Learning the Language

Mary Ann Zehr is an assistant editor at Education Week. She has written about the schooling of English-language learners for more than nine years and understands through her own experience of studying Spanish that it takes a long time to learn another language well. Her blog will tackle difficult policy questions, explore learning innovations, and share stories about different cultural groups on her beat.

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Mixing Students of Different English Levels

It's more common for schools to group English-language learners into classes according to their level of English proficiency than to mix students with a wide range of fluency levels in the same class, particularly for English class.

But an article in the March/April issue of the Harvard Education Letter tells how three high schools are taking the less-common approach of using heterogeneous groupings.

And if you want to read more about the same topic, see a Dec. 5 article I wrote for Education Week about Brooklyn International High School. That school teaches English-language learners with different levels of fluency in the same classroom, and takes that instruction to a level that I'd never observed before at any other school.


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Mary Ann Zehr

Mary Ann Zehr
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