When conducting an evaluation for your school, there are many things that you should focus on:
How well ELLs who are international students are being accommodated for at your school
How accurate your language testing tools are accessing English language proficiency and literacy
How effective a new computer software program that the school has recently purchased is
How much the parents of ELLs are participating in their child's education through volunteering at the school or attending school community activities
How accessible the school library is for ELLs
My evaluation on a School Program: Scholastic Literacy Pro.
My case study below is on parents feedback to an online reading program that is used throughout the school.
Context: This year, the district bought the Scholastic Literacy Pro online resources for all the students in the district. On this resource, teachers provide each of the students reading levels, and then personalized reading lists are created for each student. At the beginning of the year, each teacher provided the parents and students access to the link through their Fresh Grade account and encouraged them to use this as their home reading program while the teachers also used this program at school. The teachers at the school have observed that the students seem to be more engaged in reading from this program because there are a variety of books that they can choose from and they are all in their level of reading.
Purpose: Now that the school has been using this program since September, Sarah Smith, the ELL specialist at the school is interested in the parent’s feedback from this program. She in wondering if the ELL parents are finding that their children are engaged in using this program at home. She will be sending the survey home to all students so that she will be able to use the non-ELL students results to compare to the ELL students.
Methods: Sarah Smith is going to send home a survey for the parents to fill out to find out their opinions on the Scholastic Literacy Program. She is going to send this survey home online through each student's Fresh Grade profile because the parents at this school are frequently checking their child’s account. With help from the district translators, this survey will also be sent home in each of the families L1. Sarah is very interested to find out if the ELL students are using this program as much as the non-ELL students. She is worried that the ELL students are finding it hard to read at home because often their parents are unable to help them if they are stuck on a word. Sarah has also asked the classroom teachers to provide a survey to the students. This will just be a basic survey that will ask the students if they enjoy using the scholastic literacy program and reasons why or why not they like it. Question: If the surveys come back stating that the ELL students are not using this program at home or not enjoying using the program because they feel it is too hard or for other reasons, what is somethings that Sarah can do to help support ELL students to read at home?