English Language Learners (ELL) Program

Teacher: Armando Basulto (armando.basulto@bcsemail.org)

Program Goals
Buncombe County Public Schools strives to maintain an ELL Program that works in conjunction with the wider school system to provide equal educational opportunities for students with diverse language backgrounds in our system. All students have the same access to content, facilities, and the full range of programs BCS offers.

BCS works to foster an educational environment where all students can maintain pride in their own cultural and linguistic heritages while developing the knowledge and skills necessary for becoming positive, productive members of society.

The ELL Program's ultimate goal is that each Limited English Proficient student in our system eventually reach grade-level English proficiency in all domains: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, as measured by the state academic assessments.

Students who have been identified as Limited English Proficient based on English proficiency test results will participate in the ELL Reading class in order to help them be more successful as they adjust to their many academic demands.

ELL Reading
This course stresses reading skills while integrating listening, speaking and writing. Students learn reading strategies through teacher modeling and practice in reading different genres through self-selected reading. This class also increases academic vocabulary so that students can feel more confident as they read in different content areas. Reading skills such as monitoring comprehension, activating and connecting, questioning, inferring meaning, determining importance, summarizing and synthesizing will be practiced.