Support Classes

English Language Development (ELD) Class

Course description:

This course provides a comprehensive curriculum for new arrivals, with accelerated support in foundational literacy skills. Designed for students with limited to moderate English experience who, based on placement test results, instructors’ recommendations, and ELPAC scores (with an overall ELPAC level of “novice/intermediate English learner”. 

The goal of instruction is to develop core grammar principles for students. In this class, aspects of spoken English are emphasized, including stress and intonation, individual phonemes, and awareness of connected and reduced speech. Some of the topics included are verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, word order, parts of speech, and modal auxiliaries. Students in this course learn to develop sentence-level writing and paragraph creation (culminating in short multi-paragraph writing). 

To achieve this goal, instruction focuses on developing students’ English competency by helping them to acquire skills in all basic skill areas, i.e., listening, speaking, reading, and writing. It emphasizes listening comprehension, speaking practice, extensive reading, and intensive general vocabulary development. In this class, students will build academic vocabulary for all of their core courses. 

Academic Support and Success Class

Course description:

This course is designed for students who struggle with the organizational and executive skills needed to complete their assignments. The Academic Support and Success Class offers explicit lessons on executive functioning strategies including: how to use a planner, create checklists for everyday tasks, setting time limits, establishing an effective routine for things such as homework. The goal for this course is to prepare students for grade-level integrated academic instruction and appropriate rigor.

In addition, this class offers students peer and teacher tutoring to help them develop their competency on core subjects: English, math, history, and science. Key core content standards across the four core areas are scaffolded to support students' access and acquisition of these targeted skills. By broadening and deepening students' foundational knowledge, students are able to successfully integrate into academic instruction and appropriate grade-level rigor. Cross curricular strategies are used to promote core course success. Topics include: reading fluency, systematic vocabulary development, reading comprehension, literary response and analysis, writing strategies and applications, writing conventions, organizational skills, and time management skills.