Explanation of Terms

ACCESS for ELLs

Alaska’s annual English language proficiency assessment administered to K-12 ELL-identified students. Developed by WIDA. The state of Alaska has defined the ACCESS for ELLs proficiency scores for exiting ELL program eligibility (see https://education.alaska.gov/ESEA/TitleIII-A).

Academic English

Is the set of specific terminology that pertains to specific subjects we usually learn in academic contexts. The oral and written text required to succeed in school that entails deep understanding and communication of the language of content within a classroom environment. Social language is the set of vocabulary that allows us to communicate with others in the context of regular daily conversations.

Alaska Content Standards

High academic standards adopted by the Alaska State Board of Education. These standards are general statements of what Alaskans want their students to know and be able to do as a result of their public school experience. The standards reflect the collaborative work of Alaskan educators and national experts from the nonprofit National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, and are informed by the input of Alaskan teachers and public comment.

Alaska Cultural Standards

Standards endorsed by the State Board of Education serve to encourage enrichment of the content standards. They are used as a guide to ensure that schools are aware of and sensitive to their surrounding physical and cultural environments.

Alaska Performance Standards

Standards adopted by the Alaska State Board of Education as specific statements of what students should know and be able to do. They were adopted in reading, writing, mathematics, and science at four benchmark levels.

Competency

A student’s ability to apply clusters of standards to execute a particular performance task.

Competency-Based Learning

Competency-based learning has the following components:

• • Learners are empowered to make important decisions about their learning experiences, how they will create and apply knowledge, and how they will demonstrate their learning.

  • Assessment is a meaningful, positive, and empowering learning experience for learners that yields timely, relevant, and actionable evidence.

  • Learners receive timely, differentiated support based on their individual learning needs.

  • Learners progress based on evidence of mastery.

  • Students learn actively using different pathways and varied pacing.

  • Strategies to ensure equity for all learners are embedded in the culture, structure, and pedagogy of schools and education systems.

  • Rigorous, common expectations for learning (knowledge, skills, and dispositions) are explicit, transparent, measurable, and transferable.

Content Objectives

Statements that document specific, essential tasks that learners are expected to accomplish in a given grade level or course.

Course/Grade Competencies

Competency statements customized to the content of a particular grade level, grade span, or course. These competencies represent the major concept areas within a discipline.

English Learner (EL)

Linguistically and culturally diverse students who have been identified (by a WIDA screener or other state approved placement criteria) as having levels of English language proficiency that require language support to achieve grade-level content in English. Also referred to as English Language Learner (ELL).

Graduate-Level Competencies

A set of competencies that may include academic and personal success skills in which all graduates of the Fairbanks North Star Borough School District should know and/or be able to do.

Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum

A guaranteed and viable curriculum (GVC) is one that guarantees equal opportunity for learning for all learners. Similarly, it guarantees adequate time for teachers to teach content and for stu learners dents to learn it. A guaranteed and viable curriculum is one that ensures that the curriculum being taught is the curriculum being assessed. It is viable when adequate time is ensured to teach all determined essential content.

Informational Text

A rhetorical structure of text designed to convey factual information rather than to tell or advance a narrative, and which characterizes most of the text found in textbooks. Informational text uses lists, comparing/contrasting, cause/effect, graphs and charts, etc.

Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP)

This is a researched-based and validated instructional model that has proven effective in addressing the academic needs of English learners throughout the United States.

WIDA

A 40+ state consortium that supports students, families, educators, and administrators with high-quality, research-based tools and resources dedicated to supporting the education of multicultural and multilingual learners. State of Alaska has adopted the WIDA English Language Development Standards as well as the WIDA developed English Language Proficiency assessments.

WIDA Online Screener

A computer-administered adaptive assessment that evaluates English language skills in the domains of reading, listening, writing, and speaking, and is used to determine eligibility for the ELL Program for students in grades 1-12 based on the cut scores set by State of Alaska. The WIDA screener is also available as a paper-based assessment.

WIDA Kindergarten Screener

Screener assessments developed by WIDA and approved by State of Alaska that evaluate English language skills in the domains of reading, listening, writing, and speaking, and is used to determine eligibility for the EL Program for students in grade K based on the cut scores set by State of Alaska.