>> Hi, and welcome back to Assessing Achievement with the ELL in Mind.
This afternoon, I'm here with Taylor Miller of Discovery Elementary School
in Glendale, Arizona and Taylor is the ELL kindergarten teacher here at our school.
>> Mm-hm.
>> At the school.
And Taylor, can you tell us a little bit about your background and
your experience working with the ELLs?
>> Right out of college, I went and
worked at an alternative high school- >> Okay.
>> For about a year and a half.
And then after that I went to a Head Start and worked there for
a year and a half, as well.
>> Wow.
>> After that then I've been here now for two years.
>> This is your second year?
>> This is my second year. Mm-hm.
>> Great, great.
So we just finished a module on alternative assessment.
And I'm wondering if you could tell us what are some of the most significant
challenges and solutions when it comes to alternative assessments with ELLs?
>> So one of the biggest challenges that I found is that they
just don't have the vocabulary, especially for kindergarten.
They don't really have the vocabulary even in their primary language.
So I need to first assess what do they know about this topic first,
so kind of a what do you know.
>> Right.
>> And then after that then I really know where I can start, so.
>> Great, and what kind of a solution do you have with some of the challenges that
you've been faced?
>> A solution for that would be to use a lot of pictures.
>> Okay. >> So,
a lot of them don’t know what snow is especially in Arizona.
>> [LAUGH] [CROSSTALK] >> So showing pictures and describing
to them that it makes you cold and doing the dress shows and things like that.
>> A lot of animation, it sounds like.
>> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, great
>> How do you use alternative methods,
alternative assessment methods, in your content here?
>> I work really closely with my kindergarten team and
they're very good about helping me and
making sure that we're always using pictures with everything that we do.
I use sentence frames for almost everything so
that they know how to start a sentence.
I also use a lot of actions for
some of the definitions of vocabulary that they would want to use.
A lot of pictures.
[CROSSTALK] A lot of pictures.
>> Do you find that a lot of the students have that vocabulary in
their native language.
>> Not in kindergarten, usually I will ask, do you know what this is in Spanish
because the majority of mine are Spanish speaking and they're usually like, no.
>> No.
>> [LAUGH] So it's good for me because in a sense then I get to be
the first person to introduce that vocabulary to them.
But sometimes it's nice to know that they can relate it back to their home language.
>> Definitely.
Definitely.
What advice can you give a content teacher about
better understanding assessments for ELLs?