Standard-Based Instruction and Assessment

All students deserve an education based on high standards and expectations. The following tips will help ESL teachers make sure they are providing their ESL students with this type of education based on standard-based learning.

Advantages of Standard-based learning for English Language Learners:

1. Challenging and engaging instruction

2. Authentic learning tasks

3. Connecting content material to students’ lives and experiences

4. Deeper explanation of student work

5. Increased focus on literacy and the language demands of content-based learning

6. Performance-bases assessment is seen as offering a means to measure student progress on learning standards and as being more responsive to diversity than traditional assessment.

7. Since performance assessments are flexible they allow teachers to vary the methods used to diagnose the learning of students whose cognitive and cultural styles may cause them to perform poorly on the conventional tests.

Standards-Based Learning:

1. Implementing standards-based instruction and assessment with students who have varying levels of English proficiency.

2. Using active teaching methods to engage students.

3. Developing strategies for including all students in classroom discourse.

4. Accommodating different learning styles.

5. Using multiple forms of assessment to gather eveidence of student proficiency.

6. Providing a variety of opportunities for student with varying levels of English proficiency to learn concepts over time.

These are just a few of the tips that we as teachers can use to help ELLs in our classrooms. If you want to do some research on your own you can check out the book where these tips were found, Standards-Based Instruction and Asessment for English Language Learners by clicking here.