.
Social Interaction Objectives
1) Observe closely when students are asking and answering their profile.
2) Observe closely when students are sharing what the person they choose to represent their country.
3) Observe closely when students are engaging in the jigsaw activity.
Provision for Adjustments
The main purpose of this class is leaning toward social interaction and higher-order thinking than language and
content learning. Therefore, when the majority of students is perplexed and cannot follow the prepared plan,
slow down the pace and divide the lesson into two periods.
Ⅲ. Action Plan
Procedure
Activity
Greeting
Sharing
Agenda
Introduction
(Before
Activity)
Hook
(Activating
Schema)
Teacher and Learner Behavior
Teacher
Students
- Greet students.
- Let students know his/her name
and give students nametag.
- Briefly announce the agenda of
the summer school semester, and
of today’s class.
- Show today’s objectives to the
students.
- Greet the teacher.
- Have a name tag
on their table.
- Know the agenda of
this semester and of
today’s class.
Read
today’s
objectives on the ppt
slide.
- Show the following except with a
picture of the Earth on a PPT
slide to students:
The first day or so we all pointed
to our countries. The third or
fourth day we were pointing to our
continents. By the fifth day we
were aware of only one Earth.”
Astronaut Bin Salman al-Saud
International Space Station
- Look at the picture
of the Earth and read
the excerpt.
Time
(min.)
Aids
2
Nametag
3
PPT
slide
5
Video
clip,
PPT
slide
26
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Watching a
Text Preview
and Activating
Schema
- Ask students what they can
think of when they see the picture
of the Earth.
- Ask students what the excerpt
means.
- Announce them that they will
learn something about the earth
today, and after the class they will
get to know the meaning of this
excerpt clearer.
- Have students watch a video
clip that is a preview of today’s
text.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=FtYjUv2x65g)
- Ask students what the video is
about and what the video makes
them
think of. Have the
conversation continue for about a
minute.
- Let students watch it once again
with the script.
- Spread the worksheet. On the
worksheet, there is a KWL chart
that asks:
While
Activity
Part Ⅰ:
Video
Preview
-Share their ideas
about the Earth.
- Share their ideas
about the excerpt.
- Have expectations
on the class.
- Watch the video
and relate it to their
own knowledge.
- Freely talk about
what the video and
what that makes
them think of.
8
Video
clip
5
Worksheet
5
PPT
slide
- Understand the
video better with the
script.
- Fill in the K and W
part of the KWL chart
on the worksheet.
· what you know about the
content of the video?
· what you want to know more
about the content of the video?
K and W in the
KWL chart
Deve
-lopment
While
Reading
Activity
Part Ⅱ:
Reading
and
Meaning
Constructing
Vocabulary
· what did you learn from the
video and the reading?
to students. Explain how to fill
out the KWL chart and make sure
everybody understands. Have
students fill out K and W part first.
Lower students’ affective filter by
making sure that they can just
write them some words, while
writing sentences is encouraged.
- On the PPT slide, display the
key vocabulary for today’s
reading. Key vocabulary is only
selected
from
the
reading
passages that are going to be
read by everyone. Namely, words
from other passages that are
going to be used for jigsaw
activity will covered as a key
vocabulary.
Before
starting
exercise, let students know that
they shouldn’t say the meaning
out loud unless they have a clue
found in the context. Point out the
sentences that the key words are
used. Ask students what the
words mean by predicting in the
context. When students are not
- Learn the key
vocabulary
by
predicting
their
meaning
in
the
context. Also learn
the skills of guessing
the
new
words’
meaning.
27
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Keeping new
words in the
Word Cards
Look at the
PicturePrediction
Silent Reading
My Profile
in the Village
sure about the meaning, draw a
step-by-step guesses.
- Present a slide that contains all
the new words and meanings of
them. Announce students that
they will keep newly learned
vocabulary in their personal word
cards. Pass the word cards to
students and have them write
down the unknown words in the
cards.
- Keep the unknown
words in the word
cards,
reminding
themselves of the
new words.
- Have students look at the
picture on page 6, 9 and 11
respectively. Also have them refer
to the titles. Ask students to make
predictions of what the passages
will be about.
- Have students read the textbook
(p. 7, 8 and 10) silently.
- Look at the pictures
and titles and predict
the content of the
passages.
- Based on what they just read,
have students write their profile in
the global village. To guide
students’ writing, give students an
example which is also written on
the worksheet. Posit the teacher
is from Egypt and model the
writing process to students.
(There is no one who’s from
Egypt in this class)
e.g. If the world were a village, I
would be one of 14 people from
Europe, and one of 40 people
speaking different language than
8 the languages.
France (There is no one who’s
from France in this class) and
show students how to make a
sentence. Conditional forms are
underlined to highlight.
e.g. If the world were a village, I
would be one of 11 people from
Europe, and one of 40 people
speaking different language than
8 the languages.
Although not teaching grammar
terms, explicitly point out the
underlined parts and briefly
explain why they are used. Let
students know that since they are
not really living in a village but
just assuming it, the underlined
forms are used. Have students
follow the pattern while they are
making their own sentences.
- When students are done with
creating their own sentences
explaining their profile in a global
village, have students share it
- Carefully watch
how the
teacher
makes
sentences
creating meanings.
Next, Imagining living
in a global village,
write a sentence
about themselves.
- Read the textbook
silently.
- Share it with their
partner and three
more friends. Write
down
friends’
sentences on the
worksheet, also.
3
PPT
slide,
Word
cards
3
Textbook
5
Textbook
12
Worksheet
28
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Choose One
Person to Go
to the Village
with their partner. Have them
write down partner’s name profile.
If the partner speaks else than 8
most common languages, have
the students ask and write down
what language the partner
speaks. When they are done with
sharing with their partners, have
them stand up and find at least
two more friends and write down
their name and sentences.
- Have students now imagine that
they can choose one person who
can represent their countries in
the global village. Model how to
make a sentence to students.
e.g. If I could choose one person
to represent my country in the
global village, I would choose
Yuna Kim because she is the
prettiest and best figure skater in
Korea.
Again, briefly mention that since
the students are not choosing the
person but just assuming it, we
should use the underlined form.
Emphasize that for this activity,
giving reasons is more important
than choosing a person. Also for
this activity, let students know
that they can use their first
language for people’s name.
When students are done, have
them share it with their partners.
- Let students know that now
we’ll make four groups of five
and each group will have a
- Carefully watch the
teacher
modeling,
and write their own
sentence. Share it
with their partner.
10
Worksheet
17
Textbook
- expect upcoming
activity. Change the
sitting in a new group
configuration.
passage to read. Below each
passage, there is a word box
that lists all the tier 3 words and
While
Reading
Activity
Part Ⅲ:
Social
Learning
Supplementary
ReadingPreliminary
Summarizing
and
Jigsaw Activity
their meanings.
- Have the group read the text.
After reading the text, have the
groups find three to five most
important sentences. Before the
groups start, to make sure that
students
know
characteristics
what
of
- Watch how the
teacher chooses the
most
important
sentences carefully.
Collaborating in a
group, choose 3 to 5
most important sentences. When there
is
disagreement,
discuss
with
the
group members.
the
important
sentences are, model it with the
passage they have read earlier.
Let students know that when
- Change sitting in a
new group configuration and explain
their
passage
to
others.
Ask
and
answer any ques-
29
Capstone ELL Portfolio
there is disagreement, they can
tions.
discuss why certain sentence is
important.
- When all groups are done
choosing,
change
the
group
configuration into 5 groups of
four. Taking turns, have students
talk about the passage they
have
read
to
other
group
members. Encourage them to
L in the KWL
chart
Consolidation
(Post Reading
Activity)
What does he
mean? Twit.
Announcement
for next class
ask and answer any questions.
- Have students fill out the last L
part of the KWL chart. Again,
lower their affective filter by
saying that just writing word level
is acceptable, while writing a full
sentence is encouraged.
- Remind students of the excerpt
that they saw at the beginning of
the class. Ask them if what he
means is any clearer due to this
class. Have them twit what they
think he meant using the
classroom IPads. While students
are waiting for their turn to use
the classroom IPad, have them
put their thoughts together on the
worksheet.
- Briefly announce what to expect
for the next class.
- Fill out the L part in
the
KWL
chart,
reminding
themselves the things that
they learned from
this class related to
what they wanted to
know.
- Twit what they think
he meant using Ipad.
- Have expectation
for the next class.
5
Worksheet
5
PPT
slide,
IPad,
Twitter.
Worksheet
2
None
30
Capstone ELL Portfolio
[worksheet]
1. After watching the video,
What do you know about the What do you want to know more What did you learn from the video
content of the video?
about this content?
and the reading?
<K>
<W>
<L>
2. Profile in the global village
e.g. - If the world were a village, I would be one of 14 people from Europe, and one of 40 people speaking
different language than 8 the languages.
- If the world were a village, I would be one of 11 people from Europe, and one of 40 people speaking
different language than 8 the languages.
My profile:
My friend’s profile
Name:
Profile:
Name:
Profile:
Name:
Profile:
31
Capstone ELL Portfolio
3. Recommend one person who can represent your country in the global
village!
e.g. If I could choose one person to represent my country in the global village, I would choose Yuna Kim because she
is the prettiest and best figure skater in Korea.
Your Answer:
4. Twitter Talk!
“The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to
our continents. By the fifth day we were aware of only one Earth.”
Astronaut Bin Salman al-Saud, International Space Station
What do you think Bin Salman al-Saud means by this comment? Think creatively and twit!
You can put your thoughts together here:
32
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact B: Decoding Archetypes and Applying Them to Lived Experiences Lesson Plan
Unit Title: Decoding Archetypes and Applying Them to Lived Experiences
Session 2/3, Lesson Title: Time, Person, Occasion of Stereotypes
Instructional Context
What do I know about my students that will inform this lesson?
There are 15 students in the 9-12 grades’ Sheltered English Literature class. They are heterogeneous in
ethnicity; there are 10 Asian Americans, and 5 Hispanic Americans. All the students have intermediate English
proficiency level. Even though students occasionally display communicational difficulties and minor grammar
mistakes, they have proven that they have high literacy skills in their L1 and ability to engage in higher order
thinking through the informal and formal assessments done in previous courses. The school is located in a
suburban area, and all the students are from families of middle class socioeconomic status.
How does this lesson connect with and build on the previous lesson(s)?
In the previous class, the session 1/3 of this unit, students discovered and constructed the concept of character
archetypes, and explored various types of them: the hero, mentor, goddess, father/mother archetypes. The
teacher aims to transfer students’ understanding of archetype into the concept of stereotypes, especially
focusing on model minority stereotype, since it is a topic that is culturally relevant to most of the students
and is very important considering their developmental stage.
How do you expect to build on this lesson in subsequent lessons?
As an assignment, students will have a power to change one of the fictional figures’ characters. In the
subsequent lesson, the teacher will lead the discussion on how characterization can effect on the plot and
theme of the story.
Standards Addressed
Common Core State Standards/Local Standards
CC RL.9-10.6
Analyze a particular point of view or cultural experience reflected in a work of literature from outside the
