Spanish & Dual Language Resources Galore

One of the most challenging aspects of launching a dual language program is finding and purchasing resources.  Here's a document with lots of places you can go for bilingual resources--many are free.  Hope you find this helpful! Click for List of Dual Language and Spanish Resources

(P.S. If you know of other sites or resources that should be on this list, please leave a comment and I'll be sure to add it.  Thanks for sharing!)

Spring Jamaica 2010

We've worked hard this year to celebrate family, language, and culture in even richer ways.  Our 1st Annual Spring Jamaica (held at the Veterans Pavilion on S. Inspiration Rd) was a huge success!  Children and families celebrated spring, family, and culture through food, games, singing, and dancing.  Spearheaded by our amazing Assistant Principal, Mrs. Lozano, everything came together beautifully and it ended up being a highly successful fundraiser.  Enjoy some pics from the big event.

Jose-Luis Orozco Concert

We celebrated Dia de los Niños and 5 de mayo with a fantastic concert by bilingual children's songwriter and performer Jose-Luis Orozco.  He performed at Quest (paid for by money raised by Mission's parent association) so Mission and Quest K - 2 students enjoyed a true musical treat.  Here are some pics from the event--we hope to make it an annual tradition!

 Here's a video clip from an appearance Jose-Luis Orozco made on Telemundo:


Telemundo - De Mañanita from José-Luis Orozco on Vimeo.

Language Standards

I've been working on clear second-language development expectations that could be attached to our quarterly report card to show measurable progress toward second language acquisition. Right now we use the Pre-LAS (Kinder) and LAS-Links assessments (Grades 1 and up) to measure language acquisition, but those are only administered at the beginning and end of the year--we need to teach, assess, and track more "bite-sized" language objectives throughout the year.  Here's what we've got so far for English Language Development (have yet to tackle Spanish Language Development!)...

 Download: Language Development Report Card Standards

What's in a name?

It turns out that the nomenclature of "lead teacher" and "teaching fellow" was already leading some people to conceptualize the idea as a "one teacher's in charge and the other follows" deal.  No!!  I spoke with a few teachers who came to me concerned that this mindset was already developing, so we talked about different names for the program.  I'm now moving toward this:

MENTOR TEACHER:  More experienced teacher (might be more experienced in total years taught, though in a couple of cases it might be simply more experience teaching at IDEA)

PARTNER TEACHER:  The less experienced teacher partnered with a mentor teacher.  They are most definitely full-time professional certified teachers, but are in an intense apprenticeship with less demanding planning responsibilities at the beginning and with high levels of support & instructional coaching feedback throughout the year.  However, we expect them to be equal partners in the planning of the classroom environment, culture, and instruction--supported by their mentor teacher.

LEAD TEACHER:  Both would be lead teachers...just for different halves of the day (depending on the language of instruction).  When one member of the team is lead teaching, the other is assisting/supporting.

I'm sure my thinking will continue to change and develop, but that's where I am for today!

Teaching Fellow Program Overview

Teaching Fellows

At our last dual language committee meeting, I shared the following proposal for a Teaching Fellows program in Kinder.  I've also decided we'll likely pilot it in first grade next year too.  Here's a quick overview...

Next year each Kinder & 1st Grade classroom will be self-contained.  There will be 2 certified teachers teaching the class—1 English dominant, 1 Spanish dominant.  One of those teachers (with at least 1 year experience) will be what we’ll call the "lead teacher."  Basically this means he/she is the more experienced of the two.  The other will be called the "teaching fellow." This will likely be a certified 1st year teacher who will teach for half the day but in an intense “apprenticeship” with their other partner teacher.  They'll be able to collaborate around every aspect of teaching and receive valuable real-time feedback from their lead teacher.  Teaching fellows will be on a professional salary schedule but it will be a slightly lower-paying schedule than the regular teaching salary as fellows will not have to create lesson plans from scratch at the beginning--they will simply tailor lesson plans created by lead teachers for the first couple of months.

Each classroom will have 28 – 30 children.   This increased enrollment will help pay for the program.  With 2 teachers it will move classrooms from the current 1:24 (or 1:27 in first grade this year!) teacher to student ratio to a 1:14 or 1:15 ratio.  Huge difference.


