Instructional Plan for my Student’s Biliteracy Growth

          As previously stated, Jessica is currently attending an elementary school with only an ESL program, where all formal classroom and support instruction is done in English, with limited support in Spanish as needed.  I am the only classroom teacher who is formally teaching Spanish every day and my instruction is only for the four Spanish speakers in my classroom for about twenty minutes daily during a literacy group.  A few other teachers use Mexican culture, Spanish songs or a few Spanish words or poems in their teaching, but do not spend instructional minutes teaching Spanish in a formal manner.  Therefore, the first step that I would like to take to further help Jessica and my other bilingual students grow to become biliterate is to advocate for a dual language program at my school.  Although I have already been advocating for such a change over the past two years, I would like to use the research done in the book Struggling Learners & Language Immersion Education by Fortune & Menke and from the book Dual Language Essentials for Teachers and Administrators by Freeman, Freeman & Mercuri, along with other research to prove to the directors of curriculum that the way we are currently teaching our ELLs is the one of the least effect models of instruction and part of the reason why we have an achievement gap among our Latino students in our district.  Even basic research by Cummins from 20-30 years ago shows that students of a minority language that are not given the opportunity to learn academic skills in their home language struggle later on in their schooling more than their counterparts.  Since my district is focusing their committee work and administrator meetings on eliminating the achievement gap for minority students in the district, I believe the research surrounding best models of instruction for Spanish speaking students should be addressed.

          On the other hand, in order to make immediate changes and encourage biliteracy growth within my classroom for Jessica and my other students, there are many things that I will continue and add to my current literacy blocks.  Currently, my school and I use a balanced literacy program, which is supported by the research done by Freeman, Freeman & Mercuri in chapter 5 of their book.  In my second grade classroom, I meet daily with small guided reading groups according to the children’s reading level, which is a research supported method of teaching reading according to the article “Teaching for Comprehension and Language Development of English Learners:  Insights from Reading Recovery” by Neal.  I choose leveled books that help to expand the genre experience of my readers and build their specific and academic vocabulary.  While I work with some groups and students on decoding words and fluency, I am guiding Jessica’s reading group through comprehension discussions and the discovery of new vocabulary or topics.  Vocabulary growth and continual discussion around the comprehension of a story is where Jessica needs to focus her English reading skills in order to continue to grow at grade level.  I also have all of my students participate in independent reading and partner reading daily.  Depending on the topic or unit of study, we do some shared readings as well.  Every day I spend some time doing a read aloud with my class, which is also a research based method of teaching comprehension, vocabulary, and expression while reading.  After reading all of the research throughout this course, I plan to keep all of these practices to my approach to teaching reading in English.

           As for my teaching of writing in English, I use interactive writing, components of writer’s workshop, guided writing, independent writing and conferencing as my approach.  Students are asked to write in their journals a few days a week and I respond back to them so that they can see authentic writing and truly feel connected to the writing process.  I use the six traits of writing to teach about how good writer’s write and then focus on a trait when conferencing with the students.  My plan is to continue to meet with Jessica about her writing and to encourage her to add more details, more unique words and to push her to grow as a writer.  In terms of vocabulary development in English, this is an area that I spend a great deal of focus knowing that I have the cluster of ELLs in my classroom.  I use real objects, pictures on the Internet and total physical response to help students learn the meaning of new academic terms in all subject areas. 

In general, my focus in teaching is always on meaning-centered instruction, which Judith Neal discusses in her article on Teaching for Comprehension and Language Development of English Learners.  I tie culture, different languages and themes into my teaching of various subjects and ideas.  In my class morning meeting, we share morning greetings from the different languages of students in my classroom (Spanish, Japanese, Turkish, and Arabic).  Jessica gets very proud to teach the other students words in Spanish or when she is able to make personal connections to our discussions because of her Mexican heritage.  Anther way that I have helped to create meaning-centered instruction is by writing a DPI Immigrant Youth and Families Grant for my district.  Within the grant, I explained that I planned to coordinate not only family involvement nights for all ELLs and their families, but also to run a summer language program for all elementary aged ELLs in our district.  I am coordinating these programs for a second year now and have the goals for the program centered on building experiences, increasing academic vocabulary and including time for Spanish literacy enrichment.  The program is centered on themes for each week and has two field trips each week, along with specific vocabulary for those field trips.  For example, we took the kids to Rutabaga for a canoeing lesson and then taught the vocabulary associated with a canoe, like dock, row, oar, life jacket, etc.  This summer program is a perfect example of the meaning-centered instruction that I plan to continue in the future.