United States, drawing on a wide reading of world literature
CC SL.9-10.1
Initiate and participate effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacherled) with diverse partners on grades 9–10 topics, texts, and issues, building on others’ ideas and expressing
their own clearly and persuasively.
CC SL.9-10.2
Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively,
orally) evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source.
CC W.9-10.3.b
Use narrative techniques, such as dialogue, pacing, description, reflection, and multiple plot lines, to develop
experiences, events, and/or characters.
Learning Objectives
Objective
Assessment
Students will be able to…
o Read the excerpt of a novel that is in their first language and share the
Discussion participation
resonating ideas that are related to stereotypes.
o Analyze a book poster with the archetype lens with the help of an interview. Handout completion,
Discussion participation
o Associate their own experiences with the discussion topic
Handout completion,
Discussion participation
Academic Language/Language Function Objectives
33
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Students will be able to articulate in the forms of
o “I think the society assumes that…”
o “I think the society expects that…”
o “I think the society stops me from…”
o “I think the society prevents me from…”
Assessments
o Handout completion
o Discussion participation
o Assignment completion
Instructional Strategies and Learning Tasks (Procedures & Timelines)
Time
Instructional Strategies/Learning Tasks
10
Whole-class reviews on the archetype with the lead of the teacher.
20
35
25
Students read the short except of the novel that are written in
students’ first language. There are two types of the excerpts since
there are two language groups represented in this classroom.
Teacher asks questions with the prompts such as following.
- Who is the narrator of the story?
- What is the situation the narrator is faced with?
- What can you guess about the narrator and his/her family?
- What do you think the writer assumes about the characters?
- What do you think the readers would think about the ethnic
group that the narrator belongs to after reading this novel?
Students are in groups of three. Each group has
two Asian students. The teacher shows the
students a cover of a book and the book
overview page and gets students to talk about
what the book would be about briefly. After
that, the teacher plays the interview video clip
that is about the model minority myth. Then,
the teacher initiates a group discussion in
which students share their ideas on the
prompts that are on their handout.
The Book overview: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/top-ofthe-class-soo-kim-abboud/1100626656
The Interview:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxLVKROww7s
Students watch a video clip from the TV show Gilmore Girls that
shows an Asian girl and her tiger mom. Students are given a short
description of main characters, the plot of the entire show, and the
theme. Students share their ideas on questions that are on their
handout. After the discussion, the class is assigned a homework that
is to write and upload their ideas on
1) which character you are going to change and how,
2) how that would affect the plot of the show,
3) how that would affect the theme of the show.
Student Supports
Handout completion,
Discussion participation
Purpose
Students will review and
recall the concept of
archetype that they
learned in last class.
Students will be
emotionally engaged in
the text because it is in
their first language and it
is about their people’s
older generation.
Students will generate a
big idea on stereotypes,
linking it with their lived
experiences.
With the same topic that
was discussed in the
previous activity,
students are shifted to
the present time period
and examine new forms
of stereotypes in today’s
society. They will get to
the realization that
stereotypes are human
constructed entities and
they are present in any
society, any culture, in
any time period.
Students can turn their
focus back on literature
with the heightened
understanding on the
concept of stereotype.
Students have a power
to change the plot and
theme by leveraging the
stereotypical
characterization.
34
Capstone ELL Portfolio
 Using the material that is in students’ L1
 Allowing students talk in their L1 to the degree that it would not disconnect themselves from the
focal point of the lesson
 Purposeful grouping so that more than one perspectives are represented in group discussion
Materials and Resources
 Handout
 Power Point Slides
Materials needed in class
 Excerpts of the novels
 The book overview website
 The interview video clip
 Gilmore Girls video clip
Reflection
o What worked and for whom? Why?
o What didn’t work and for whom? Why?
o What are instructional next steps based on the data from this plan?
35
Capstone ELL Portfolio
[Worksheet]
Activity #1: Read one of the following excerpts of the novel, and respond to the prompts. (*For the student
handout, excerpts are in students’ L1.)
He listened attentively, smiling with understanding as she struggled with her English. He sighed deeply
when she finished what she had to say. “The school was established for Anglo-Saxon Protestant boys,” he
said.
“Yes,” she said. “Presbyterian.”
He gave her a puzzled look, “Anglo-Saxon,” he repeated.
She cleared her throat, “I don’t understand.”
“It means… It means we, that is, the Academy does not accept Orientals.”
She smiled. “No, not my sons. American-born. Right here in Los Angeles.”
“Mrs. … Uh… Please try to understand,” he said, impatience in his tone. “Anglo-Saxon, uh… Caucasian.”
He seemed to be searching for the right word. “White,” he said, finally.
As she began to understand, her face turned hot. She felt her pulse throbbing in her throat, choking her.
“I’m sorry Mrs. ... uh… Mrs. It is the policy of the school. It is out of my hands.” The Colonel seemed to
squeeze the patronizing words from the upper chambers of this tightened nostrils as he shrugged off any
responsibility.
Everything she wanted to say came to her in Korean. She glared speechlessly at the pale, frecked-ladened,
flabby skinned Colonel Leland.
He leaned back in his chair and folded his hands piously in front of him. “Mrs. … uh,” he began.
“Chun!” she snapped.
“Mrs. Chun,” he said condescendingly, “your boys would not be happy here. They’ll want to be with boys
like themselves. You ask them. I’m sure they’ll agree with me.”
Clay Walls by Ronyoung Kim
Hoping to leave our poverty behind and start a new and better life, my family emigrated illegally from
Mexico to California in the late 1940s and began working in the fields. From the time I was six years old,
Toto and I worked together alongside our parents. He sang Mexican songs to me such as “Cielito Lindo” and
“Dos Arbolitos” while we picked cotton in early fall and winter in Corcoran. After we were deported in
1957 by la migra and came back legally, Roberto took care of me like a father when he and I lived along for
six months in Bonetti Ranch, a migrant labor camp. He was a sophomore in high school and I was in the
eighth grade at the time. The rest of our family stated in Guadlajara and joined us later. During that time, I
helped him in his job doing janitorial work at Main Street School in Santa Maria after school, and on
weekends we worked together topping carrots or thinning lettuce. After graduating from high school,
Roberto got married and continued working as a custodian for the Santa Maria School District on weekdays.
And even though he had left our home in Bonetti Ranch to start his own family, we saw each other often.
On weekends he and I worked together for the Santa Maria Window Cleaners, a commercial janitorial
company.
Reaching Out by Francisco Jimenez
36
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Discussion Questions:
- Who is the narrator of the story?
- What is the situation the narrator is faced with?
- What can you guess about the narrator and his/her family?
- What do you think the writer assumes about the characters?
- What do you think the readers would think about the ethnic group that the narrator belongs to after
reading this novel?
Activity #2: After analyzing the book cover and listening to the interview, discuss with your group on the
following questions.
- What kinds of stereotypes are reflected on the book cover?
- Is there any new stereotypes toward Hispanic community that can be compared to Asian model minority
myth? If there is, what is it? Share.
- How do you think those stereotypes have made? By whom? Can you guess their intentions?
- Do you have any stereotypes toward other group of people such as boys/girls, younger generation/older
generation, the poor/the rich, certain ethnic communities? How did that originate? Where did you learn
those from?
Activity #3: Watch the clip from the TV show, Gilmore girls and think about the following questions.
- What are some evidences that show stereotypes on Asian family is reflected in this part of the show?
- How does the relationship of Lane and her mom contrast to the relationship of Rory and Lorelai?
- Which character would you describe differently if you were the author of the show? How?
Assignment: On the class wiki, upload your idea on
1) Which character would you change and how?
2) How would that affect the plot of the show?
3) How would that affect the theme of the show?
37
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact C: PowerPoint Slides of ELL Foundations Course Final Presentation (See the Attachment)
38
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact D: Food around the world Lesson Plan
Ⅰ. Setting Scenario
In urban elementary school in the U.S, there are 16 international students (ELLs) in 6th grade.
They attend every class with their native English-speaking classmates, and they also take separate
“sheltered” ESL classes. The dual purposes of the sheltered ESL class are (1) to let ELLs have better
understanding of contents of the reading materials from core classes, and (2) to enhance ELLs’ English
proficiency. ESL teachers decided to divide 16 students into two groups (Upper/Beginner) based on
their current English proficiency level. Each class convenes 2 times a week. Teachers derive the
reading material from the other classes usually the most difficult ones, and link that into other reading
supplements. For this class, the teacher brought the reading material from Social Studies class.
Students have already read the text, but their comprehension is not complete. They have a formative
evaluation (quiz) on this text in the next Social Studies class.
Ⅱ. Master Plan
Target
Class Time
Upper level 6hth grade ELLs
(Three Mexicans, two Puerto Ricans, 2 Japanese and 1 Italian)
45 minutes
Dawson, Imogen(1995). Food & Feasts in Ancient Greece. Parsippany, N.J. :
New Discovery Books.
Illsley, Linda(1995). A Taste of Mexico. New York: Thomson Learning.
MeKenley, Yvonne(1995). A Taste of the Caribbean. New York: Thomson
Supplementary Materials Learning.
Ridgwell, Jenny(1993). A Taste of Italy. New York: Thomson Learning.
Ridgwell, Jenny(1993). A Taste of Japan. New York: Thomson Learning.
Focused skill
Reading (in conjunction with other three skills; listening, writing and speaking)
Textbook
Key Vocabularies
according to, defend, surrounding, such as, craftworker, merchant, so that, weave,
barter, helot, hoplite, obedient.
Content Objectives
Students are able to…
(1) Grasp the concept of city-states of Ancient Greece.
(2) Identify general features of food culture of Ancient Greece.
(3) Match characteristics of food culture to the correct Ancient Greece cities.
(4) Read and understand the text about their country’s culinary tradition and describe it.
Language Objective
Students are able to…
(1) Comprehend the meaning of sentences including key vocabularies.
(2) Create at least two sentences using the expression “such as.”
(3) Create at least two sentences using the expression “so that.”
Higher-Order Questions
(1) How is one country’s culture of food related to geological and demographical features of the country?
(2) What are some features of our country that are represented by our traditional food?
(3) Why is it important to value every country’s culinary tradition?
39
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Ⅲ. Action Plan
Procedure
Activity
Teacher and Learner Behavior
Teacher
Greeting
Introduction
Before
Reading
ActivityReviewing
(formative
assessment,
activating
students’
schemata)
Learning the
objectives of
the class
Learning New
Vocabulary
within the Text
While
Reading
Activity
Part Ⅰ:
Providing
support
to
Reading
Comprehension
Level
for the
Social
Studies
Class
Acquiring
New
Expression
Reading for
Understanding
Time
(min.)
Aids
Students
- Greets the students
- Greet the teacher
- Reminds students what
they have read last time in
Social
Studies
class
through several questions
and answers
- Talks about today’s
reading topic-food and
culture. Asks about what
they know about ancient
Greek food, and also about
students’ own food culture
of their home country.