Some additional details:

• Is the main teacher for half the day (opposite language of lead teacher), with lead teacher present & working with high-priority sts (1-on-1; small groups)  
• Lead Teacher & Teaching Fellow both maintain their assigned language at all times   
• Later in year, Teaching Fellow writes lesson plans for one content area  
• Allows for a 1:14 certified teacher/student ratio (total 28 - 30 students in room;  2 certified teachers) 
• Two certified teachers lead guided reading groups during centers, ensuring every child receives about 20 min of guided reading every day in their dominant language  
• Plans collaboratively with Lead Teacher, other same-language teachers, and entire grade level  
• Both teachers take additional personal planning during partner teacher's LWS block  
• Teaching Fellow is evaluated by Lead Teacher & Manager together  
• Lead Teachers are developed around key instructional coaching basics  
• Teaching Fellows receive real-time feedback from Lead Teacher as well as from manager   
• Ensures 2 adults in early childhood classrooms at almost all times (critical for extreme misbehavior, bathroom accidents, etc)   
• Eliminates the many transitions our students previously experienced with team teaching while still ensuring language separation by teacher (key element of our model)  
• Potential to dramatically reduce misbehavior & increase student achievement in Kinder given the low teacher to student ratio (without needing additional classrooms) 

That's the idea in a nutshell.  It aims to combine all the benefits of a self-contained classroom with the benefits of a language team-teaching approach.  If it works as well as I think it will and proves to be cost-effective and sustainable, then I'll expand it to 2nd grade and make this our K - 2 approach.  3 - 5 can then be team taught in 2 separate classrooms.


Not only will this (most importantly) have a positive impact on children academically, linguistically, and socially (due to dramatic improvements that can be made in classroom culture), but it will launch what I believe can be a very powerful first-year teaching apprenticeship program, helping first year teachers work in a highly supportive environment that sets them up for career success in the years to follow.  I've struggled with the fact that first year teachers have such a tough time at IDEA (we really expect a LOT) and I sometimes wonder if IDEA is a good place for 1st year teachers....while also considering the fact that there probably couldn't be a better place for teachers to learn to teach--we might as well learn the right way first!! (Presumptuous of me to say, I know, but I really do believe that IDEA's focus on intensive instructional coaching is the best thing brand new teachers could have!)

I got the green light on the Teaching Fellows program from my manager, so now I'm just waiting for HR to create an official salary schedule and for my budget to be readjusted accordingly.  Luzdivina and I are heading up to KIPP SHINE in Houston, an elementary charter school that gave us the idea to begin with.  We'll meet with Teaching Fellows there, talk with admins, observe in classrooms, etc, and hopefully come back ready to launch our own version of the program!

Dual Language Revision Committee

I knew I needed to engage teachers in every step of the "revision" process as we made changes for the 2010 - 11 school year. I also knew that different teachers want to be involved to varying degrees. So, I decided to set up a Dual Language Revision Committee that would meet at least 3 times after school and have as much input as they wanted on changes I would be proposing for the coming school year. Anyone could join--I had two takers: Blanca (1st grade) and Christine (Kinder). My assistant principal, Luzdivina, also wanted to be involved but hasn't been able to attend either meeting so far due to after school duties/incidents.  Hopefully she'll be able to attend this final meeting.

So far we've discussed revisions to our model and daily schedule. Our district has mandated some big changes by eliminating our weekly early release day (for staff development) and requiring that school instructional hours are neither more nor less than 7:45 AM - 3:45 PM. This was incredibly hard for me to swallow at first as it meant shortening our regular full day schedule (already packed to the max due to the extra time demands inherent in a dual language schedule) AS WELL AS eliminating our weekly 2-hr block of staff development...another critical element of dual language launch, particularly those first couple of years. I'll admit that I freaked out at first, then got angry and went into protest mode, and finally have come to accept that it is what it is and I'd better find a way to make it work. (Ah...the grieving process in miniature). Interestingly, I'm actually really pleased with the results and believe we've really found some great ways to make it work.  Should I admit that I might even like our new ideas better than what we're currently doing this year?  Humble pie.  Eating lots of it.

So I went to work trying to figure out how to maximize a shorter school day and how to fit in substantive professional development without having to spend thousands of dollars for substitutes to provide release planning/PD time. Some things had to go, unfortunately. Right now we have a daily assembly or class meeting time. Next year we'll only be able to have school assembly once a week and an extended (20 min) class meeting once a week. I also had to eliminate our 30 min daily intervention block and, instead, add 20 minutes to centers time to allow for pull-out/push-in interventions for struggling students during that time. Saves 10 minutes without having to do away with it altogether. I created a special planning time schedule (STEPP Days...stands for Staff Time for Evaluating a Problem of Practice) :) where one grade level a week will have a 2 hour period without students (kids will be in an extended enrichment rotation in PE, Art, etc...) during which we'll engage in intensive PD activities. Got that idea from Sharon at Quest. However, it will only be tri-weekly for each team (1 team per week) instead of the current weekly PD time. Better than nothing. Also, it won't be the entire school together--it will only be by grade level. Again, better than nothing.  Download Proposed Master Schedule

Blanca & Christine provided valuable input during meeting 1 and then came back with additional thoughts from other teachers during meeting 2. That's when I shared with them a very new idea I'd hatched for Kinder and 1st grade--a Teaching Fellows program. I'll give further details in a post dedicated just to this idea.

