English as a Second Language - Chester Community Charter School

Chester Community Charter School’s mission is to equip English Language Learners with the language proficiency and independence necessary to meet or exceed state and district content standards while preserving the individual’s language and culture.

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Educational Approach

CCCS has selected English as a Second Language (ESL) as its educational approach. ESL instruction is an academic discipline that is designed to teach ELLs social and academic skills as well as the cultural aspects of the English language necessary to succeed in an academic environment and contribute to society. The ESL program model that CCCS has chosen is a push in/pull out model.

What is ESL?

English as a Second Language (ESL) is an educational approach for students who qualify. At registration, all families complete the “Home Langauge Survey”. This informs Chester Community Charter School (CCCS) if another language is spoken and understood at home other than English. If another language is used at home, a student is screened on their English abilities. Depending on the score of the screener, a student maybe placed into ESL instruction for extra English language support. In ESL, a student receives services three to five times per week for 45-60 minute sessions to strengthen their English listening, speaking,reading and writing abilities. The overall goal for ESL services is to better assist a student in being successful in both the general education classroom and daily living.

Instructional Approach

At CCCS, the ESL program uses the push-in/pull-out method of instruction. Depending on students' individual needs, ESL instructors vary their time between pushing into the regular education classrooms and pulling out students into the ESL classroom for direct language instruction.

Curriculum

Curriculum

Our core curriculum for K-5th ELLs is Ballard & Tighe’s Carousel of Ideas. Carousel of Ideas is a comprehensive, research-based language development program for students of beginning through advanced levels of language proficiency.

For 6-8th ELLs, Ballard & Tighe’s Champion of Ideas is the core curriculum. It’s a rigorous, research-based language development program for all levels of language proficiency. For all grades, the program along with curriculums, focus on language, vocabulary, reading, and writing skills in English.

Besides the core curriculum, the program uses a variety of supplemental materials to support all learners. Some materials, include:

Ballard & Tighe’s Frames for Fluency (listening/speaking aids)
Raz-Plus (All learning domain practice)
Brain-Pop

Assessments

Assessments

Pennsylvania is a member of the WIDA consortium and CCCS has adopted all of their assessments for our ESL program. Once a student’s Home Language Survey and Family Interviews are completed, the WIDA Screener is given to potentially identify and determine ELL instruction.

The ACCESS for ELLs is an English language proficiency assessment, which is given annually to students in kindergarten through 12th grades. It’s given as a way to monitor student progress in acquiring academic English. The ACCESS test provides teachers with results that help guide curriculum and lessons. Similar to the PSSA, it provides helpful information to demonstrate the effectiveness of the ESL program and the growth of our students over the years.