by Amy Melik

An old Chinese proverb states “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”  We often use this analogy when educating the students in our classroom. An ultimate goal for educators is that we equip our students to be able bodied, responsible members of society when they leave our classrooms.  We want to make sure that when we are not around them daily, our students have the skills necessary in order to thrive in the real world.

Now let’s turn this proverb on its head and think not of students, but of classroom teachers.  When we are language specialists serving English Language Learners (ELLs), our goal is not to be the sole owners of language knowledge and skills for our students.  Instead, our goal is to equip every classroom teacher with skills and knowledge at their fingertips that will help improve educational outcomes for ELLs in their classrooms, especially when we are not with them.

This requires a great deal of mutual trust, or confianza, between ELL specialists and classroom teachers.  We need to walk alongside the educators that serve ELLs in their classrooms to provide assistance with lessons, accommodations, and inclusive classroom procedures.  A great place to start is the creation of a Language Plan.  (Please note: some states and districts refer to this kind of tool as an Individualized Language Plan, or ILP.  Another name could be something like Student Success Plan or Student Portrait. Your local context may have something like this in place already!)

To get started, you and your team should ask yourselves several questions about your school, your learner, and the educators that will benefit from creation of a plan.

Language Plan Brainstorm Session: Guiding Questions

• What does a classroom teacher need to know about ELLs?

• What knowledge should a classroom teacher possess that will help this ELL to be successful in the classroom?

• How can we highlight ELL knowledge in a way that is asset based?

• How can we think of the whole child in order to create a full and complete snapshot?

• What opportunities already exist within our school that would help everyone involved?

When brainstorming what should be most helpful to include in a Language Plan, it is important to know what tools and resources you have around you.  Are you a consortium of districts?  Perhaps you can look at examples from area school districts near you.  What does your annual assessment look like?  Maybe you would like to pull information from that assessment to create flow and connection.  What do your student profile plans look like within your district?  It may be a great idea to collaborate with educators within your district that serve specialized student populations to develop a plan that uses a similar template, font, or language system.  

And finally, we need to make sure that it is accessible and useful for educators serving ELLs.  The chances of a teacher reading a concise, simple Language Plan are much higher than if we were to produce a long, jargon heavy Language Plan.  The key to a plan being useful is when educators are able to go back to it multiple times throughout the year and efficiently find what we need for a particular lesson, unit, or assessment.  

With the help of Language Plans, it will be easy to facilitate a conversation with partnering educators about similarities and differences in differentiation needs within their classrooms.  They may realize a tool they are already using for other students will also work well with the ELLs in their classrooms!

Here is a list of ideas for you to use to start your Language Plan creation.

Starting your Language Plan: Basic Ingredients

Language Domains:  

• How can you use the domains of Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking to create a clear picture of academic readiness?

Home Language Information:

• Where is the student from?  What is the language background?  What is the student’s home language literacy? What does prior schooling look like?

Tools for Classroom Success:

• What tools already exist that ALL learners find successful?  

• What additional specific tools or supports does this particular student need to experience success?  (Explore other Confianza Resources & Tips.)

Development Information

• How will you show development or progression of language?  What wording will you use to show language proficiency and where students are on the continuum of learning English?

Assessment information

• What language assessment information do you have?  How can this information be shared in a way that is easily understood?

To Further Your Learning

• Your Students Have Assets from Confianza