MN-PELSB-006 · Minnesota PELSB Renewal Course Series
Meeting the Varied Needs of English Learners in Minnesota Schools
Teacher Notes and Study Guide · iTeachAI Academy
Clock hours3 clock hours / 180 active minutes
Mandatory areaEnglish Language Learners · InTASC aligned
FormatSelf-paced online professional learning
This study guide is a review companion drawn verbatim from the course. Course completion requires the full lessons, activities, and assessment.
Module 1 · Minnesota's English Learners: people, law, and profession
32 required minutes
Lesson 1.110 required minutes
Who Minnesota's multilingual learners are, and why "varied needs" is the operative phrase
PELSB: accommodating and meeting the varied needs of English Learners · InTASC #1, #2
Learning objectiveDescribe the linguistic, cultural, and educational variation among Minnesota's English Learners and explain why a single "EL strategy" cannot serve them all.
Key teaching points
Minnesota serves one of the most linguistically distinctive English Learner populations in the United States. Statewide, Spanish is the most common home language among identified English Learners, followed by Somali, Hmong, and Karen, with the ranking varying sharply by county: Hmong is the largest non-English home language in Ramsey County, while Spanish and Somali dominate in Hennepin County. [S9] This profile...
The statutory definition matters because it frames the teacher's task. Minnesota law defines an English learner as a student who first learned a language other than English or comes from a home where a language other than English is usually spoken, and who lacks the necessary English skills to participate fully in academic classes taught in English. [S4] The same statute defines a student with limited or interrupted...
InTASC Standard #2 states that the teacher "uses understanding of individual differences and diverse cultures and communities to ensure inclusive learning environments that enable each learner to meet high standards." [S10] Notice the two commitments held together: individualized understanding and high standards. The most common failure mode in EL instruction is not cruelty but quiet simplification, in which...
Newcomer programming deserves specific treatment, because the first months set trajectories. A defensible first-weeks protocol for a receiving classroom: seat the student where the board, the teacher's face, and a bilingual peer (if one exists and consents) are all visible; establish two or three survival routines with visuals (bathroom, lunch, "I need help" card); learn to pronounce the student's name correctly and...
The long-term English learner profile also rewards a closer look at the evidence. Umansky and Reardon's analysis of a decade of student records found that reclassification timing varies systematically by program model: students in bilingual and dual-immersion classrooms reclassified more slowly in the early grades but showed equal or better English proficiency and academic outcomes by late middle school, while...
Equity check. Never infer proficiency, prior schooling, or family literacy from a student's country of origin, religion, or accent. Two Somali-speaking students in the same class may include one born in Minneapolis and one who arrived last spring from a refugee camp with interrupted schooling.
Newcomer: Recently arrived student; needs vary with prior schooling, first-language literacy, and arrival circumstances, including refugee experience.
SLIFE: At least two fewer years of schooling than peers on entry to United States schools; needs foundational literacy and school-routine instruction alongside content. [S4]
Long-term English learner: Often United States-born, orally fluent, and still identified after six or more years; needs academic literacy acceleration, not beginner materials.
Dually identified student: Receives both EL and special education services; needs the EL and special education teams to plan together, not in sequence.
Applied activity
Profile your context. Identify the largest home languages in your school or district (your student information system, EL coordinator, or the current MDE English Learner report can supply this). Then describe two English Learners you serve or expect to serve, using the four profile types above, and name one way their needs differ that a generic "EL strategy" would miss. Use no student-identifying information.
Primary sources: S4 · S8 · S9 · S10 · S27
Lesson 1.212 required minutes
The legal floor: Lau, Castañeda, Title III, and Minnesota's LEAPS Act
PELSB: accommodating and meeting the varied needs of English Learners · InTASC #9
Learning objectiveExplain the federal and Minnesota legal obligations that make EL accommodation a professional duty rather than an optional kindness.
Key teaching points
In Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974), the United States Supreme Court held that the San Francisco schools violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by giving approximately 1,800 Chinese-speaking students the same desks, books, teachers, and curriculum as everyone else while providing no language support. The Court's reasoning is the foundation of everything in this course: identical treatment is not equal access...
Castañeda v. Pickard, 648 F.2d 989 (5th Cir. 1981), turned that principle into a workable test that federal enforcement agencies still apply; the 2015 joint Dear Colleague Letter from the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Justice applies the Castañeda framework point by point to identification, services, staffing, exit, and parent communication. [S24] A program serving English...
Title III of the Every Student Succeeds Act funds and structures state EL work. Its statutory purposes include ensuring that English Learners attain English proficiency and reach the same challenging state academic standards as all other students, and helping teachers, principals, and districts build effective language instruction programs. [S16, S25] The Department of Education's non-regulatory Title III guidance...
Minnesota's own commitment is the Learning English for Academic Proficiency and Success Act, known as the LEAPS Act, enacted in 2014 as Minnesota Laws 2014, chapter 272 (H.F. 2397). [S6, S7] The LEAPS Act threaded EL responsibility through existing statute, from early childhood through adult education and teacher licensure.
