Being Bilingual is Better

by Rick Joseph Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

Students progress in their language learning by using Spanish in all subject areas

How many languages do you speak? Chances are, if you are like many native-born Americans, the answer is a resounding…one. Only English.

Students at Marquette Elementary School in Muskegon, however, learn in both Spanish and English in the school’s dual language immersion program. The idea is that by the end of 8th grade, students will be prepared to enter high school fluent in two languages, regardless of their native tongue. The results are astonishing.

Kids begin in kindergarten classrooms where 90 percent of the instructional language is Spanish and 10 percent is English. Slightly more than half of the students come from homes where English is the spoken language, while the rest are from families where Spanish is the parents’ first language. This model of bilingual education is known as an “additive model,” in that students “add” a language to their first language without losing the capacity to listen, speak, read, or write in their home language.

It works.

A Fraught History of Bilingual Education

Dual language programs have been in place in the United States since the late 1960s, when educators realized the power of language-minority communities to create language-additive environments for the benefit of all. Native English speakers could learn English and acquire a second language. Spanish speakers could retain their native language while learning English.

Students from a variety of cultural backgrounds benefit from dual language immersion at Marquette Elementary

Historically, the United States has had a love-hate relationship with bilingual education—one that may mirror the immigration debate. There is no doubt that language itself carries a vast array of not only cultural but political implications. Few people doubt the cognitive benefits of knowing more than one language. The advantages of being multilingual and multicultural are self-evident from the perspective of the business world and the competitive marketplace.

At the same time, there are the voices of those who seek to build walls—literally and figuratively. These may hurt the enthusiasm necessary to create and sustain robust models to cultivate bilingual education.

A Vast, Untapped Potential

At Marquette, the community has seen the profound impact of the school’s dual language immersion program, which helps sustain a healthy school and attract students to the district. Principal Kristina Precious need look no further than the scores of families who see the value in her program and seek to gain entrance for their children.

“When you hear English-dominant children speaking Spanish without an accent, you know the program is working,” Precious says.

If you ask the kids about learning Spanish, they just tell you it’s fun. The “fun factor,” of course, is one of the reasons the program succeeds.

Principal Kristina Precious with a kindergarten friend who will be bilingual by 8th grade

The dedication and passionate commitment of teachers make the dual language immersion program happen on a daily basis. They see the value of an approach like this, in which students naturally acquire language without consciously realizing they are learning a second language.

This is one of the essential differences that sets effective dual language immersion programs apart from much more common world language programs, where kids attend “Spanish class.” None of us are conscious of our ability to understand and speak our first language. By providing natural language learning environments, dual language immersion programs create a very authentic opportunity to learn a second language.

I truly believe we continue to have a vast, untapped potential of language learning in the United States, especially in communities where immigrants continue to arrive and provide access to native speakers. But for the kids at Marquette Elementary, it’s just how they do school.

Rick Joseph is a National Board Certified Teacher and has taught 5/6 grade at Covington School in the Birmingham Public School district since 2003. Prior, he served as a bilingual educator and trainer for nine years in the Chicago Public Schools. Rick is thrilled to serve as the 2016 Michigan Teacher of the Year. Through Superhero Training Academy, Rick’s students have created a superhero identity to uplift the communities where they learn and live.

Reflect. Reinvent. Renew.

by Caroline Thompson Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

daybook-title My daughter is turning three and my house is a disaster area. There is papier mâché residue on the carpet and ceiling from the piñata we decided to make today. The sink is piled high with half-filled milk cups I haven’t gotten around to emptying.

I look around and wonder if this is the best environment for a three-year-old to live in, considering we have decided to keep her home from pre-school next year. And that’s when I realize: I’m reflecting, and it feels good.

Reflect for Yourself

One of my favorite things I used as a teacher was Jim Burke Teacher’s Daybook Personal and Professional Workshops. Burke is a trusted English high school teacher who helps teachers try to balance their work and home lives. I tried to make a habit of doing his Beginning of the School Year Workshop–which was easy. But I didn’t always make it to the End of the School Year Reflections. I was too busy closing up my room or grading finals or just plain exhausted from the year.

