SupportEd develops free tools, checklists, and resources to help educators and administrators better serve their English learners (ELs) and multilingual learners (MLs).

Culturally Responsive School Checklist & Goal Setting

It’s always important to give ourselves permission to pause, catch our breath, and reflect. For us educators, even more so. Our Culturally Responsive School Checklist is a tool that can help you gauge how you are supporting and valuing your multilingual learners (MLs) and their families. It explores 26 “look for’s” organized by our 5 Guiding Principles of Culturally Responsive Teaching (Snyder & Staehr Fenner, 2021).

Tic-Tac-Toe Formative Assessment Choice Board

Now more than ever, we recognize the sense of urgency around assessment and equity as many ELs continue navigating distance learning. Our tic-tac-toe Formative Assessment Choice Board provides a variety of task options for ELs to demonstrate their understanding of content and increase assessment validity. Tailor tasks to ELs’ proficiency levels, strengths, and needs, provide different boards for different students, and embed appropriate scaffolds for tasks.

10 Considerations for EL Formative Assessments for Distance Learning

Whether in a distance, hybrid, or in-person learning environment, formative assessments play a key role in measuring student mastery of new and challenging content, and all ELs deserve equal opportunities to demonstrate their academic achievement and growth. This checklist provides ten research-based considerations to help reflect on current practices and discover new strategies for developing effective assessments for ELs during distance learning.

A Checklist for Increasing Academic Language Awareness

Understanding and applying academic language is at the heart of EL language development and mastery of grade-level content, and providing ELs the support they deserve is crucial in fostering academic comfortability and growth. Framed around a set of awareness-building questions, our “Academic Language Awareness Checklist” provides practical considerations to help analyze academic language and discover new strategies for strengthening EL text comprehension.

Five Areas of Considerations for the Upcoming School Year

After an unexpected pivot to distance learning, teachers are now starting to look ahead and plan for what the instruction of ELs might look like this fall. This tool will help you reflect on five areas that are crucial for ELs in the upcoming school year and can be leveraged by educators providing distance learning exclusively, face-to-face instruction with social distancing, or a combination of both practices.

Two Types of Cyber Learning Environments for ELs At-A-Glance

The temporary closure of brick and mortar schools is worldwide, unprecedented, and ongoing. Teachers are called to quickly figure out how to educate students in a distance learning environment, and the disruption and confusion experienced by all students may be compounded exponentially for ELs and their families. This resource shares the two types of cyber learning environments–synchronous and asynchronous–and considerations for EL distance learning.

12 Considerations for Scaffolding, Academic Language, and Oral Language Development

This checklist provides practical, research-based practices for scaffolding, academic language, and oral language development. It can be leveraged by administrators and educators for self-reflection, assessment, and peer observations; it may also be useful for strategic goal setting.

10 Considerations for Developing EL Formative Assessments

Formative assessments play a key role in measuring student mastery of new and challenging content, and all ELs deserve equal opportunities to demonstrate their academic achievement and growth. This checklist provides ten research-based considerations to help reflect on current practices and discover new strategies for developing effective assessments for ELs.

A Checklist for Incorporating Scaffolds into Instruction

Helping your ELs thrive academically and personally requires more than knowing and selecting appropriate scaffolds. It’s important to think deeply about the best ways to incorporate those scaffolds into your instruction so you and your colleagues can set goals for encouraging EL success. Our “Scaffolded Lesson Planning Checklist” provides considerations and guidelines in doing so.

A Guide for Learning About Your EL Students

Use this tool to help you and your colleagues expand knowledge and leverage valuable information about your EL students. Explore items such as home languages, educational experiences, family backgrounds, and more to better understand each student and support their success within and beyond the classroom.

Possible Barriers to EL Family Engagement and Solutions

This tool offers six possible barriers to EL family engagement and solutions. We invite you and your colleagues to use this tool to facilitate conversation around shaping a welcoming environment for EL students and their families.

A Checklist for Culturally Responsive Instruction

This checklist offers classroom and school look-fors in four areas that align to Staehr Fenner & Snyder’s (2017) four guidelines for culturally responsive instruction. We invite you and your colleagues to use this checklist as a collaborative tool to facilitate conversation around culturally responsive instruction in your school and set goals for improvement.

Resources for Equitably Grading ELs

This bundle of three resources offers original, practical tools to help support you as you work towards the equitable grading of ELs.

Guidelines for Selecting the Right Scaffolds for Your ELs

All teachers who work with ELs need strategies and tools to support ELs in accessing challenging content and acquiring academic language. Our “Suggested Scaffolds at Each Proficiency Level” tool makes it easy to select appropriate scaffolding based on English language proficiency levels (ELP) so you can establish a framework for mapping your scaffolds to students’ ELP level.

Three Main Categories of Scaffolds for Your ELs

Once you have a foundation of EL scaffolds, it’s important to consider different scaffolding categories to maximize the ways in which your ELs can benefit. Use our “Categories of Scaffolds and Examples” graphic to break down the three main categories of EL scaffolds and incorporate some of our examples into your instruction.

A Checklist for Incorporating Scaffolds into Instruction

Helping your ELs thrive academically and personally requires more than knowing and selecting appropriate scaffolds. It’s important to think deeply about the best ways to incorporate those scaffolds into your instruction so you and your colleagues can set goals for encouraging EL success. Our “Scaffolded Lesson Planning Checklist” provides considerations and guidelines in doing so.

Questions to Facilitate Educators’ Discussions of the Book

Many school districts are using Diane Staehr Fenner’s book Advocating for English Learners: A Guide for Educators as a foundation for their book study or Professional Learning Community (PLC). To help guide educators’ discussions around the topics in this book, we’ve designed discussion questions framed around the book’s chapters. We encourage you to download this useful list of questions and launch your own groups to focus on advocating for English Learners.

A Checklist for Schools

This checklist is a tool that you can use to evaluate the steps your school is taking to make ELs and their families feel welcome. Once you have assessed what you are currently doing, you can set goals for creating a more welcoming environment at your school.