Two practical consequences follow for a renewing Minnesota teacher. First, EL professional development is not an EL-department matter; section 124D.61 makes it an obligation attached to every staff member who works with English Learners, which in most Minnesota schools means every teacher. [S5] Second, the asset orientation of the LEAPS Act is legal posture, not sentiment: the statute's definitions, seals, and SLIFE...
One statute completes the federal architecture and explains why Castañeda binds nationwide. The Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 provides that no state shall deny equal educational opportunity through, among other things, "the failure by an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instructional programs." [S33]...
Applied activity
Apply the Castañeda three-prong test to one EL support currently used in your classroom or school (for example, a co-taught block, a pull-out group, a translation tool, or a scaffolded text routine). For each prong, write one sentence: What is the theory? Is it resourced and implemented as designed? What evidence shows it is overcoming language barriers? Identify the weakest prong.
PELSB: training aligns with InTASC standards · InTASC #1, #2, #4, #6, #8 taught explicitly
Learning objectiveState the five InTASC anchor standards used in this course and map each to a concrete English Learner instructional decision.
Key teaching points
The Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium, convened by the Council of Chief State School Officers, published the Model Core Teaching Standards to describe what effective teaching looks like across all subjects and grades. The 2013 resource pairs the ten standards with learning progressions for ongoing teacher development, which is why the standards are a natural spine for licensure renewal training....
Two additional standards appear where the work demands them: Standard #9, Professional Learning and Ethical Practice, frames the legal obligations in Lesson 1.2, and Standard #10, Leadership and Collaboration, frames co-teaching and family partnership in Lessons 4.2 and 4.3. [S10] The point of the crosswalk is not compliance decoration. When you can name which standard a decision serves, you can also name what...
A note on how the standards interlock for English Learners specifically. Standard #2 tells you to know the learner; Standard #4 tells you to know the language of your discipline; Standard #8 tells you to build the bridge between them; Standard #6 tells you to check whether the bridge held; Standard #1 reminds you the learner is moving, so the bridge must move too.
A worked pass through the loop shows what the crosswalk buys in practice. A grade 6 mathematics teacher plans a lesson on ratio tables and has one Level 2 newcomer and one Level 4 long-term English learner.
Applied activity
Choose one recent lesson you taught. For each of the five anchor standards (#1, #2, #4, #6, #8), write one sentence describing what that standard looked like, or should have looked like, for the English Learners in that lesson. Flag the standard where your evidence is thinnest; you will strengthen it in your capstone.
Primary sources: S1 · S10 · S19
Module 2 · Understanding language proficiency
28 required minutes
Lesson 2.114 required minutes
The WIDA framework: proficiency levels, ACCESS, and the can-do philosophy
PELSB: accommodating and meeting the varied needs of English Learners · InTASC #6, #2
Learning objectiveInterpret WIDA proficiency levels 1-6 and annual ACCESS results to plan instruction, and explain why a proficiency level describes language performance rather than academic capacity.
Key teaching points
Minnesota is a WIDA consortium state. That single fact determines the proficiency data every Minnesota teacher receives.
The WIDA English Language Development Standards Framework, 2020 Edition, is the instructional architecture behind the test. It organizes language development around four Big Ideas, including equity of opportunity and access and the integration of content and language, and it describes what students can do with language across six proficiency levels, from Level 1 (Entering) through Level 2 (Emerging), Level 3...
Read the levels as an instructional dashboard, not a ranking. A Level 2 (Emerging) seventh grader can typically process and produce phrases and short sentences with sensory, graphic, or interactive support; asking her to write an unsupported five-paragraph essay is a planning failure, while asking her to sequence labeled diagram cards and then produce two sentences with a frame is calibrated challenge.
The framework's can-do philosophy is a deliberate stance: begin from what multilingual learners can do with language today and build from there, rather than cataloguing what they cannot yet do. [S11, S13] This is InTASC Standard #6 in action, using assessment "to engage learners in their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher's and learner's decision making," and it is InTASC Standard #2's...
Descriptor-driven planning is a learnable three-step protocol, and it is the practical heart of this lesson. Step one, fix the grade-level target and name what students must do with language to meet it: in a grade 3 unit on animal adaptations, students will explain how a trait helps survival, which is the key use "explain" running through listening (the read-aloud), reading (the leveled text set is not leveled down...
Teachers should also know the assessment system's edges. ACCESS is annual and summative: it tells you where a student was in late winter, not where she is in October, so classroom evidence carries the between-administrations load, and a year of growth can hide inside an unchanged composite when domain gains offset.
Levels 1-2, Entering and Emerging: Words, phrases, short sentences. Needs visuals, realia, gestures, native-language resources, and heavily modeled tasks. Can reason at grade level when input is accessible.
Levels 3-4, Developing and Expanding: Expanded and increasingly complex sentences. Needs scaffolds for dense text and academic writing. The most common levels in Minnesota classrooms, and the easiest to under-serve because oral fluency masks need.
Levels 5-6, Bridging and Reaching: Approaching and matching the language of grade-level peers. Needs continued vocabulary depth and monitoring, including after program exit.
Domain variation: Plan from domain scores. Strong listening with emerging writing calls for oral rehearsal before writing, not silence before writing.
