Stephanie Salerno
10/24/2022
ELL Assessment Article Summary
The article I chose to use for this assignment is titled “Ensuring Accommodations
Used in Content Assessments are Responsive to English Language Learners”, this
article was sourced from The Reading Teacher and published in May of 2009. This
article was written by Lynn Shafer Willner, Charlene Rivera, and Barbara D. Acosta.
This article offers an overview of the requirements for including and accommodating
ELL students in content assessments and explains how accommodations for ELLs
work.
The article begins by explaining why ELL students need accommodations.
Students not yet proficient in English may take longer to process the language used in
assessments and also often have difficulty accessing the content of test questions
because of unfamiliar language or unfamiliar cultural references. The authors of this
article then explain that accommodations for ELLs involve changes to testing
procedures, testing materials, or the testing situation in order to allow students to
meaningfully participate in an assessment without changing the content that is being
assessed. The authors note that extended time is considered an accommodation
because it provides additional time for the processing of test questions.
The article wraps up by offering five recommendations based on research to help
ensure that accommodations given to ELL students are effective. The first
recommendation offered is to ensure that students are being taught the content
effectively. If students don’t know the content, accommodations offer little benefit to
students. The next recommendation is to ensure that accommodations are supporting
ELLs linguistic needs. The third recommendation provided is to use a team to make
accommodation decisions. Multiple perspectives help ensure that each ELLs needs are
being identified and that the appropriate accommodations are being selected to meet
those needs. Next, the authors recommend choosing accommodations based on
individual needs. It is noted that using a one size fits all approach is unlikely to be
effective. The final recommendation in this article is to provide students with the chance
to use accommodations before the assessment so students are familiar with their
accommodations.
From reading this article I gained five useful recommendations to consider when
planning accommodations for assessing ELL students. I also gained a better
understanding of exactly what accommodations for ELL students should provide.