[Date]

[Your State’s Name] State Department of Education
[Your Superintendent’s Name] State Superintendent of Schools
[DOE Address]
[DOE City and State]

To whom It May Concern:

As an educator in the field of early childhood education, I am concerned that English Language Learners (ELLs) achieve language proficiency. My authentic learning experience as an educator within the classroom revealed the damage that occurs academically when an ELL is removed from the classroom two to three times a week for 30 to 45 minutes a day. This action creates a disconnect between the ELL’s social interaction in the classroom and the normal daily routines of the classroom. In today’s society, schools have experienced a dramatic increase in the enrollment of ELL students; this is due to immigration and migration of families to the United States from different parts of the world. There is a need to create a strategy that increases English language proficiency among ELLs. The state of [Your State’s Name] Public elementary schools have experienced language and dialect differences within the classroom, demonstrating that many ELLs are challenged to perform at proficiency levels in literacy, meet state standards and state assessments. Enrollment within schools in the partnership will continue to increase each year with ELLs and it is imperative to ensure that school systems accommodate all ELLs and help them reach their language potential.

Although there are already established methods within the [your state’s name] school systems to prevent isolation and low language proficiency, such as the pull-out method, an improved strategy is needed. There is an alternative system that is designed to ameliorate the language deficiency among ELLs. The Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol is a program that trains teachers to integrate academic language development into their lessons, through this method students are not removed from class, but remain and have the opportunity to learn and practice English as used in textbooks and lectures in each academic discipline.

This program allows teachers to modify their instruction so that they can meet ELLs where they are linguistically and build on what they already know.

As an advocate and future educator, I highly recommend this program for all teachers and schools. Our goal is to ensure that every ELL reaches their linguistic potential. The critical urgency of developing a strategy that accommodates incoming ELLs requires the support of students as learners, parents as support, teachers as instructors, and the state as a resource.

Thank you in advance for your consideration of the SIOP program.

Sincerely,

[Educator’s Name]