Integrated ELD: ‘Better access to instruction’

Amy McConnell, director of curriculum and instruction, and Damien Elderkin, district Title III coordinator, provided an update on the Integrated ELD program at the May 8 HRCSD board meeting.

Essentially, Integrated ELD minimizes the number of instructional disruptions to a student’s day by providing services in tandem with what is already being taught in the classroom. It’s similar to AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination), which utilizes different teaching strategies to meet a common goal — the “how” to teach, not the “what.”

The content area, coupled with ELD standards, provides the structure to integrate the lesson, which benefits the entire class. Lessons should all be structured to offer daily practice in four domains; reading, writing, listening, and speaking.

Historically, ELD students in elementary school have been pulled out of the classroom for instruction. When Parkdale teachers asked then Principal Gus Hedberg if there was a way to serve students in the classroom, he reached out to McConnell and Bill Newton — at the time, McConnell was assistant director of curriculum and instruction, and Newton director — who in turn reached out to the Oregon Department of Education.

“We called ODE and got additional information, because we’ve been doing [ELD instruction] one way for a very long time,” McConnell said. “We wanted to make sure we were still meeting the guidelines of the service model. Our partners at ODE said this is actually the direction they want districts to go.”

During the 2022-2023 school year, the district began working on a “continuum of service” plan (see sidebar). Administrators, ELD specialists and classroom teachers worked together to create what McConnell called a “guiding document” for anyone who wished to pilot the program during the 2023-2024 school year.

Elderkin said a continuum of service plan was developed “because we realized that our ELL plan wasn’t representing what we were trying to do,” and allowed the district to identify ways the program could be more flexible — and what needed to be more rigid.

“We went from trying to identify what our schools were doing to really getting deep into what integrated ELD is,” he said. “And this is something that we’re doing in Hood River, but it’s also being explored across the state.”

All of this year’s work means next fall, teachers will have an Integrated ELD handbook that provides the framework and long term plans “not with the idea that all schools will be doing Integrated ELD, but that district resources will be set up so any school or grade level or administrator or teacher who wants to try it can have the resources they need to do so,” Elderkin said.

While it’s hard work, he added, classroom teachers and ELD specialists agree it’s worth the effort. “We believe this effort will be a driver to align other inclusive practices to provide better access to instruction, facilitate alignment to other district initiatives such as AVID and Sheltered Instruction, and improve student achievement and close the opportunity gap,” he said.