Writing with Dr. Mercuri

Sandra Mercuri has invited me to collaborate with her on some writing about our experiences last year.  We've chosen to focus first on instructional planning and delivery in a dual language school, so I'm trying to gather my thoughts and draft an outline for what that article could entail.  I don't have anything on paper but have lots of thoughts running through my head.  I'm really excited about this opportunity!

There's no EASY way of doing it

As I've gotten feedback (both formally and informally) from staff as part of our mid-year reflection and evaluation process, it's clearer and clearer that there will never be an easy way to implement a two-way immersion program.  Now, it will hopefully get easier and easier each year--due to familiarity, practice, and previous lessons learned--but it will always be a more difficult alternative to a traditional all-English approach.  During yesterday's visit from Dr. Mercuri, teachers shared their reflections on learning (specific to dual language) thus far, by answering these questions:

What have you learned so far?  ....specifically in terms of...

• planning curriculum
• delivering instruction
• biliteracy development
• how students learn in a dual language setting

What has been your greatest accomplishment so far this year?

What is your biggest need in terms of professional development/support? (can be reviewing something we've already learned about or something completely new)

A few things that stuck out to me from the various reflection discussions:

Many teachers articulated a very clear understanding of many things we'd learned....helping me see that they have learned a great deal and now just need more of my support in certain areas.  It was also a good assessment in some respects.  For example, many teachers reported confidence that using bilingual pairs has gone well, however my classroom observations have helped me see that there is much still to be done around using bilingual pairs much more consistently and purposefully.  By no means is this my teachers' fault!  I've essentially done little to no training around bilingual pairs and how to facilitate bilingual pair cooperative learning in ways that truly promote academic language use.  Basically it helped me see that in certain areas of dual language, teachers have both knowledge and skill, in others they have the knowledge but still need help developing the skills, and yet in other areas they don't yet have the knowledge necessary to move forward.  Always exciting was the investment evident in almost every teacher.   One teacher put it something like this:  "Some parts of our model are nearly impossible for us as teachers right now, but they are so critical for the students."  I really respect this attitude--it exemplifies being sincerely student-centered.  Much of this year has been about this--giving up personal preferences and ways of doing things to ensure that we do what's absolutely best for the children.   For example, dividing language by teacher and team teaching, collaborating to plan together, ensuring consistency across partner classrooms in physical environment, procedures and routines (still a huge area for improvement on our campus), focusing instruction on content and language objectives, implementing cooperative learning structures to encourage student discussion and collaboration, etc, are all very difficult to do!  However, we do them because we know it's what's best for our students.

The biggest concerns/drawbacks of the way we've done things thus far are:

1) the time crunch inherent in a dual language schedule (especially a team teaching model where you switch children mid-way through the day)

2) getting to know students at a really personal level is much more difficult when you have 50 kids and only see each of them for 1/2 a day

These were my biggest concerns as a dual language teacher myself.  I'm trying my best to come up with some possible solutions.   I've already begun playing around with some very very rough drafts of possibilities for next year's schedule...a big priority being sneaking in some additional personal planning time for teachers.  I think I'll be able to accomplish this with a 45 - 50 min common conference time & an additional 30 min personal planning--or something comparable.  I've also begun playing with the idea of having each teacher instruct a specific class for an entire day (while the partner teacher instructs the other class) and then switches every day.  This would allow us to continue our team teaching model and divide language by teacher, but it would also loosen some of the strict constraints on time caused by the 1/2 day switch and would give teachers a full day at a time with each group of children--this can make a big difference in bonding with them and getting to know them.  They would then see each class every other day.  It would eliminate the need for additional preview-view-review planning (this would take care of itself) and it would eliminate the frustration some teachers are feeling every 3 weeks picking up a content area they haven't see for weeks and trying to "get back in the loop."  It would require careful planning of every vocabulary term in both languages.  It would also eliminate the need to "switch" homerooms at mid-year since students would begin and end the day in both classrooms--classroom A one day, classroom B the next.  It would allow every teacher to teach every content area;  this has both benefits and drawbacks.  Benefits:  You're never "lost" and can facilitate powerful connections across the content areas because you're teaching them all.  Students get an entire day from the same teacher, improving connection and flow across the day.  Also, it would reduce the amount of lesson planning each teacher would do, allowing us to return more to the model of lesson planning we followed in 2008-09.  Drawbacks:  It would take more time to prep materials/manipulatives as you'll be teaching every subject every day.  It would take some careful planning to manage student materials.  Another possibility (though I don't think teachers would really go for it) is that students stay in the same classroom every day, but the teacher switches.  This would have its own benefits and drawbacks, but would ensure consistency of room and materials organization like never before.  All things to think about.  :)

