Special Factors and Issues Involved in Identifying if a Problem stems from Normal Language Acquisition or is a Special Education Issue
In order to determine if a problem stems from normal language acquisition or is a special education issue, the ELL teacher as part of the pre-referral team, must assist in collecting information regarding the student’s culture, educational history and prior academic training, progression in L1 and L2 as well as information from home and family to discover all possible contributing …show more content…
• Does the student comprehend directions and classroom instruction?
• Has the student been in a refugee situation or other situation causing post-traumatic stress disorder?
Steps in the Referral Process The steps that a teacher would take prior to and during the referral to special education process as detailed by the Washington State Transitional Bilingual Instruction Program Guidelines pamphlet (2011) and listed on page four of this essay. A more concise list of steps could be:
• Documentation of collaboration with classroom teacher, ELL staff, parents, and other support program staff to implement modifications and interventions and the subsequent data indicating the effectiveness of interventions.
• Notify the parents of difficulties as well as collect additional information from parents and gather parent input.
• Complete referral documenting interventions, information collected from a variety of sources, description and history of the observed problem, and parental input.
• Request meeting with school multidisciplinary team to present referral information and make request for the student to be