Instructional Modifications for an English-As-Second-Language 10th Grade Student Teaching for Exceptionalities

The student is a 15-year-old bilingual male in enrolled in 10th grade. He presents as having difficulties in his school work primarily due to his current inability to speak, read, and write English fluently. He is currently reading at approximately a 2nd-grade level, and all of his assignments are modified. Examples of the instructional modifications he experiences are as follows: Material is read aloud to him, writing assistance is provided to help him translate from his native language to English, and all story format math problems are converted to conventional number format to sidestep reading and translation difficulties. When a high level of academic support is provided, the student does not exhibit problem behaviors. However, he reports feeling overwhelmed and stressed, and these underlying emotions do contribute to occasional bouts of problem behavior.

Instructional example. I took a content-focused approach to reading and writing instruction with this student. My rationale for this choice was based predominantly on the student's continued frustration and embarrassment about his difficulties with making progress in fluency in English. My goal was to embed specific language development strategies into content that the student would find engaging and respectful (i.e., content that most 10th-grade boys would find of interest).

Content-focused approach. We chose baseball as the content area and based the student's reading, writing, and math goals on that topic. Many highly successful baseball players speak English as a second language, which the student found intriguing and empowering. As a sport, baseball highlights the individual personalities, characteristics, career and game statistics, and history of the game. In other words, this is a content-rich area that lends itself well to reading about...

In addition, the promise of interesting math problems about baseball players is very rich. Because the student already had an understanding of the sport of baseball, fundamental background knowledge was not a difficulty. Further, by using interesting and age appropriate content, I was able to avoid the pitfall of simplifying the content instead of the language.
Assessment. The student's levels of proficiency were assessed by using the ACCESS for ELLs (Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State for English Language Learners). This tool is a secure large-scale English language proficiency assessment given to Kindergarten through 12th graders who have been identified as English language learners (ELLs). A primary strength of the ACCESS for ELLSs is its capacity to help determine "when ELLs have attained the language proficiency needed to participate meaningfully in content area classrooms without program support and on state academic content tests without accommodations" ("ACCESS," 2012). The assessment also helps teachers and school districts to evaluate the success of their programs and to enhance instruction and learning for ELLs.

Discuss his strengths and weaknesses

The student is a willing learner and states that -- despite the barriers he faces due to language issues -- he enjoys math, history, and current events. The student relies heavily on his first language to process information and labors to translate concepts into English. This is especially true when he is asked to do process the information silently and then report orally. The student is much stronger in reading…