If we went down a road like those I've outlined, I think that in K/1 we would still divide students by language for GR/Centers, but in 2nd grade (either BOY or MOY) we'd transition them to getting GR/Centers in both languages.  Rise and additional interventions would likely still be in L1, at least for literacy.

I'll be doing a lot more thinking, planning, and discussing with a number of people before seriously considering any of the above options as viable.  Part of me has to realize as well that there will never be an "easy" effective dual language model and that every single approach will have both its benefits and its drawbacks.  In the end, we may decide to keep everything as it is.  I do want to find any way I can to still meet student needs in a powerful way but also provide staff with the time and support they need to keep morale high and attrition low.

Mid-Year Reflection

Our first semester of two-way immersion is almost over. Since my last post we've had two more visits from Dr. Mercuri. She spent a half day with each grade level. Some big "illuminations" resulting from the meeting with each grade level:

1st grade: We really began to think long and hard about language objectives and how to craft them. We came to realize that it doesn't necessarily have to be a separate "self-contained" language objective for every daily class period. Instead, we learned that language objectives within a given content area can be longer-term (ie: weekly), but from this objective we should "unpack" daily, scaffolded, "bite-sized" daily objectives. For example, in a science unit on rocks, we might craft the sequence of language objectives something like this:

• Monday: Students will identify rocks with specific characteristics (ex: individual or groups of students have a few rocks and hold up rock(s) as teacher calls out characteristics, such as "smooth," "rough," "black," "shiny," etc) This is a LISTENING language objective--students don't yet have to produce language but they are listening and comprehending.
• Tuesday: Students will orally describe a rock. (ex: student has a particular rock and must orally describe it, perhaps using a sentence frame to support language use at the sentence level; "My rock is _______.") Students are producing language orally--this is a SPEAKING language objective. For beginning language learners we might only expect the use of one particular adjective.
• Wednesday: Students will write a sentence describing a rock. (ex: student does what he/she did yesterday, but this time in writing) This is a WRITING language objective--we might even use a more complex sentence frame today to encourage children to use more than one adjective in describing their rock: "My rock is _____ and _____.")
• Thursday: Students will compare 2 rocks. (ex: students work in bilingual pairs and orally complete the following sentence frames: Our rocks are similar because they both _________. Our rocks are different because one is ______ but the other is ________. Perhaps they could use a Venn Diagram to prepare for this more complex level of thinking and language production.)

So on and so forth...

I had a huge light go on for me--I realized that language objectives were tightly connected to different modes of thinking and different ways of visually organizing information. I began seeing how the same graphic organizers and sentence frames could be used across all content areas to promote high level thinking and explanations of such thinking. I immediately went to the Thinking Maps website (www.thinkingmaps.com), pulled out release TAKS tests from grades 3 - 6, etc. and began drafting a set of graphic organizers/thinking maps, accompanied by general sentence frames, that we could use to much more systematically and powerfully build comprehension, high-level thinking, and academic language production. For example, a simple Venn Diagram for comparing and contrasting has 2 sentence frames connected to it: ______ and _____ are similar because __________. ______ and ______ are different because ____________. This could be used in reading, writing, math, science, social studies, anywhere!

