This quarter I am continuing my observations with Heather Cyrus from Barbour Dual-Language Immersion Academy. She is a unique second grade teacher for Spanish and English speaking students. In my prior fieldwork assignments, I have not met another teacher who has been so ahead of her peers in evolving the classroom for successful, 21st century education.
Barbour runs a dual immersion program for Latino children from kindergarten through eighth grade. Starting in the lower grades more Spanish instruction is the main concentration with English incorporated more and more each year. The classrooms are split as evenly as possible with English speakers and Spanish speakers of all backgrounds and ethnicities. The average class size is 26 students
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Her philosophy of learning is “ever changing” and she believes “the learner is the most important piece of the puzzle…” . (H. Cyrus, personal communication, January 20, 2017) She works continuously with the other second grade teachers in a team to set the plan on the standards and how they will meet them each year. They do not follow a curriculum, but the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with the Essential Learning Outcomes (ELO) and Depth of Knowledge (DOK) levels. The curriculum Math Investigations is offered in the district for her grade level, but it is not a main focus for her lessons. She utilizes curriculums provided by the district as resources and supplements for lessons alone.
When sitting down with her fellow teachers, they do what’s called “unpacking” the standards. Project- based lessons are built in putting as many subjects in to the units as possible. With ESL students, vocabulary is a large part of their unit design and plays a significant role in Spanish or English in teaching students to understand the lessons. There are pretests devised based on these objectives and units for each teacher to determine the needs of their students in their particular classrooms.
Like most teachers, she supports the CCSS but does acknowledge the flaws of their implementation. In our interview Heather tells me, “the CCSS are not developmentally appropriate, …often times social/emotional standards are less emphasized, … the amount of CCSS we often are
By providing different learning experiences in the curriculum teachers will be able to meet the needs of each student’s learning style. For ELL students, New Caney Elementary offers Bilingual programs dedicated to teach both languages, Spanish and English, that will essentially allow ELL students to learn the language. Programs like these were created to help students to thrive academically no matter their circumstance. To assess students at all times, one as a future educator must ensure that we are assessing the students in each lesson plan. The teacher must ensure that each student is grasping the content presented to them by monitoring their gained knowledge. In order implement the units from the curriculum, I will strive to provide various learning experiences to each student. I will provide visual activities for my visual learners, have hands on activities for my hands-on learning students, and provide discussions for the ones that learn through hearing and repeating things out loud. Each learning experience is crucial to the student’s academic success. By providing different types of learning experiences I will be able to make the lessons more effective and
Curriculums are the roadmaps for schools which provide purpose and direction for administrators, educators, parents, and students. Curriculum typically refers to, “the knowledge and skills students are expected to learn, which includes the learning standards or learning objectives they are expected to meet; the units and lessons that teachers teach; the assignments and projects given to students; the books, materials, videos, presentations, and readings used in a course; and the tests, assessments, and other methods used to evaluate student learning.” (Curriculum, 2015, para. 1) Curriculums may come in many shapes and forms, whether they’re purchased as a package at the school or district level or they’re created or refined by educators and
When an educator walks into her classroom for the first time, she needs to be prepared to encounter students that come from a variety of backgrounds. The children will be in different stages of language development, and the educator must accommodate for each of these students. Magruder, Hayslip, Espinosa, and Matera (2013) state, “The US Census Bureau projects that by the 2030s, children whose home language is other than English will increase from roughly 22 percent to 40 percent of the school-age population” (p. 9). This increase in second language learners will cause the educator to accommodate for those needs. Second language learners “need teachers who welcome them and recognize their unique abilities, what they know, and what they need to learn” (Magruder, Hayslip, Espinosa, and Matera, 2013, p. 10).
The film does a great job of portraying the complexity of the situation by comparing two teachers that work at Hoover, Third-grade teacher Dianne Lee and First-grade teacher Arcelia Hernandez whose approach towards ELL students differs tremendously. Dianne Lee takes the English only approach with her students, hoping they will learn the language through immersion. Dianne is approaching her students in a way that is forcing them to give up their culture, even quoted saying “to become American, you have to be willing to give something up” pointing to her grandparents who immigrated from Russia and strove to Americanize themselves and their family. What Dianne most likely did not realize that more dropouts come from students who are placed in English only instruction where their primary language is suppressed (Freeman, p. 159). While showcasing another approach is Arcelia Hernandez who uses Latino culture and language that she shares with her students in order to help them learn both Spanish and English.
