Case
Misplaced Student

A new student to your school has been placed in your ESOL class. However, during classroom instruction you find that he is at a very high level of English proficiency, and appears to not need any ESOL instruction. When you bring this to administrations attention, they provide the documentation claiming that the child be placed in an ESOL classroom because his language spoken at home is Spanish. What do you do?

Posted on: 04/18/13 | Views: 1272
Solution #1
Top Solution
I would keep records of my own if the student has shown a full grasp of the English language in your classroom. I would then show these records to administration and ask that the student be re-evaluated for the ESOL program, if the student is truly fluent in English he/she should be able to test out of the ESOL program.
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Solution #2
Students are placed in EL classes because of the home survey. Make sure you document when the student did or did not receive help on work samples. I would especially document oral and written expression samples. If the student is functioning as high, he will test out at the end of the year. In the meantime, if the student is receiving services, I would talk with the teachers about amending his services.
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Solution #3
I would discuss it with the student, and talk to them to see what they want and feel that they need. And record all your findings through their writing assignments and comprehensive work.
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Solution #4
It is important to remember that it can take 7-10 years for a student to become fluent using academic language even if the student speaks very well conversationally. This may be why the student is in ESOL to continue academic language.

In addition to this, this student may peak English very well, but may have trouble reading or writing in English. I would make sure to pay attention to or assess this student for different types of fluency and go from there.

Good points. It would be terrible to pass a student along just because they "appear" to know more than expected. Looks can be deceiving. The student should be given a chance to succeed, wherever that happens to be.

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