Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education

Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE) "are English language learners who have experienced interrupted education due to war, civil unrest, migration, or other factors; who have never had the opportunity to participate in any type of schooling before entering school in the United States; or who have experienced limited education in their home countries due to lack of resources or trained teachers, the type of schooling they participated in, or other circumstances." (DeCapua & Marshall, 2010)

Join the MATSOL SLIFE Special Interest Group

General

• How to Support ELL Students with Interrupted Formal Education (SIFEs), Colorín Colorado

• Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education (SLIFE), ESOL in Higher Ed - Interview with Andrea DeCapua (Video)

Culturally Responsive Teaching

• Mutually Adaptive Learning Paradigm® (MALP®): A culturally responsive instructional model for struggling language learners. It is intended to transition these learners from their preferred and customary ways of learning to Western-style formal education by integrating key elements of formal education while acknowledging and balancing the needs, preferences, and priorities of struggling language learners.  With MALP®, instructors have a concrete, practical set of guidelines to follow in designing and delivering instruction to this population.
• Principles for Culturally Responsive Teaching, Education Alliance, Brown University

Project-Based Learning (PBL)

• from Buck Institute for Education (BIE)
• from Edutopoia

WIDA

• WIDA Focus on SLIFE: Students with Limited or Interrupted Formal Education

Documentaries

• Strangers No More
  
• Hard Truth, Levity, and Hope (Lowell High School)
  
• Children in No Man’s Land
  
• Which Way Home
  

Organizations

• CAL - Center for Applied Linguistics
• Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services