Classroom Environment in a TWI Program

Classroom environment is incredibly important in a dual language classroom.  There needs to incredibly high levels of organization and consistency of environment as well as the procedures that children are expected to follow to access that environment--this is to make sure that as much energy as possible is devoted to the learning of language and content rather than remembering where things are, how to get them, what the teacher expects this time.  Consistency and predictability is critical for children in any classroom...just that much MORE important when children are learning in two languages.

Because every child spends at least half the day learning content in a language he or she is NOT completely proficient in, they need to know where they can look or go for support and tools that will help instruction become more comprehensible.  This consistency is incredibly important when children transition from one classroom to another in the middle of the day.  Again, remember--you want childrens' environment to be so organized and so predictable, that they never unnecessarily waste time and energy on finding materials, inefficient systems, or ever-changing procedures that could and should otherwise be spent on learning language and content.  The classroom environment can and should be a powerful learning tool--but will only become such with really careful planning.

Over last spring vacation I read a fantastic book, English Language Learners Day by Day, K-6  by Christina M. Celic, that provides an excellent (and super practical!) overview of creating a language learning classroom.

There's a great chapter on classroom environment and organization.  I highly recommend the entire book to anyone with second language learners in their classroom (regardless of the bilingual model you may be implementing).  As I read it the first time, I felt like I was reading a summary of everything we'd been learning to do with Dr. Mercuri during year 1!  (I wasn't surprised to discover that the author had done extensive work with David and Yvonne Freeman, dual language experts that often work very closely with our consultant, Dr. Mercuri).  Reading it was incredibly affirming while also providing models of how we can take what we've implemented to the next level.  It's a great read!  Click here to purchase from Heinemann Publishing

After reading it, I wanted to synthesize the key points in one page.  Here's an overview of the book:

ELLs Day by Day Overview

Often dual language models have some key signage to draw attention to certain aspects of the classroom environment.  Here are some we've used, along with some I've found via other schools/districts.

Dual Language Labels: Classroom (Bilingual)
Dual Language Labels: School (Bilingual)
Dual Language Classroom Labels (Bilingual)
Centers Labels (Bilingual)
Language of Instruction Signs: Inside Classroom English
Language of Instruction Signs: Inside Classroom Spanish
Language of Instruction Signs: Outside Classroom Bilingual
Language of the Day Signs: School
Subject Headers & Objective Tags (Bilingual)
Sentence Frames & Thinking Maps (English--no Spanish translation yet...sorry!)
Word Wall ABC Labels (English)
Word Wall ABC Labels (Spanish)
Word Wall Headings (Bilingual)
Calendar Headings: Days & Months (Bilingual)

Here is some signage we developed at IDEA Mission to ensure our big goals, core values, and other important representations of our school culture were 100% bilingual.

Core Values 2009: RISE (Bilingual)
Phoenix Rising 2009 (English)
Phoenix Rising 2009 (Spanish)
Core Values 2010: Ready to Try Again (Bilingual)
Core Values 2010: Inner Compass (Bilingual)
Core Values 2010: Seek Knowledge (Bilingual)
Core Values 2010: Every Student, Every Day (Bilingual)
Core Values 2010: Joy (Bilingual)
Core Values 2010: Smaller Signs (Bilingual)
IDEA 55 (English)
IDEA 55 (Spanish)
Gigantic Goals: Student Trackers (Bilingual)

Gearing up for change

An important part of a dual language model is ensuring a complete and equitable balance of both languages...at both the academic and social levels.  The way we've built our schedule we do have an equal balance of exposure to academic language, however, we had to figure out how to achieve a similarly equal balance in students' exposure to social language. Because our teachers ONLY speak their language of instruction--even during non-instructional times--we had to make sure that children (for example) who were assigned to their English teacher's homeroom (where they begin/end day, eat meals, go to recess, etc) also received the opportunity to spend equal non-instructional time doing the same things with their Spanish teacher. We decided to achieve this by switching each class' homeroom teacher at mid-year.

I was starting to get very nervous about this transition, primarily because I was anticipating a lot of misunderstanding from parents and was afraid that they'd see it as a much BIGGER change than it really is.  It really just means that the child eats his meals and leaves his backpack in teacher B's classroom, instead of teacher A's.   I worried that parents wouldn't understand that the "new homeroom teacher" will simply be the teacher their child already spends half a day with and that therefore it is truly a minimal change.  I shared these concerns with kinder and first grade teams and solicited their feedback. At first most teachers agreed that it might not be worth the potential parent backlash. One teacher, however, began to push our thinking that if we don't make the change, that we'll never really help our parents understand that their child truly does have 2 teachers instead of just 1. She pointed out that if we message the change powerfully enough and for long enough, we would likely educate them well enough to help them understand our unique two-way model. That began to change our perspective on the issue.  Another teacher then shared that the transition would likely be a fairly easy one for children given the fact that they've already been teaching them for half a day every day for several months; we're not talking about breakfast and lunch procedures with an entirely brand new group of kids. During the kinder meeting one teacher pointed out that she really saw students speaking lots of English during meals in her classroom and knew lots of Spanish was being spoken by her team teacher's homeroom students during those same times. She said she felt it was a disservice to the students to NOT make the mid-year shift.  Kinder has been previewing and preparing for this shift with the children for some time to ensure that they transition easily.  A great point of feedback was that if, school-wide, we'd done a much better job calling every class by only their college mascot (instead of sometimes still referring to them as "Ms. Lopez's class" or "Mrs. Herrera's homeroom") it would make for a smoother transition because it would focus their class identity more on their mascot than on one teacher vs the other.  Teachers reported that kids had lots of questions like: "Where will we keep our things?" "Will you still be a Hurricane, Ms. Lopez?" etc.  We determined that in order for the transition to go smoothly, we'd need to do the following to prepare parents:

1) Remind them of the change every week in the Family Connection newsletter, working hard to "minimize" the transition (as one teacher put it, "they'll be eating their meals with the other teacher....that's about it")
2) Send home a parent letter specifically about this, maybe with a list of FAQ's.
3) Teachers will address the change briefly during report card conferences on Feb 3 & 4
4) My assistant principal and I will set up a Dual Language Q&A room during report card nights so any parent can drop in and talk with us about questions and concerns.

We would then probably make the change the week following.   We'll see how this goes!


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