What I know is that I always felt better, and had more closure maybe, in the years when I made the time to reflect.

Reinvent One Area of Your Teaching Life

I’ve adapted to my role as mom, as my daughter has grown. In the beginning, I was basically a source of nourishment and comfort. Now I’m that, but I’m also a disciplinarian, a television and internet censor, a teacher, a nutritionist, a coach, a problem solver, a storyteller, a fort builder, and a small toy detective.

Something I miss from my teaching years is the opportunity each new school year afforded me to try something new. Maybe it was something small, like a new desk arrangement. Maybe it was something big, like the Oakland Writing Project, seeping into my teaching and changing the way I would look at myself as a teacher and writer. But each year, I could decide to change, and I would get a new batch of students to adjust with.

Some questions to reflect upon: What will you change next year? What worked this year? What flopped and why do you think it did?

Renew Your Love Affair with Teaching

My daughter loves hearing stories about herself. We started a bedtime tradition of reading a book and then telling a story about the day, or the last trip we were on together, or the time we went to a favorite place. I was just starting to tire of the same old stories about the zoo and the bookstore. Then last week, genius struck, and we retold the story of the day she was born. And we all were excited to remember.

Do you remember why you got into teaching in the first place? Do you still hold the passion you did when you first started?

Spend some time reflecting on the first-year teacher you were and the teacher you are now. What has changed? What hasn’t? What do you wish you still had? What do you wish you could leave behind?

You are probably already signed up for a workshop or a course this summer. If not, you probably have plans to grow and change in some area of your teaching. Maybe this is the summer you figure out how Twitter can expand your professional reach. Maybe you decide to research UDL and find out what it stands for.

Or maybe you could start to explore MiPlace and all that it has to offer. What about joining Camp NaNoWriMo this July and deciding to get your students involved in November? You might take the entire summer just to be with your family, and promise yourself you will only go back in the fall on the day that the school requires you to be back to set up your classroom.

If you’d like to spend time with deliberate reflection, you might try a Thinking Routine like “I used to think…but now I think…” Or you could check out what this guy from Edutopia has to offer.

Whatever you need to do–to renew your teaching life or your personal life–make sure you do it this summer!

Caroline Thompson (@TeacherThompson) taught middle school ELA for twelve years in Lake Orion before becoming a stay-at-home mom. She supports AARI teachers for Oakland Schools as an independent literacy consultant in the areas of digital media, professional development, and non-fiction resources. Caroline is a Reading and Writing Workshop advocate, a 2008 Oakland Writing Project Teacher Consultant, and a 2009 Oakland County Outstanding Teacher of the Year Nominee. She has a BA in English from Michigan State University and a Masters in the Art of Teaching Reading from Oakland University. She lives in Berkley with her husband and their two year old daughter.

Ending with a WOW

by Beth Rogers Notes from the Classroom

makennaaddibook A few weeks ago I wrote about giving students choice in end-of-year reading and writing projects, in an attempt to maintain enthusiasm for learning into mid-June, which is a challenge no matter how motivated your learners are. I’d never done this before, but I decided to jump and gave the students a “Purposeful Reading and Writing” assignment.

Students had to design their own project that had to involve both reading and writing at a 5th grade level or higher. They were allowed to work with a partner, in a small group, or alone. I had no idea how or if this was going to fly. Idea sheets were submitted for approval, and then my students were off and running.

For the past two weeks I have monitored progress, given feedback, and watched as students navigated peer, technology, and learning issues–the scope was too broad, they needed more information, they were in over their heads, etc. There were days when I doubted what we were doing.

But last week, on a hot Thursday afternoon, someone walked in my room and said, “Whoa, what’s going on?” I asked what they meant. “Look at them–they are all engaged.” I looked around and realized they were. Without me, without any fun distractions, they were all engaged with their own projects.

