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Mainstream First-Grade Teachers' Understanding Of Strategies For Accommodating The Needs Of English Language Learners, Clare Hite, Linda Evans

Linda S. Evans

In this time of high stakes testing, teachers' working with English Language Learners (ELLs) becomes a high-stakes teaching act. Nationally, mandated testing is increasing in the schools even as school demographics are changing. The growing numbers of language-minority students come with varying levels of English proficiency, from little or none to fluent bilingualism. Teachers find it difficult to bring all their native-English-speaking children along to an acceptable level of performance in literacy and content-area subjects; ELLs present an even greater challenge, particularly for the elementary mainstream classroom teachers who are the primary language teachers for most young ELLs, yet typically …