Here are some quick examples...





We now just need to translate into Spanish.


Kinder: The Kinder team had been experimenting with Preview-View-Review quite a bit and decided that instead of adding Preview-View-Review in their regular lesson plans, they'd create a document that just contained their P-V-R plans. It was obvious they were a little further along in this area than the other grade levels. Some great things kinder is doing to make P-V-R more powerful:

• posting same vocabulary words (in different languages) with the same visual in both the Spanish and English classrooms
• when content areas transfer to the partner teacher (every three weeks), teachers exchange anchor charts (ex: a reading workshop chart outlining what readers do and don't do during independent reading) so that the partner teachers can recreate them with the same visuals in the other language.
• every classroom has the same unit anchor chart (for example, during a unit on the 5 senses, each teacher posted the outline of a child on the inside of their classroom door with the title: How did I use my 5 senses today? or ¿Cómo usé mis 5 sentidos hoy? Teachers would give students a chance to review their learning each day (from either English or Spanish classes) and record its connection to the 5 senses using this ongoing anchor chart)
• Whole grade level team planning of P-V-R for the upcoming week

I'm going to stop and explain a little bit about the evolution of structured collaboration on our campus (as I think I've neglected to explain it here)--we've understood more and more clearly the importance of team planning in our model. Every grade level has 60 min of common conference time per day (in addition to about 110 min of personal planning time scattered throughout the week). The common conference times have some very specific objectives:

• Monday: Grade Level Team Meetings (facilitated by the grade level leader--agenda items can cover anything and everything. It's often about logistical things--field lessons, homework, upcoming events, etc--though 2 grade levels have often started spending about 15 min each week discussing a book they're all reading). Once every three weeks team leaders are expected to dedicate 15 - 20 min of this meeting to discussing students teachers are considering referring to the SAC (Student Assistance Committee--part of RTI). This is called Pre-SAC.
• Tuesday: Personal Planning (we try to leave Tuesday open as this is when we schedule SAC meetings, LPAC meetings for ELLs, etc. Lesson plans are always due Tuesday nights, so this, hopefully, gives teachers the chance to sometimes work on them during Tuesday conference.
• Wednesday: Same Language Partner Planning -- every grade level has 2 English teachers and 2 Spanish teachers. They divide the planning together. Let's say that for a given 3 week period Spanish teachers are teaching Reading Workshop and Math (instead of Writing Workshop & Our World--taught in English for those same 3 weeks). Every teacher also teaches Language and Word Study every day, so that children get this in both languages every day. Spanish Teacher A would create the lesson plans for Reading Workshop & Math while Spanish Teacher B would create the plans for Language and Word Study and Centers. During Wednesday's conference period, they review all plans together so that both teachers are on the same page and fully understand the lesson plans created by the other, have the resources they need, etc.
• Thursday: Bilingual Team Planning -- After both English teachers and both Spanish teachers get on the same page within their respective languages of instruction on Wednesdays, they are ready to come together to collaborate across languages on Thursdays. My teachers have tried several different things for this meeting--first it was just in pairs (the Spanish teacher and English teacher that teach the same 2 homerooms), then it was as an entire grade level (both English teachers and both Spanish teachers), but both my Kinder and 1st grade teams have decided upon a balance of the two. For the first 30 minutes of this meeting, they meet as an entire grade level and identify key areas they need the partner language teachers to preview or review for. This helps every teacher of the team better understand how their instruction contributes to the overarching unit of inquiry and also how their teaching helps reinforce instruction in the other lanuage. It also helps them identify how everyone can help children make critical connections across languages and transfer knowledge and skills from one to the other. The 2nd 30 minutes of the meeting is spent in separate bilingual pairs (just 2 teachers)--here they discuss individual students they teach together, share data, agree on key procedures or approaches that need to be kept consistent across both classrooms, etc. Last week (week of Dec 14 - 18) I observed both Kinder and 1st conduct this bilingual team/pair meeting and saw we've come a loooong way compared to the beginning of the year!)
• Friday: Problem of Practice (or) Personal Planning -- I reserve Fridays for grade level "problem of practice" meetings. Or, if this doesn't happen, teachers have additional personal planning time. Problem of Practice meetings can be really powerful. This is where I can address common needs across the grade level--as I observe and debrief with all first grade teachers, I might find that there are certain areas of instruction in which all of first grade could benefit from support in. So, I facilitate "problem of practice" meetings where I'll help develop grade levels around a particular aspect of instruction. We might watch video, observe in other classrooms, hold discussions, etc. Some example of "problem of practice" meetings are: Writing strong objectives, Posting and communicating objectives to students, Increasing student engagement to 100%, etc.. Often a by-product of these meetings are observation templates that teachers use to conduct peer observations...10 min "peeks" into a colleague's classroom, focused on our current problem of practice. It makes sure teachers step outside of their own isolated classrooms every once in a while. I expect each teacher to conduct a minimum of one 10-min peer observation every 2 weeks. My assistant tracks completion of this expectation.