It was beautiful.

Students’ Soaring Ambitions

Monday was our peer showcase. Projects were laid out and students were instructed to go around with post-it notes, leaving positive, specific feedback and wonders, which is a nice way to say, “I’m wondering about this and didn’t see it in your project…could you tell me more?” I was (for the most part) incredibly pleased with the results and, in some cases, completely blown away.

loyalop Projects ranged from Google Presentations on the Holocaust to a 175-page book, complete with a companion text of biographies of the characters. There were board games about topics of interest, and there were poetry anthologies. The students were proud and so was I.

This is definitely something I will do again next year. Of course, I will tweak it and have more scaffolds in place to bring up the quality of projects for those students who can’t manage an independent piece on their own.

I learned a lot from the past few weeks, but the most important lesson is this: when students are ready to take on their own learning, when they have the knowledge and tools necessary, and when they are passionate about what they are doing, amazing things can happen.

Happy end of the school year to us!

Beth Rogers is a fifth grade teacher for Clarkston Community Schools, where she has been teaching full time since 2006. She is blessed to teach Language Arts and Social Studies for her class and her teaching partner’s class, while her partner teaches all of their math and science. This enables them to focus on their passions and do the best they can for kids. Beth was chosen as Teacher of the Year for 2013-2014 in her district. She earned a B.S. in Education at Kent State University and a Master’s in Educational Technology at Michigan State University.

More Than One Way To Skin a Cat

by Hattie Maguire Notes from the Classroom

shutterstock_240744010 My mom always used to say, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”

I’d never really thought about that disgusting idiom until I used it in class one day and the kids were rightly horrified. It’s awful, but it addresses a core principle of good teaching and learning: there is more than one way to do something well.

For the past seven years or so, our English department at Novi High School has been on a journey through that principle. As we have attempted to align to the Common Core State Standards, we have moved toward an aligned curriculum with shared texts and common assessments.

This has prompted a debate about the difference between common experiences and common assignments. Must we be lock step, or can we skin cats however we choose? Okay, that’s gross. I’ll stop.

This year, my professional learning community has finally hit its stride and figured out how to preserve teacher autonomy while still providing a CCSS-aligned curriculum for all 500+ tenth graders at Novi High School. How’d we do it? Skills based, aligned common assessments.

As we head into summer and start thinking about changes for next year, perhaps our model can give you some ideas for how you can better align with your colleagues but still maintain your autonomy.

Before A Unit Begins

This is a key to success. Prior to starting the unit, everyone needs to know where you’re going so you can get there however you’d like. We look at our district curriculum in Atlas, and we revisit the five to six very specific learning goals for the unit. Then we make sure our assessments are measuring the students’ abilities with those skills.

For example, in the third unit for the year, we worked on five learning goals:

reading info texts critically
analyzing dramatic structure
maintaining argumentative claims
presenting effectively
using varied syntax

Our PLC talked about what proficiency in each of those standards looks like, and started imagining how students could show us that proficiency. For each standard, we decided on one common skill-based assessment that we’d give to our students. We made samples of what the proficient work would look like, and agreed to use formative assessments with each standard to help students monitor their learning. That’s it. We all agreed on the end point and then went our separate ways.

During the Unit

This is where the freedom came in.

Some of us started with informational reading, while others jumped right into the unit’s anchor text (a play). We shared things informally as we moved through the unit, but the pressure to do the same things and move in lock step was off completely. At our PLC meetings, we shared what was going well, where we were struggling, and worked together to come up with solutions.

After the Unit

shutterstock_410136730 This was the most important part, I think. After the unit, we shared our different approaches and what had gone well.

The language standard, for example, was a bit of a mess. Some of us had tried to give students formative assessments in a writers’ workshop with writers’ notebook checks, and quickly found ourselves overwhelmed. Other people had done one-on-one conferences and liked them, but struggled to squeeze all the kids in.

