AZ's LDA: The 4 Principles

    

Arizona has 4 primary principles regarding its approach to language development for its EL students. As Arizona educators, it is important to know these principles and be ready to use them in the classroom. Even if there are not any EL students in the classroom, these principles are helpful to general education students as well. Research based and designed to provide high quality education, Arizona's 4 Principles of Language Acquisition will help students learn both English and other academic content. 

    The first of the 4 Principles is Asset Based Behaviors and Expectations, wherein educators build instructional expectations based on the student's current assets, as well as provide opportunities to students that will benefit them in the future. This often takes the form of providing EL students the same secondary education applications as their native English-speaking peers or celebrating the student's home culture in the classroom on a day-to-day basis. While providing students with college applications is often a routine activity in a high school setting, the celebration of culture often ends up taking the form of a culture day, which ends up being one day out of over 100, and does not celebrate every student equally, instead focusing on those who know their native culture or have access to their family history. Therefore, try to find activities that are small and easily replicated throughout the year, such as asking students for a translation of academic vocabulary into their native language, or smiling at students and actively listening to how their weekend was. Something so simple often has the huge impact of making a child feel welcome, valid, and wanted in a classroom.

    The second of the 4 Principles is Integrated Instruction in Disciplinary Language, which may sound like something difficult to implement, because it is a mouthful, but it really is quite simple. In essence, all the second principle is is an opportunity to teach one's class academic vocabulary to a high level. This means introducing academic words in a meaningful way and giving students the opportunity to use that language organically in and out of the classroom. For example, if one is teaching a 2nd grade standard on the Water Cycle, they may introduce the word "evaporation," and they may do this by having the students track the loss of water in a glass pot over the course of a week, and then discussing the process of evaporation as a class. The experiment of tracking the water is a meaningful method of teaching the word, and it provides the students with an experience to reference when they use the word, "evaporation." Later, the opportunity to use the word "evaporation," can be found when the students create and present visual models of the Water Cycle as groups. These groups would have EL and general education students alike, as well as those with IEPs and 504 plans, to allow all of the students to work with people who are different from themselves and learn and think in different ways. 

    The third of Arizona's principles is Targeted and Explicit Instruction, which involves the direct building of English language skills in the classroom. In Arizona, elementary level EL students are required to have 120 minutes per day (600 per week) of English Language Development, while high school students need 100 minutes per day (500 per week). This targeted instruction can either be done in the general education classroom, or in a specific classroom with a separate teacher who pulls EL students out for their required lesson. 

    Finally, the fourth principle is Assessment, Monitoring, and Feedback. In Arizona, ELLs are required to take the AZELLA, or Arizona English Language Leaner Assessment, at the start of each school year, and then again at the mid-point of the year, and once more at the end of the year, to gather data on their progress and ensure that they do not lose their skills. In addition, most educators keep records on each of their students--portfolios that include their classwork, testing grades, anecdotal records, and IEP records and 504 plan documentation as needed. It is recommended that teachers also include data on an EL's language development in this file.