- Introduces today’s topic
and activities
- Has students read the
objectives of the class
altogether.
- Presents students with
sentences that have some
unfamiliar vocabulary or
idioms.
- Asks students what they
think the meaning of a
sentence is to check their
comprehension level.
- Paraphrases each
sentence
with
easier
words, or explain the
meaning of the word.
- Focuses students’
attention on two new
idioms: “such as” and “so
that.”
- Presents a few sentences
including the two new
expressions to students.
- Has students inductively
make guesses on what the
expressions exactly mean.
- Asks students if there are
equivalent expressions in
their own language.
- Lets the students know
the genre of the text:
expository writing. Explains
some characteristics of the
genre.
- Introduces students a
reading strategy: noticing
the structure of a text.
- Helps students divide the
- Activate their knowledge
on what they read in the
last Social Studies’ class
and what they already
know about ancient Greek
culture; last time, they read
about ancient Greek history
and geological features.
- Activate their knowledge
on food and culture of
ancient Greece and their
own country.
- Get to know today’s topic
and activities
- Read the class objectives
and have anticipation on
the class.
- Read the sentences
given.
- Make guesses on what
the new words mean
considering the context.
- Understand the meaning
of the new words better.
- Make guesses on what
the given sentences from
the reading text mean.
- Read the presented
sentences
- Make guesses on what
they
exactly
mean
inductively.
- Share how to say the term
in their own language with
classmates.
- Learns a genre of the text.
- Learn a strategy of
reading.
- Understand that the text
can be divided into four
parts by the four different
themes.
- Match the information to
the correct part it belongs
0.5
None
3
None
0,5
Power
Point
Slide
7
Power
Point
Slide
5
Power
Point
Slide
10
Power
Point
Slide,
Handout
40
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Deve
-lopment
Reading a
Theme- and
Culture-related
Text
While
Reading
Activity
Part Ⅱ:
Enhancing
General
English
Language
Proficiency
Producing
Meanings
with
New
Expressions
Sharing and
Constructing
Meanings
with the
Partner
whole text into four parts:
general information on the
city-states / farming and
eating of ancient Greece /
In Athens / In Sparta.
- Gives students a worksheet that has a chart that
shows the structure of the
writing. Only the titles of
the four parts are written,
and some important facts
in that parts are written on
a box below the chart. (The
worksheet is included at
the end of the lesson plan)
- Has students to put the
information in the chart.
- Check the answers
altogether.
- Provides students a new
reading text; they are
thematically (culinary tradition) and culturally (about
each student’s country)
related texts.
- Has students individually
read the text silently
- Informs students that
whenever they face a new
vocabulary, try to guess
what it means first, and if
they make any probable
prediction, ask help from
the teacher.
- Has students write down
sentences that include new
expressions, “such as” and
“so that,” to explain their
countries’ culinary tradition.
- Gets questions and gives
feedback if needed.
- Collect the papers on
which students wrote the
sentences (they will be the
formative evaluation data)
- Pairs students with a
partner, letting the partners
be from different countries.
- Put two questions (What
is special about your
country’s food culture? and
What is your favorite food
and what is it like?) on the
power point slide.
- Encourages students to
ask and answer the given
questions with the partner.
- Circulates the classroom
listening
to
students’
conversation and giving
to. Understand the key
information and the flow of
the full text.
- Mark their answers and
see what they know and
what they don’t.
- Read the text individually.
- Make prediction on the
meaning of new vocabulary.
- Get some help from the
teacher if needed.
- Produce sentences with
the given expressions, in a
given theme.
- Ask questions if needed.
- Report the paper to the
teacher.
5
Handout
3
None
5
Power
Point
Slide
- Have a conversation on
their
country’s
culinary
tradition and their favorite
food with the partner.
41
Capstone ELL Portfolio
some feed if needed.
Post
Reading
Activity
Sharing and
Constructing
Meanings with
Whole Class
Reviewing
Consolidation
Culminating
- Asks students what they
learned
about
their
partner’s culinary tradition
and
what
the
most
interesting thing they found
was.
- Asks students why it is
important to value other
country’s culinary culture.
- Chooses some sentences
that have key vocabularies
that
students
most
struggled with to figure the
meaning out. Has students
to read them out loud
altogether.
- Briefly mentions what
they will read next time.
- Wishes students good
luck for their test, and tell
them to come by with any
questions.
- Ends the class.
- Share what they learned
from the partner and what
the most interesting thing
was.
- Answer to the teachers
question or think about it.
5
None
0.5
Power
Point
Slide
0.5
None
- Read the sentences
altogether.
- Have anticipation for the
next class.
- Be more confident about
the test.
42
Capstone ELL Portfolio
[Food & Feast in Ancient Greece - Worksheet-4/7]
Food in Towns and Cities
Please put the alphabet of the information into the box it belongs to.
ⓐ Few people ate more than a snack for breakfast or lunch-olives, piece of fruit, some bread and cheese.
ⓑ Cities such as Athens and Corinth grew around an acropolis.
ⓒ People continued to exchange, or barter, for the goods they needed to buy in the towns.
ⓓ Most households kept hens, so that they had a supply of fresh eggs to eat.
ⓔ Small dishes of food were served after the main course at dinner parties or symposia.
ⓕ Food was said to be the worst in ancient Greece.
43
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact E: Three Genre Lesson Plan
Ⅰ. Instructional Context
In Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, thirty students are in the 8 th grade language arts class. Students
are heterogeneous in terms of their ethnic, racial, cultural, and linguistic background, though the majority of them are
middle class white students. The teacher of this class noticed that students just learned about the World War Ⅱ in
history class. Inspired by that, the teacher decided to teach a unit that has a character of interdisciplinary lesson. Also,
in pervious lessons, students learned about different genres of print and new media. They are familiar to the
characteristics of novel, poetry, drama, essay (narrative, expository, argumentative), graphic novel, movie, etc. After
studying each genre, this unit of lesson aims to consolidate and apply their knowledge by having a chance to
understand a given genre (graphic novel, narrative essay and movie) and transforming it into a different genre. This
opportunity would grant students ample understanding of different genres which will go hand and hand with reading
strategies and media analysis.
Ⅱ. Master Plan
Class title
Unit Title
Target
Class time
Multimedia Readiness
Main Materials
Language Arts
War and Humanity
20 students of 8th grade
90 minutes
A Teacher PC, Projector, 5 classroom computers
Maus: A Survivor's TaleⅠ by Art Spiegelman (Chapter 1-3) [Graphic novel]
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (Excerpts) [Narrative essay]
La Vita é Bella (Life Is Beautiful) by Roberto Benigni (Second half) [Movie]
NCTE / IRA Standards Addressed
1. Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and
of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and
demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and
nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the
many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They
draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word
meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features
(e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to
communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements
appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation),
media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and non-print texts.
7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing
44
Capstone ELL Portfolio
problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts,
artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
10. Students whose first language is not English make use of their first language to develop competency in the
English language arts and to develop understanding of content across the curriculum.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning,
enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
Unit Objectives
Students are able to…
1) identify the characteristics of three different text genres, graphic novel, narrative essay and film,
2) differentiate ways of writing to adjust to a variety of medium of writing and
3) create a working definition of “humanity” which is a repeated theme of three texts.
Ⅲ. Action Plan
1. The First Lesson: Ordinary People becoming the Victims
Standards
Learning
Objectives
Academic
Language
Objectives
2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an
understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human
experience.
3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and
appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers
and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification
strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence,
sentence structure, context, graphics).
4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style,
vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different
purposes.
5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process
elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and
punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and
discuss print and non-print texts.
10. Students whose first language is not English make use of their first language to develop
competency in the English language arts and to develop understanding of content across
the curriculum.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes ]
(e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
Students will be able to…
1. retrieve and utilize their background knowledge to understand the text.
2. understand the text by identifying characters, setting, events, and conflicts of it.
3. predict the later part of the story.
4. identify characteristics and effect of graphic novel.
5. apply their knowledge on different genres to create a genre-transformed writing.
6. construct their working knowledge of definition of humanity
Graphic Novel, Symbolism, Humanity
45
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Assessment
1. The result of the K and W part of KWL chart
2. The result of the Story grammar chart
3. The result of the part after the story grammar chart in the worksheet
4. Observation of the jot thoughts activity
5. The result of the genre-transformed writing
6. The result of the L part of the KWL chart (Tweets)
Main Materials
Maus: A Survivor's TaleⅠ by Art Spiegelman (Chapter 1-3) [Graphic novel]
Supplementary
Materials
Music, Power Point slides, worksheet, text, 5 different colored slips of paper
Student
Support
Procedure
Introduction
(Before
Reading
Activity)
ELLs are allowed to write in their first language when they cannot think of a certain word in
English. However, they are encouraged to upload their writing only in English by translating the
unknown words at home.
Activity
Entering with a
Hook/
General
Introduction of
the Unit and This
Lesson
Checking
Teacher and Learner Behavior
- Students enter the dark classroom with a dark, slow,
and solemn music. On the projector, a slide is shown that
has
the
following
quotes:
Solomon Radasky "Out of the 78 people in my family,
I am the only one to survive. My parents had 3 boys
and 3 girls: My parents were Jacob and Toby; my
brothers were Moishe and Baruch, and my sisters were
Sarah, Rivka and Leah. They were all killed."
Leslie Meisels "Silence helps the oppressors."
Simon Wiesenthal "For me, the Holocaust was not
only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy."
When all of the students come in the classroom and sit
down, the teacher quietly pass out the worksheet.
Worksheet has a few questions such as:
1. Who do you think these people are?
2. How do you interpret the quotes?
3. Which one brings out the strongest emotion out of
you? Why?
4. Can you think of any experience in your life that you
can emotionally relate to these quotes?
- The teacher turns the light on and turns the music off.
Students are asked to share their answers to the
questions 1-4. They easily figure out these quotes are
from Holocaust victims and continue sharing their
thoughts. If students cannot think of their own experience
they want to share for questions no. 4 or if they are
hesitant to share it, then the teacher tells them his/her
own story.
- The students are informed the general agenda of this
unit. They learn what the materials are to read and
watched, and what activities are to be done. Most
