Measuring Program impact for ELL students

[Karen Saake]

Are there common tools, other than standardized test scores, for measuring a program's impact on ELL students? 

We are all constantly advocating for gardening and cooking programs in schools . An impact that seems to be persuasive to many organizations whether it is a state government office or a potential funding partner, such as a healthcare organization, is a positive impact on ELL students. In terms of speaking the language of ELL are there some common measurements for a program's positive impact on ELL students? 

Is it strictly standardized test scores (which seems like it would be difficult to isolate a single program's impact)?

Anecdotally we know that the kitchen and the garden provide students with a more equal playing field to be successful due to the hands-on nature of lessons. This often means we can teach by doing rather than speaking.

Any insight / terminology you could offer would be so helpful. 

Thank you so much,

Karen Saake 

--

Karen Saake
Garden Program Director, Sage Garden Project

(760) 815-4912 | ka...@sagegardenproject.org

[Whitney Cohen]

Hi Karen,

What a great question! Back in the late 1990s and early 2000s, researchers at UC Santa Cruz partnered with Life Lab (LifeLab.org) on a program called Language Acquisition through Science Education in Rural Schools (LASERS), funded by NSF to explore the impact of garden education on language acquisition. Here is a research paper summarizing their results, here is a video summarizing the study and talking with teachers involved, and here is a synopsis of their findings from the abstract: "The traditional approach to the education of language minority students separates English language development from content instruction because it is assumed that English language proficiency is a prerequisite for subject matter learning. The authors of this article take the alternate view that the integration of inquiry science and language acquisition enhances learning in both domains.”

I cannot find rubrics or tools they used to measure the students’ gains, but the full research paper includes a rubric they used to evaluate teachers’ understanding of this integrated approach to language learning, and the video describes using pre- and post-tests of oral language development, which showed gains of 3-5 months in a 1 month period of time (this is explained around minute 32 of the video).

This was a long time ago, but in digging it up I feel really inspired by what our predecessors got up to! :) Thanks for the inspiration!

I hope this is helpful,

Whitney

Whitney Cohen (pronoun: she)
Education Director, Life Lab
educ...@lifelab.org
831-459-5395
See how we’re changing the nature of education!

--
READ BEFORE REPLYING:
You can reply to the whole Google Group, just the sender, or both. When replying to this message make sure to check your recipient address line to confirm you are responding to who you want to be responding to.
ALSO check your subject line to be sure that the subject line is about the topic and NOT "digest for...."
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "School Garden Support Organization Network" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to school-garden-ne...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/school-garden-network/2ceedfb8-ddd7-45a0-ae60-41c10a215fben%40googlegroups.com.