Burton’s School

Level 1 students have had some exposure to English at kindergarten or primary school. They may be able to name letters, say letter sounds, read a few short words, sing parts of songs and use a few practiced patterns. They have extremely low language usage skills and require high scaffolding during activities. Level 1 students need exercises, activities, and tasks with visible step-by-step interactions to scaffold patterns in use.

Level 2 students have some autonomy encoding and decoding Level 1 words and patterns words. They can write some words by memory and use phonics to encode/decode words. They have had exposure to various content types, recycled topics, words, and patterns, but they require a lot of scaffolding to apply language to the tasks. They may be able to use short patterns between 3 to 5 words at different moments but cannot negotiate each subtask in English only.

Level 3 students are familiar with various exercises, activities, and tasks. They can read, write, listen and talk about the content with less teacher support while utilizing more alternative inputs (text, media, songs, etc.). They can link ideas together when situations are known and predictable. They are better at answering questions than asking questions. They can achieve higher accuracy and fluency through practiced contexts but struggle in new content types and situations.