Supports teachers need to enact formative assessment for English learners¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · no claims cited

Description¶

The brief lists supports teachers benefit from: professional development in formative assessment, asset-based instruction, and language development across pre-service, induction, and in-service; learning alongside peers analyzing high-quality practice; collaborative planning time for lesson planning and analyzing student work; and flexibility with program mandates such as pacing guides and grading requirements. Teachers also need four knowledge types: content and language, pedagogical content, knowledge of students and community, and formative assessment.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Substantial leadership support, collaboration opportunities, time for self-reflection, ongoing training and coaching, and removal of barriers

Constraints¶

• Most teachers have little access or requirements to engage in coursework or professional learning around formative assessment or language development

Target Learners¶

• Teachers of English learners

Target Learning Goals¶

• Implementing high-quality instruction and formative assessment for English learners

Affordances¶

• Ambitious Teaching English Learners Sociocultural

Related Strategies¶

• Teacher reflection cycle for adopting a formative assessment practice
• Culturally Responsive Teaching
• Teachers enact agency-building instruction through five moves: valuing strengths, fostering autonomy, encouraging initiative, reinforcing growth mindset, and modeling metacognition
• Create positive, culturally inclusive, welcoming schools using strengths-based practices such as newcomer welcome centers, attendance cafés, and home-language-as-asset approaches
• Grow-your-own teacher pipelines and institutionalized peer-based professional learning to build a qualified newcomer-school workforce
• Professional development in asset-based pedagogies and adult SEL to build culturally affirming environments

Examples¶

• Flashlight360: a browser-based tool for scoring and feeding back on multilingual students' speaking and writing

Key Sources¶

• Jones, B., Faulkner-Bond, M., & Blitz, J. (2024). Accelerate Success for English Learners With Formative Assessment. Region 15 Comprehensive Center at WestEd. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED673605