Course For English Learners Takes Reading to a New Level

Sometime soon, a student from Ethiopia could be joining Talia Ferdinand’s class at Sandburg Middle School.

With so many culturally different students in her beginner reading course, Read 180 – Chinese, Hispanic, Arabic, and Korean children accounted for – Ferdinand might open a discussion by asking about personal identity, a wide-assortment of answers flying from the mouths of these young students. 

A decade ago, Ferdinand, working her way to earning her ESL teaching credential, had to teach at a neighboring school district because Glendora Unified had no or few English learners.  Today, Ferdinand and Kristy Carrigan have a motley mix of students from all over the world who come to their class.

“Compared to nothing it’s a good amount,” Ferdinand said.

The diversity in her class reflects the changing demographics at Sandburg Middle School, and the .  Since 2000-01, the white population has decreased 27 percent to 41 percent at Sandburg.  Ferdinand said the top three foreign languages spoken at the school are Spanish, Arabic, and Mandarin.

Last year there were 29 students classified as EL learners at Sandburg, according to the California Department of Education website.  Students in Carrigan’s English intervention course also attend the class, even though they might not be classified as English learners.

Read 180 is an extra class of English for these students where they can go for daily support.  How these students perform in Read 180 could determine how they do in other classes, considering reading skills are the foundation for other forms of learning.

“You need your English language skills to do your math and to do your history,” Ferdinand said.  “You need to understand the rules of the game to do PE.”

For these students, it’s an important time.  The next stop is high school, a more informal setting with more than 2,000 students.

The small class of about 15 students is broken into three groups, the students rotated through each section to maximize interest and prevent students from becoming bored, Ferdinand said.  Students might be put in a reading center or a small group discussion.  The third group goes off to use the computers to study vocabulary, reading and spelling.    

In the Read 180 class, a process of trial-and-error paves the way to reading competency.  Describing a Hispanic student in her class, Ferdinand said “it doesn’t matter how many times he has to re-write something or try it again.  It’s what he wants to do.”

Describing a Chinese student, Carrigan said, “He has a confidence you don’t see at that age.  In talking to him for two minutes, you can tell he hasn’t been here long, but he never doubts himself.”

Not all of the students excel.  But with some middle school class sizes in the mid-30s, the extra attention can be helpful. 

In previous years, students might use Rosetta Stone.  This year, students exclusively use the software program Read 180, which is where the class name derives from. The software program changes the amount a student might have to read and the difficulty of the questions depending on competency. 

With the software program, instruction on the same learning material can be instantly differentiated for students at different levels of proficiency.     

“It doesn’t give them a lot of opportunity to not increase because of the set-up and the high interest in it,” Carrigan said. 

Scott Bell, principal at Sandburg, said he has noticed the demographics change.  More importantly though, he said the number of socioeconomically disadvantaged students has increased over the last five years, two statistics that are not necessarily correlated.  The number of students eligible for free or reduced price meals increased 11 percent to 28 percent over the last decade, according to the CDE website. 

With both parents potentially working, socioeconomically disadvantaged students might need extra academic help. 

“What we’ve done (in the last decade) is to really shore up our intervention to meet some of the gaps students come with or support the learning here at school where it might not be at home,” Bell said. 

The school has an after school tutor program with college tutors assisting students, web-based software  like Study Island provides support, and intervention classes like Read 180 have been added. 

“By the time they’ve been in an English-speaking school, they’ve gotten support for four or five years, they should be moving along,” Bell said.  “If they’re not, we should take a closer look at them.” 

Carrigan said the amount of work that a student takes on to become a fluent English reader should not be underestimated.

“The facts that these kids persevere, even through these hardships is truly inspiring to me,” she said.  “They work hard everyday to keep up with their (standard English) classmates and excel.”