Bruce Karhoff
EDL 707: Creating Effective and Supportive Learning Environments for All Students
18 November 2013
Diverse Populations Professional Development Plan
Professional Development Program—Summary and Objectives
This professional development plan will focus on the needs of the Bronx Lab School’s English Language Learners (ELLs). More specifically, this series of workshops will train subject-area teachers in math, science, and history to effectively use English as a Second Language (ESL) literacy strategies in the content courses. The overarching goal of this professional development is to increase student achievement on the four non-ELA Regents exams and to increase the graduation rate among our ELL population.
The specific objectives of this plan are:
Needs Assessment
The ELL population at Bronx Lab School is relatively small. In the 2012-13 school year, there 31 ELLs, representing 6.3% of the total enrollment. In previous years, the enrollment rate ranged from 4% to 7% of the total student population. On October 31, 2013, there were 37 ELLs enrolled at Bronx Lab School.
The graduation rate of students designated as Limited English Proficient (LEP) at Bronx Lab has steadily diminished over the past five graduation cohorts. The weighted graduation rate for the ELL population over the five years is 65%; during the same time period, the overall graduation rate for the school has been 74%. The past two cohorts have very small numbers, so it is difficult to draw conclusions about them.
Table 1. Graduation Rate of Bronx Lab School LEP Students, 2009-2013
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
While these rates might indicate greater success in the past, a closer look at the graduates’ diploma type from the school’s internal ATS graduation reports suggests that the declining graduation rates may not indicate decreasing student performance, but rather changing New York State graduation standards. A large majority of the LEP graduates in the years 2009-2011 earned Local Diplomas, indicating that they did not earn grades of 65 or higher on all Regents exams. With the 2012 graduating cohort, general education students had to earn 65 or higher on all five core Regents exams to graduate. The rate of students earning a Regents Diploma has remained steadily low, as shown in Table 2 below.
Table 2. Graduation Rate of Bronx Lab School LEP Students, by Diploma Type, 2009-2013
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
* The LEP student who earned a HS diploma had an IEP and thus earned a Local Diploma with 2 Regents scores below 65.
A further look at the records of the non-graduates further shows that their performance on Regents exams is a larger contributing factor in preventing them from graduating. In fact, every non-graduating ELL student has (or had) at least one Regents exam that s/he needs to pass in order to graduate. While most non-graduates also need to earn more credits in order to be eligible for a diploma, every non-gradate still had Regents exams to pass.
Table 3. Bronx Lab School LEP Non-Graduating Student Credit and Regents Exam Need
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In short, increasing the pass rate on the Regents exams for the ELL population will directly impact the graduation rate of this group. As with the graduation rate, the ELLs’ pass rates for the Regents exams lags behind the overall pass rates. The data from the past three years for students who have not previously passed the particular Regent exam are shown in Table 4.
Table 4. Overall and ELL Regents Pass Rates, 2011-2013, for Select Regents Exams
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Workshops
The professional development will be provided in monthly, one-hour workshops during the school’s regular Wednesday Faculty Gathering over the course of the spring semester. The workshops will be led by our ESL coordinator and our assistant principal, a special education specialist who supports instruction of students with diverse learning needs.
The first three workshops will focus on ESL strategies; the final two workshops will provide a structured time for teachers to reflect on their practice, share strategies, and to revise the lesson plans they used with the ESL strategies. Before each workshop, teachers will be asked to bring lesson plans (or a unit plan) for the next week’s lessons. During each workshop, teachers will be given time to incorporate the monthly strategy into a lesson plan for the following week. Teachers will work with department teams for each session so they will have sounding boards for their ideas and content-area support. Department leaders will have a preview of the workshops at the Department Chair meeting the week prior in order to better support their team during the workshops.
The first workshop will center on the explicit teaching of content vocabulary and the use of graphic organizers to facilitate the learning of vocabulary. As the Institute for Educational Studies notes in a U.S. Department of Education publication, research supports “daily explicit vocabulary instruction,” that provides “multiple exposures” to new, key content words. The facilitator will provide the content teachers with examples of pictograms and graphic organizers. Each teacher will then identify one lesson for the upcoming week in which content vocabulary could be specifically taught with the use of graphic organizers. Teachers will work with other members of their departments (math, science, social studies) to incorporate the explicit teaching of vocabulary into one lesson plan, providing support and sharing ideas. Teachers will be asked to use this same strategy in at least two other lessons by the end of the month.
To support teachers and to monitor progress, the ESL coordinator will open a blog on the staff’s email site. Each teacher will be expected to report the challenges and successes in the use of their ESL strategy at least one time by the end of the month, with a short blog post that indicates the lesson, the vocabulary terms explicitly taught, the graphic organizer used, and a one-two sentence reflection. Time will be allotted for teachers to complete the blog during the one “teacher time” Faculty Gathering each month. At each workshop, Department Chairs will check in with teachers who have not written a post for the previous month. This process of blog post reflections will continue through the end of the PD cycle.