Applied activity
Obtain the de-identified WIDA proficiency profile of one English Learner you serve (overall level plus the four domain levels), or use this practice profile: overall 3, listening 4, speaking 4, reading 3, writing 2. Write what this student can do in your subject this week, one calibrated support for the weakest domain, and one way you will keep the grade-level target intact.
Conversational fluency is not academic language: BICS, CALP, and the modern caveats
PELSB: accommodating and meeting the varied needs of English Learners · InTASC #4, #2
Learning objectiveDistinguish conversational proficiency from academic language proficiency, identify the academic language demands of your own discipline, and apply the scholarly caveats that keep the distinction from becoming a deficit label.
Key teaching points
The most consequential misreading of an English Learner sounds like this: "He chats with friends in perfect English, so if he's failing science, language isn't the problem." Jim Cummins named the distinction that explains the error: basic interpersonal communicative skills, or BICS, the conversational fluency used in face-to-face, context-rich interaction, versus cognitive academic language proficiency, or CALP, the...
What makes language "academic" is describable, and every discipline has its own version. Academic text compresses meaning through nominalization (the process of erosion rather than things erode), embeds clauses inside clauses, uses precise connectives (whereas, consequently, given that), deploys discipline-specific terms (photosynthesis, integer) alongside general academic terms (analyze, derive, justify), and, most...
Honor the caveats, because the field has spent decades refining this distinction. Cummins himself has addressed critiques that BICS and CALP can be misread as a rigid dichotomy or as evidence of deficit. [S17] Three cautions govern responsible use.
The practical discipline this lesson asks of you is language-demand analysis. Before teaching, look at your central text, task, and assessment and ask: Which words carry the concept?
Each discipline's language demands are specific enough to inventory, and a renewal course should name them rather than gesture at them. Mathematics compresses logical relations into short words that carry heavy load ("of" signals multiplication in "half of six," "each" signals rate, "if" opens a condition), reverses everyday word order ("six less than a number" is n minus six, not six minus n), and stacks noun...
Language demands also scale by task, not only by text. Producing language is harder than comprehending it; writing is harder than speaking about the same content because it forfeits gesture, intonation, and the listener's repair questions; and public production is harder than rehearsed production.
Applied activity
Run a language-demand analysis on one text, task, or assessment you will use within two weeks. List: two discipline-specific terms, two general academic terms, one everyday word used technically, one sentence structure likely to block a Level 2-3 student, and the language students must produce to demonstrate mastery. Then write one sentence on how the BICS/CALP distinction changes your read of one specific student, without lowering the target.
Primary sources: S10 · S11 · S17 · S31
Module 3 · Instruction that meets varied needs
36 required minutes
Lesson 3.112 required minutes
Comprehensible input and scaffolding: same destination, better route
PELSB: accommodating and meeting the varied needs of English Learners · InTASC #8
Learning objectiveSelect input supports and scaffolds matched to a student's proficiency profile that make grade-level content understandable without simplifying the content itself.
Key teaching points
Language develops when learners receive input they can substantially understand, stretched slightly beyond their current level. The teacher's job is therefore not to make the content easier but to make the input comprehensible: to increase the number of routes by which meaning arrives.
Scaffolding is the temporary structure that lets a learner perform a task today that she will perform unaided later, and the word temporary carries the professional weight. WIDA's framework describes proficiency levels partly in terms of the support a student needs, which means instruction should be planned as level-matched support that fades as proficiency grows. [S11, S13] A useful planning discipline is to...
Match the scaffold to the level, then plan its removal. A Level 1-2 student explaining erosion might sequence four labeled photographs and produce two frame-supported sentences; a Level 3 student completes a cause-effect organizer and writes a paragraph with a connective word bank; a Level 4-5 student writes independently with a model text available for reference.
Finally, protect productive struggle. Comprehensible does not mean effortless, and the LEAPS-era expectation that English Learners progress toward the same academic standards as peers requires cognitive demand to survive the accommodation. [S5, S16] Before adopting any support, run the two-question check this course will reuse in the case lab: Does this support give the student access to the grade-level thinking?
A full scaffolding progression, written out once, is the template the capstone will demand. Elementary science, grade 4, target: students explain the water cycle's stages with evidence from a diagram and text.
Distinguish macro-scaffolds from micro-scaffolds, because both are needed and only one can be planned on paper. Macro-scaffolds are structural: the previewed organizer, the leveled frames, the captioned video, the glossary.
Applied activity
Take one upcoming lesson segment. Plan one input scaffold, one interaction scaffold, and one output scaffold for a student at Level 2 and a student at Level 4 (six cells total; they may overlap). For each scaffold, add its fade condition: the observable evidence that will tell you to remove it.
Primary sources: S5 · S10 · S11 · S13 · S16 · S21
Lesson 3.212 required minutes
Preteaching vocabulary and sentence frames that carry disciplinary thinking
PELSB: accommodating and meeting the varied needs of English Learners · InTASC #4, #8
Learning objectiveSelect high-value vocabulary for preteaching and construct sentence frames that rehearse the language functions of your discipline rather than fill-in-the-blank recall.
Key teaching points
Vocabulary preteaching fails when it becomes a list of twenty words copied with dictionary definitions, and it succeeds when it is triage. Select five to eight words per lesson using three filters.