importantly, students know what the aim of this unit is.
They learn that this unit is not about learning details of
World War Ⅱ, but about empathizing the victims of the
Holocaust, finding the evidences of humanity that show
even in the hardest time, and finally considering if there
are any practices in our society that are, at some extent,
inhumane and unjust as Holocaust. Students are also
informed about the final products of this unit: three genretransformed writings after every lesson and an essay on
“What is humanity?”
- The students read the objectives of this class on the
Time
(min.)
Materials
7
Power
Point
Slide,
Music,
Worksheet
2
Power
46
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Objectives
Pre-assessment/
Activating
Background
Knowledge
Silent Reading
Whole Class
Discussion
Development
(While Reading
Activities)
Peer WorkUnderstanding
the Contents
Group Activity
(Jot Thoughts)Understanding
the Genre
Consolidation
(After Reading
Activity)
RAFT Writing in
Different Genre
Exiting- Tweet
the Evidence of
Humanity
slide.
- The students fill out the K (What they already know
about this text) and W (What they want to know by
reading the text) parts of the KWL chart. There are two
sections in the chart: genre (comic/graphic novel) and
contents (World War Ⅱ) so that students can show their
extent of knowledge on each area. When they are done,
the teacher gathers the KWL charts and let them know
that when they will fill out the L (What I learned from
reading the text) part and that will be the exiting activity.
- The students read the chapter 1-3 of the Maus silently.
- While students are reading, the teacher quickly
examines the KWL charts of the students and figure out
students’ previous knowledge on the genre and the
contents, making decisions on how in-depth she will
explain the genre and the contents.
- The students are asked how they liked reading the
Maus. One or two students who love to read comic books
volunteer and talk about why they like to read comic
books and why they are “cool.” (If there is none, skip this
part.) The students are asked to think about if, compared
to reading a novel, news article or informative essay of
similar contents, they would prefer reading this type of
text better. They answer why/why not. (Desirable answers
are: graphic novel is easy-reading because it is visual,
graphic novel is more direct in drawing emotions, etc.)
- With a partner, the students fill out the story grammar
chart that asks characters, setting (time/place), events,
and conflicts of the text. Since chapter 1-3 is a beginning
part of the entire story, there is no section for resolution.
Instead, students need to fill out the part where they can
imagine or predict what is going to happen next. When
they are done, teacher goes through the answers one by
one. Students voluntarily answer their answers first and
then check the teacher’s answer.
- Students are modeled how to participate in the Jot
Thoughts activity. Each student receives 5 slips of papers
to write on.
- The question for the Jot Thoughts activity is “What is the
effect of representing people by the mouse/cats/pigs?
What do each representation symbolizes?”
- When students are done writing, they are encouraged to
gather their answers and categorize them and name each
category. When finished, they go to the next groups and
see if their answers are similar or different. The slips of
papers are gathered by the teacher and posted on the
class blog.
- The students are informed about the basic ideas of
RAFT (role, audience, format, and topic) writing activity.
Their role is Artie, the son of the narrator in the book
Maus and audience is other students. Topic is Artie’s
retrospect in 10 years after his father’s death. Students
can decide the format (genre). They can choose any
genre that is not the graphic novel. The finished writing
should be posted on the class blog.
- Instead of writing down all that they have learned from
reading the text, students are asked to find and write only
one bit of information in the L part of the KWL chart that
Point
Slide
3
Worksheet
15
Text
7
None
15
Worksheet,
Power
Point
Slides
20
Slips
of
paper
16
Worksheet
10
Worksheet,
Power
47
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Assignments
students filled out at the beginning of the class. Students
Point
are to answer these questions: Humanity means “the
slide,
quality or condition of being human; human nature” by
Comdefinition. After reading three materials of this unit, we will
puter,
create our own definition of humanity by gathering
Twitevidences from our reading. Please write the 1) page
ter
number and 2) quotation of the evidence that shows the
main character, Vladek’s human nature, and 3) give a
short description of how that quotation represent general
human being’s quality. Students will have an example on
the projector screen such as:
1) p. 33
2) “It was many, many such stories-synagogues
burned, Jews beaten with no reason, whole towns
pushing out all Jews-each story worse than the
other.”
3) This quotation shows that all human being are afraid
and feel helpless when it comes to the War or a
power that suppresses them.
Students who are ready to tweet use the classroom
computer to and upload it. Meanwhile, a twitter page is
open on the projector so that all the students can see it as
they write.
1. Tweet your findings of evidence from this reading which is written in the L part of the KWL
chart if you didn’t in class.
2. Upload the reproduction on the class blog. Read and comment on the other students’.
(The teacher has to upload the collective jot thoughts of the class on the class board.)
2. The Second Lesson: Hopes and Dreams in the Secret Annex
Standards
Learning
Objectives
2. Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an
understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human
experience.
3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and
appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers
and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification
strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence,
sentence structure, context, graphics).
4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style,
vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different
purposes.
10. Students whose first language is not English make use of their first language to develop
competency in the English language arts and to develop understanding of content across
the curriculum.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes
(e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
Students will be able to…
1. retrieve and utilize their background knowledge to understand the text.
2. retrieve and learn knowledge about dramatizing and develop a drama based on a given
text collaboratively.
3. give a constructive critique to the other group’s work.
4. identify some important and significant lines in a prose that condense the writer’s feeling.
5. apply their knowledge on different genres to create a genre-transformed writing.
6. construct their working knowledge of definition of humanity
48
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Academic
Language
Objectives
Assessment
Main Materials
Supplementary
Materials
Student
Support
Procedure
Drama, dialogue, monologue, aside
1. Answers to the questions on the worksheet after watching a short video clip of a speech
2. The result of the group product of drama script
3. Answers to the questions on the worksheet of comparing their and the other group’s work
4. The result of the significant line chart
5. The writing of the leaf on Anne Frank’s tree
6. A leaf on the Anne Frank tree
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (August 4th 1943, August 9th,1943, June 14th, 1944,
August 1st, 1944) [Prose / Narrative Essay]
http://www.annefrank.org/annefranktree,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhGv9xLT5U&feature=BFa&list=UUlJAYpfNwjEXuhP3ssj7
1Ug,
Power Point slides, worksheet, notes that says five different factors of writing a drama,
computers, leaf-shaped slips of paper
- ELLs are allowed to write in their first language when they cannot think of a certain word in
English. However, they are encouraged to upload their writing only in English by translating the
unknown words at home.
- When watching a video, ELLs receive a script of the video so that they can comprehend the
video better.
- ELLs are allowed to write in their first language when they cannot think of a certain word in
English. However, they are encouraged to upload their writing only in English by translating the
unknown words at home.
- For fast readers who finish reading the text significantly earlier than other students, the
teacher prepares more pieces of Anne’s diary and provides it to them.
Activity
Entering with a
Hook
Introduction
(Before
Reading
Activity)
Guest SpeakerWatching a
Video That Is
Related to the
Topic
Teacher and Learner Behavior
- Students enter the classroom where an webpage
(http://www.annefrank.org/annefranktree) is displayed on
the projector. They can see an image of a big tree and
listen to the sound of birds chirping. Without receiving any
further information, students are asked to guess what this
website is for. They guess with the clues like the title,
words on the banner, and so on.
- After listening to some guessing, they now watch a
video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XhGv9xLT5U&feature
=BFa&list=UUlJAYpfNwjEXuhP3ssj71Ug
It is a video of an actress, Emma Thompson, giving a
speech on 1 February 2006 at the launch of the Virtual
Anne Frank Tree. (For this activity, a script of the speech
is given to the ELLs so that they can comprehend the
video better.) After watching the video, the students
answer to the questions that are posed by the teacher.
1. For some of you who already read this book, do you
agree with her saying that this is the book it’s one of
the books you should every few years? Why or Why
not?
2. What does she mean by saying Anne Frank
represents much of human tragedy as well as well as
human happiness?
3. She says that her (Anne’s) would haves are our real
possibilities and opportunities. Can you think of one
example?
As some of the students voluntarily answer to these
questions, other students, too, have their own thoughts
and remind themselves of what they already know about
this topic or the things that are related. (Activating
Time
(min.)
Materials
5
Website
12
Video,
Power
Point
Slide,
Worksheet
49
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Checking
Objectives
Reading
Group Writing
Development
(While Reading
Activities)
Significant Line
background knowledge) The teacher the students that
these questions are going to be reconsidered at the end
of the class, and they will can to participate in sticking the
leaf on the tree.
- The students read the objectives of the lesson on the
Power Point slide.
- The students read the four pieces of diary of Anne Frank
silently. (For fast readers who finish reading the text
significantly earlier than other students, they are provided
with more pieces of Anne’s diary and encouraged to read
them.)
- The students are formed as groups of 5. They are to
reread the two pieces of diary, August 4th, 1943 and
August 9th, 1943 which describe the mealtime in the
secret annex. Groups choose one of the two pieces and
transform that piece into a drama script. They work
together to make one piece of writing. Before students
start writing, they listen to the teachers modeling script
writing and explaining on important factors in script writing
such as character, setting, props, sound, types of speech
(dialogue, monologue, aside, etc.), conflict and resolution,
and so on.
- For all students in groups equally dedicate, the teacher
gives five notes students can choose from. In the notes,
there are five factors of the drama they need to decide
when they are writing a script: characters, setting, props,
sound and type of speech. Once the characters are
decided, they assign one or two characters and act in a
role to make a script. One student keeps the script on a
word processor of a classroom computer.
- When they are done, groups move to the other group
which chose the same piece’s computer station and read
its script. It is encouraged students keep the same role
and read it in the role when reading as a group. When
they are done writing, students fill in the worksheet that
asks questions such as:
1. What are the similarities and differences between your
group’s and the other one’s?
2. What is the one thing you particularly liked about the
other group’s script?
3. What is the one thing you believe you did better than
this group’s?
- Each group shares their answers in the whole class
discussion.
- Groups upload their scripts on the class blog.
- Students reread the last two pieces of diary, June 14th
and 1944 and August 1st, 1944. The students find some
significant lines from the text. Next to the significant line,
there is a space that students write down why they think
this line is significant. Students are taught that this is a
good strategy to find the writer’s emotion.