One teacher, on the other hand, had developed a short-answer written formative assessment that had worked well for her and seemed very manageable. For the next unit, we all decided to use her method.

Wait, you’re thinking. I thought this post was about more than one way to do something well!

It is! I promise. Good teaching is about experimenting and testing and figuring things out. That’s what this new structure has allowed us to do. We all tried different ways to teach the language standard and, after that experimentation, we found a way that works best. Had we not had that freedom to experiment, though, we might have never landed on the best way at all.

With some of the other standards, we found that we all did things very differently, we were all happy with with what we’d done, and our kids performed the same on the common assessment. The key is that this structure has given us a way to stay aligned to what’s important–clearly defined standards and assessments–without shackling us to agreed upon daily lessons.

As you go into the summer and think about everything you’d like to change next year, I’d encourage you to consider where you and your colleagues can make agreements about being the same, and where can you leave yourself a little room for creativity. I think you will find that agreeing to give each other a little space to experiment will ultimately help you see that there are many ways to…um..do things well.

Hattie Maguire is an English teacher and Content Area Leader at Novi High School. She is spending her fifteenth year in the classroom teaching AP English Language and Composition and English 10. She is a National Board Certified Teacher who earned her BS in English and MA in Curriculum and Teaching from Michigan State University.

Reading and Writing Apps: K-5

by Tricia Ziegler Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

shutterstock_305346137 Thanks to a generous grant from the Walled Lake Foundation for Excellence, I was able to get five iPad minis for my classroom. We have been working out the way to best incorporate them into our kindergarten classroom, and we found that they fit in best during our literacy centers, small groups that allow for focused interventions. This way, small groups can use the iPads to enhance skills in an exciting way.

We use the iPads at other times throughout the day as well; literacy centers were just a natural fit. Because the world of educational apps can be a bit overwhelming at first, I hope to help guide you toward some apps we’ve had success with and that my students have enjoyed engaging with in the classroom. Everything below represents my own opinions.

Reading and Writing

With the grant we were also able to obtain a subscription to a service called Raz-Kids, on the website Reading A to Z. This is both a website and an app, and it’s wonderful! You are able to set up logins for each student and assign books at their reading level. At the end of each book, students are asked comprehension questions to earn points. The students are motivated because these points help them create a robot to interact with. Teachers are also able to log in and check students’ progress and comprehension of the texts.

A Tell About This video

Another app we just downloaded–and the students are enjoying–is called Tell About This. In this app, students are offered choices of pictures, and then are able to record themselves as they tell a story related to the picture. We first implemented it into the classroom with students taking a picture of the animal diorama they had created for the culmination of our research project. Then they recorded what they learned. They were so excited! (Here’s a link to download a sample of one student’s video.)

A companion to this app is called Write About This. We have not used this in my classroom, but my 2^nd Grade daughter enjoys it.

My students’ newest favorite is Vocabulary Spelling City. While it isn’t sight-word practice, it is great practice when working on spelling, helping to motivate students during writing time. To practice, they can play hangman, alphabetize words, and unscramble a word’s letters, among several other choices.

Teach Me Kindergarten is another go-to app. This app, which covers multiple subjects, is in quiz form. Students earn coins as they correctly answer questions, and they are able to use these coins to buy virtual prizes like a fish tank and accessories. As the students start to show mastery, the questions start to become harder automatically. You can also choose a level at which your students start.

Lakeshore also has several learning apps. We have been using Sound Sorting and Phonics Tic Tac Toe. The students like the instant feedback when they get answers correct, as well as the ability to try again.

Coding

A new way that students are learning to write is through coding. This is a whole new language, one I can admit I don’t quite have a handle on, but I am trying. We are only using the iPad apps for coding, but all these apps have desktop applications too.

Currently my students are in love with an app called The Foos. With The Foos, they are learning to code by creating their own games. My students love creating levels for their friends to play.

