Huntsville City Schools’ program goals are based on established principles of language development outlined in WIDA’s document “The Cornerstone of WIDA’s Standards: Guiding Principles of Language Development” as well as federal and state legal and educational guidelines. For more information, visit the WIDA website.
HCS strives to create a learning environment that encourages students’ pride in their cultural heritage, and provides the cognitive and affective support to help them become successful members of our society.
This program, beginning in kindergarten and continuing through high school, will provide each English language learner (ELL or EL) the opportunity to be successful in academic areas and to develop listening, speaking, reading and writing proficiency in order to be successful in all classes.
The educational goals of the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program are:
- Equal access to understandable instruction in all academic areas
- Meaningful participation in all district programs
- Increased English proficiency
- Mastery of subject matter content
The following are objectives that will be implemented:
- Identify and assess all students whose native or home language is something other than English within ten days of enrollment.
- Provide instruction to all students who have trouble understanding, speaking, reading, or writing English.
- Assess and monitor the academic progress of language minority students in the school district with an ongoing evaluation process.
- Help students develop the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing through an English language development instruction.
- Provide an opportunity for multilingual students to interact with their English-speaking classmates.
- Create a learning environment that will provide for cognitive and affective needs.
- Exit students from the program when they achieve an overall composite score of 4.8 or better on ACCESS for ELLs.
- Monitor students for two years after exiting the program.
- Support curriculum and instruction of the regular classroom as appropriate to the English proficiency level of the student.
- Provide staff development to principals, counselors, teachers, and other school personnel in instructional and assessment strategies that address cultural and language needs of ELs.