The Common Core has been developed as a nationwide measurement for student progress. Officially launched in 2009 as a federal funding bill, the standards identify skills that every student residing in the United States should master in English language arts (ELA) and mathematics from kindergarten through 12th grade (Gewertz, 2015). The Common Core itself is not a curriculum, however, it identifies rigorous objectives that must be met by a school’s curriculum. The purpose is to initiate a deeper focus on developmental learning by using interdisciplinary instruction. This redefines the way that students learn because their progress is no longer assessed on the outcome of their performance, but by the process that has allowed them to reach the
States. These guidelines consist of what every student from kindergarten to the 12th grade should
Structuring on the best of existing state standards, the Common Core State Standards provide a clear and reliable learning goal to help prepare students for college, career, and life. The standards clearly demonstrate what students are expected to learn at each grade level, so that every parent and teacher can understand and support their learning. From Kindergarten through 8th grade, grade-by-grade standards exist in English language arts/literacy and mathematics. From 9th through 12th grade, the standards are grouped into grade sets of 9th through 10th grade standards and 11th through 12th grade standards. Moreover, the CCSS stress the importance of using primary texts in the classroom to build literacy, along with many other things. While the standards set grade-specific goals, they do not define how the standards should be taught or which materials should be used to support students. States and districts know that there will need to be a range of supports in place to guarantee that all students, including those with special needs and English language learners, can master the standards. It is up to the states to outline the full range of supports appropriate for these students.
When many people think of elementary education, they think of reading small passages and learning the difference between addition and subtraction in easy, creative ways. Now, with the new Common Core State Standards implemented, today’s kids will have more things to worry about. They are asked more challenging questions and expected to have more rigorous answers. This does not set a steady learning pace for the average child.
“Common Core State Standards Initiative” is a result of the “Standards and Accountability Movement” which began in the 1990s in the United States. This particular branch of education reforms was geared towards expectations of learning at each grade level. The Standards and Accountability Movement not only brought attention on what students were expected to learn, but on teachers as well – focusing on how teachers were to implement lessons and able to teach for student achievement which would be measured in
Hispanic ELLs students will be tested on their reading and on phonemics. The teacher will give the test to students individually because the teacher needs to hear the student read. The student will be given a book based on their reading level. The book will contain a picture and small amount of words. The picture is a way for students to make connections with the words, but there will be times where the student will not able to make the connections. Pictures are a visual for students so they could associate vocabulary words (Vacca-Ricopoulos & Nicoletti, 2009, p. 70). Once the student starts to read the book the teacher will use a timer to determine how long it took the student to read the book. Once the reading part is over, the teacher will ask the students questions regarding the book. The teacher will have a graded formatted sheet and that sheet will contain information based on the student’s reading capacity and understanding of the book.
The Common Core Standards engage a standards-based education. The standards guide teachers to prepare students for what they are expected to learn to succeed in life. It is essential that teachers understand the expectations and implications of the standards, so teachers can help students achieve educational goals by designing specific educational plans that align with the core standards. Furthermore, tailoring the curriculum will help to build relevant skills students are argued to integrate in college and their future careers.
In the 1960s, Mexican Americans began organizing to address a broad range of issue of bilingual education. In New York, Puerto Ricans began to demand that schools offer Spanish-speaking children classes taught in their own language as well as programs on their culture. Latinos were demanding the right for school to teach students in their language because they feared abandoning Spanish would weaken their extinct culture. Additionally, women were excluded from education because it was believed that if women were well educated it would ruin their marriage prospects and be harmful to their mind. In this saying, Latinos were allowed to have education but it was the belive that a woman must stay home. Women with little education often believed that
For this lesson Guillermo needs to have the teacher adapt a few things for him in order for him to fully comprehend the information. I would first pair Guillermo up with a bilingual child for support in his group. I would also use clear language, writing, and hand gestures to assist him. Instruction would be repeated several times in order for him to feel comfortable and confident with moving on. There would be a lot of teacher modeling to insure that not only Guillermo but the entire class understood what was being asked of them. I would provide Guillermo with an easy vocabulary word list that he could have to help in his writings. I would also provide extra assistants, praise and time to Guillermo in order to boost his self confidence in
Teaching moves Ms. Rodriguez makes to support her multilingual students: She begins with a narrative story about yesterday’s work, She uses a visual cue to remind students of the writing she demonstrated yesterday, She provides a verbal demonstration for her students, modeling English syntax, Her tone is inclusive, and she talks to her students like fellow writers, She writes about a Spanish-language television show that most of her children know and watch, She points to each word and has the children read with her, demonstrating concepts of print that are significant for children learning to read in English, She asks students to turn and talk to their partners, which provides her multilingual student the opportunity to try out their ideas with a partner before speaking to the whole group, She models her writing and writes in Spanish, which validates the majority of her students’ language(s), She checks for understanding, She verbalizes the internal question that children can ask themselves when they complete their writing.
in charge to develop a criteria for accepting books. Once this committee evaluates which books could be a good option to be used, the committee sends a list of the books that the teachers might use. Then it becomes of matter of each teacher’s preference; however, Mrs. Espinoza addressed that changes have been made since the implementation of the Common Core Standards. What is occurring nowadays, she said, “each teacher take the Common Core and apply it to current lesson plans using the Basal or whatever they use, and for a whole year, just to see, what they are already doing and how it falls under the Common Core”.