That sums up how we've structured collaborative planning. Teams are learning to be better about assigning a time-keeper and note-taker each meeting. They're also reporting that without these meetings (Wednesday and Thursday meetings in particular) their following week of instruction can sometimes really suffer. As a school lead team, we're working to make sure we never interfere with Wed and Thurs meetings if at all possible. We're working to really safeguard this time and treat it as something of very high-priority.

I also dedicated an entire Faculty Wednesday afternoon professional development session (students have early release so we can hold PD on Wednesdays) to "fine-tuning" collaboration. I gave grade level teams substantial time to discuss and plan together. They had to identify clear objectives for each collaboration session, articulate standing agenda items (and time allocation for each), and identify common obstacles to meeting efficiency & efficacy and brainstorm solutions. They had to discuss meeting facilitation and roles/responsibilities of each team member. They reviewed team norms and re-committed themselves to this. Each grade level turned in a written synopsis of their decisions to me (I, in turn, reviewed these with Dr. Mercuri for feedback--she was highly complimentary of the strides teachers were making in this area).

I also talked to her about another challenge that teachers keep bringing up--the tri-weekly transfer of content areas (all except Language and Word Study). Teachers have expressed that they feel "out of it" when it comes back around to them to teach each content area every 3 weeks. They feel unsure about what objectives have been taught and how individual students are progressing toward mastery of these objectives. I discussed several solutions with Dr. Mercuri:

• Changing subjects bi-weekly or weekly: This would shorten the time during which teachers don't teach a particular content area, leaving them less "in the dark" about what's being taught. Dr. Mercuri recommended we consider this--either piloting this year or considering for next year. Melissa (grade 1 team leader) posed the idea to her team but they preferred to keep it tri-weekly.
• Improving communication between bilingual partner teachers: If we don't change the timeframe of content area transfers, then we need to improve flow of information between the teachers sharing students. I proposed one idea to teachers and they seemed to like it--I suggested that once every 3 weeks that their co-teacher cover class for the morning or afternoon, giving them the chance to spend a whole AM or PM session in their team teacher's classroom--watching carefully how and what is being taught in each content area to facilitate a more seamless transfer of subjects from one language to the other. I was very honest about my only worry--that it would taken them from their own instruction too often, but my teachers' feedback was that, at least in these beginning stages, the longterm benefits would outweigh that drawback. They felt this would really help transfer of subjects.
• Finally, I need to figure out how to better use Faculty Wednesday (periodically) to facilitate transfer of student achievement data across team teachers. We've done a couple of exercises, but nothing that really has become an ingrained and regular practice for us. One data analysis activity we did do a month (or so) ago seemed to be very powerful in getting bilingual teaching pairs to look at data together. I printed out the most current student achievment data in reading levels, high frequency word mastery, math objective mastery, etc. Teachers worked together to "color-code" results according to the following categories (I gave them clear quantitative guidelines around this too): CRITICAL (far below expected standard--red); BORDERLINE (below expected standard--yellow); MASTERY (meeting expected standard--green); EXCEEDING (well above expected standard--blue). Using this color-coded spreadsheets, teaching pairs then created student priority lists for each homeroom, with the highest-need students at the top. We divided the list into English-dominant and Spanish-dominant students, so we could prioritize within language dominance. I also added a column for "behavior-priority" children. Sometimes a child might not be struggling academically, but might be a top-priority child (for interventions and support) due to behavior. I'm trying to use these priority lists to help me better focus my observations and debriefs of teachers. That particular activity is one I plan to replicate periodically as we get more data.

