At Urban Academy, 85% of our students are English language learners. To support all of our students, we provide English language teachers who focus on building background knowledge, vocabulary and grammar. Our English language teachers work closely with classroom teachers to co-plan, assess and help differentiate instruction. Staff regularly participate in professional development to build EL strategies, such as RISA dialogues, turn and talks, sentence frames and Total Physical Response. New EL students are screened at the beginning of the year and participate in statewide WIDA Access Testing in the winter.