Teach the selected words the way words are actually learned: multiple encounters in multiple modes; teaching a small set of academic words intensively across several days through varied activities is the strong-evidence first recommendation of the What Works Clearinghouse guide for English Learners, and research syntheses on EL instruction converge on the same point. [S21, S22] A workable four-step routine takes...
Sentence frames deserve the same disciplinary seriousness. A frame is not a worksheet blank; it is a rehearsal of how your discipline talks.
Two cautions keep frames honest. Frames are for producing academic language, not for suppressing ideas; if a student has a correct idea that overflows the frame, the frame yields.
A scripted worked example fixes the routine in memory better than a description. Grade 2 science, the word "absorb," ninety seconds.
Applied activity
For one upcoming lesson: select five to seven words using the three filters and label which filter selected each; script the four-step routine for the two most important words; and write two sentence frames for the same discussion task, one calibrated for Level 2 and one for Level 4, each encoding a genuine language function of your discipline.
Primary sources: S10 · S13 · S17 · S21 · S22
Lesson 3.312 required minutes
Translanguaging: the home language as an instructional asset
PELSB: accommodating and meeting the varied needs of English Learners · InTASC #1, #2
Learning objectiveDesign at least one instructional structure that invites strategic home-language use to deepen content learning and English development, and defend the practice to a skeptical colleague.
Key teaching points
Translanguaging names what multilingual people actually do: draw flexibly on their full linguistic repertoire to make meaning, rather than operating two sealed language systems; García and Wei's book-length treatment is the scholarly foundation of the concept. [S23] As pedagogy, it means deliberately structuring moments where students use their strongest language in service of learning, and it directly challenges...
The cognitive logic is straightforward. A tenth grader who reads a two-paragraph Somali summary of supply and demand before tackling the English chapter is not avoiding English; she is building the conceptual schema that will make the English text comprehensible, which is Lesson 3.1's principle executed through the student's strongest tool.
Address the two objections you will hear. "I don't speak Hmong, so I can't allow it": translanguaging requires the teacher to design the structure, not to speak the language.
Boundaries keep the practice defensible. Translanguaging supplements, never replaces, the explicit English development that Minnesota Statutes section 124D.61 requires districts to provide. [S5] It is a scaffold for meaning-making, so it follows scaffold rules: strategic, planned, and adjusted as English proficiency grows, though unlike a sentence frame, the home language is never something to eliminate; the goal is...
The empirical footing deserves one more careful paragraph, because translanguaging pedagogy is younger than its theoretical foundation and a renewal course should say which claims rest on what. The cross-linguistic transfer of literacy skills and concepts is among the National Literacy Panel's firmest findings, and home-language literacy instruction shows measurable benefits for English reading outcomes in the...
Applied activity
Design one translanguaging structure for a specific upcoming lesson: state the concept, the home-language move (preview, partner negotiation, bilingual glossary, draft-then-compose, or your own), the English deliverable, and how you will keep it rigorous. Then write a three-sentence response to a colleague who says "English-only is how they will learn English."
Module 4 · Assessment, collaboration, and families
34 required minutes
Lesson 4.112 required minutes
Differentiating assessment: measure the construct, not the English
PELSB: accommodating and meeting the varied needs of English Learners · InTASC #6
Learning objectiveAdjust classroom assessments so that scores for English Learners reflect the intended learning target, and distinguish accommodations that preserve validity from changes that alter the construct.
Key teaching points
Every assessment measures two things: the construct you intend and the language required to show it. For English Learners, the second contaminates the first unless you engineer otherwise.
Start with the question this course has asked since Module 1: what exactly is the construct? If the construct is mathematical reasoning, then reading the word problem aloud, simplifying its sentence structure (not its mathematics), glossing non-mathematical vocabulary, or accepting a diagrammed solution all preserve validity while removing construct-irrelevant barriers.
Practical moves for everyday assessments follow. Offer multiple demonstration formats where the construct allows: oral response, diagram, demonstration, home-language draft with English summary, shortened constructed response.
Know the boundary between classroom practice and statewide assessment. Classroom accommodations do not automatically apply to Minnesota statewide assessments, and EL-specific supports on state tests follow current MDE policy and district procedures. [S8, S28] Equally important, classroom assessment evidence feeds the district's documented entrance and exit criteria under Minnesota Statutes section 124D.61, so your...
The measurement concept underneath this lesson has a name worth teaching: construct-irrelevant variance, score variation caused by factors outside the construct the assessment intends to measure. For English Learners the dominant irrelevant factor is English proficiency on tests of everything else, but the concept also catches cultural knowledge assumptions, unfamiliar item formats, and speededness, since processing...
A worked item revision makes the surgery visible. Original grade 5 item: "After the big storm knocked out power across the county, the Hendersons' basement freezer, which had been chock-full of venison from last fall's hunting trip, warmed up.
Applied activity
Take one assessment you currently use. Name its construct in one sentence. Identify two places where language demands could contaminate the measurement for a Level 2-3 student, revise each, and add one alternate demonstration format that preserves the construct. State how you will record content mastery and language development separately.
