Ask the right questions and your data will reveal the answers
A big part of using ELL data to plan for the next school year involves knowing which questions to ask — and when to ask them. What questions should you and your team consider as you close out this year and prepare for the future?
The answers to these questions can help you hit the ground running next year.
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End-of-Year ELL Planning Guide: Harness the Data You’ve Collected to Plan for Success Next Year
The End of the Year
It may be helpful to think about…
- Starting a preemptive internal review process in your organization to determine if you have all of the data needed for end-of-year meetings
- How many emergent bilingual students exited this year? What implications does this have for next year?
- How did your emergent bilingual population grow this year? Compare this year’s enrollment data to data from the past few years.
- Based on enrollment changes, does your staff need any program-based training (ie. Sheltered instruction)?
- What home and student languages are the most common in your school or district
- When were compliance documents submitted this past year? Was student data readily accessible? Do you have room for improvement to ensure staff members aren’t spending time chasing down information?
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3 Benefits of Restorative Dialogue for English Learners
In an episode of our Field Trip podcast, we talked with Grace Delgado, the Director of Language Acquisition, and Lorin Furlow, the Director of Special Services, of Brazosport Independent School District near Houston, Texas. Grace and Lorin have developed and incorporated restorative practices with ELL classroom tools in a way that is making a profound difference in their school district.
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Before Next School Year Starts
Set your team up for success…
- Create a checklist for all your compliance documents for each student in your program. Upload the checklist to common digital system and share it with your team.
- Tip: If you have a software system to manage your EL program, this will be much easier.
- Use last year’s EL member training roster as a jumping off point to plan this year’s training approach.
- Did your team experience any challenges during the first 20 days of the previous school year? For example, were you able to send permission forms to parents in a timely fashion? Were they returned in a timely fashion? Is there a way to proactively address challenges before the school year starts?
- Pair new committee members with expert members to help with training Q&A.
The First Day of School
If you use last year’s data to plan, your team can start the year off strong!