Here's my plan for meeting 3 (this is the email I sent yesterday):

Hi Ladies,

For some reason I’d calendared Tuesday 3/23 as the final dual language revision committee meeting date. Instead it will be the following Tuesday (3/30) at 4:15 PM. I’d like your feedback on the following two things:

1) Unit Planning Template
I’m attaching a unit planning template for next year that I’d like feedback on.  Download Proposed Unit Planning Template  I’m also attaching an “overview” help sheet that includes questions to think about at each stage of the planning process. The template I’ve created is based primarily on the Understanding by Design (UbD) backwards planning model (something I’ll be developing you all on at the beginning of the school year and throughout) and will allow us to “beef up” the tremendous work that’s already been done in planning our units. I anticipate this document going onto Google Docs so that all grade level team members could access them simultaneously and collaboratively and use the template to together create a detailed plan for each unit of inquiry. While you’ll see that it’s primarily UbD, I’ve also tweaked/revised it to ensure it includes critical aspects of our dual language planning expectations as well as some key pieces of IB’s PYP unit planning process (particularly the stage 4 post-unit reflection...this isn’t a part of the UbD framework). If you want to find out more about UbD’s planning framework to help you better understand the template’s organization, you can learn more (as well as see sample unit plans for different grade levels) at: UbD on Google Books.  It’s actually a pretty fascinating read. :) After participating in a book study of this text, I used UbD as my primary unit planning approach as a teacher and found that it really pushed me to think very critically about how I planned, taught, and assessed units of study.

2) Website: Teaching & Learning Central
I’d also like you to take a look at a (VERY rough) draft of a website I’ve been working on to better organize & streamline all the information we need to access as well as our collaborative planning documents. I’ve invited you each to view: https://sites.google.com/site/ideaprimary/. The invitation was sent to the gmail accounts you use to access Google Docs. Some of the links on the website are “live” and accessible, many are not, so just play around for a few minutes and see what you think. I’d love questions, ideas, & critical feedback.

Ultimately, this final meeting will be the time to provide final feedback on any of our committee discussions:

• Next year’s proposed model
• Next year’s proposed schedules
• Teaching Fellows proposal
• Unit Planning approach
• Improving our use of Google Apps (website)
• Any other aspects of dual language planning you want me to take into consideration

I’ll then integrate your feedback and ideas and synthesize everything into proposals to be shared with the faculty as a whole. Please let any of your colleagues know that even if they haven’t attended a meeting yet, they’re still more than welcome to come to this final meeting. Just have them let me know they’re coming and that they need access to the website to review beforehand.

Thanks!

Bethany

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.

Spanish Reading Assessment

One of the trickiest aspects of figuring out a two-way immersion model is the assessment piece.  Who will be assessed on what, when, and in which language?  We've determined thus far that the schoolwide/districtwide benchmark literacy assessments (TPRI/Tejas Lee, Guided Reading level assessments, High Frequency Words) would be administered to children in their dominant language...at least during K - 2.  Haven't yet figured out grades 3 - 5.  (**Exciting note:  the district found a way to add Dominant Language as a demographic category in PowerSchool, our main student information system.  They were also able to sync this info with Data Director, our student achievement data management system, so that we can disaggregate data by language dominance and also keep a permanent "living" record on file of the LPAC committee's initial decision concerning language dominance.  Previously we'd been working from our own excel spreadsheets but there was way too much room for error as we added new students, removed withdrawn students and sent out the lists to teachers).  In-class formative and summative assessment is given to all students in the language of instruction.  With our math assessments, we administer the assessment in the current language of instruction for math and provide retesting opportunities in the dominant language for any students that didn't reach the expected level of mastery.

Our English teachers use the Fountas and Pinnell Benchmark Assessment kit--a solid system for assessment students' reading levels using benchmark books, running records, and clear guidelines for considering accuracy, fluency, and comprehension to determine a child's instructional reading level.  It does not exist in Spanish, however, so my assistant principal spent a great deal of time over the summer creating a similar kit in Spanish.  She chose benchmark books from www.readinga-z.com and created running record note pages for a fiction text and nonfiction text at each level.  It was a tremendous task and she did a wonderful job!  However it doesn't have the kinds of rubrics and tables and calculation charts for identifying accuracy, fluency, and comprehension scores that the F&P kits have so the Spanish teachers are having to put in a lot more work for the same assessment.

One of my kinder Spanish teachers sent me a link for the Spanish version of DRA:  Click here to go to the Pearson website.

It looks very promising, especially since there are established conversion charts that correlate the DRA numerical levels to F&P's letter levels (what we report to the district).  Extra exciting is the fact that DRA is now available to administer via handheld devices.  Tango software (the company we use for TPRI/Tejas Lee testing on Palms) has the software for DRA, making testing much faster and automatic.  IDEA Quest uses DRA so I've emailed Sharon a few questions about it and a request to borrow any extra kits she might have.  But what I've seen on the website looks very very exciting!  I hope to purchase kits for our campus and be trained and ready to go before our EOY testing later in May 2010.

Added Aug 16, 2010:  Bilingual Means Two:  Assessment Issues, Early Literacy & Spanish-Speaking Children, by Kathy Escamilla

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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