Primary sources: S5 · S8 · S10 · S13 · S28
Lesson 4.211 required minutes
Co-teaching and collaborating with EL specialists
PELSB: accommodating and meeting the varied needs of English Learners · InTASC #8, #10
Learning objectiveStructure collaboration with a licensed EL teacher so that language and content expertise are combined in planning and instruction rather than divided into teacher and helper roles.
Key teaching points
Minnesota law expects EL programming to be a coordinated system, not a corridor. Section 124D.61 requires districts to avoid isolating English Learners for a substantial part of the school day and to provide coordinated professional development to all staff who work with them, which pushes service models toward collaboration inside content classrooms. [S5] The LEAPS Act reinforced the same direction by expecting all...
The partnership works when the division of expertise is explicit. You bring InTASC Standard #4 knowledge: the concepts, the misconceptions, the texts, the assessments of your discipline.
Where formal co-teaching is scheduled, the established models each serve different purposes: one teach, one support (efficient, but the trap model if it becomes permanent); station teaching, where the specialist runs a language-intensive station all students rotate through; parallel teaching, halving the group size for discussion-heavy work; alternative teaching, a preteach or reteach group whose membership rotates...
When no EL specialist is regularly available, the collaboration obligation does not lapse; it changes form. Consult the specialist asynchronously with specific artifacts ("here is Thursday's lab sheet; where will my Level 2 students stall?"), bring EL questions to PLC time with student work in hand, and route service questions through the district EL coordinator, whose existence is guaranteed by the program...
The professional literature on integrated EL services gives this lesson's claims their footing and their vocabulary. Honigsfeld and Dove's foundational guide to integrated practices, the standard reference for EL collaboration, frames the partnership as a continuum that runs from informal exchanges through co-developed materials to full co-teaching, and its central finding from more than a decade of implementation...
A grade 2 team runs the twenty-minute protocol on Tuesday for next week's science unit on properties of matter. Minutes one to five: the classroom teacher names the target (classify objects by observable properties), the central task (a sorting investigation with a recording sheet), and the assessment (students explain one sort aloud).
A grade 10 chemistry teacher and an EL specialist share four multilingual learners across two sections, with no common co-teaching block, only a shared prep on Thursdays. They work the asynchronous form of the partnership with discipline.
Applied activity
Draft a one-page collaboration agreement for you and an EL specialist (real or prospective): the weekly 20-minute protocol agenda, the co-teaching model you would use for one specific upcoming lesson and why, each adult's role during that lesson, and one warning sign you will both watch for that the partnership has drifted into teacher-and-helper.
Artifact specification. A strong agreement could be signed by both adults and audited in October. Quality criteria: (1) the protocol agenda assigns minutes and an owner to each segment and names the artifact that must arrive before the meeting; (2) the model choice is justified by the lesson's language-load peak, not by habit or scheduling convenience; (3) each adult's role during the lesson is specific enough that an observer could tell within five minutes whether the plan is running, including at least one whole-class segment led by the specialist; (4) every scaffold in the plan carries an owner and a fade condition; and (5) the drift warning sign is observable and paired with the repair both adults agree to in advance, because partnerships calcify by increments no one meant. [S24, S35]
Family engagement through interpreters and translated communication
PELSB: accommodating and meeting the varied needs of English Learners · InTASC #1, #10
Learning objectivePlan family communication that uses qualified interpretation, avoids using students as interpreters for substantive matters, and treats multilingual families as educational partners.
Key teaching points
Minnesota law builds family partnership into EL programming: districts must make their identification and exit criteria available to parents and must provide parents a written description of program services. [S5] Title III's statutory purposes include promoting parental, family, and community participation in language instruction programs. [S16] Behind the legal language is a practical truth every experienced...
Language access is the precondition. For conferences, meetings about placement or discipline, and any substantive conversation, arrange a qualified interpreter through your district's process; most Minnesota districts contract interpretation for their major languages, and telephone or video interpretation covers the rest.
Engagement, though, is larger than logistics, and this is where InTASC Standards #1 and #10 converge: understanding how learners develop includes understanding the family and community contexts of that development, and collaboration with families is an explicit professional expectation. [S10] Open conferences by asking what the family wants for the child and what they see at home, and treat the answer as data equal...
The legal architecture behind these practices deserves to be stated precisely, because it converts good intentions into enforceable expectations. The 2015 Dear Colleague Letter devotes a full section to communication with limited English proficient parents: districts must provide meaningful access to school information through qualified interpretation and translation, in a language the parent understands, for...
A grade 4 teacher prepares a twenty-minute conference with Amina's father, whose strongest language is Somali (the Module 5 case, worth rehearsing from the family side). Before: she books the district's Somali interpreter a week out, sends home a translated conference notice paired with an interpreted reminder call, and pre-briefs the interpreter for two minutes: the three points she hopes to land, the one piece of...
A grade 9 team wants first contact with Paw's family within her first month (the Module 5 newcomer). The wrong opening is a letter: her parents' strongest literacy is oral, in a language with limited district translation capacity, and a formal school document arriving at a refugee-background household can read as trouble.
Applied activity
Script your next substantive contact with a multilingual family, real or realistic and de-identified: how you will arrange interpretation, your opening question to the family, one strength you will report, one piece of jargon you must gloss and your plain-language version, and the affirmation you will give about the home language. Note one logistical barrier you will remove.