VACATION PRIORITIES

During this Christmas vacation, I want to take some time to do the following:

1. Think through a pilot of changing our tri-weekly subject transfers to weekly or bi-weekly. Perhaps Kinder would be willing to pilot this? I'll consider presenting the idea to them but will not force anything at this point. They are already trying so many new things--any other changes/tweaks will require 100% investment on their part in order to be succesful.
   
2. Analyze progress monitoring reading data for our 1st grade Spanish dominant students reading at a critically low level. Figure out some short-term and long-term solutions.
3. Start planning what kind of curriculum work must be done in preparation for the 2010 - 11 school year and when/how it will be done. What materials need to be purchased? What professional development needs to take place?
4. Other reflections on the past semester... Dr. Mercuri and I had a conference call just over a week ago. She was very kind and complimentary as she praised the work that has gone on at our campus thus far. She encouraged me to record as much as I could concerning the process we've gone through. She mentioned that she's considering writing/editing a book about curriculum planning for dual immersion programs, and asked me to write down as much as possible in preparation for potentially contributing our school's experience to this collection of articles/essays. What an opportunity that would be. For that reason I'm trying to get as much as possible down in this blog. I know some things make sense only to me, but hopefully it will be reminder enough for me to come back to and really get down on paper so that other schools can benefit from our successes and victories.
   

Who am I? Where am I?

Whoa. I knew this whole thing was gonna rock my world but I didn't quite know just how much. Yes, I come in with experience as a former dual language teacher. Yes, I've read everything I can get my grubby li'l hands on about the research and practice of two-way immersion. Yes, I'm insanely passionate about the dual language approach. Yes, I've visited multiple dual language schools and spoken with dozens of administrators leading dual language schools across the country. Yes, my school is filled with teachers who, for the most part, are 100% bought in to our program. Yes, I've hired a consultant to help guide me through the instructional planning part of putting dual language on the ground. So why do I feel only slightly conscious--like I was hit on the head with a brick on, say, August 24th (AKA the day the children arrived) and am only now (barely) beginning to come to my senses?

The first few weeks and all the additional transitions that are a regular part of a day when team teaching (moving back and forth between the English and Spanish teachers' classrooms) had me wondering if this was the right way to make the model work. However, this past week or two the children seem so much more settled and comfortable with the transitions. I'm also beginning to see the power of dividing language by teacher--there are children who would otherwise refuse to speak in Spanish that are busting out full sentences simply because they know their Spanish teacher will only ever speak just Spanish to them. Consciously or subconsciously, their brain knows that "when I'm in Sra. Herrera's classroom, I've just gotta speak Spanish." We see the same in our English classrooms too. The model is beginning to bear fruit.

