Implementing Language Learning Progressions with English Learners
By Laureen Avery and Alison L. Bailey
Three districts in New York State (Middletown, Ossining and Tarrytown) are starting to use
Dynamic Language Learning Progressions (DLLPs) as part of their effort to improve academic
outcomes for English Learners in their schools. DLLPs are used to formatively assess student
progress in academic language development and support the development of personalized,
contingent teaching approaches.
Ossining and Tarrytown are Project ExcEL districts, and partner with second language
development experts from UCLA’s Center X. ExcEL schools promote improved academic
outcomes for students learning English in public schools through the use of data to monitor
student progress and adjust instruction and the creation of accessible school structures that
ensure every student engages in personalized planning and goal setting. At ExcEL schools
community partners to provide wrap around services and supports for students and their families.
Center X also works with the Middletown schools who have adapted parts of the ExcEL model.
The DLLPs were also created by UCLA researchers and are part of the Assessment Services
Supporting English Learners Through Technology Systems (ASSETS) Consortium, funded by
the U.S Department of Education Enhanced Assessment Grant to the Wisconsin Department of
Public Instruction and WIDA. The Consortium has developed a next-generation, technologybased language assessment system for students in grades K–12 who are learning English. While
the DLLPs can impact all levels and stages of the assessment development initiative, they play a
key role in the creation of formative assessment tools and professional development materials.
Teams of ENL and content area teachers have been assembled at schools in all three districts
who work together as a PLC focused on improving outcomes for English Learners in their
schools. These teams employ a tiered approach to monitoring ENL student process, modeled on
effective RTI systems. ExcEL’s tiered system relies on ongoing progress monitoring of
students, with instructional responses and approaches at different levels of intensity provided to
match their unique needs. Tier 1 students (coded ‘green’ in our model) receive research-based
instruction, sometimes in small groups, sometimes as part of a class-wide intervention. Students
who do not respond to the first level of group-oriented instruction typically move to the Tier 2
(‘yellow’) and the level of intensity of the interventions is greater. They may also be more
closely targeted to the areas in which the child is having difficulty. Tier 3 students (‘red’) have
not responded adequately to the intervention(s) in Tier 2, and receive continued and more
intensive intervention. To date, ExcEL teams have gathered and used data from language and
academic assessments (NYSESLAT, Regents, MAPS, Quarterly Assessments) and
supplemented that evidence with anecdotal findings from classroom teachers. As most ENL
students in our schools work with a number of adults (classroom content teachers, language
teachers, and interventionists), rich discussions about each student emerge and the team can
brainstorm instructional approaches and strategies that might lead to improved advancement and
success.
As teachers and teams began to build skill and confidence in ways to personalize and improve
instruction for English learners, the need for a deeper understanding of their progress became
apparent. Existing language
progression assessments (the
NYSESLAT, for example) are
summative, administered annually
and results are not reported for many
months. Beyond serving a
classification process they provide
little useful information for
classroom teachers. Working PLCs
therefore rely on ‘content’
assessments (such as the NWEA
MAPS or classroom grades) and their
own professional knowledge and
judgment to develop instructional
Figure 1. Middletown teachers Luz Chinchilla and Mary
Santiago with UCLA's Dr. Juan Lopez using the Sentence
interventions for individual EL students.
Sophistication DLLP to formatively assess student work.
The single greatest value of the DLLPs in
this model is the potential for planning
contingent teaching, by student and by skill, to efficiently and effectively support each child.
What Are Language Learning Progressions?
