“What I have seen here in these three schools is the best kept secret in Homer. That’s a credit to the principals who put the staff together and to their leadership,” said Sandburg, who teaches ELL — English language learners — at the Mountain View school. The majority of her students have been in the country for less than two years.

Youngsters in the three Russian Old Believer communities at the head of Kachemak Bay enter kindergarten speaking only Russian, but by third grade are expected to take benchmark tests in English, said Ray Hillman, principal at Voznesenka and Razdolna schools.

Sandburg’s visit to the three schools was to observe ELL students and the teachers that work with them.

“All I’m here to do is enhance what you’re already doing,” Sandburg told them.

To help students successfully navigate the Russian-English gap, teachers described for Sandburg their use of picture collages, visualization, memorization, acting out of words, context, synonyms, antonyms and a host of other tools.

“You’re already doing wonderful things,” Sandburg said.

Her presentation highlighted the importance of explicitly teaching vocabulary. Two words a day. Ten words a week.

“That’s the piece that’s the key — vocabulary knowledge. This is where we really need to focus,” Sandburg said, adding that the link between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension is “why I believe comprehension scores are low.”

Illustrating her point and the importance of building vocabulary by explicitly teaching one word at a time, Sandburg wore a necklace with the word “explicitly” printed on an attached card. In addition to using a word-of-the-day necklace, other teaching strategies suggested by Sandburg included completing sentences, illustrating words, writing the word and several games found on the Web at www.theschoolbell.com.

Dividing words into three tiers based on words’ familiarity and use was another approach Sandburg addressed. Using a paragraph on marine mammals, she asked teachers to circle 10 words that would have to be learned by fourth-grade students in order to understand the text.

“If I took a word out of a sentence, could the student understand the meaning of the sentence?” she said. “When teaching ELL kids, it’s not the quantity (of words) that works. It’s the quality. We need to go deep into the meaning.”

Teachers’ heads nodded as they considered application of Sandburg’s suggestions. Some of the ideas, they said, would require modification.

“Every school, every situation is different,” Sandburg said.

Within KPBSD, there are 29 bilingual, or ELL, schools with students representing15 different languages, according to Miller.

“These teachers face incredible odds,” Sandburg said. Referring specifically to staff and faculty at Voznesenka, Razdolna and Kachemak Selo, she added, “There are teachers here teaching six grades and teaching exceedingly well. None of these teachers and tutors put self-needs first. It’s about putting the kids first. They have leadership, professional development, research-based programs, data, cohesiveness, collaboration, passion, flexibility — that’s what makes these successful schools.”

The students’ mastery of English has long-reaching effects, Hillman said.

“It lets them be more competitive in the outside world,” he said. “Their self-confidence really jumps.”

Sandburg agreed.

“These students are college material,” she said.