About the English Learner Education (ELE) Program
Wakefield’s ELE Program is designed to support the development of English language proficiency for students who are considered English Learners (ELs). Wakefield Public Schools values the diverse linguistic and cultural richness that our EL students bring to the school community. Current languages represented in our schools are Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole, Vietnamese, Chinese, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Ukrainian, Italian, Gujarati, Korean, Hindi, Albanian, Khmer, and Nepali.
The ELE Department strives to empower ELs to achieve social and academic language proficiency by ensuring equitable access to opportunities that promote language acquisition, biliteracy, and lifelong learning.
Our Program utilizes a Sheltered English Immersion (SEI) instructional model, which consists of:
- Sheltered Content Instruction (SCI) - Instruction in core content, grade-level classes taught by content-area licensed and SEI-endorsed teachers.
- English as a Second Language (ESL) - Additional linguistic support for ELs delivered through systematic, explicit, sustained focus on language and literacy. WPS utilizes both push-in and pull-out model ESL instruction, based on the needs of the students.