ELL Endorsement Portfolio By: Sydney Freel

Evidence & Rationale for Competency 6.9

6.9 Candidates apply effective practices and strategies to plan, implement,
adapt, and modify curriculum and instruction for multiple language
proficiency level classrooms with students from diverse backgrounds.

Document Components Overview:

Rationale
Evidence 1: Introduction to ESL for K-8 Teachers:
Proficiency Level/ Instructional Differentiation Assignment
Communicating in Diverse Classrooms: End of Unit Activity

Rationale:
The first piece of evidence I provided for competency 6.9 is an
assignment I completed in Introduction for ESL Teachers K-8. I
demonstrated my ability to apply effective practices, and strategies to
plan, implement, and adapt curriculum and instruction for multiple
language proficiency level classrooms with this assignment.

For this

assignment I was given a content lesson plan and my job was to

determine what the language demands were for each task of the
lesson. Next, I needed to define how each of these tasks would look if
done by a student of each level of English language proficiency. After
that, I determined ways that we could accommodate the lesson plan to
meet the needs of students for each level of proficiency. I did this by
determining the ways that students under each proficiency level would
be able to demonstrate their knowledge, and used that to determine
how the teacher should scaffold each proficiency level differently.

My next piece of evidence, an End of Unit Activity from

Communicating in Diverse Classrooms, demonstrates my ability to
apply effective practices, and strategies to plan, implement, and adapt
curriculum and instruction for classrooms with students from diverse
backgrounds. This assignment prompted us to think critically about a
lesson plan and any cultural biases it contained. Then I explained how
the lesson plan could be changed to meet the needs of culturally
diverse students, ELLs, and other students with learning needs.
This evidence demonstrates how my ability to apply effective
practices and strategies to plan, implement, adapt, and modify
curriculum and instruction for multiple language proficiency level
classrooms with students from diverse backgrounds has grown through
the assignments that prompted me to do so. I will have to opportunity
to strengthen these skills by learning from the hands-on experiences I
will have applying these skills once I am in the classroom.

 Evidence 1: Proficiency Level/Instructional Differentiation

Assignment:

Evidence 2: Communicating in Diverse Classrooms: End of

Unit Activity
End of Unit Activity: Apply Your Understanding
Instructions:
Read the article from Time for Kids below. In one page or less, respond
to the questions, supporting your responses with evidence from all of
the readings.
Plasket, K. (May 30, 2014). Playing princess. Time for Kids. Available on
line:
http://www.timeforkids.com/news/playing-princess/164191
1.

According to the readings, what might be some issues that

culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners might have with this
story?
Culturally and linguistically diverse learners may have
never seen Sleeping Beauty before, which would make this
article seem like gibberish. The author doesnt provide any
background knowledge about Sleeping Beauty, but makes
continuous references to it throughout the article. Students that
have never seen this movie before would be left confused with
everything that this article is about, terms used, vocabulary, and
character names. Like Andrews described in chapter one of
Linguistics for L2 Teachers, people usually talk like the people
they talk with. Sleeping Beauty is considered a classic for many
English native speaking students. Therefore language about this
would be engaging, interesting, and familiar to those studentswho have probably talked about it many times before.
As it states in the background reading, sociolinguistics is
the relationship between language, culture, and society. Because
kids that grew up in America speaking English may be more
familiar with the story of Sleeping Beauty they will probably
understand this article on a deeper level. Because this story is
familiar to those students, they will actually be able to consider
how the story would differ if it were written from a different
perspective. They will have the language and prior knowledge to
process this article because in American culture Sleeping Beauty
is a classic that almost everyone has seen. Students that are
culturally and linguistically diverse would not have the previous
knowledge to understand this article.

2.

What are some things that teachers might need to know or think
about to help CLD learners understand this story?

The background reading mentions that its important for

teachers to be secure in their understandings of linguistics and
culture so they are able to assess where their students are in
their language and culture learning processes and adjust
materials and type of instruction accordingly. With that being
said, if the article, Playing Princess, was going to be used in the
classroom the teacher could do a number of things to help CLD
students understand the story. For example, the teacher could
have asked the class who had seen Sleeping Beauty, and then
provided an opportunity for students that werent familiar with
the story to read and discuss it in advance. The teacher also
could have introduced students to the story ahead of this lesson
with a similar picture book, or shown the movie in class.
While all of these accommodations would have benefited
CDL learners, I think the best accommodation would be providing
various stories from multiple cultures that have two versions
based on perspective, and giving all students the opportunity to
choose which one theyd read. This would have give the class
the opportunity to do collaborative group work by joining others
with the same story, to create a poster that compares and
contrasts the story read by their group, and presenting it to the
class. This version of the activity would have been a less
threatening activity for students with learning needs (especially
ELLs), and feel more comfortable working with their peers, and
being able to verbally portray what they know, rather than
writing it out or filling out worksheets.