Westerville Central Assistant Principal Brad Adams addresses visitors.
Westerville Central High School, home to some 1,800 pupils, is continually striving to evolve to meet the needs of its diverse English Language Learner student population. On October 6, hundreds of educators were in Columbus for the State Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) conference. A busload of them chose to participate in a site visit to Westerville Central to learn about its success with the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) model, a research-based and validated instructional model that has proven effective in addressing the academic needs of English learners throughout the United States. SIOP consists of eight interrelated components:
- Lesson Preparation;
- Building Background;
- Comprehensible Input;
- Strategies;
- Interaction;
- Practice/Application;
- Lesson Delivery; and
- Review & Assessment.
Using instructional strategies connected to each of these components, teachers are able to design and deliver lessons that address the academic and linguistic needs of English learners.
Westerville Central has 109 English as a Second Language (ESL) students who speak 17 languages from 20 countries. Sixty-seven are now in one or more SIOP classes, which has resulted in vastly decreased failure rates. The TESOL visitors left with valuable information about how Central is helping its ESL learners to succeed.