- When students are done, they exchange their lines with
a partner. They explain why they chose them to each
other. They are encouraged to talk more about if they had
felt similar feeling or had the same problem.
1
Power
Point
Slide
15
Text
25
Text,
Notes,
Comp
-uter,
Worksheet
10
Worksheet
50
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Consolidation
(After Reading
Activity)
Assignments
- The students again engage in the RAFT (role, audience,
format, and topic) writing activity. Their role is Anne Frank,
who is alive in imagination, and audience is all the
RAFT Writing in readers. Topic is Anne’s retrospect in 30 years after the
Work15
Different Genre time that the diary is written. Students can decide the
sheet
format (genre). They can choose any genre that is not the
diary. The finished writing should be posted on the class
blog.
- Students look at the questions that are asked at the
beginning of the class again. They are asked if they can
answer the questions better. Some volunteer and answer
them again.
- Students remind themselves with the concept of
humanity that is talked about last time. They are
Leafprompted to think about what aspects of Anne’s diary
shape
Exiting- Writing
show her quality or condition of being human. They are
-d
a Message on a
7
also informed that this writing is to be uploaded on the
slips
Leaf
http://www.annefrank.org/annefranktree as a message on
of
a leaf. The teacher gives students an example that says:
paper
“Anne, I felt you are a humorous person because you
managed to keep your diary very vibrant and vivid, which
sometimes made me laugh. They write their messages on
a leaf-shaped slip of paper. Students’ writings are
checked individually as they walk out the classroom door.
1. Leave your message on http://www.annefrank.org/annefranktree that contains students’
critique on Anne’s humanity.
2. Upload the reproduction on the class blog. Read and comment on the other students’.
3. Watch the first half of the La Vita é Bella (Life Is Beautiful) by Roberto Benigni (Watching
the first half of the movie is important to appreciate the second half of the movie, especially for
emotionally engaging in the characters’ feeling. Students are noticed that there are going to be
some activities with this part of the movie in next class so that they can make sure watching it.)
2. The Third Lesson: Love for Life in the Darkest Night
Standards
1. Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts to build an understanding of texts,
of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new
information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for
personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary
works.
3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and
appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers
and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification
strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence,
sentence structure, context, graphics).
4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style,
vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different
purposes.
6. Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and
punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and
discuss print and non-print texts.
7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and
by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources
(e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways
51
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Learning
Objectives
Academic
Language
Objectives
Assessment
that suit their purpose and audience.
10. Students whose first language is not English make use of their first language to develop
competency in the English language arts and to develop understanding of content across
the curriculum.
12. Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes
(e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
Students will be able to…
1. retrieve, activate and utilize their knowledge of the movie they watched as an assignment.
2. Critique a movie in terms of various factors of the movie.
3. understand and have a personal attachment towards a character
4. identify the core theme of the three genre texts
. 5. apply their knowledge on different genres to create a genre-transformed writing.
6. construct their working knowledge of definition of humanity
7. integrate and consolidate their ideas from the three texts and gather information from them
to produce an essay.
Dark Comedy, Movie Critique, Paradox, Core Theme, Perspective
1. Observation of round robin activity
2. Observation of the movie critique activity
3. Observation of the best supporting character activity
4. The result of the discovering the core theme activity
5. The result of the genre-transformed writing
6. The result of the tweets
7. The result of the final essay-the rubric is given to the students and the result if evaluated
based on it.
Main Materials
La Vita é Bella (Life Is Beautiful) by Roberto Benigni [Movie]
Supplementary
Materials
Music, Power Point slides, worksheet, 5 different colored square chips to be used in the
Talking Square activity, final essay rubric,
Student
Support
Procedure
Introduction
(Before
Reading
Activity)
Development
(While Reading
Activities)
- ELLs are allowed to write in their first language when they cannot think of a certain word in
English. However, they are encouraged to upload their writing only in English by translating the
unknown words at home.
- When watching the movie, turn the English subtitles on for the ELLs.
- Extra reading materials given in class, the plot of the book and a movie “The Reader” in this
class, is emailed to ELLs so that they can read ahead of time if they think that their reading
pace is too slow to keep up with native speakers’.
Activity
Teacher and Learner Behavior
Entering
- Students enter the classroom where the theme song of
the movie La Vita é Bella (Life Is Beautiful) is played.
- The students read the objectives of the lesson on the
Power Point slide.
Checking
Objectives
Round Robin
Activity
Watching the
Movie
- The students form four groups of five. They are modeled
how to engage in the round robin activity. Each student in
a group talks for a minute about the first half of the movie
they watched as an assignment. They can talk about the
characters, setting, plot, and their prediction on what is
going to happen next which are written on a slide on a
projector board.
- Students watch the shortened version of the second half
of the movie. Before they start watching it, they are asked
to read the questions on the worksheet. Questions are
like the following:
1. Read these keywords: tone, mood, music, shift of
Time
(min.)
Materials
3
Music
1
Power
Point
Slide
8
Power
Point
Slide,
Timer,
20
Worksheet
52
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Movie Critique
Best Supporting
Character
(Talking Square)
Integrating
Three Stories
and Discovering
the Core Theme
Perspective/
Point of View
them from the first half and the second half, meaning
of the title. Think about them while you watch the
movie.
2. Who is your favorite main character? Write down a
line (or a gesture) that makes him/her your favorite.
3. Who is your favorite supporting character? Write
down a line (or a gesture) that makes him/her your
favorite.
4. Do you like the way the director ended the story? Why
or why not? If not, how would you change it?
- Students in groups critique the movie using the
keywords that are given before the movie is watched:
tone, mood, music, shift of them from the first half and the
second half, meaning of the title. They are encouraged to
talk about how these factors impact on the movie in terms
of delivering its theme to the audience.
- When groups are done discussing, each group chooses
to talk about one of factors they discussed.
- Students are modeled how to proceed the talking square
activity. They are given the square chips in five different
colors and each student chooses one color of chips and
takes them. There are three chips of each color. The topic
is “If you were one of the judges who decide the best
supporting character in this movie, whom would you
choose?” Students are informed that they should ground
the reason not based on their ability to act, but solely on
the characteristics of the character and students have to
give a line to support their ground as they use a chip.
- Groups have one big map of Europe on which Poland,
Netherland and Italy, the setting of the three text we read
in this unit, are highlighted. Each student writes down the
theme of each text on the map. When all the students are
done, the group collect their thoughts and think of a one
core theme of the tree texts. Each group takes turns to
present.
- The students read the plot of “The Reader”
THE READER opens in post-war Germany when
teenager Michael Berg becomes ill and is helped home
by Hanna, a stranger twice his age. Michael recovers
from scarlet fever and seeks out Hanna to thank her.
The two are quickly drawn into a passionate but
secretive affair. Michael discovers that Hanna loves
being read to and their physical relationship deepens.
Hanna is enthralled as Michael reads to her from "The
Odyssey," "Huck Finn" and "The Lady with the Little
Dog." Despite their intense bond, Hanna mysteriously
disappears one day and Michael is left confused and
heartbroken. Eight years later, while Michael is a law
student observing the Nazi war crime trials, he is
stunned to find Hanna back in his life - this time as a
defendant in the courtroom. As Hanna's past is
revealed, Michael uncovers a deep secret that will
impact both of their lives. She is illiterate and has
concealed it her whole life. The other female guards
who claim she wrote the report are lying to place
responsibility on Hanna. Hanna receives a life
sentence for her admitted leadership role in the church
deaths while the other defendants are sentenced to
four years and three months each. Michael arrives at
7
Worksheet
8
Square
Chips
10
Map
of Europe
10
Plot of
the
movie
“The
Reader”
53
Capstone ELL Portfolio
RAFT Writing in
Different Genre
Consolidation
(After Reading
Activity)
Tweet the
Evidence of
Humanity
ExcitingCompletion
Assignments
the prison on the date of Hanna's release with flowers.
He discovers that Hanna hanged herself and left a tea
tin with cash in it with a note asking Michael to give the
cash and some money in a bank account to a daughter
of a Holocaust victim.
Excerpted and edited from
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976051/plotsummary
- Students are asked what do they think about this story
and how they can relate this story to the previously read
texts. Students discuss that nothing can justify the
Holocaust, but in many cases, there is no absolute good
or absolute evil. Also, they express Holocaust is a tragedy
for all human beings, and blind hatred towards human
destroys both parties. They are also encouraged to share
an even in their lives when they had conflicting views or
roles. The teacher points out that many different
perspectives towards looking at an incident, and they are
going to discuss more about the perspective or point of
view in the following unit.
- The students again engage in the RAFT (role, audience,
format, and topic) writing activity. Their role is Joshua, and
audience is all the people. Topic is Joshua’s retrospect in
20 years after his father’s death. Students can decide the
format (genre). They can choose any genre that is not a
movie. Students are encouraged to try a different genre
from the previous ones if the two previous ones are in the
same genre. The finished writing should be posted on the
class blog.
- Students find the evidence that shows humanity of any
of the characters in the movie, or the plot of the story
students consumed through this class. They should
mention a character, scene, and the utterance or action of
the character. Students who are ready to tweet use the
classroom computer to and upload it. Meanwhile, a twitter
page is open on the projector so that all the students can
see it as they write.
- Students are noticed that this is the end of the unit.
Some of them briefly share about what they learned and
how they felt about this unit. The teacher encourages all
the students with praise, and lets the students know about
the assignment, especially the final essay. Students
receive the final essay rubric, and exit..
15
Worksheet
7
Worksheet,
Computer,
Twitter
1
Final
essay
rubric
1. Tweet the evidence of Humanity if you didn’t in class.
2. Upload the reproduction on the class blog. Read and comment on the other students’.
3. Write a final essay to this question: what is humanity? Use the evidences you have
gathered through the three classes as examples and quote the lines.
54
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact F: Procedure Lesson Plan
Procedure Title: Opening Procedure
Grade Level: 10th grade
Predicted Time to Teach: 5 minutes
Teacher Rationale (thoughts in your own mind about why this is worth
your time and effort): What are is/are the personal benefit(s) to YOU if all
students do this successfully?

