This year, nearly half the fourth-graders in Sharon Watford’s class at Lakewood Elementary School speak limited English. But when Watford told the story of “Penny the Goose” in English, everyone tuned in. Instead of sending students who haven’t mastered English out of their homerooms for reading and writing, educators say it makes more sense to let the students stay put and bring specialists into the regular classroom.

“When 60 percent of your class is ESL students, it’s sort of silly to pull them out,” said Kyra Raphaelidis, a teacher for the English as a Second Language program at Lakewood. “If you pull all the ESL kids from the classroom, you’re left with half the class.” Across the state, the number of English language learners with limited skills jumped 40 percent from 2002 to 2005, according to the state Department of Public Instruction. Students are classified as having “Limited English Proficiency” if they have scored below “superior” on a state-mandated test in listening, reading, writing and speaking English.

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