The last area of my current teaching that I would like to continue to help my students gain more academic support in their English language development is by using Readers Theater experiences, team and partner learning experiences in teaching, and learning centers for my students to use during the English literacy block.  Activities like interactive writing and Readers Theater help to give reading and writing an authentic and real place in the life of a child.  I have held small performances for Readers Theater and have also done larger productions where we invite families to come in for the events.  Not only do the children need to think deeply about the characters and the meaning of the story, but it also allows for building on their oral language, encouraging family involvement and requires the entire language experience approach to be embraced.  In Readers Theater, partner reading time and by creating active learning teams in science, social studies and writing, all students are able to interact with one another and to share the learning experience.  Lastly, as Joanna Click explains in her article Learning Centers:  Meaningful Contexts for Language Use in the Primary Immersion Classroom, having interactive learning centers during the independent  time of the literacy block allows the students the freedom to explore concepts previously explored by the whole class and creates the cooperative group work environment that not only helps to build a safe and caring classroom environment, but also promotes oral communication and shared learning experiences.

The main area that I would like to continue to grow as a bilingual educator is in how to better use my Spanish literacy block to effectively work with my Spanish speaking students.  Obviously it would be best if my Spanish literacy block could be equal to the time spent on English literacy; however, since my school district does not have a dual language or a true bilingual program at this time, I am able to spend about twenty minutes daily with my four Spanish speaking students.  When I began this literacy block in the fall, I began with running a guided reading group for half of the week and by spending the other days doing interactive writing and independent writing.  Now, I have continued those efforts, but have expanded to include more specific mini-lessons during the week as well.  For example, after reading the article by Kathy Escamilla, Teaching Literacy in Spanish, I have begun to focus on the basic learning block in reading of understanding the syllable in Spanish.  I taught several mini-lessons where we broke apart words in Spanish to both spell and read the words based on the syllables.  After these lessons, my group students, especially Jessica, have been better able to decode words in their leveled Spanish books.  Over the course of this class, I have gone through and used all of Kathy Escamilla’s steps to teaching Spanish literacy with my small group each day, including lessons on articles, the additional letter and sounds in Spanish, the contractions, the silent ‘h’, accents on frequently used words, and writing the date in Spanish.  Another area of focus that I have recently adopted is the dictado, as explained in the article Using Writing to Make Cross-Language Connections from Spanish to English.  I have seen all of my students and especially Jessica gain more confidence in their journals in written Spanish as they have begun to understand accent marks, the silent ‘h’, and have had practice with frequent words that do not follow a pattern, like “qué, cuando, and quién.  To continue to improve my short time during my Spanish literacy block, I am planning next week to begin to create a word wall in Spanish with the help of my students.  

One aspect of teaching literacy in Spanish that I began and will continue in the future is to use strategies that encourage transfer of knowledge for my students.  The idea of transfer, as explained in chapter 5 by Freeman, Freeman & Mercuri, is that the students get familiar with the approach to teaching reading and writing and are able to better focus on the specifics for the given language when both the approach and the general ideas remain the same.  I facilitate guided reading, independent reading, shared and guided writing and independent writing in both languages in similar manners.  As noted by Kathy Escamilla in her article, Teaching Literacy in Spanish, although there are many aspects of teaching Spanish that only apply when teaching literacy in Spanish, there are also many universal approaches to teaching literacy that can be applied when teaching literacy in Spanish.  Like all of my guided reading lessons in English and Spanish, I focus on a skill or idea for each child or group that fits where that child/group needs to focus.  For example, among my four students that I teach Spanish literacy to daily, each child is reading at a different level; therefore, I get leveled books that are appropriate for each child and then as the children begin to read their own book, I go around to each of the four and listen to them read.  Some of my students need reminders on how to break the words into syllables, while Jessica needs reminders to decode instead of only making predictions about words.  Within my group, I am always attempting to find specific vocabulary that the students do not know in Spanish and give pictures, translations into English, etc. to help teach the new academic vocabulary.

