English Language Development (ELD)

Designated ELD

English Language Development (ELD) for English Learners (K-5, 6-12)

The California Department of Education (CDE, 2010) has defined English Language Development (ELD) as instruction that is “designed to help them (English Learners, or ELs) learn and acquire English to a level of proficiency (e.g., advanced) that maximizes their capacity to engage successfully in academic studies taught in English,” (p. 23). Instructional Services provides training for teachers (K-12) that focuses on the CDE’s “Guidelines for ELD Instruction” (2010, p. 27).

Topics include structuring student interaction; emphasizing listening and speaking to build reading and writing; explicitly teaching English vocabulary, syntax, grammar, functions, and conventions; integrating meaning and communication; providing corrective feedback on form; implementing communication and language-learning strategies; emphasizing academic language acquisition; and basing instruction on specific language objectives. The training is 12 hours and includes principal coaching. It is customized using the district’s adopted ELD curriculum and by grade level (elementary, K-5, or secondary, 6-12).

These files can be found on this page:

Multilingual and Multicultural Education Department (MMED) website:

Kindergarten

First Grade

Second Grade

Third Grade

Fourth Grade

Fifth Grade

Student Progress Form – Constructive Conversation Language Sample(SPF-CCLS)

 Resources

PDF Lesson Revisions

SDAIE: Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English:

SDAIE is a methodology (a set of specific strategies) designed to make instruction comprehensible and grade-level academic content accessible for English learners (ELs).

    •  Four Critical Elements and Reflection Questions

      1. Content

      • Teachers need to:

        • Determine key concepts and skills
        • Design lesson objectives that focus on specific concepts and specific language
        • Use district / state adopted grade-level curriculum
        • Choose ancillary text and other materials that will help clarify the content

      • Reflection questions

        • Are the major concepts and skills identified?
        • Are they specific?
        • Does my lesson delivery support the content and language objectives?
        • Do my scaffolds meet the language proficiency needs of my English learners?
        • DoI select text and other materials that make content clear and meaningful to English learners?

      2. Connections

      • Teachers need to:

        • Build connections between what is to be learned and what students already know
        • Take into consideration:
          • Previous content learning
          • Processes and skills learned (e.g., Think-Pair-Share, outlines)
          • Personal experiences (e.g., selecting culturally responsive examples from the student’s
            life to illustrate a key concept)
        • Organize lessons that build on previous knowledge

      • Reflection questions

        • Do I link concepts and skills to English learners’ experiences?
        • Do I select and elicit examples from students’ lives that illustrate key points?
        • Do I display information in a variety of formats, such as maps, graphs, charts,
          pictures, models, etc.?
        • Do I provide opportunities for English learners to use process skills such as
          hypothesizing, organizing, categorizing, drawing conclusions, etc.?
        • Do I prepare students for new learning by teaching key concepts, previewing critical
          aspects, and reviewing related past learning?
        • Do I use scaffolding devices such as outlines, Thinking Maps®, or other advanced
          graphic organizers, to help English learners organize ideas and make meaningful
          connections between previous and new learning, and to support and sustain new
          academic learning?
        • Do I organize content so it is related from lesson to lesson?
        • Do I select text and other materials that make connection with previous learning?

      3. Comprehensibility

      • Teachers need to:

        • Combine visual clues such as pictures, diagrams with verbal and written communication
        • Make a one to one correspondence between spoken and written concept and the visual
          clue
        • Control range and diversity of vocabulary (e.g., idiomatic expressions)
        • Repeat new key words in different contexts and chart them
        • Check frequently for comprehension

      • Reflection questions

        • Do I enunciate clearly?
        • Do I control the range diversity of my vocabulary?
        • Do I control my use of idiomatic expressions?
        • Do I teach and write idiomatic expressions and use them in a consistent manner?
        • Do I repeat and write new key words and expressions?
        • Do I use many different examples to teach new concepts?
        • Do I use extra linguistic clues to facilitate student comprehension?
        • Do I use many and varied clues?
        • Do I make one-to-one correspondence between the clue and the concept being taught?
        • Do I repeat clues as needed and requested?
        • Do the clues I select illustrate the concept clearly?
        • Do I check for comprehension frequently and effectively?
        • Is the feedback I offer immediate, specific, and related to the lesson concepts?
        • Do I use a variety of methods to check for comprehension?

      4. Interaction

      • Teachers need to:

        • Use a variety of grouping
        • Use modeling and sentence frames to scaffold academic language development
        • Make sure students use targeted academic language
          • Ask many and varied questions

      • Reflection questions

        • Do I provide different opportunities for students to talk about the lesson
          concepts?
        • Do I allow students to clarify key concepts in languages other than English?
        • Do I provide many opportunities for students to write about the course content in
          many forms such as graphs, charts, outlines, lists, maps, descriptions, and
          essays?
        • Do I provide many opportunities for questioning between students and teacher and
          among students?
        • Do I plan real-life (authentic) activities that offer opportunities for listening,
          speaking, reading, and writing (e.g., collecting information for polls or
          surveys and analyzing results, writing letters requesting information,
          experimenting, producing plays or television programs, participating in
          simulations, constructing models, making presentations, authoring books,
          writing music and lyrics)?
        • Do I assist students to develop their language by modeling correct usage and providing
          scaffolds such as sentence frames / starters?
        • Do I offer positive feedback?
        • Do I provide an environment and activities which assure interaction from:
          teacher-to-student? Student-to-teacher? Student-to-student / small group /
          clsss? Student-to-content / text / materials? Student-to-self? (e.g., in
          dialogue journals, audio / video recorders, learning logs, note taking, student
          self-questioning)?