TESOL International Association Writing Team - The 6 Principles for Exemplary Teaching of English Learners®

Exemplary teaching of English learners rests on the following 6 Principles:

1. Know your learners. Teachers learn basic information about their students families, languages, cultures, and educational backgrounds to engage them in the classrooms and prepare and deliver lessons more effectively.

2. Create conditions for language learning. Teachers create a classroom culture that will ensure that students feel comfortable in the class. They make decisions regarding the physical environment, the materials, and the social integration of students to promote language learning.

3. Design high-quality lessons for language development. Teachers plan meaningful lessons that promote language learning and help students develop learning strategies and critical thinking skills. These lessons evolve from the learning objectives.

4. Adapt lesson delivery as needed. Teachers continually assess as they teachobserving and reflecting on learners responses to determine whether the students are reaching the learning objectives. If students struggle or are not challenged enough, teachers consider the possible reasons and adjust their lessons.

5. Monitor and assess student language development. Language learners learn at different rates, so teachers regularly monitor and assess their language development in order to advance their learning efficiently. Teachers also gather data to measure student language growth.

6. Engage and collaborate within a community of practice. Teachers collaborate with others in the profession to provide the best support for their learners with respect to programming, instruction, and advocacy. They also continue their own professional learning.

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ISBN 978-1-945351-35-8

Library of Congress Control Number 2017964569

Recommended citation:

TESOL International Association (TESOL). (2018). The 6 principles for exemplary teaching of English learners: Grades K12. Alexandria, VA: Author.

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First edition, 2018

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I t is a privilege to write a foreword to this immensely valuable book. The 6 Principles for exemplary teaching of English learners elaborated in these pages provide an evidence-based foundation for schools to examine their own instructional practice and work collaboratively with colleagues, parents, and policymakers to enable English learners to acquire strong social and academic language proficiency. A major strength of the book is its inclusion of the entire school communityadministrators, English language teachers, content teachers, school librarians, guidance counselors, and other groups of educatorswithin the scope of exemplary teaching of English learners. As noted in of concrete ways in which these various groups of educators can apply the 6 Principles opens not just a culture of shared responsibility within the school, but also a culture of shared opportunity. As our expertise to work effectively with diverse learners expands, so too does our sense of affirmation as educators.

An additional strength of the book is the way in which it highlights the instructional implications of well-established research findings that are frequently overlooked in teaching English learners. For example, it is now well-established that bilingualism represents a positive force in childrens cognitive and academic development, particularly when literacy is developed in both languages. However, in classroom contexts where multiple languages are represented, many educators have been unsure about how to engage students multilingual repertoires. In response to this uncertainty, the classroom vignettes and instructional suggestions throughout this book illustrate how teachers, school librarians, and other professionals can mobilize students home languages as cognitive resources and instructional tools to enrich the learning of all students.

Another significant emphasis throughout this book is on the importance of encouraging English learners to become avid readers, ideally in both English and their L1. There is extensive research evidence regarding the impact of print access and literacy engagement on the development of students reading comprehension skills (e.g., OECD, 2010). As noted in , students who read extensively encounter more words and meet each word more frequently, which can result in a larger vocabulary and deeper word knowledge. Unfortunately, this research was largely ignored in reading policies instituted under the No Child Left Behind legislation that operated between 2002 and 2015 (Cummins, 2007).

The importance of promoting active literacy engagement is illustrated in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), an international assessment initiative involving more than 70 countries and hundreds of thousands of 15-year-old students conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) over the past 20 years. The PISA research has consistently shown that reading engagement is a stronger predictor of reading achievement than students socioeconomic status (SES). Furthermore, the OECD (2010) reported that there was about a one-third overlap between the negative effects of low SES and the positive effects of reading engagement. The implication is that schools can potentially push back about one-third of the negative effects of socioeconomic disadvantage by ensuring that students have access to a print-rich environment and become actively engaged with literacy.

This finding assumes relevance in the present context because a large proportion of English learners come from lower-income communities with significantly less access to print in their schools and homes than is the case for students from middle-income communities (e.g., Duke, 2000). Immersion of these students in a literacy-rich environment from the day they enter school is a powerful tool in accelerating their academic catch-up trajectory.