Tynker and Scratch Jr. are also coding and programming apps my class (and daughters!) are enjoying. With Tynker, kids learn to code different characters to complete missions. With Scratch Jr., students are able to code a character to move around and entertain them. Kids can also change the background and animate things like letters.

Successes

While I can lay no claim to being a technology or iPad expert, I will say I have enjoyed having them in my classroom. The students enjoy learning while having fun, and the technologies give them another outlet to show what they can do. I am excited to spend the summer checking out new ways to use them; my daughters will get to be my guinea pigs.

Tricia Ziegler (Twitter: @axf96; blog: http://kindergartentreasures.blogspot.com/) is a kindergarten teacher at Loon Lake Elementary, in the Walled Lake School District. She is a part of the Walled Lake iCouncil (Instructional Council) team. She recently won a technology grant from the Walled Lake Foundation for Excellence. She is in her tenth year of teaching, with eight in kindergarten and two in Second Grade. Prior to that she taught in the Walled Lake Great Start Readiness Program, which is a state-funded preschool program for at-risk students. Tricia attended Michigan State University for her undergraduate degree and specialization in Early Childhood. She then attended Wayne State University for her Master’s in Teacher Education.

Lit Hot American Summer

by Mike Ziegler Notes from the Classroom

shutterstock_374832541 This summer, my Theory of Knowledge students will read two independent books in preparation for the second semester of the course. Down the hall, my colleague Hattie (you know her from her fantastic blog posts!), will be handing out her lists for AP summer reading as well. These are all students who excel at school–reading a couple extra books over the summer might elicit some grumbling, but for most of them it really just means setting aside a couple of Nicholas Sparks titles in favor of some Toni Morrison or Ishmael.

Meanwhile, for my Co-Departmental English students who made great gains all year reading graphic novels and expanding their ability to work with grade-level texts; for my English 11 students who have signed up for 12th Grade English next fall; for my incoming class of English 11 students–for all of these students, there are no assigned summer readings.

Why is that, exactly?

There is robust research showing that this damages at-risk learners. It’s so robust, in fact, that the effect has earned a nickname: “The Summer Slide.” The estimate is that students lose the equivalent of one full month of instruction by not engaging in regular reading over the summer.

And that’s just an instructional measure. Imagine how much ground is lost when we cut kids loose for summer, having just begun to foster a love of reading in them.

If You Can’t Make ‘em . . . Make ‘em WANT to

The problem is, most of us have perhaps a couple weeks left, so getting administrative approval for a mandatory summer reading program for all students just isn’t going to happen this year.

But here’s what I’m thinking: Most of us can’t create something all kids must do, but we certainly have time to create opportunities that might encourage kids to read on their own over the summer. Towards that ambitious goal I humbly submit a few imperfect solutions.

51mASzxex8L._SX317_BO1,204,203,200_-1 The Comic Book Flood
If you tried the graphic novel approach to struggling readers, this could be your best option for those same readers. Amazon has a $5.99 a month Netflix-style subscription program that allows digital access to thousands of back issues of popular comic book titles. The first 30 days are free–your graphic novel enthusiasts could absorb an endlessly graphic summer for only 12 bucks!

Blockbuster Reading
Most of our kids are going to spend a good chunk of the summer at the movies. And when they get home from the latest summer blockbuster, they’re going to play video games or watch TV. You can shake your head (and your cane) at these young whippersnappers and their bad habits–or you can embrace these habits and use them to get your kids reading.

Challenge your incoming students (a quick letter home or an email blast) to get some pop-culture criticism under their belts. One starting place is the website Metacritic, which compiles professional critics’ reviews of films, TV shows, video games, and music.

Metacritic is a far cry from books, but in terms of minutes spent reading, vocabulary absorbed, etc., it’s leaps and bounds ahead of their default option of doing “not anything.” Imagine if every student entered your room in the fall having read five or six critical reviews of pop culture. Sounds like your first writing assessment just created itself!