Getting off to a good start is one of the most important steps of a lesson. And by ‘good start’, I
mean the quick and quiet start. It is especially crucial to me because in that way I can (1) save my
teaching/students’ learning time (2) have less problem of students bumping into each other when
they go to grab their textbooks, workbooks and journals (3) call the role without yelling, (4) have
students utilize the time when I call the role to write their journals routinely (5) the transition to the
lesson will be smooth, (6) begin the lesson with the gained students’ attention. In summary, it will
save my frustration and increase my effectiveness as a teacher.
Materials needed/Preparation: What will you need to have/do/prepare ahead
of time?

A bookshelf

Milk carton boxes

Textbooks, workbooks and journals that are labeled

Extra textbooks, workbooks, journals and labeling tapes

Extra pencils and pencil sharpeners.

Personal while board and erasers on the days students will use them

Overhead projector and a PowerPoint slide that displays the day’s journal writing topic

A poster to write out a procedure map
Concrete Definition: What is the most succinct way you can complete the
sentence Class, today we are going to learn how to ...?

“Class, today we are going to learn how we begin every class with journal writing, involving your
textbook, notebook, and a writing implement.
Student Rationale - personal WIIFM for students: What succinct statement
55
Capstone ELL Portfolio
can you provide to students to show them how doing this is of personal benefit to
them? (AVOID REFERENCE TO SELF!)

“When you get your textbook, workbook and journal when you enter the room, you are able to get
organized more quickly, and you have more time to write down your thoughts. Writing daily is
significantly helpful for building your writing ability. Plus, I will check your journals daily and count
them in as a part of your participation score.”
Step-by-step Demonstration with Explanation: How will you allow the class
to SEE what this looks like – either by doing it yourself or having a few students do it?

There are three steps to this procedure; I will have three of you demonstrate the procedure after I
describe the steps.

Step one – as you come in, get your textbook, workbook, and journal from the labeled shelf in the
back of the room. Notice that everything on the shelf is labeled and in the order of your class
number to help you quickly find your materials. (To keep a line from forming, half the students’
textbooks, workbooks and journals are on one side of the shelf, and the other half students are on
the opposite end.)

Step two – as you return to your desk, if you find you do not have a pencil, borrow one from the
pencil pot so that when you sit down at your desk you have everything you need; or if you see
that your pencil need sharpening, do it before you are seated.

Step three – look at the projector screen for the topic you are to write about that day and begin
writing. I will set a timer and you will have 10 minutes to write in your journal.
Cue: What visual and/or auditory signal can you provide to let students know
now is the time to do x?

For the first week or two, I will have a poster that has a procedure map on the classroom wall.
Rehearsal: How will you have the class practice the desired procedure?

On the first day, I will choose three students to rehearse the procedure in front of everyone. As
the students come into classroom on the second day, I will have everybody rehearse the
procedure. I will consider it as a success when students automatize this procedure in the third
week.
Feedback: What will you say to students, depending on how successfully they
rehearse the procedure?

