# data[].attributes.headline
Enhancing ELL Family Involment: Promising Practices for Teachers

# data[].attributes.subject
Enhancing ELL Family Involment: Promising Practices for Teachers

# data[].attributes.body
Breiseth, L., Robertson, K., & LaFond, S. (2011). A guide for engaging ELL families: Twenty strategies for school leaders. Data retrieved from http://www. bostonpublicschools. org/cms/lib07/MA01906464/Centricity/Domain/112/Engaging-ELL-Families. pdf.

This article provides 20 strategies that can be implemented within the school system to better enhance family involvement. Parent Involvement and Parent Engagement are defined and discussed and tools are provided in order to help implement a family engagement plan. The major themes within the article include connecting with ELL families, communicating, parent participation, parents as leaders, community partnerships, and creating an action plan. There are 20 strategies outlined with each one including information on what you need to know, a reflection, strategies, and then examples.

This is an extremely valuable resource for teachers, administrators, school counselors, and all school personnel. This resource provides hands on techniques that teachers can directly implement into their classrooms. I also believe administrators would benefit from having this knowledge, as the information provided will positively effect ELL students if it is enforced. The contributors are knowledgeable on the topic and are all experts in different areas allowing them to collaborate and provide an article with well rounded views on different topics. Their resources they used for the article are listed, as well as additional helpful links on topics related to ELL students.

This is an article that I would have printed out and readily available in my counseling office. The strategies listed are extremely valuable in my opinion, and it provides the opportunity for multiple interventions to be put into action. It would be helpful to shorten the article and provide all teachers with all 20 strategies. I would then have the hardcopy available to anyone who needs to broaden his or her understanding of the specific strategy. This is a really strong resource that all school counselors should have in order to better help the partnership between ELL families and teachers.

# data[].attributes.body
Chen, C., Kyle, D. W., & McIntyre, E. (n.d.). Helping Teachers Work Effectively with English Language Learners and Their Families. School Community Journal, 18, 1-14. Retrieved July 30, 2018, from https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ798678.pdf.

This article discussed a research study done through the Sheltered Instruction and Family Involvement project. They instructed groups of teachers to research the correlation between family involvement and student achievement. From there, they emphasized their research on English Language Learners and focuses on how they could enhance family involvement. Teachers who participated in the study were asked to write out specific plans, as to how they were going to get more families involved in their classroom. This project emphasizes family involvement and also provides excellent strategies and teaching tools to help enhance ELL family participation.

The SIFI project used a specific model called the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol model that they use to implement within their curriculum and instruction towards ELL students. The relationship between the SIOP model and parent involvement is the key behind academic success in ELL students. The contributors all seem to be well educated in education and also ESL. The collaboration between teachers of ESL, professors of curriculum, and professors of Education combine to put together a scholarly, helpful resource that would be a great tool for educators to use.

The article talks about how teachers that were involved in the study were provided with resources about strategies to use to implement to enhance family involvement. Criticism that I have is that the resources were discussed in more depth. The article just states that teachers were given professional development opportunities to enhance their knowledge on involving families more, but I want to know what each teacher actually read. A strength this article has is the specific strategies that teachers used in their curriculum to enhance family involvement. As a school counselor, I could share out these ideas with teachers and encourage them to actually do these activities in their classroom.

# data[].attributes.body
Ellis, D., & Hughes, K. (2002). Partnerships by Design: Cultivating Effective and Meaningful School-Family-Community Partnerships. Creating Communities of Learning & Excellence.

This article emphasizes the role of partnerships between families, schools and communities. It is clear that student achievement increases when family involvement increases. The problem area comes when there are language and cultural barriers involved that hinder this partnership from being successful. This article is distinctive because it asks the reader to assess what their relationship is like with families and community members currently, helps form a vision as far as the successful way to set up partnerships moving forward, and helps set a plan of action with goals and objectives.

This article lacks the focus on ELL students, which I think makes it a weaker resource compared to the other ones that I’ve already found. The strength comes from how the authors talk about the different intervention strategies that can be done to form such strong relationships with families. I also think a strength that comes from this article is that it explains how to form a partnership plan. I think school districts would benefit from this, as they can start by working collaboratively to form a plan to enhance the communication with ELL families. The article also highlights what it truly means to form a meaningful relationships and involvement with families. This is where the article really signs, as I think this is extremely valuable information for school personnel to read through. There is also a section that includes specific roles and responsibilities for jobs in the education field. The contributors used a substantial amount of references to support their information in the article. I am unsure of the author’s educational backgrounds, as those are not listed in this article, while the other sources provided the backgrounds of the authors. I think the information is valuable but is less scholarly compared to the other resources.

