Fact:  10% of students enrolled in our schools today are second language learners.
Fact:  ELL’s need to spend at least 50% of their instructional time “producing” oral language.
Fact:  ELL students will be included in standardized testing requirements in the majority of the states.

With these facts in mind, how do you start preparing students for learning in another language in a meaningful and deep way as new standards propose?

I am not a language acquisition expert, but my experience teaching in a bilingual classroom and supporting educational technology has allowed me to see many successful learning strategies used with ELL's. Wixie makes it easy to help your language learners master content and reach your curriculum standards.

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Because of its combination of concise and purposeful text, both reading and writing poetry offers fantastic opportunities to engage English Language Learners at a variety of levels.

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As they are learning a second language, all students go through distinct stages of language acquisition. Effective ELL instruction reflects a student's stage, helps students move through stages, and engages students at all stages in high-level thinking.

Stages of language acquisition, identified through research by Stephen Krashen and others, are:

1. The Silent/Receptive Stage (Preproduction) 
2. The Early Production Stage
3. The Speech Emergence Stage 
4. Intermediate Language Proficiency Stage
5. Advanced Language Proficiency Stage

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