All of our ESOL students are eligible for certain accommodations for assessments. These are for all assessments throughout the year, not just SOLs. If you have an ESOL student in your class, you should have been notified of the accommodations that they are entitled to for assessments. If you are unsure, please reach out to the ESOL teacher in your school.

Generally, our ESOL students get the following accommodations (although these may differ slightly from student to student);

* Small group

* Read Aloud (except for a Reading assessment)

* Flexible schedule

* Dictionary (may be English, or Bilingual - dependent upon the student)

Yes!

Many of our ESOL students, especially those who are EL level 1 or 2, should have all class assessments adapted to meet their language ability. Differentiated assessments should look different for a newcomer or an EL level 2 versus an EL level 3 or 4. As students are able to comprehend more language they should have fewer accommodations. We need to ensure that class assessments are assessing only the specific class skills - not English language ability.

For example, a Social Studies assessment should be assessing Social Studies knowledge, not the student's ability to read and understand a text in English. Therefore, when creating class assessments, determine exactly what skills you are assessing. Then, look at how you can take out other elements from the assessment so that you can assess only these key skills for the ESOL student.

1) Check the wording of your questions. Ensure they are clear - try to make the questions as short as possible.

2) Think about the vocabulary that you are using. Are there cultural things that an ESOL student may not know? Will this get in the way of them demonstrating the skills that you are assessing?

3) For multiple choice questions, reduce the answer choices to 2. This means the ESOL student only needs to decipher two possible answers and then decide the correct one.

4) If you are asking the students to write a lengthy answer, allow them to write in their home language if they choose. The ESOL student may be more able to explain their knowledge in their home language (if they are literate in their home language). You can then ask the student to use Google Translate to translate their answers into English (or ask an ESOL teacher to help if that is not possible).

5) For written or multiple choice assessments, use graphics to help the students understand what you are asking. Adding pictures, breaking up the text into text boxes and highlighting important words will allow the student to focus their energy on showing you what they know, rather than trying to understand the questions.

6) Think about other forms of assessment that you could use instead. Perhaps you could assess skills through presentations, projects or with rubrics.

7) Are there non-verbal ways in which you could assess the skills? Could the student draw and label pictures to demonstrate their knowledge instead of answering multiple choice questions?