The key points that I would definitely take away from this article is the piece that defines and evaluates meaningful involvement with families. Teachers would highly benefit from being provided with the characteristics of what meaningful involvement is. I think teachers may think they have this concept grasped, when in reality they do not and being provided with this information will help their family involvement with ELL families. The key point that will substantially benefit ELL students specifically is the point that states that meaningful involvement includes respecting the different cultures and the diversity in families and helping to integrate them into the school community. There are also a list of ideas to help increase family involvement such as, home visits, communicating early and often, welcome conferences, helping with transitions, and using the school as a community center. These ideas would be helpful to share out to teachers and encourage them to practice these interventions. There are also checklists, assessments, worksheets, and needs assessments that I would definitely share to school personnel, as I genuinely feel that these would be extremely beneficial.

# data[].attributes.body
Hiatt-Michael, D. B. (2007). Promising Practices for Teachers to Engage Families of English Language Learners. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.

This book is an excellent resource that focuses on strengthening the relationship between teachers and ELL families. There is an emphasis on how to engage families, building genuine relationships, developing a full understanding of ELL families, creating a parent-friendly classroom, providing culturally sensitive curriculum, and engaging parents of ELL students to become leaders. All of these key factors are critical pieces when it comes to being able to bridge that gap and enhance the communication between ELL parents and teachers. This book discusses topics that would be able to fill any gaps of questions that teachers may have when it comes to this topic. Teachers will feel empowered and confident enough to engage parents and create a partnership that will allow for success and growth in ELL students.

This book is something that I believe every school personnel should have a copy of. The ten contributors to this book all have an educational background and are researching education in some way. The source is unfortunately 11 years old, but I think that key points can still be pulled from it, as the information is still valuable and reliable. Enhancing ELL family involvement is a specific topic that this book solely addresses. It is lengthy but I think school counselors could work to pull out the critical pieces and then distribute the information to teachers in a shortened version. Each topic is thoroughly discussed within it’s own chapter. All of the topics come together for the ultimate way to enhance communication, but I also think that teachers would reading chapters on the areas that they feel are the weakest in their classroom. One teacher may already have caring relationships with parents, but not know how to engage them. Another teacher may not be struggling with engaging them, but may struggle with making their classroom friendly to ELL parents.

This book would be an outstanding resource for any struggling teachers. I feel as if many teachers are unsure of the best approach on how to enhance their communication with ELL parents. This book would provide clarification, as far as the steps that they need to take in order to be successful when partnering with families. As a school counselor, I would recognize the areas of weakness that teachers within the school district have and target them. This book has a variety of strong topics that target areas that teachers would benefit from. Recognizing weakness areas, and then targeting them by using this book to help teachers partner with parents would be extremely beneficial.

# data[].attributes.body
Sibley, E. e., & Brabeck, K. (2017). Latino Immigrant Students' School Experiences in the United States: The Importance of Family--School--Community Collaborations. School Community Journal, 27(1), 137-157.

This article mainly focuses on Latino Immigrant students overall experience within the American school system. The primary emphasis is on the high value within family, school and community collaborations. The article talks about how these three factors are essential in the overall success of ELL students. Bronfenbrenner’s biological theory is discussed and emphasizes the importance of the communication between parents and teachers.  Overall, this article discusses risk factors, immigrant children’s experiences, legal statuses, and breaks down their ages from early childhood to high school age levels. Erin Sibley and Kalina Brabeck concentrate on bettering the educational experiences and interventions that can put in place to truly benefit ELL students.

I thoroughly respect the amount of resources that were used to put together this article. The authors provided almost seven pages of resources that concentrate on ELL students and a variety of different factors that go into their integration into the American school system. The authors both seem to be well educated in researching this topic, which leads me to believe this is creditable information being discussed. Erin Sibley is a postdoctoral research associate who concentrates her research towards parent’s educational involvement in immigrant families. Kalina Brabeck is a professor and is interested in immigrant children and youth and the influences of sociostructural challenges. It is also only one year old.

I would highly recommend this article to others because of the emphasis on bettering the overall well-being and educational achievement of the ELL student population. I think that more research on this topic is what will create better results in enhancing ELL family involvement within the American school system. The information provided in this article would be a great resource for teachers, administrators, and all school personnel. It is critical to work collaboratively in order to figure out the best way to reduce the issue that is at hand. For all school personnel to be provided with key points in this article, it will then put everyone on the same page about the best way to collaboratively work to support ELL families.

# data[].attributes.body
Helpful video about reaching out to ELL families