Artifact specification. A strong script could be handed to a colleague covering your conference. Quality criteria: (1) the interpretation arrangement names the mode (in-person, video, telephone line), the request pathway in your district, and the pre-brief you will give the interpreter; (2) the opening question genuinely cedes the floor to the family and cannot be answered yes or no; (3) the strength is specific and evidence-backed, drawn from a two-lens record where one exists; (4) the jargon gloss is a full plain-language sentence, not a synonym; (5) the home-language affirmation is written word for word and cites something real (the seals, the transfer research) rather than sentiment; and (6) the removed barrier is concrete (timing, transportation, childcare, channel) and the script notes how the contact will be documented, since the record is also the district's compliance evidence. [S5, S24, S30]
Case lab: three Minnesota learners, three different problems
Integrated demonstration of both PELSB sub-criteria · InTASC #1, #2, #4, #6, #8
Learning objectiveAnalyze three composite Minnesota cases and justify accommodations matched to each learner's actual profile, citing the InTASC standard each decision serves.
Key teaching points
These cases are composites built to represent common Minnesota profiles; they describe no real student. Each demands a different response, which is the point: "the varied needs of English Learners" is plural on purpose.
Case A: the newcomer with interrupted schooling. Paw, grade nine, arrived in St. Paul four months ago from a refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border.
Case B: the long-term English Learner hiding in fluency. Diego, grade seven, was born in Willmar and has been identified as an English Learner since kindergarten.
Case C: assessment and the family conference. Amina, grade four, speaks Somali at home.
For each case, complete the eight-part decision record:
There may be more than one defensible answer. A high-quality response holds the grade-level standard constant, matches support to the specific profile rather than to the label "EL," respects the legal boundaries this course has named, and cites its InTASC anchors accurately.
Case A. The controlling insight is that SLIFE names a schooling-history profile, not an ability level, and the two facts the vignette pairs, five years of schooling and beautiful diagram copying, are both instructionally load-bearing. DeCapua and Marshall's Mutually Adaptive Learning Paradigm, the leading research-based SLIFE framework, reframes the newcomer problem precisely: students like Paw arrive expert in...
Case B. The strongest records treat Diego as a measurement problem before a placement problem. Three converging data points, flat composite for three years, a domain split favoring oral skills, and failure specifically on quizzes, do not yet distinguish the two live hypotheses (unaddressed academic-language needs versus a genuine learning disability), and the professional sequence is to improve the data before...
Case C. The domain profile is the analytical key the vignette hands over: listening 4, speaking 4, reading 3, writing 2.5 predicts exactly the observed pattern, strong mathematics until the mathematics arrives wrapped in dense text. A strong record names the construct (fraction and operation reasoning, not English reading), applies two Lesson 4.1 moves that preserve it (a read-aloud or audio version of word...
Applied activity
Complete the eight-part decision record for all three cases. Then write one comparative sentence: name the single biggest difference between what Paw, Diego, and Amina need, and what that difference teaches about the phrase "varied needs."
Artifact specification. Strong case records are judged against the calibration guidance above. Quality criteria: (1) all eight parts are completed for all three cases, with the grade-level target stated first and never modified; (2) each barrier is written as a language-access problem with the evidence for it, and Case A's record distinguishes schooling history from ability explicitly; (3) each accommodation is matched to the domain profile, not the composite alone, and the record states what it preserves and what it changes; (4) each case names the additional evidence to collect and the date rule for reviewing it, with Case B's record sequencing the language-demand audit before any referral decision; (5) legal anchors are cited accurately where they bind (isolation, appropriate action, interpretation); and (6) the comparative sentence names a genuine axis of difference (schooling history, time in program, domain profile) rather than restating that students differ. [S13, S24, S27]
Capstone: build an EL-responsive lesson plan with an InTASC self-audit
Integrated demonstration of both PELSB sub-criteria · InTASC #1, #2, #4, #6, #8
Learning objectiveProduce a standards-aligned lesson plan that demonstrates accommodation for English Learners at two different proficiency levels and audits itself against the five anchor InTASC standards.
Key teaching points
The capstone is the course's professional-learning artifact. Use a real upcoming lesson from your own assignment, and remove all student-identifying information.
The capstone is complete when every section is present, the same grade-level target can be traced through both learners' pathways, every scaffold has a fade condition, the assessment measures the construct rather than English proficiency, and the self-audit cites real sections rather than aspirations. Renewal clock hours in Minnesota must consist of actual professional learning addressing the Standards of Effective...
Applied activity
Complete the ten-section capstone. Self-score against the checklist in the paragraph above and revise any section that is missing or aspirational before taking the assessment.
Primary sources: S2 · S3 · S10 · S19
Assessment question stems
Answer all 20 scenario-based questions. The planned completion threshold is 80% (16 of 20). This reviewer copy shows feedback after submission; the deployed version must make the same threshold, scoring, feedback, and remediation rules consistent in the interface and server. Clock-hour credit, when this course is approved and live, follows Minnesota renewal rules. [S2, S3]
Question stems are listed for study purposes. Answer choices and keys are intentionally omitted.