For the students who don’t comply, I will have them notice the poster that has the procedure map.
Also, for the students who don’t start writing, I will have them notice the slide that has the day’s
writing topic.
56
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact G: Student Analysis with Standardized and Authentic Assessments
Part 1: Educational, Cultural and Linguistic Background of the Student
I am currently positioned at Glencliff high school for my practicum. With Nashville’s growing
immigrant population, Glencliff is renowned for its diversity;
there are over 42 different nationalities and 26 languages
represented in its student population.
(http://www.glencliffhs.mnps.org/Page58144.aspx)
Walking around the school, you will see students from so
Figure 1 A painting of national flags of different countries on
many different countries and paintings and signs which
different fruits celebrates the diversity of Glencliff High School.
reflect the school’s characteristics. Among about 1250 students, 20% are ELLs in this school, and the
school provides English language development (ELD) program for ELLs. There are three full-time ELL
teacher; two teachers have six different groups of students ranging from language emergent to advanced, and
the other teacher is the one who provides individualized skills development program (ISDP) in which
students receive one-on-one support from the teacher in every subject course. The decision of ELLs’ English
language support is based on the ELDA (English Language Development Assessment) that is administered
every year. ELDA consists of four subtests – Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking an is scored with a
score ranging from 1 to 5; 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest.
(http://www.tn.gov/education/assessment/ELLAssessments.shtml) Students who received score 0 in any
57
Capstone ELL Portfolio
area of ELDA of the previous year are in this program. The other ELLs are assigned in in one of the ELD
classes depending on their previous year’s ELDA score. Students who obtain a composite score of 4 or 5
become a Transitional student (T1) and they exit our from the ELD program.
My mentor teacher teaches classes A1, A2, A3 in A days and B5, B6, and B7 in B days. A1 and B5
are advanced level classes, A3 and B5 are intermediate, and A3 and B7 are emergent. The first thing you can
notice in her classroom is the walls full of vocabulary that students are currently learning. She updates the
walls with the new words when she teaches a new chapter. On each sheet of paper, there is one word in
English and there are translations of the word in students’ L1 such as Arabic, Somali and Spanish. Though
abiding NCLB regime and English-only policy, my mentor teacher masterfully serves a role of cultural
mediator (Brantley, 2007), allowing her students to use their 1st language. She speaks Spanish but uses it
moderately so that she would not exclude students whose L1 is not Spanish. She uses Longman Keystone –
Building Bridges published by Pearson Longman as a textbook for classes A1, A2, B5, and B6, and
Longman Keystone by the same publisher for classes A3 and B7. Her teaching method can be described as a
traditional way; the teacher asks a big idea question that is related to the day’s reading topic, students listen
to the reading passage while they read, they answer the comprehension questions, and solidify their
understanding with the workbook, and they take the test on the text. While she does a great job of activating
students’ background knowledge before beginning reading, and her using individual whiteboard for students
to answer the comprehension quiz clearly dedicate to make class more participatory and engaging, I could
see the room for more scaffolding and explicit reading strategies teaching.
58
Capstone ELL Portfolio
The student that I have been observing, Sara (a pseudonym), is a junior, Latino student. She is
currently assigned in the class B6, which is an intermediate level class. The reason why I chose Sara as my
observation target is because I found that her sociolinguistic and discourse competence is exceptionally high
to be in the ELD program (Brantley, 2007). Under such classroom atmosphere where using L1 is allowed
and encouraged, Sara is one of the students who is most actively translates English to Spanish to help her
friends out which proves her high receptive skills. Her productive skills appeared to be high as well while I
was observing her class participation. I could not help but wonder what is impeding her from exiting out
from the ELD program.
To learn Sara’s cultural and linguistic background, I conducted four informal and formal preinstructional assessments: Identity Questionnaire, Home Language Survey, Oral Language Survey, and
Literacy Survey. The identity questionnaire is adapted from figure 4.1 of Herrera chapter 4, and the three
surveys are adopted from appendix 1.2, 1.3 and 1.3 or Gottlieb chapter 1.
From the Identity Questionnaire, I learned that she is actually from the U.S. In the follow-up
interview, she said that she lived in Mexico only for three years from one to four. She speaks Spanish with
her parents, which enabled her speak Spanish fluently. I learned that even though she was born in the U.S.,
she identifies herself as a Mexican. In the questions which ask her to explain her culture, she gave
examples of the culture of Mexico. Also, for the most important even in her life, she chose the time when
she went to Mexico to visit her grandparents.
59
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Home Language Survey provided objective evidences to my findings from the identity questionnaire.
It turned out that Sara speaks Spanish at home every day. However, she has gone to elementary and
secondary schools here in the states, which explains why her level of oral English proficiency is comparable
to that of native English speakers’.
Oral Language Use Survey and Literacy Survey gave me more specific information on Sara’s
language use. She responded that she communicates with her parents and relatives only in her L1. She also
checked that she only uses L1 at her church. I could see that an invisible boundary of L1, or a safety net of
L1, exists in which her identify emerged and fortified. For the interactions with other people, however, she
interchanges between L1 and L2, which I observed her doing most of the time at school. It was interesting
how she said that she uses both L1 and L2 with her brothers and sisters. Even though they are her family
members, there must be some school language that they developed in school and it must be more
comfortable for them to use the school language when they talk about certain topics.
Literacy Survey gave me substantive information on Sara’s written language use. Her response says
that she reads and writes mostly in L2 or in L1 and L2 interchangeably, with the exception of reading short
stories only in L1. This made me wonder if she already mastered receptive skills in L1 or she developed
literacy only in L2.
The cumulative result of the informal and formal assessments gave me a big picture of who Sara is as
an ELL. Though she is a citizen of the U.S., she identifies herself as Mexican who is proud of her culture
60
Capstone ELL Portfolio
that she greatly values. Her oral language use in her L1 is much more frequent than her written language use
in L1. She displays a high competence in code-switching from L1 and L2 for both speaking and written
language.
Part 3: Interpretation of the Student’s English Language Acquisition Stage Based on Standardized
and Non-standardized Assessments
To determine Sara’s english language acquisition stage, I used two standardized assessments, one
observational protocol and one content-based assessment artifact. Then, I paired each standardized
assessment with one non-standardized. The first pair is ELDA and SOLOM which verified Sara’s high oral
language competency. The second pair is Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test and Vocabulary
Knowledge Rating Scale which proved that her weakness in lexcial knowledge. After taking the analysis of
every evidence into account, I concluded that Sara is at level 4 – Advanced according to Tennessee English
Proficiency Levels. Also, according to American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL),
Sara is at the superior level in speaking and listening and at the advanced level in writing and reading.
Details and Evidences are provided in the following
ELDA is the annual language proficiency test that every ELL must take. Though it aims to measure
students’ proficiency level of the test taking time, it also has the characteristic of achievement test because
achivement tests are administered “in order to see whether and where progress has been made in terms of the
goals of learning. McNamara(2000)” In ELDA Technical Report 2005, In Abedi(2007) states “Language
61
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Development Assessment(ELDA) was designed to assess the development of proficiency in relation to
English language proficiency standards of participating states.” In this report, In Abedi defines purpose and
structure, test developing process and psycometric properties of ELDA. According to the report, the purpose
of ELDA is to assesse “the construct of academic English”. It further defines the term “academic English” as
“(1) language used to convey curriculumbased, academic content, and (2) the language of the social
environment of a school”. It then states that even though the content of the test consists of texts from English
language arts, math, science, technology, social studies, and school environment, “The concepts are not
being assessed; the students’understanding of spoken and written texts about the concepts and ability to
write and speak about the concepts are being assessed.”
This article reports that mean item difficulty of 2005 ranged from .59 to .81 and item discrimination
ranged from .53 to .87. This indicates that items in ELDA are generally in a good range of difficulty, though
the spectrum of it is wider than recommended. It also shows that ELDA discrimnates students with high
academic language proficiency from the ones with low academic proficiency effectively.
As for vaildity, the report remarks that ELDA, to prove its high face vailidity, went through
nationally recognized content experts’ review in 2005 in which they documented all recommendations,
made the necessary modifications, and submitted all items for final approval. They also conducted multiple
studies with different student groups to raise its validity. In terms of its relability, its coefficient alpha ranges
from .76 to .95 which indicates fairly high reliability except for the writing part of 3-5 cluster for which
interrater and intrarater reliability seem to need a monitor.
62
Capstone ELL Portfolio
I could refer to ELDA scores of four years (2007-2012) of Sara. According to the results, it
seems obvious that she has a high academic language proficiency in listening and speaking areas. For
the four years, her scores are the composite of level 4 and 5. In reading and writing, however, she
reveals her weaknesses. For both areas, her scores are the composite of level 2 and 3, which drag her
composite level of the four areas down to 3 for the all four years.
To see if the results of the ELDA test are meaningful, I conducted an oral language assessment
and adopted SOLOM as a guideline. I developed three different tasks. The first task asked Sara to make
orders for herself and two of her friends at a Burger King. I provided a menu plate that was edited. I
structured the task by having her posit that she only has $10, and then I asked her reasoning behind
the choices. The second task was to choose a movie among three options that were given to her. She
was given two options in order: when you are renting a movie to watch at home with your friend and
when you are going to the movie theater with your boyfriend. The third one task was to summarize
the short novel “Somebody’s Son” by Richard Pindell which her ELD class just finished reading. I was
familiar with the text because I taught the first period of the lesson with the particular text. The first
two tasks were more real-life-based, authentic ones whereas the last one was more academic.
I gave her 5 for the comprehension, fluency and vocabulary and pronunciation criteria and 4
for the grammar criteria. She displayed no misunderstanding at all in terms of comprehending my
utterances including everyday language and academic language such as directions. As for the fluency
her oral language, she showed no suspension of speech no matter the task was given to her. She
63
Capstone ELL Portfolio
delineated her thoughts without pausing to straighten her sentences in her mind, and moreover, the
content of her speech was always related to the topic and meaningful. For vocabulary criteria, I jotted
down the academic words she utilized which were, which were: in addition, involved in, composed of,
argue with, romantic, comedy, suspect, arranged, and competition. She had no problem expressing her
thoughts with both tier 1 and tier 2 words. For pronunciation criteria, I gave her 5 because even
though I could tell she has an accent, her utterances were always intelligible and did not require any
conscious concentration to understand her. The only word she had a hard time pronouncing was
Sundae, which did prohibit me from understanding her speech. The reason why she is not familiar to
the word was more culturally related than academic. The grammar criterion is the only part that I
gave 4. When I asked her to tell me the plot of the novel, “Somebody’s Son,” she alternated from
present tense to past tense. While it did not obscure the meaning, it was repetitive enough to notice
and sometimes it made the sentences ungrammatical, for instance “she go to…”
Comparing the ELDA listening and speaking parts and the oral language test I conducted, the
two results showed significant similarity. The mean of Sara’s listening and speaking parts of ELDA for
four years is 4.5, which is 90%, and according to SOLOM, she scored 96% in the oral language test.
With the result, I could say that Sara’s real-life oral language proficiency is slightly superior to her
academic oral language proficiency. Based on the ACTFL scales both scores would land in the superior
level for speaking and listening sections. As for speaking, she could explain complex matters in detail
and provide lengthy and coherent narrations. Her utterances were structured, and she had a
