Location

Fairbanks North Star Borough School District
520 5th Avenue
Fairbanks, AK 99701

Contacts

Fawn Jelinek and Shannon Sinclair, Bilingual Partner Teachers
Phone: 907-452-2000 ext. 458
Email: fjelinek@northstar.k12.ak.us and ssinclair@northstar.k12.ak.us

Staff Development Model for Mainstream Teachers of English Language Learners in Low Incidence ELL Populations

Fairbanks North Star Borough is located in interior Alaska and is the second largest population center in the state. Almost 10 percent of the borough’s population is Alaska Native; 8 percent of students are English language learners.

Two years ago, the district began an evaluation of its services for ELL students. At the time an ESL pull-out model was being used, where children were "pulled" from their classrooms and taught English proficiency in small groups. Mainstream classroom teachers were not adequately trained to meet the needs of their ELL students, and the teachers had little time to learn strategies, as they had no staff preparation time and few professional development opportunities.

The district knew that more support for ELL students was needed. Although bilingual immersion programs had been successful in other schools with larger groups of students who speak the same heritage language, the district determined that this model would not fit with their smaller percentage of students who speak several different languages. As a result, the district knew that professional development in content and language instruction for mainstream teachers would be vital to ensuring success for their ELL students.

To obtain resources for this professional development, in 2001 the district applied for and received two Title III staff development grants: Training for All Teachers: a five-year grant focusing on K–8 mainstream teachers; and a three-year bilingual development and implementation grant that provides for staff development for K–8 mainstream teachers and paraeducators.

The goals of the Training for All Teachers and Bilingual Development and Implementation Grants were to:

• Provide one-to-one collaboration of mainstream classroom teachers and bilingual specialist teachers to teach ELL students more effectively. This includes co-planning, co-teaching, and co-reflecting.
• Aim to foster academic achievement and an environment of inclusion for ELLs in the classroom.
• Offer graduate-level courses.
• Provide resources and develop materials for classroom teachers’ specific needs.
• Train paraeducators to work with ELL students.
• Encourage parent involvement for language minority families.

The collaborative teaching model is implemented through an integrated approach. In the past, the classroom teachers focused on content objectives with ELL students, while the bilingual specialist focused on language objectives. In the integrated approach, the classroom teacher and the bilingual specialist work together on both objectives.

The instructional model used for professional development is the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, or SIOP, a model for teaching grade level content in a way that is understandable for ELL students while at the same time promoting their English language development. Developed by researchers from the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, Excellence, SIOP is based on research into best practices, and takes into account the special language development needs of English language learners, which distinguishes it from high-quality non-sheltered teaching. Research findings indicate that students whose teachers implemented the SIOP model outperformed similar students whose teachers were not trained in the model (Echevarria & Short, 2003).

SIOP was chosen to provide a framework for systematic implementation of practices known to be effective for ELL students rather than just a "mishmash" of strategies. There are eight components of the SIOP model: lesson preparation, building background, comprehensive input, strategies, interaction, practice/application, lesson delivery, and review and assessment. (For more detailed information on this research-based framework, with examples of lesson plans, see www.siopinstitute.net and www.cal.org/crede/si.htm)

Fairbanks North Star bilingual partner teachers and classroom teachers have designed their own detailed lesson plans that integrate SIOP features of content and language objectives, adapting content, using techniques to make concepts clear, clearly explaining tasks, and providing meaningful activities to integrate lesson concepts.

For a lesson on the book The Cay, a bilingual teacher and classroom teacher worked together to develop two lessons. Each lesson has a content and language objective.

For example, Understanding the meaning of a "Literature Circle" and Identifying Question Answer Relationships (Right There, Think and Search, Author and You, and On My Own questions) are content objectives. The language objectives are to write the different types of questions for their discussions, and to write questions for the Literature Circle.

After the first year of implementation, bilingual partner teachers Jelinek and Sinclair praise the SIOP framework as an exemplary alternative to the "pull-out" approach, because children are using language as a vehicle to learn the content. Says Sinclair, "The SIOP model is the most effective framework we have seen so far because the protocol includes what the research says are ’best practices’ for all teachers." Although Sinclair acknowledges that more time is needed for mainstream teachers and bilingual paraprofessionals to collaborate during the day, she knows that long-term self-directed teacher development is necessary. "Unlike a weekend workshop approach, the SIOP model allows teachers to use what they learn the next day in their own classrooms."