In Lau v. Nichols (1974), the Supreme Court held that giving Chinese-speaking students the same materials, teachers, and curriculum as English speakers was unlawful because:
Under Castañeda v. Pickard, a program serving English Learners must satisfy which three-part test?
Which set of requirements does Minnesota Statutes section 124D.61 place on every district enrolling English Learners?
A student's WIDA composite proficiency level of 2 (Emerging) tells the teacher:
ACCESS for ELLs is best described as:
Which statement uses the BICS/CALP distinction responsibly?
Which move best reflects the principle of comprehensible input?
A well-designed sentence frame:
Which word set best deserves preteaching minutes before a lesson on electrical circuits?
Translanguaging as an instructional stance means:
An assessment accommodation preserves validity when it:
A student fails written math word problems but solves the same problems correctly when they are read aloud with two idioms glossed. The best interpretation is:
In a co-taught class, the licensed EL teacher has spent a month circulating and whispering translations while the content teacher leads every lesson. The best correction is:
For a conference about a student's placement, the family's strongest language is Somali. The appropriate plan is:
Under Minnesota Statutes section 124D.59, a student with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) is an English learner who:
Which is the actual language of InTASC Standard #2, Learning Differences?
A teacher records content mastery and language development as separate marks and uses both to plan instruction for an English Learner. Which InTASC standard is most directly demonstrated?
Selecting a labeled-diagram pathway for a Level 2 student and an independent-writing pathway for a Level 5 student, both aimed at the same erosion target, most directly demonstrates:
A student exits EL services after meeting the district's documented criteria. What should the classroom teacher expect next?
What is the correct submission status of this pilot course file?
Primary source register
Sources were checked July 24, 2026. The register was expanded from 19 to 35 sources under the provider research-validation directive of July 24, 2026; every source below was individually verified live on that date (statutory and agency pages by live retrieval; journal articles against their Crossref DOI records). Reconfirm current statutes, rules, forms, framework editions, and agency guidance immediately before submission.
S3. Minn. R. 8710.7200. Clock hours must be actual instruction or planned professional development, be professionally relevant, and address at least one Standard of Effective Practice. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/8710.7200/
S4. Minn. Stat. §124D.59 - Definitions. Statutory definitions of English learner and of a student with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE): at least two fewer years of schooling than peers on entering United States schools. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/124D.59
S5. Minn. Stat. §124D.61 - General Requirements for Programs. District EL program requirements: documented identification and exit criteria, ELD-aligned instruction, written plan of services for parents, staff professional development, avoiding substantial-day isolation, and equal access to nonverbal subjects and activities. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/124D.61
S6. Minnesota Laws 2014, chapter 272 (H.F. 2397). The 2014 session law containing the Learning English for Academic Proficiency and Success (LEAPS) Act provisions, including English learner instruction requirements, teacher preparation expectations, and bilingual and multilingual seals. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/laws/2014/0/272/
S7. Minnesota Department of Education - LEAPS Act. MDE's summary of the LEAPS Act (2014 Minnesota Session Law, Chapter 272, H.F. 2397), including SLIFE accountability and the expectation that educators develop students' academic English. https://education.mn.gov/MDE/dse/el/leap/
S8. Minnesota Department of Education - English Learner Education. MDE support for districts on identification and exit procedures, WIDA and ACCESS assessment, and program implementation and evaluation. https://education.mn.gov/MDE/dse/el/
S9. MDE, English Learners in Minnesota Report, 2023-24. Statewide EL demographics: Spanish is the most common home language, followed by Somali, Hmong, and Karen, with rankings varying by county (Hmong largest in Ramsey County). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED676212.pdf
S12. WIDA - ACCESS for ELLs. The suite of secure, large-scale, summative English language proficiency assessments administered annually to identified English Learners in kindergarten through grade 12, with Alternate ACCESS. https://wida.wisc.edu/assess/access
S13. WIDA Can Do Descriptors, Key Uses Edition, Grades 6-8. Descriptors of what multilingual learners can do with language at proficiency levels 1-6 across listening, speaking, reading, and writing, organized by key uses (recount, explain, argue, discuss). Parallel editions exist for other grade bands. https://wida.wisc.edu/sites/default/files/resource/CanDo-KeyUses-Gr-6-8.pdf
S14. Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974). Supreme Court holding that identical materials and instruction without language support effectively foreclose meaningful education and violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/414/563
S15. Castañeda v. Pickard, 648 F.2d 989 (5th Cir. 1981). The three-part test for EL programs: sound educational theory, effective implementation with adequate resources, and evaluation showing language barriers are actually being overcome. https://www.azed.gov/sites/default/files/2017/04/Castaneda_v_Pickard.pdf
S17. Cummins, J. (2008). BICS and CALP: Empirical and Theoretical Status of the Distinction. In Encyclopedia of Language and Education (2nd ed., Vol. 2). Springer. The conversational versus academic language proficiency distinction, the differing development timelines, and the author's responses to critiques of dichotomy and deficit misuse. https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_36
S19. Minn. R. 8710.2000 - Standards of Effective Practice. Minnesota's teacher standards, structurally parallel to InTASC, including expectations for linguistically responsive planning, instruction, and assessment. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/rules/8710.2000/
