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The parents, students and all necessary staff members should be made aware of the placement decision.

Students and parents should be made to understand how they will work their way through the ESL courses (as shown in the diagram)

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Students will be given a math assessment that is age appropriate to help with their placement

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4) English Reading, Writing and Oral Assessment (for students who have knowledge of English)

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4) English Reading, Writing and Oral Assessment (for students who have knowledge of English)

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1. Picture response: students should be given a selection of ethnoculturally diverse pictures they can pick from to have a conversation about. You can also have students draw a picture and then base a conversation around that photo.

2. Students with some English should be given an english text to read. They should be able to read this independently. Observe the student’s behaviours while reading.

3. Next have them answer oral and written questions to gauge comprehension of the text they just read. The written aspect will be examined for pre-writing, writing and editing. The assessors should observe the student’s behaviour while writing.

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Use all the assessment data to appropriately place the student. Consider in class placements, ESL classrooms and extra support.

The STEP document explains ”the Initial Assessment for English Language Learners continua consists of five continua. There is one continuum for Oral (Grades 1–12), two continua for Reading— Grades 1–3 and Grades 4–12 and two continua for Writing— Grades 1–3 and Grades 4–12”.

ELLs in elementary school are placed in grade appropriate classrooms, for at least part of the day, regardless of their STEP results

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3) Early Literacy Tasks (for students who do not have knowledge of english)

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3) Early Literacy Tasks (for students who do not have knowledge of english)

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The STEP Initial Assessment provides this list of concepts to assess for students with little knowledge of English:

Print Concepts

• directionality of text (e.g., left to right, top to bottom of page)

• directionality of book (e.g., cover, front, back)

Alphabet

• ability to say the alphabet

• ability to identify letter names in random order (upper/lower case letters)

• accurate directionality of letters in writing

• knowledge of sound/letter relationships

Vocabulary

• basic vocabulary

• picture/word match

• drawing pictures and labelling

• identifying colours

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Have students do a piece of writing in their L1 → gauge their comfort writing and see if they write as much as you would expect from their age. The STEP Initial Assessment document says to “observe the student as he/she works noting: fluency, hand-eye coordination, thinking before or during writing, organization on the page, amount written in a given period of time, editing or re-editing.”

If you feel you need more information you may need to have the student do an L1 reading assessment. It would be helpful to have an interpreter or dual language book here.

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Ask students questions about their background, family, interests etc.

Ask about schooling history: what age did they start school, has schooling been interrupted, how many years of schooling have they have had, private vs public school, single gender school vs mixed, student’s favourite classes etc.

Include the parents and an interpreter. Ask parents about developmental milestones (first steps, first words etc).

When asking ELL students questions start with simple questions and build your way up to build their confidence.

You can ask questions from many categories: personal, basic school questions, language questions, family/friend/interests questions and acculturation questions.

Simple questions may be “did you go to school before”. You may build up to “ What are your favourite subjects in school and why”. You may build even more to something like “Compare where you are living now with where you lived before you came to Canada (or this community)”