Erin Hepler
ESL-223 N
March 10, 2013
Lindsey Davis English language learners are becoming more popular in many of the local school districts in the world today, therefore, it is important for us as educators to know how to accommodate these students’s needs and ensure they are learning all the skills necessary to succeed. Today many schools follow a strict set of standards to ensure that all students are gaining the necessary skills needed to succeed. Let us take a look at the ELL standards and how they could be incorporated into the reading and writing standards in Arizona. We will also take a look at standards based instruction, how the Arizona English learner standards can be used as a guide for differentiating instruction, how data from various sources relating to the learners progress can be used to drive the standards based instruction, and how the different standards available to teachers provide high expectations and motivation to meet the needs of the different learners. First let us take a look at the English proficiency standards. The standards are English language learners communicate in English for social and instructional purposes in the school setting, communicate information, ideas, and concepts necessary for academic success in the content area of language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies (Chico, 2005). Now let us take a look at the Arizona standards for kindergarten students in the areas of reading and writing. Some of the reading standards are print concepts, phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension. Some of the writing standards are pre-writing, drafting, revising, and editing (Waterford). The English proficiency standards can be embedded into all areas of curriculum; therefore they could easily be embedded into the reading, and writing standards. Reading and writing both are a big part of communication in today’s world. In order to print and understand the concept of words the student must understand the language first. The same concept holds true when it comes to being able to read the words. Now let us take a look at standards based instruction. Standards- based education has become the organizing principle and force behind most federal, state, and local education policy in the United States today (Ed Source, 2013). It was believed that the expectations for student performance can and should be raised so that academic achievement could be improved. All children needed to have access to a more challenging curriculum and should be expected to learn the content at a high level of performance. Policies were created to support the establishment of high academic standards and the implementation of curriculum and instruction aligned to those standards, an assessment system that measures and sheds light on progress, accountability systems that hold educators and policymakers responsible for student achievement, and interventions systems that reward progress and provide support for schools that are struggling (Ed Source, 2013). There should be high expectations for all students to ensure that they are meeting the skills needed to help them succeed as adults. The standards should be used as a guideline to help the students gain the knowledge and skills appropriate for that age level. How can the Arizona English learner standards be used as a guide for differentiating instruction for various levels of ELL’s? We as teachers can set up each lesson with a certain objective of what we would like the students to learn. For the ELL student or students we could set up a language objective as well. An example would be the child will be able to successfully identify 6 of the vocabulary words and their meanings written on the board. An objective for the ELL student could be that the child will also be able to pronounce the sound that each letter in the word makes correctly. If the child was struggling with a certain objective the teacher could come up with a variety of