Learning progressions applied to science and mathematics instruction and assessment have been
most prevalent to date, with the current literature defining progressions as:
“…hypothesized descriptions of the successively more sophisticated ways student thinking about
an important domain of knowledge or practice develops as children learn about and investigate
that domain over an appropriate span of time.” (Corcoran, Mosher, & Rogat, 2009, p. 37)
“…a researcher-conjectured, empirically-supported description of the ordered network of
constructs a student encounters through instruction (i.e. activities, tasks, tools, forms of
interaction and methods of evaluation), in order to move from informal ideas, through successive
refinements of representation, articulation, and reflection, towards increasingly complex
concepts over time.” (Confrey & Maloney, 2010, p. 2)
The DLLP Project brings ideas from the field of learning progressions, to children’s
development of a range of language functions, for example, beginning with the “novice”
explanations students produce in the early years through to increased levels of sophistication in
language at the higher grades. The DLLP Project researchers point out:
“Standards represent a prescriptive or normative focus on outcomes for specific points in
schooling, usually at the end of each grade level. They do not characterize in any detail how
student learning progresses from one standard to another…. By contrast, learning progressions
are focused on providing empirically validated descriptions of significant steps students tend to,
or are likely to follow along pathways leading to end-of-school learning goals.
“…it is important to note that student learning does not proceed in lockstep, nor does it always
take the same pathway. …Extending progressions to language learning requires not only
conceptualizing how language is progressively acquired, but also how teachers and students can
support ongoing language learning.” (Bailey & Heritage, 2014, p. 484)
Effective support occurs during content instruction and not in isolated language lessons. The
DLLP Project offers guidance for teachers on how they can use the language learning
progressions for instructional and assessment purposes to increase students’ competence with
respect to particular language functions both for content learning and for supporting acquisition
of linguistic features.
In practice, the DLLP is operationalized through a set of seven high-leverage (i.e., high utility in
the content classroom) language features that collectively capture the development of words,
sentences and discourse. With the support of UCLA staff, ExcEL team members are beginning
to learn about the individual high-leverage features and language progressions and use these to
collaboratively score student work products. This naturally leads to the discussion of contingent
teaching – what specific instructional steps are needed to help each child progress.
Although still in the earliest stages of implementing this process, New York classroom teachers
are already noting ways they use the DLLPs as ‘checklists’ for engaging students in the
classroom, surfacing language features students need to build on. ENL teachers are particularly
engaged with the work, and using the DLLPs for on-going assessment in their work with
students. Many have pointed out this is the first usable tool they have for this purpose.
Over the coming months practitioners will build their own understanding of the power of the
DLLP tools. Eventually we hope to see the progressions form the basis of the PLC collaborative
discussions, resulting in more effective data-informed decisions about tiering students and
providing targeted, contingent teaching.
References cited:
Bailey, A.L., & Heritage, M. (2014). The role of language learning progressions in improved
instruction and assessment of English language learners. TESOL Quarterly, 48(3), 480­506.
Corcoran, T., Mosher, F.A., & Rogat, A. (2009). Learning progressions in science: An evidencebased approach to reform. New York, NY: Columbia University, Teachers College:
Center on Continuous Instructional Improvement, Consortium for Policy Research in
Education.
Confrey, J., & Maloney, A. (2010). The construction, refinement, and early validation of the
equipartitioning learning trajectory. In Gomez, K., Lyons, L., & Radinsky, J. (Eds.)
Learning in the Disciplines: Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the
Learning Sciences (ICLS 2010) – Volume 1, Full Papers. International Society of the
Learning Sciences: Chicago IL.
Alison Bailey is Professor of Human Development and Psychology in
the Department of Education, UCLA. She is the Principal Investigator of
the Dynamic Language Learning Progressions Project and the ExcEL
Leadership Academy. She can be contacted at [email protected].
Laureen Avery, M.S., works with the Middletown, Tarrytown and
Ossining Public Schools through Project ExcEL. Avery is the Director of
the Northeast Regional Office of UCLA Center X, located in Trumbull,
CT. If you would like to contact Ms. Avery for further information on
Project ExcEL or anything else, she can be reached at
[email protected].
Further information on Project ExcEL can be found at http://projectexcel.net. Further
information about Dynamic Language Learning Progressions and the research behind them can
be found at http:// DLLP.org.