64
Capstone ELL Portfolio
discourse competence. She displayed sporadic errors which did not interfere with the communication.
As for listening, she is at the superior level because she could not only comprehend with no limitation,
but also make inferences. When the meaning was not clear, she took a guess and posed a question to
negotiate the meaning, which proved to me her ability of making inferences. I wouldn’t say that she is
at the distinguished level, though, because I did not expose her to different styles and registers of
speech.
In addition to the first set of standardized and non-standardized assessments, I decided to
administer another standardized test that measures students’ vocabulary competence. The reason
why I decided to conduct an extra standardized test is because I noticed that she has a low confidence
in vocabulary. In the lesson that I taught, I used adapted and used Vocabulary Knowledge Rating Scale.
I listed 10 key words to understand the text and asked my students check to what extent they were familiar
to the words. Sara, though being one of the most high-achieving students in class, checked that she did not
know most of the words at all. I wanted to use the standardized vocabulary assessment so that I could
pinpoint her level of vocabulary ability compared to the norm of her age group and see what I could suggest
for her, so that she could improve her weak area. Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test –
Spanish Bilingual Edition (EOWPCT-SBE) is “an individually administered, norm-referenced test
designed for use with individuals ages 4 years 0 months through 12 years 11 months.” Even though
my testee is 17 years old, I decided to use the test because I was curious about the test itself especially
because it was for bilinguals, and I also thought the result will be still meaningful in some ways.
65
Capstone ELL Portfolio
The purpose of EOWPCT-SBE is to measure “the extent of an individual’s vocabulary that can
be assessed and retrieved from memory and used to produce meaningful speech in Spanish or
English.” The manual admits that this assessment does not provide a measure of Spanish and English
proficiency but just assesses acquired expressive vocabulary regardless of in which language the
words are in.
EOWPCT-SBE proves a high reliability in both alpha and split-half methods. The reliability of
the test of all ages ranges from .87 from .98. Something to think about this assessment is its validity.
To heighten its content validity, EOWPCT-SBE is adapted from EOWPVT by eliminating problematic
items due to its potential culturally biased and mistranslation of words. Criterion-related validity of
EOWPCT-SBE with Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test – Spanish-Bilingual Edition
correlation is .36, and with SAT9-Vocabulary, the correlation is .57. The correlation between
EOWPVT-SBE and SAT9 Reading is .67 and with SAT9 Language is .75. As we can see here, this
assessment is correlated highly to academic achievement test than other vocabulary test which
demonstrates that this test is not accurately measuring its construct.
Sara’s raw score of EOWPCT-SBE is 74 and its standard score is 94. Again, since her age is not
appropriate for this test, I am skeptical on how meaningful these scores are. The way I interpret it is
that since she is older than 12 years and 11 months, she is expected to have a higher vocabulary level,
which makes her standard score lower. She is lower than average among her age group
66
Capstone ELL Portfolio
unquestionably. This is an important issue to consider, knowing that she has very high oral language
proficiency.
As I was reflecting on the results I gathered, I went back to the informal assessments I
conducted. I noted that she responded that she does not read much in L1 in her literacy survey. My
informed guess is that even though her first language, Spanish, is established orally, she might not
have not built written language skills in L1. And while receiving education in the States, she might not
have had a literacy strategy from L1 that she can refer to establish L2 literacy. To concretize my
finding, I will create the strengths and needs chart that Brantley (2007) proposes and share it with her.
While I will praise her strengths, I will consult with her about her weaknesses and suggests some
possible solutions that she can try out.
The part 1 and 3 of the analysis project assured me the institutional character of tests and
direness of its implications on students’ lives (McNamara, 2000). I learned that opening multiple
channels through which students can express their proficiency and validating the results from them as
well as scores from standardized tests are crucial. As an ELL teacher, I will always contemplate ways
in which I can design my assessments to be as authentic as possible and by many different medium so
that I will be able to estimate students’ proficiency as exact as possible and the assessments will be
able to have a positive washback effect on my student’s learning.
67
Capstone ELL Portfolio
References
Brantley, D.K. (2007). Instructional Assessment of English language learners in the K-8 classroom. Pearson:
Boston.
Brownwell, R (2001). Expressive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test Spanish Bilingual Edition Manual.
Novato, California: Academic Therapy Publications.
Gottlieb, M. (2006). Assessing English language learners: Bridges from language proficiency to academic
achievement. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press
Herrera, S.G., Murry, K.G. & Cabral, R.M (2007). Assessment accommodations for classroom teachers of
culturally and linguistically diverse students. Allyn and Bacon: Boston.
Hurley, S. & Tinajero, J. (Eds.), Handbook for literacy assessment for bilingual learners Boston: Allyn &
Bacon.
Hughes, A. (2002). Testing for language learners. Cambridge: New York University Press.
In Abedi, J. (2007). English Language Proficiency Assessment in the Nation: Current Status and Future
Practice (Ed.): Davis” University of California.
McNamara, T. & Widdowson, H.G. (2000). Language testing. New York: Oxford University Press
http://www.glencliffhs.mnps.org/Page58144.aspx
http://www.tn.gov/education/assessment/ELLAssessments.shtml
68
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact H: PowerPoint Slides for OWLS Presentation (See the Attachment)
69
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact I: Explore Paper
Exploration of the U.S Policies and Laws Relating to ELLs
For the past two weeks, we have read and discussed the history of legislation and judicial decisions
in regards of ELLs. We also had a great opportunity to hear what current issues of immigrants’ and ELLs’
rights are from the advocates of them in different settings. This exploration allowed me a perspective to look
at ELL education from a broader range taking many stake-holders into consideration and refined my idea of
what my responsibility is as a teacher.
In the early years of its foundation, the U.S took the assimilationist view toward speakers of
languages other than English; English was the language of institute for everyone. With the exception of
German for a limited period and area, other languages were, at the most, “tolerated rather than embraced
(Schmid, 2001, p. 31).” In the worst case, with cultural factors interwoven, indigenous languages were
targeted to eradicate. This tendency lasted until mid-twentieth century, when the immigrant population
surged. Starting in 1968 with the enactment of Bilingual Education Act (BEA), however, federal
government began to recognize the necessity for providing equal opportunity to limited English proficient
(LEP). BEA, though not from the beginning, ended up making visible differences in ELL education across
the nation because federal government could control the funding for schools which did not comply. In other
words, for school administrators and teachers, BEA was a punitive provision rather being the law that they
enthusiastically followed and voluntarily improved. Besides, BEA was not enough to guarantee equal
opportunity because its underlying ideology fluctuated frequently which reflected “changes in the political
climate and changing views about the place of linguistic diversity in American society.” (as cited in De Jong,
2011, p. 137) Reluctant or additive bilingualism was projected in the BEA of the 1970s, whereas
assimilationists view reemerged in the 1980s. Pluralistic view seemed to come back in 1990s, but it quickly
return to the other end of continuum in 2001, when No Child Left Behind (NCLB) replaced BEA. NCLB,
which is in effect at present, puts much emphasis on assessment and accountability which makes it difficult
70
Capstone ELL Portfolio
for teachers to plan instructions which consider language as a resource (Ruiz, 1984) and draw and highlight
cultural and linguistic diversity. (De Jong, 2011, p. 143)
Juxtaposed with BEA, judicial decisions of federal courts have discovered the violations of ELLs’
rights and have dedicated in providing remedies. The very first Supreme Court decision was the Lau v.
Nichols case which declared that LEP’s right to learn was violated and proclaimed that there should be the
appropriate language support for LEP. (Garcia, 2005) Although this case is meaningful for being a
cornerstone statement that positioned the “language as a right” view, (Ruiz, 1984) it lacked detailed
prescription of what language support should look like. In the following year, the jurisdiction was extended
to schools in the entire nation by Equal Educational Opportunity Act (EEOA) in the following year, and in
1981, the Castaneda v. Pickard case resulted in the court’s mandate for all school districts to provide ELLs
with the adequate resources including materials and trained staff. (Garcia, 2005)
Conforming to all the above mentioned laws, Tennessee is also under pressure of NCLB law, having
to show good annual yearly progress (AYP) data. This renders the state to maintain English-only policy
which was initiated by three other states in the late 1990s and early 2000s “to restrict the use of a language
other than English in the delivery of educational services to Chicano children.” (Garcia, 2005, p. 86) ESL
program policy document of Tennessee State Board of Education (2008), reifying the laws and policies,
stipulates the guidelines such as how to identify ELLs, what kinds of services should be available, and what
staffing ratio should be, etc. Although the presence of these rules does play their roles of improving ELL
education to some extent, there is much room to be improved. First of all, when the spectrum of
backgrounds of ELLs is becoming wider and wider in terms of varied SES of immigrant families, as we can
see in the chart 1 of immigration’s economic impact article, (executive office of the president, 2007)
identifying ELLs’ needs with three questions cannot be sufficient or comprehensive. Secondly, the treatment
of transitional LEP students (T1, T2) is not specified enough when bridging students in this level from pullout programs to mainstream courses and making sure that students are anchored in the mainstream courses
are critical. One of our guest speakers, Tim Hogan, mentioned three trial issues he was engaged in for the
71
Capstone ELL Portfolio
last ten years in Tuscon, Arizona. The first one, Arizona’s revision home-language program survey from
three questions to one to under-identify the needs, and the second one, the state made the proficiency test
easy to pass as many students as possible, resonate in Tennessee also in that the survey and tests for
identifying ELLs must be precise so that they can get the proper treatment they need. Thirdly, 45 students
for one ESL teacher is the overwhelming number considering ELLs are likely to come from multiple
cultural and linguistic backgrounds. If the state acknowledges the idea that teachers’ meaningful
relationships with ELLs are invaluable in ELLs’ success, the staffing ratio should be amended.
These issues are all rooted from the big agenda of the education law, NCLB. While I do not disagree
with basic tenet of NCLB which seeks for nationwide educational improvement and competence, I realize
that over-emphasizing assessment and accountability is significantly limiting potential various approaches to
teaching of teachers and numerous educational experiences of students, in every discipline area. Especially
for language minority students whose life experience can be considerably distinctive from that of
mainstream students’, many creative and unconventional methods of learning can be helpful than traditional
instructions of which efficacy cannot necessarily be assessed by test scores. ELLs’ classroom should be
somewhere they can validate their identities by sharing their cultural heritage and building relationships,
worrying less about the tests.
Finally, I believe that teachers and administrators should familiarize themselves with immigrant
policies and current immigrant issues such as Deferred Action because immigrant family’s legal status and
their children’s success in learning are most likely woven together. Schools should also be aware of the
resources such as Tennessee Immigrant & Refugees Rights Coalition (TIRRC) and Justice for Our
Neighbors (JFON) of Tennessee where teachers can earn necessary information to help students or obtain
legal assistance. It was hopeful to hear that there are many charities that help out JFON and there are figures
like Adrienne who can assist with immigrant family’s legal concerns and Karla who, based on her own
experience, can help immigrant children’ academic concerns. With the tied effort of schools, families, and
advocates, we can secure ELLs’ rights and raise their chances of success in life.
72
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Reference
De Jong, E.J. (2011). Foundations for multilingualism in Educations: From Principles to practice. Caslon:
PA.
Garcia, E. (2005). The policy debate and related policies regarding U.S. bilinguals. In teaching and learning
in two languages: Bilingualism and schooling in the United States. New York: Teachers College
Press.
Jammal, S., Duong, T. (2008) Language right: An integration adenga for immigrant communities.
Washington DC: MALDEF.
Ruiz, R. (1984). Orientation in language planning. NABE Journal, 7 (2), pp. 15-34.
Schmid, C. (2001). The politics of language. New York: Oxford University Press, chapter 2, pp. 14-31.
Tennessee State Board of Education. (2008). ESL program policy, pp. 1-6
73
Capstone ELL Portfolio
Artifact J: http://howonlee27.edublogs.org/