The E.S.L Mainstream Linking Curriculum Guide (Grades 1-8)

By Mark Curran

Teaching English as a Second Language, in far too many American schools, thrusts, especially new teachers to the craft, into a learning environment where there are many expected learning outcomes and few real classroom tools to achieve them. This ESL-Mainstream Linking Curriculum Guide addresses that situation and provides solutions. It incorporates a basic set of mainstream, subject topics, into a format for the teacher to expedite, and it provides for second language learners to develop English language skills while aligned with mainstream, text, scope, and sequence expectations. From day one, the teacher is provided with a set of lesson topics to guide the educator and the students through mainstream subject requirements. In conjunction with this, students are focused on acquiring their second language skills. The Linking Curriculum Guide is a living entity. It has provision and protocols for review and adjustment. In this way, it can meet the specific needs of any given school district's academic requirements, scope and sequence of texts, language and subject content, and skills acquisition. This work can also be used as a professional development tool. It provides teachers and administrators with a program to develop district-specific Linking Curriculum Guides that build upon the baseline this work offers. Teaching and acquiring second language skills can and should be as student- and teacher-friendly as they are challenging. This work is a concrete, ready-to-use approach toward that end.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781643503899

Book preview

An English as a Second Language

Philosophy

ESL Philosophy

Learning a language can and should be a source of satisfaction and achievement. An English as a Second Language Program seeks to provide an academic environment in which language skills are developed through listening, speaking, reading, and writing activities. The program affords students the opportunity to acquire and refine language proficiency, eventuating in mainstream enrollment, in order to meet standard graduation requirements. The ESL program should create a learning atmosphere where language development is as student-friendly and exciting as it is challenging.

ESL Goals and Objectives

ESL Goals and Objectives

Students will build the functional base in English vocabulary necessary to meet course requirements.

Students will develop English language proficiency, enabling them to successfully complete grade-level, course requirements.

Students will develop an understanding of the language of interpersonal relationships and relate them to acquiring personal, social, educational, and career goals.

Students will develop an awareness of a positive self-concept and communicate that through acquired English language skills, as it relates to them in our culturally diverse, global community.

The curriculum will emphasize skill-based and practical communication.

Curriculum implementation should be differentiated to include a variety of student, learning styles, and ability levels.

The curriculum will challenge students to engage in English language activities beyond the classroom and campus.

Essential Elements:

Linking Curriculum Tool

The

Linking Curriculum

Tool

Linking Curriculum, Essential Elements

The Essential Elements of Study are course-specific topics and disciplines reflective of each mainstream subject’s scope and sequence. They serve to provide a link between mainstream and ESL curriculums. They make the ESL teacher aware of what his/her mainstream-teacher counterpart is or could be covering. They provide that window of opportunity for the ESL teacher to parallel-teach with a mainstream counterpart and develop material that will enhance the ESL student’s ability to succeed, once exited from the ESL course of study.

Essential Elements are not set in stone. They have to be refined, added to, and/or deleted as the curriculum, teachers’, and students’ needs change. Revising Essential Elements, as in the case of curriculum revision, is an ongoing process, which can serve to integrate Essential Elements, common to both ESL and mainstream curriculum needs.

The Essential Elements included in this work reflect those topics common to a variety of curriculum courses of study.

Essential Elements

Essential Elements: Prospectus, Objectives, Outcome Expectations

Prospectus

This list of Essential Elements is not all-encompassing. It is a list of possibilities, as outlined by any text/subject. It is an entry-level foundation upon which a refined list of Essential Elements, linking the ESL course of study to the mainstream curriculum, can be forged.

Objectives

To link the ESL course of study to the mainstream curriculum

To make ESL teachers aware of current, mainstream class topics of study

To provide a regular forum for the exchange of curriculum ideas between the ESL and mainstream program

To provide new-to-the-campus, ESL teachers with a quick reference of possible teaching topics

To serve as a tool of implementation, by moving curriculum objectives to lesson-intensive, classroom applications.

Outcome Expectations

ESL students will be better prepared and more successful at handling mainstream class work.

ESL students will exit to the mainstream at a faster pace.

ESL and mainstream curriculums will evolve into more solid and useful tools.

A more unified system of textbook selection will emerge, reflecting mutual ESL/mainstream curriculum objectives.

ESL teachers will be empowered to become definitive, hands-on, and integral players in designing and implementing real course and curriculum direction.

ESL and mainstream curriculums will develop, not in exclusive vacuums, but, instead, in mutual continuums.

Essential Elements

Essential Elements: Implementation, Procedure

Implementation

Essential Elements may be used:

as a quick reference to mainstream curriculum topics of study.

by ESL teachers, as core elements of their respective teaching objectives.

by ESL teachers, as supplementary elements to their core objectives.

by ESL teachers, as modules in an accelerated learners’ program.

as ideas for lesson or unit development.

as topics for student self-directed study.

as precursors for curriculum refinement.

Procedure

Where possible, the ESL educators should incorporate