Implementing Effective Instruction for English Language Learners: 12 Key Practices for Administrators, Teachers, and Leadership Teams

This book provides step-by-step guidance for district-wide committees, school leadership teams, and teacher teams committed to ensuring that the ELLs in their classes, schools, and districts are successful and can reach high core-content and English language development standards.

Implementing Effective Instruction for English Language Learners takes a comprehensive, systemic, and strategic approach to educating all students, particularly ELLs. The 12 Key Practices Framework is divided into four parts:

• Shared practices at the district, school, and classroom levels
• Common classroom practices for all ELL educators
• Core instructional practices of every program for ELLs
• Organizing the key practices into effective program configurations

Administrators, teachers, and leadership teams can use the 12 Key Practices Framework and checklists to plan, implement, monitor, evaluate, and improve ELL education in their districts and schools.

Suzanne Wagner, Ph.D., has been a bilingual educator for more than 30 years. She has taught English as a second language, worked as a high school bilingual coordinator, and as a Title VII program director. As a specialist at the Illinois Resource Center in Arlington Heights, Wagner has taught courses, conducted workshops, and provided professional development for teachers and administrators in school districts throughout Illinois and nationwide.

Tamara (Tammy) King, M.A., is an education specialist at the Illinois Resource Center in Arlington Heights where she focuses on program design and improvement—especially in multilingual settings and districts with small numbers of English language learners. Bilingual in Spanish, she has worked as an elementary bilingual and English as a second language (ESL) teacher, an adult ESL teacher, and a language education program coordinator in a large, linguistically diverse school district. King is a WIDA-certified trainer and writes for the WIDA blog. She is also a wife and the mother of a precocious toddler.