Shared Spaces
I would imagine that for some students, summer reading simply doesn’t occur as an option. You can create a Google Classroom page or some other blog site that would email recommendations each week for great summer reads (articles would work as well as books!). You can also create another shared space where the students are encouraged to talk to each other about what they’re reading.

Any sort of sharing is good. In the age of Twitter and Instagram, this seems like just the sort of goofy, non-invasive reading encouragement that would get some reluctant readers on board. Sell it as a fun thing–create your own hashtag and get the kids to try and make it “go viral.”

Next Year’s Big Thing

There’s no reason our average-to-low level readers should “take the summer off” from reading when the expectation for our highest achievers is that they’ll spend the summer engaged with text. That is immoral on its face. This summer, consider taking some small aim at the problem with the time you have left.

But start thinking now about next summer, too. Perhaps you can push for that change in your department’s policy. In an age of increasing accountability, I’d imagine administrators would be more than open to a conversation that would improve the performance of the school’s lowest-performing populations.

Hollywood is already teasing the Big Summer Movies of 2017. Is it really too early to start a conversation about how we can better serve our students next year?

Michael Ziegler

Michael Ziegler (@ZigThinks) is a Content Area Leader and teacher at Novi High School. This is his 15th year in the classroom. He teaches 11th Grade English and IB Theory of Knowledge. He also coaches JV Girls Soccer and has spent time as a Creative Writing Club sponsor, Poetry Slam team coach, AdvancEd Chair, and Boys JV Soccer Coach. He did his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, majoring in English, and earned his Masters in Administration from Michigan State University.

The Writing Inclination

by Amy Gurney Notes from the Classroom Oakland Writing Project

A recent article in the School Library Journal addresses a commonly heard statement in education: “Kids hate to write.” The article suggests that kids do write, and that the Internet is offering more opportunities than ever before to do so. The article even suggests some online writing tools and apps to use with kids, many of which I use in my classroom.

Still, though, the author wrote, “How do we help our students harness the inclination–the cultural imperative to write–so that they can become better academic writers?”

Five Strategies to Use with Students

I want to share several beliefs and practices about how I entice kids to believe in writing and see themselves as writers.

As the teacher, I write.
I complete every assignment along with my students. Sometimes I prepare examples before class, while other times I write on-demand as we contribute to writing ideas together. As students see me as a writer, they gain confidence in their own writing.

I let kids choose their own topics.
I have standards that I have to cover and model curricula to use, but those resources never say that I have to have all of my students complete an essay on the same topic. Rather, these resources say that I have to give students opportunities to write in various genres over different lengths of time, so I give students opportunities to do that. A student’s writing is much better when she chooses a topic that interests her.

I teach students to use reading as a guide for writing.
I have learned so much from using exemplars for writing–from sentence structures and the organization of an argument, to word variety and character creation. I offer student these same opportunities to explore their reading to use for writing. For many students, this practice gives them the structure they need to make a personally important topic shine.

I offer consistent writing opportunities.
We write every day. Sometimes it is genre-specific work, sometimes it is just a quick write, and sometime we just doodle. But we write every day. When students can have a consistent experiences with writing, they begin to look forward to writing.

I give feedback on writing.
The feedback a teacher gives writers should encourage growth. I use a very defined structure each day with students: a compliment related to a recent standard (I notice…); a question about the feelings of the writer; a suggestion, sometimes with an example (Can I offer a next step?); and an offer to revisit the writing when the writer has made a decision. Kids say that they enjoy feedback and want as much as possible.

Borrowing the idea from Ruth Ayres’ video, I have created a video to take a look at the notebook life in our middle school classroom. I hope that you can find use for it to encourage your classes to write every day.

Amy Gurney is an 8th grade Language Arts teacher for Bloomfield Hills School District. She was a facilitator for the release of the MAISA units of study. She has studied, researched, and practiced reading and writing workshop through Oakland Schools, The Teacher’s College, and action research projects. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Education at Central Michigan University and a Master’s in Educational Administration at Michigan State University.

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