To: Michael GreenRe: June Monthly Special Services ReportFrom: Deb KernenDate: June 2, 2011
The Washington Language Proficiency Test (WLPT) was administered to all of our 124 ELL students in February. As you may recall this test assesses student progress in the area of language acquisition. Great news........we had 22 students exit ELL services based on this assessment! Something unique about this year's results is that 8 of them were from WIS. This hasn't been our typical pattern, as it gets more difficult for students to make these type of gains as they get older. I think what has contributed to this success is the work that our SLP, Ann Marie McLarrin has done working with our WIS ELL students these past 2 years. Another contributing factor is that during the last few years we have trained over 25 teachers from WPS in Guided Language Acquisition Design (GLAD). They are implementing successful teaching strategies designed to support our ELL students daily. Our ELL services are also able to provide research based curriculum instruction, while supporting/providing teachers with modified materials, in class support and information about each students Language Proficiency level yielded from the WLPT administered. This year our ELL staff have continued their efforts with teacher and instructional assistant professional development activities that help provide staff with the skills and strategies that help these students be successful. We will be continuing our Guided Language Acquisition Training (GLAD) for the staff at WPS and continue implementation phase in at WIS next year as well. This will ensure that our instruction for these students is differentiated enough so students learn the content as well as the necessary language skills on a daily basis. We are very proud of the collective efforts that have gone in to seeing such successful results!!!!!