Who takes the ELPA test?
If parents register their home as primarily Spanish speaking, their child will be administered the ELPA placement screener test within the first two weeks of being enrolled in school. If the student does not pass the screener, they are provided services and will take the ELPA test each spring until they pass. The test progressively gets harder. The test is banded, so there is a K-1 test, 2-3, 4-5, and so on.
What does the ELPA test assess?
Students will take four sections covering Reading, Writing, Listening, and Speaking. Each test can take students between 45 minutes and 2 hours.
READING: (link to examples)
- Extended informational passages with questions
- Extended literary passages with questions
- Match a picture to a word
- Match a picture to a sentence
- Read a letter from someone and answer questions
- Short informational passages with questions
- Short literary passages with questions
WRITING: (link to examples)
- Editing tasks where students choose the best word to complete the sentence
- Build a sentence
- Given a storyboard of pictures, the student must write a short story
- Finish a word by adding the correct letters
- Write an opinion about a topic
- Write questions
LISTENING: (link to examples)
- Follow directions of clicking on something and moving things to the right location
- A student is giving a presentation and students answer questions about it
- Listen and match a sentence
- Listen and match a word
- Listen for information to fill in a diagram
- Listen to a conversation and answer questions
- Listen to people talking and sort information based on who says what
- Listen to a short story and answer questions
SPEAKING: (link to examples)
- Given a picture, students must answer multiple questions in complete sentences
- Analyze two pictures and choose which they prefer and why
- Compare and contrast two pictures
- Listen to a conversation and answer questions about it in complete sentences
- Read a book report and answer questions about it
- Listen and watch a science demonstration and then retell in your own words
Tips and Tricks
For the reading section, I teach students to really look at the questions and figure out what they are asking kids to do. I do mini-lessons on words like infer, summarize, main idea, and dictionary definitions visuals.
The writing section is really searching for kids to understand how to write short responses and paragraphs. They want answers to be written in complete sentences and to use prepositions correctly. It is important to teach students transition and temporal words. I did a mini-lesson on opinion paragraphs, sequence words, and writing strong questions.
Now that I’ve researched, I focus a lot on teaching students to read and listen to questions before listening to the directions or prompt. It is important to teach students how to pause the text and relisten as often as they need to.
Students usually struggle the most on the speaking portion. It doesn’t have to do with them not being able to speak, it has to do with their confidence level. Some speak too quietly or give short brief responses. I spend a lot of time getting kids used to talking into a microphone and listening to themselves. One strategy that I have found really works for my kids is having them write out their answers, check that their sentences make sense, and then they can read it into the mic. Just like the written section, students are expected to answer in complete sentences. Even if they ask a yes or no question, students should answer with: “Yes, I do enjoy playing at the park.”
If you’re searching for resources to prep your students, check out my store. I have provided links above to specific practice packets. My newest resource is a yearlong workbook. It is ready to print, copy, and go! This resource is used during our ELL intervention time as an Entry task. Our teacher took the first eight weeks to really scaffold each type of question. From that point on, students were expected to be able to complete it on their own and then check with a partner, while the teacher worked one on one with a question type a student was struggling with.
