ELL and Special Education with Steve Gill

The ELL Critical Data Process – 3rd Edition

This book provides teams with the processes and materials to complete the ELL Critical Data Process for K-12 and preschool students including a data analysis process for districts to better understand their issues. Knowing the critical data to gather, the staff to involve, and having a process to follow will increase the likelihood of appropriate intervention. This resource kit contains resources and guiding documents to help understand whether targeted interventions or a special education referral is the appropriate action for your student. It includes a section, the SLD Mini-Matrix, that focuses on providing more information about students suspected of having learning disabilities. The category of SLD is the most problematic category for disproportionality of language learners. An appendix provides examples of how certain information processed during the ELL Critical Data Process is related to interventions or referral, with examples.

Language Acquisition

This booklet provides the reader information regarding struggles within the journey of language learning and ways to address these struggles. In addition, it provides the information needed to build a solid foundation for successful language acquisition, for themselves and/or for their students. It also provides practical steps to take that are described in a concrete and easy to understand manner. The booklet then goes on to discuss key practices and issues that must be addressed and/or utilized to help the reader and/or their students move from initial foundation building to a path toward successful new language mastery. The reader also receives an introduction to many topics that are important to all learners, yet has been kept at a length that increases the likelihood that the information will be read and implemented. The appendices provide two versions of step-by-step outlines of learning plans.

Evaluating ELL Students for the Possibility of Special Education Qualification – 2nd Edition

Evaluating ELL Students for Special Education is one of our earlier books and has been rewritten once. Over the process of writing our other books, about half of the content covered in this book has been updated and included in our other books. Lessons Learned while Evaluating ELL Students for Potential Special Education Qualification focuses on the active evaluation process. In contrast, Evaluating ELL Students for Special Education has a stronger section on data analysis of schools, districts, and programs. After talking with some of our readers, we have chosen to greatly reduce the price for Evaluating ELL Students for Special Education, instead of creating a 3rd edition. The sections on report writing content, ideas for interventions, data analysis, and face validity are the strengths of this book.

Lessons Learned While Evaluating ELL Students for Special Education Qualification

The process of evaluating a language learner for the possibility of special education eligibility provides many challenges. This book is the culmination of 30 years of working on increasing the likelihood of finding the students who truly have disabilities, versus the students whose struggles are primarily related to language acquisition. This book provides practical steps to achieve this. It also provides practical advice on how to help others, strangers to the situation, understand how the decision was made and what evidence was used. In the end, is the determinant factor language acquisition or language acquisition with a disability?

Processing Perspectives

Our perspective is created through our acculturation and the knowledge we gain in our lives. What if our perspective is leading to poor results? Perspective is not reality, and this disconnect can lead to difficulties in solving problems. This book uses stories and reflections to explore this problem and propose solutions. These stories and reflections were written by successful educators on topics close to their hearts. The stories let the reader see another way to look at an issue and can be used for personal growth or for professional development purposes. This book also includes an appendix that focuses on belief systems issues and an appendix that focuses on a new way to examine problems in skills development that children may face.

Special Education Referral or Not

This book, like the book on the ELL Critical Data Process, guides educators through a process to collect data, have critical conversations, and document their decisions in a matrix one data point at a time. The result is a pictorial image, the matrix, that represents the discussions of the team. This helps the team to determine whether to implement interventions, add more interventions, or make a special education referral. The discussions and work help the team to know the root cause of the presenting problem. Then the team designs a more targeted intervention or creates the groundwork for better analysis of the special education referral. If a special education evaluation is started, this process helps create data that can lead to a more accurate special education evaluation.

ELL Teachers and Special Education

This book is a self-study or group study course for ELL teachers to learn more about special education. The hope of the authors is that this information will help ELL teachers in their day-to-day work with special education staff, leading to better results for our students. The focus of this course came from asking special education staff what they want ELL teachers to know, presenting this information to ELL teachers, and then asking them what they still wanted to know. The course follows the following format: • Provide information on a topic • Quiz for knowledge and reflection • Provide additional information • Then to reflect again on what has been learned and what still needs to be learned. The book also covers three scenarios that follow a similar pattern.

The ELL Special Education Evaluation Workbook

Sample report for integrating ELL Critical Data Process factors into special education evaluation reports. This is a companion workbook for the ELL Critical Data Process book.