S20. August, D., & Shanahan, T. (Eds.) (2006). Developing Literacy in Second-Language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. The most comprehensive research synthesis on literacy development in language-minority students, including the finding that first-language literacy and concepts transfer to second-language literacy and that oral English proficiency development requires explicit attention alongside code skills. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED553370
S21. Baker, S., et al. (2014). Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School (NCEE 2014-4012). IES What Works Clearinghouse. Four recommendations: intensive multi-day academic vocabulary instruction (strong evidence), integrating oral and written English into content-area teaching (strong evidence), structured written-language opportunities (minimal evidence), and small-group intervention for struggling students (moderate evidence). https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/19
S22. Goldenberg, C. (2013). Unlocking the research on English learners: What we know, and don't yet know, about effective instruction. American Educator, 37(2), 4-11. Research synthesis for practitioners: what works for English Learners generally mirrors effective instruction for all students, with added language supports; home-language instruction and literacy confer measurable benefits. https://www.aft.org/ae/summer2013/goldenberg
S23. García, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Palgrave Macmillan. The scholarly foundation of translanguaging theory and pedagogy: bilinguals draw on one integrated linguistic repertoire, and classrooms can structure its strategic use for learning; winner of the 2015 BAAL Book Prize. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137385765
S24. U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, & U.S. Department of Justice (2015, January 7). Dear Colleague Letter: English Learner Students and Limited English Proficient Parents. Joint federal guidance applying Lau, Castañeda, Title VI, and the EEOA to identification, services, staffing, exit, monitoring, and communication with limited English proficient parents through qualified interpretation and translation. https://www.ed.gov/sites/ed/files/about/offices/list/ocr/letters/colleague-el-201501.pdf
S25. 20 U.S.C. §6812 - Purposes (ESSA Title III, Part A, statutory text). The five statutory purposes, including ensuring English Learners attain English proficiency and meet the same challenging state academic standards as all students, and promoting parental, family, and community participation. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/6812
S27. DeCapua, A., & Marshall, H. W. (2023). Breaking New Ground for SLIFE: The Mutually Adaptive Learning Paradigm (2nd ed.). University of Michigan Press; peer review in TESL-EJ 27(3) linked for access. The leading research-based framework for students with limited or interrupted formal education: instruction that explicitly bridges students' familiar informal learning paradigms and formal Western schooling rather than treating SLIFE as remedial cases. https://tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume27/ej107/ej107r1/
S28. Minnesota Department of Education. Minnesota Standardized English Learner Procedures. The statewide standardized procedures all districts and charters must use for identification, entrance, and exit of English Learners, including English Learners with disabilities, WIDA screener use, and MARSS data elements. https://education.mn.gov/mdeprod/groups/educ/documents/structure/bwrl/mdcy/~edisp/mde072040.pdf
S29. WIDA. ACCESS for ELLs Interpretive Guide for Score Reports. WIDA's authoritative technical guide to the scores ACCESS reports for kindergarten through grade 12: domain scale scores, proficiency levels, and composites, and how to interpret them for instruction. https://wida.wisc.edu/resources/access-ells-interpretive-guide-score-reports
S30. Minn. Stat. §120B.022 - World languages; bilingual and multilingual seals. Codification of Minnesota's bilingual and multilingual gold and platinum seals based on ACTFL proficiency levels across four domains, including Indigenous American Indian languages and American Sign Language, with college-credit translation. https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/120B.022
S31. Hakuta, K., Butler, Y. G., & Witt, D. (2000). How Long Does It Take English Learners to Attain Proficiency? University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute Policy Report 2000-1. Four-district analysis: oral English proficiency takes three to five years to develop and academic English proficiency four to seven years, the empirical basis for long-horizon planning of EL services. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED443275
S32. Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. Meta-analysis of 190 studies (18,573 participants): mean adult silent reading rate approximately 238 words per minute for non-fiction, with slower rates for careful study reading; the empirical basis for this course's time-on-task computation. https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8647789
S33. Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, 20 U.S.C. §1703(f). Prohibits denial of equal educational opportunity through "the failure by an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by its students in its instructional programs"; the statutory duty Castañeda interprets. Statutory text verified live. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1703
S34. Umansky, I. M., & Reardon, S. F. (2014). Reclassification patterns among Latino English learner students in bilingual, dual immersion, and English immersion classrooms. American Educational Research Journal, 51 (5), 879-912. Cohort analysis of a decade of student records: bilingual and dual-immersion students reclassified more slowly in early grades but showed equal or higher English proficiency and academic outcomes by late middle school; the program-level evidence cited in Lessons 1.1 and 3.3. Verified against Crossref. DOI 10.3102/0002831214545110. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831214545110
S35. Honigsfeld, A., & Dove, M. G. (2019). Collaborating for English Learners: A Foundational Guide to Integrated Practices (2nd ed.). Corwin. The standard professional reference for integrated EL service delivery: the collaboration continuum, co-teaching model selection, co-planning protocols, and implementation evidence from more than a decade of practice. Bibliographic record verified via ERIC ED593454. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED593454
