Thursday, November 21, 2019

TELL Specialist M2:Task 3-Alignment

Interview Time:

Choose 1 of the 3 questions below to answer. In order to respond to your chosen question, incorporate the learning materials reviewed, conduct research, visit a school and/or interview an ESL teacher. Also, be sure to share any personal insight and/or experiences of your own in your response.

Question 1: How does the Ministry policies align with your school board or school policies?

Question 2: How are students modified and accommodated in their learning needs? What protocol does your school initiate to identify ELL in order to provide them with support?

Question 3: Emphasize the importance of how the STEP continua is used in your school or how students are tracked using the STEP continua? How are students being monitored and how is growth demonstrated? Think about initial and ongoing assessment.
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For this following interview it was with a teacher who finds themselves an ELL teacher of Canadian born students but more so a special education teacher. This is something that becomes difficult for schools and teachers to maneuver. First, a school needs to determine whether the student has a special need; is not comprehensive in their English Language abilities or if its a combination of the two. For a lot of schools its priority to decide on as a student with two needs (ELL and Spec. Ed.) can become not only complex but time consuming for the staff and board as they try to determine where the area of need is rooting.

In regards to the MOE's "The Ontario Curriculum, Grade 9-12; ESL and ELD" there is mention of the ways that teachers are able to meet the needs of learners who need special education accommodation/modification; one of which is UDL (Universal Design Learning); but most of all, utilization of their IEP (Individual Education Plan) (2007).

Kristina Heimester: Q1

We use the Ontario curriculum.We are inspected by the ministry. But that’s where the procedures end. We follow growing success as much as we can, but that's it. I use some spec ed documents, but mostly just the purple IEP document. We have a policy book handed down from the First Nation education authority.

With that being said the alignment of the school with the policies of the board are important. Classroom practice becomes more than just a discussion on proper teaching strategies and rapport but now more than ever-equitable teaching. What a school, teacher, or board offer students is precedent to the province and need to be understood by schools, teachers and parents. Schools are sometimes in limiting positions where accommodations are more difficult to make in some circumstances-however the most important thing to province (or Canada, actually), is that all students are treated equally-in the sense that they are given equal opportunity for success.

Heimester is working on student success through utilization of the IEP documents that support her first nations students with language difficulties as well as exceptionalities like FASD (fetal alcohol syndrome) and ADHD (attention deficit disorder).

In regards to smaller scale alignment, MOE's Mention in "Many Roots, Many Voices" about how the schools individually could be developing teaching teams in which high school subjects compliment each other in order to provide cross-curricular teaching for students who need the support and draw interest areas into more thought provoking environments with confidence by the rest of the class's student body (2005). This idea was discussed in MOE's "Many Roots, Many Voices" with little detail, but was very insightful to the extent that a teacher can choose to follow the directive.

Furthermore the MOE's "Many Roots, Many Voices"cross-curricular approaches are most effective in elementary school subject areas as generally, the teacher is capable of teaching the students the content of each subject area in formats that compliment and segue from one class to the next making it a welcoming environment for an English Language Learner (2005).

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