The second workshop will center on the teaching of “Regents questioning words,” the “academic English” that challenges many ELLs as well as many other students. The facilitator will open with a summary of the blog posts, emphasizing best practices, and will have one member of each department share an experience with the teaching of content vocabulary. For this workshop, the facilitator will have each department team review the three most recent Regents exams, as well as the Common Core State Standards, and identify the vocabulary, such as “justify” or “contrast,” needed to understand the questions, and compile a list. Each teacher will select two Regents-style problems or questions to use in a class in the next week that use one of these words. The teacher will explicitly teach the vocabulary in the lesson, and have students come up with synonyms and examples for the vocabulary term. The teacher will incorporate these two vocabulary words onto a poster for the classroom. Over the following three weeks, each teacher will be expected to repeat this exercise twice more, for a total of six “Regents questioning words.” Teachers who share a classroom with another teacher in the same content will plan during the workshop to cover different vocabulary terms.
The final workshop to introduce a new strategy will take place in April. After again summarizing the blog posts and having teachers share successes from the previous month, the ESL coordinator will lead a workshop on strategies for the teaching of similarities and differences. Jane Hill and Kathleen Flynn identify four unique forms of identifying differences and similarities in an academic context: comparing, classifying, creating analogies, and creating metaphors. The facilitator will introduce these forms and lead a discussion among the teachers of examples of this in the content areas. The facilitator will also provide strategies to organize these graphically. Teachers will use the workshop time to incorporate one of these forms into one lesson for the upcoming week; teachers will be expected to follow this up twice more by the end of the month. Table 5 below summarizes the workshop topics.
Table 5. Workshop Dates and Topics
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Follow-up Activities
The final two workshops will be used to provide a structured time and space for reflection and evaluation. Prior to the May workshop, the AP will select a model poster explaining the Regents vocabulary from each department to share with the entire staff. At the workshop, the assistant principal will have each teacher reflect on what went well and what could be improved in the 9 lessons in which they incorporated the ESL strategies, and lead a Think-Pair-Share. Teachers will be asked to select one lesson from each strategy cycle, and asked to revise the lesson plan. Finally, teachers will be asked to select evidence from student work to share in June showing the successes and challenges of using the ESL strategies in the content areas.
The final workshop will take place during the Chancellor’s Conference Day. Teachers will meet in departments and share student work as evidence of the successes and challenges. Teachers will also have time to complete the revisions to the lesson plans that incorporate the ESL strategies. The lesson plans will be collected and assembled as a teacher resource for end-of-year curriculum mapping and unit planning. Finally, all participating teachers will be asked to complete an evaluation of the workshops, the facilitators, and the PD cycle as a whole.
Evaluation
One measure of the effects of the PD cycle will be the quantity and quality of the revised lesson plans that teacher submit. We expect 100% of the math, science, and social studies teachers to submit three lesson plans that effectively incorporate the ESL strategies taught in these workshops. Another measure will be the participation rate and the quality of reflection in the blog posts. Again, we expect every teacher to write a minimum of three blog posts as part of the reflective process.
A second source used for evaluation will be the teacher survey feedback. Teachers must find that the workshops provided a resource/tool to better their practice, and that the workshops were structured in a way that was meaningful and a productive use of their time.
The best evaluation of the PD cycle, of course, will be the impact on student achievement. After the June and August Regents, the results for the ELL population will be disaggregated, as will the graduation rates for the 2014 and 2015 cohorts. Only if the Regents pass rates increase and, ultimately, the graduation rates begin a steady climb, will these workshops be deemed truly effective and the goals met.
Reflection on Ethical Dimensions
As Goldenberg, Hill and Flynn, and others note, the teaching strategies that are effective with ELLs are those that are effective with all students. Thus, this cycle of PD workshops on ESL strategies will benefit the general education and special education populations as well. Strategies that enhance ELL literacy have been proven by research to be effective strategies in increasing the literacy rates for all students.
By targeting the ELL population at Bronx Lab, however, these workshops will be specifically designed to boost achievement among a subpopulation that has had a record of poor achievement since the school opened a decade ago. Even though the ELL population is too small to be considered in the Annual Yearly Progress measures of No Child Left Behind, it is incumbent upon the school leaders to note this underachievement and put systems into place to address this inequity. As such, efforts such as this series of workshops to enhance the student achievement among the ELL population is both educational sound and ethically necessary.
References
Gersten, R., Baker, S.K., Shanahan, T., Linan-Thompson, S., Collins, P., & Scarcella, R. (2007). Effective Literacy and English Language Instruction for English Learners in the Elementary Grades: A Practice Guide (NCEE 2007-4011). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Retrieved from http://ies.ed.gov/ncee.
Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English Language Learners: What the Research Does—and Does Not—Say. American Educator, 8-23, 43-44.
Hill, Jane D, and Flynn, Kathleen M. (2006). Classroom Instruction that Works with English Language Learners. Alexandra, VA: ASCD.
NYC Department of Education. (2011). Progress Report, 2010-2011. Retrieved on November 15, 2013 from http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/11/x265/AboutUs/Statistics/default.htm.
NYC Department of Education. (2012). Progress Report, 2011-2012. Retrieved on November 15, 2013 from http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/11/x265/AboutUs/Statistics/default.htm.
NYC Department of Education. (2013). Progress Report, 2012-2013. Retrieved on November 15, 2013 from http://schools.nyc.gov/SchoolPortals/11/x265/AboutUs/Statistics/ default.htm.
NYC Department of Education. Graduation Cohort Download (RGCS)—Cohorts K-O. Retrieved on September 15, 2013 from https://ats.nycnet.edu.
Please wait...