Utah ELLs and Access to Online Content

I must admit, for my very first blog here, my Google Alerts let me down.  I was alerted to ESL Gaming, but I guess ESL stands for other things as well.  I’ll have to modify my alert notification settings I suppose, but nevertheless, I found a great article in Google News about ELLs and Technology.  I have the reference below, but this was an article about how ELLs in Utah have been recently working with more technology integrated into their school day allowing them to be more proficient learners. 

            As Utah Schools have a high school graduation rate for ELLs at 62% compared to 83.9% for native English speakers, they wanted to do something more to provide for their students to make every as successful as possible (ELLs in Utah).  To counter this issue, the Utah State Board of Education decided to partner with Fuel Education to provide personalized learning and online content to their ELLs to access 24/7 (ELLs in Utah).  They decided against a full online curriculum for ELLs as they wanted for the students to have access to the teachers in the state already and to allow for further integration into the classroom.  They hope this blended approach to education will benefit their students as 1,000 secondary students will be taking apart in this. 

            The curriculum can connect to each student’s cultural backgrounds, allow for them to move at their own pace, and continue to build their language and literary skills.  There are also projects students can collaborate on in this online setting while also attending the brick and mortar school.  What is also great is that the curriculum is aligned to the WIDA standards, Common Core, and ELPA21 standards too. 

            I found this to be very interesting as it seems like something that could be a benefit to my cyber-school colleagues in the ESL department and our own ELLs.  As where I work is not homeschooling, but more of a combination of home, school, and online learning, I feel like this curriculum could help meet the needs of our students while they are still able to join for lessons in the general classroom as well.  I especially like how they align the curriculum to many standards to assure for quality content as much as possible.  As this article was written in May but mentions the roll out of this program in the Spring, I can only assume this is happening right now for some students at the end of the schoolyear in Utah.  I would like to check in on the developments next year as well to see how it is working out.  At my school, we currently use a National Geographic Curriculum for our ELLs, but I am curious if the ESL teachers and administration would see benefits in this instead provided by Fuel Education. 

References

More than 1,000 English Learners in Utah Using Supplemental Online and Blended Learning Solution from Fuel Education. (2017, May 11). Retrieved from http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170511005355/en/1000-English-Learners-Utah-Supplemental-Online-Blended