Supporting teachers in assessing the language and literacy skills of preschool English language learners

Early childhood is an important window to address the language needs of English learners, preferably in preschool before children face academic frustration and potential failure. Preschool educators need to deeply understand their English learner students' language development in order to more effectively support and provide appropriate interventions for these students. However, there is a critical gap in the field; there are very few assessments which adequately meet the needs of English learners.;Given the dearth of appropriate assessments available to preschool educators, an action research team of teachers and administrators at a charter preschool in Los Angeles set out to discover what kind of an assessment system would best reveal the linguistic skills and emerging literacy practices of preschool English learners. The action research team embarked on a pilot of the Desired Results Developmental Profile-Revised 2 (DRDP-R2) assessment, to explore whether the instrument's revised language measures would help them more fully capture children's first and second language development. The team investigated whether teachers could better harness the power of the instrument and utilize it more intentionally as a formative assessment to reflect on each child's developing language skills, identify needed areas for growth, plan instructional modifications and scaffold new learning. For eight weeks, the preschool teachers practiced collecting and organizing a wide variety of evidence documenting their students' first and second language development. They scored the DRDP-R2 and gave feedback as to the assessment's usefulness for measuring students' language and informing curriculum development. They utilized the resulting assessment information to create a streamlined portfolio of information that could be transitioned to the kindergarten teachers.;This project involved qualitative methods, including interviews with the preschool and kindergarten teachers and administrators, document analysis, classroom observations, and field notes from the action research team meetings. At the end of the intervention, the preschool teachers reported greater awareness of language and greater intentionality in assessing children's language development. The teachers also reported more use of the Desired Results Developmental Profile as a formative assessment and had created plans to extend that usage even further.