By NANCY NEUZIL, Chicago Tribune
Friendship, fun, language and culture were the key ingredients at Grand Prairie Elementary School recently during an English Language Learner (ELL) Family Night. Students and their families came out to enjoy pizza, crafts, games, pumpkin painting, reading together and having fun with their classmates.
The Dobrovitz Family enjoyed Family Night. (Posted by NANCY NEUZIL, Community Contributor)
In Frankfort District 157-C, there are twenty-three students currently listed as English Language Learners. These are students who came to the district speaking a language other than English or live in a home where another language is spoken, and now are learning English at school. Current students in the program include children from Project BEGIN and all K-8 grades except sixth grade. Their languages include Spanish, Russian, Korean, Arabic, Polish, Vietnamese, Japanese, Mandarin, Chinese and Kazakh. The students are doing very well with their English studies and many other children have already progressed out of the program.
The District’s ELL teacher, Shelby Baty, teaches the ELL’s for kindergarten through fifth grade and also oversees pre-kindergarten and sixth through eighth grade students. Project BEGIN English Language Learners are taught together by the Project BEGIN teachers who have the appropriate ELL endorsement. Sixth through eighth grade students are taught by Jennifer Rayola, the Spanish education and ELL teacher.
A combination of pull-out and push-in services is used, depending upon the needs of the students. Mrs. Baty stated, “For pull-out, I create units using Content-Based Instruction. I pick thematic units that focus on developing all of the tiers of vocabulary ranging from social and interaction skills and words for newcomers, to Tier 3 content words for advanced students.” She works on different things each day depending upon the groups she has, but every lesson tries to incorporate the four domains of reading, writing, listening and speaking.
Read the full article HERE.
