Supporting English learners with BOTH language and content

Hello colleagues, Last week, I had the great opportunity, along with 5 colleagues from my local program, of visiting the Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School in Washington, DC. What a phenomenal program! The goal for our visit was to learn as much as we could about how this unique adult charter school supports English learners onto career paths. Carlos Rosario offers four career training academies: health care, culinary arts, technology and bilingual paraeducator. I took away so much from this visit, and the staff and faculty at Carlos Rosario were incredibly gracious and generous in sharing their time with us.

Many things stood out to me from our visit, and I'd like to share a couple. First is the absolute necessity of having robust support services to ensure learner success. Second, I learned that instruction, for both teachers and career trainers at Carlos Rosario, is guided by the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) in order to effectively support English learners to learn both language and content. SIOP is a research-based approach to instruction designed by Jane Echevarria, Mary Ellen Vogt and Deborah J. Short for content teachers in K12, but--as the practitioners at Carlos Rosario have discovered, SIOP is entirely relevant for those of us who teach adult English learners, too. 

The 8 components of SIOP include:

  • Lesson Preparation
  • Building Background
  • Comprehensible Input
  • Strategies
  • Interaction
  • Practice and Application
  • Lesson Delivery
  • Review and Assessment

This SIOP document highlights some details related to each of these 8 components. I would love to hear from teachers who use a content-based approach to instruction, including those who are engaged in supporting adult learners onto career paths. What are your thoughts about these research-based guidelines? 

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP

Reference: Echevarria, J., Vogt, M. E., & Short, D. J. (2016). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP model (5th Edition). London, UK: Pearson Education.

Comments

Hi Susan,
I wish Carlos Rosario would make training videos of their career path programs! I had the privilege of working with some of the teachers at Carlos Rosario a number of years ago. Later, I researched their programs for the contextualization for work and career pathways materials I worked on with LINCS ESL Pro. Every time I read or hear about their programs, I get a starry-eyed look on my face.  :-) 

I remember that CAL did SIOP trainings for adult programs. (Miriam Burt led one in Maine in 2015, while I was doing a CCRS training there, so that's how I recall the year :-))  I wonder if Carlos Rosario participated in one of CAL's trainings and whether CAL is still doing them?

It's always seemed to me that SIOP and CCRS could be good partners. Then again, there are elements of SIOP that adult English language instruction has long had in its bloodstream (schema building, making content comprehensible, etc.) and that are undergoing some "rigorizing"  thanks to the three shifts/advances in instruction that we're integrating into our lesson design. It would be interesting to look at how the CCRS, ELPS and SIOP model can be interwoven in lesson design to support adult English learners in workplace training and beyond.

So glad you brought this up, Susan.

Warmly,
Jayme

Hi Jayme, Thanks for weighing in on this discussion. You asked if Carlos Rosario has participated in SIOP training, and they have. This training was evident in every classroom we visited (e.g., we saw both a content objective and a language objective for the day posted in each classroom) last week, and the principal at the Sonia Gutierrez campus, Karen Rivas, emphasized how valuable the SIOP training has been for their school.

I agree with your point that many components in SIOP align with what has been considered essential to excellence in adult ESL instruction. I think the emphasis and importance of enhancing the rigor of our teaching as per the CCRS, including the instructional advances, and the ELP are definitely compatible with the elements outlined in the SIOP approach. I would love to hear what others think about this.

Do you or other members have thoughts on how these concepts might be effectively woven into lesson design in a way that makes planning work best for teachers and learners?

Cheers, Susan Finn Miller

Moderator, English Language Acquisition CoP