We are now also starting to encounter anxious parents who want immediate results in their child's second language process. One already withdrew and another is threatening to withdraw; I have a meeting with this parent on Monday to (hopefully!) convince her to keep her daughter in the program. This family is Spanish-dominant and the mother is concerned that, 6 weeks into kindergarten, she is not yet reading in English. She says that the family moved to the U.S.A. so that the children could get a good English education so she's concerned that by her daughter receiving 50% of instruction in Spanish her growth in English will be slowed. I'm going to have to break it to her that we wouldn't typically expect her child to be reading at all this early in kinder--even in her dominant language! I also need to help her understand the (looooong) language learning process and the role childrens' native language plays in the learning of the 2nd language. Finally, I'll whip out the trusty Thomas and Collier graph and show, in no uncertain terms, that the long term results of bilingual instruction are staggering. It helps English achievement tremendously! I'm looking forward to this parent meeting.

These anxieties are normal right now--parents don't realize how long this process takes! That's why we ask them to commit to our program for 5 - 7 years. It really does take that long for young children (still developing ther first language) to acquire a second language at high academic levels. I've also decided that I need to hold a (minimum) quarterly information meeting for parents who haven't yet attended one or parents who still have questions and concerns. We held several last year and include an overview of dual language in our recruitment information session, but--other than that--haven't held any info sessions this year. Definitely an oversight I won't repeat next year.

Teachers are really starting to get into the groove of things. Tomorrow will mark the end of each grade level's first unit of inquiry. They're starting to better see how their units can truly become transdisciplinary and how they can weave their unit concepts and topics throughout every content area for a much richer and contextualized dual language experience. I also had Melissa and Ilse, an English/Spanish team in first grade, share excitedly that they had worked together for Mel to preview dictionaries and their format in English in preparation for a science activity in which students created huge dictionary posters with vocab from their current Fabrics unit. They're beginning to find opportunities to apply preview-view-review strategies across the languages. Bravo!

Dr. Mercuri had her first observation/debrief consulting day with us on Thurs 9/24. We saw every teacher in action and met with grade levels for team meetings. She provided some feedback and also listened to their questions and concerns. Some of my big takeaways from that day--

**all roads must lead to meaning--in a dual language school we can never teach anything that doesn't incorporate comprehension and meaning.

**we need to increase and improve oral language experiences. I learned that oral language experiences should encourage students not just to listen to their second language but to produce it. Therefore we need a lot more singing, chants, etc. We also need to consistently employ the daily news oral language structure and use it to reinforce elements of language such as vocabulary, syntax, conventions, etc.

**we must be more purposeful in our sheltered instruction. We must alway have second language learners in might and plan ahead to provide them with the supportive scaffolding they'll need to also be successful in mastering lesson objectives, even though they aren't delivered in their dominant language.

**we haven't really started capitalizing on the preview-view-review strategy. Dr. Mercuri suggested we structure more formal planning at three different levels to better facilitate this: (1) grade level planning (ex: entire 1st grade team) (2) language partner planning (ex: all Spanish teachers in 1st grade) and (3) team teacher planning (English/Spanish teacher pair sharing the same 2 classes of children. As a result I set up a schedule to provide more structure to the use of each grade level's common conference time each day--

Mon: Grade Level Planning
Tues: Personal Planning (lesson plans due each Tues evening for the following week)
Wed: Language Partner Planning
Thurs: Team Teacher Planning
Fri: "Problem of Practice" (instructional development) with principal

We began following this this past week--I need to monitor this more closely and provide additional support around how to do use these different types of planning more effectively (specifically in helping teachers understand how each serves a somewhat different purpose and looks at instructional planning from a slightly different perspective). Overall, however, I'm pleased with how this is strengthening instruction. I also rearranged enrichment & PE schedules so that teachers have some additional personal planning time at different points in the week. I'm hoping that will help them (everyone was feeling a bit frantic and as if there was no time to do much planning/prep on campus. They weren't incredibly far from the truth! :) I do think we found a good plan, however. I'm crossing my fingers that teacher morale goes up. It's been pretty low lately, particularly with my new (brand new as well as just new to IDEA) teachers. I think the reality of what they signed up for is really hitting them. Some are embracing it and working through it, while a couple are having a much rougher time.