For our case study, I purposely choose an average bilingual student from my cluster of Spanish speaking students in order to create a plan of instruction so that I could apply my plan of teaching Spanish and English literacy to my entire group of students.  Jessica has been very successful under my current approach to teaching literacy in English and has had also made significant growth as I have added to and learned more about teaching literacy in Spanish this year.  She needs more focus on comprehension and academic vocabulary in English and needs to have more time to practice her decoding skills in reading in Spanish.  Jessica needs lots of encouragement in writing in both languages, but is making adequate progress in both areas.  The strategies, such as the dictado, the shared writing experiences, and the word wall in Spanish have helped her gain more confidence in her Spanish writing and I feel confident that soon she will be adding more details and ideas to her Spanish writing without significant encouragement from me.  In general, I feel that my plan of instruction that I have laid out for both languages will further assist Jessica become biliterate and will also help my other cluster of bilingual students as well.

Reflection on the Student’s Biliteracy Development

          Jessica is a Mexican American student who lives with an older brother, two older sisters, and her mother and father in a small apartment in Middleton.  The family speaks Spanish at home, although all of the children speak English and converse with each other in both languages.  Her parents do not speak English and are immigrants from Mexico.  Jessica and one of her sisters were born here in Madison and the other siblings were born in Mexico.  Jessica is a second grader in a mono-lingual school who has been in English-only classroom environments since attending Head Start at age three and four.  In all of her classroom experiences, Jessica has always had an assistant or teacher who speaks Spanish, but English has been the language of instruction.  Due to her type of schooling and her family/home life, I believe that Jessica is a simultaneous bilingual, who has been surrounded by both English and Spanish throughout her entire life.  Obviously Spanish was Jessica’s initial language with her family, but having grown up in the Madison/Middleton community and having three older siblings in schools without bilingual programming, Jessica has been surrounded by English in the community, in her home, on the television and eventually throughout her schooling.

          In terms of the three language domains for our case study, Jessica’s oral language was the most balanced between her two languages.  In her oral language, Jessica fits more into a general level 3-4, with some areas being stronger than others.  Jessica’s linguistic complexity fits a level 4 in both English and in Spanish, as she was able to give many details and variety within our conversations in both languages.  Jessica’s language control appears slightly stronger in Spanish than in English due to some irregular plural nouns and verb mistakes during our conversation in English.  For example, she referred to the “fishes” that she saw at her cousin’s house and said that her cousin “runned” very fast during a game that they played together.  I did not notice many language control mistakes during our conversation in Spanish.  Lastly, the area that was most challenging to Jessica was that of vocabulary usage.  In both languages her vocabulary usage fit best into a level 3 developing.  In Spanish, Jessica did not appear to have enough specific vocabulary to continue to add the level of details that she desired, and I have found this to be the case in her Spanish reading and writing as well.  Her general Spanish language is strong; it is only when it comes to a specific word where she pauses or after a few moments will say the word in English instead.  In English, I feel that she has a higher level of academic vocabulary, mostly due to her instruction in English throughout the years.  There were still words that she did not know when describing a specific activity, such as canoeing on a lake, but she often had enough other vocabulary to talk or demonstrate with a movement around the unknown word.  For example, when she was telling me that she saw people on the lake canoeing, she did not know the word “row” or “canoe” and instead used the word “boat” and then showed me the action for rowing by using her hands and arms to demonstrate.  Throughout both of our conversations, I was able to thoroughly understand Jessica’s main idea and most details in both languages.

          In terms of code-switching, the only times that Jessica used code-switching was during our oral conversations in Spanish.  She never misread a word in the other language and never used a Spanish word or vice versa during any of our writing sessions.  She also never used code-switching while speaking to me in English, even though she knows that I also speak Spanish.  The only type of code-switching that Jessica used was the intra-sentential code-switching, as defined by Karen Beeman.  Jessica would say things like “el Saturday fui con mi cousin…” and “sí, más durante el summer….”.  In both of these sentences, I know that Jessica knows the Spanish words for Saturday, cousin, and summer, as I have heard her use them before.  Therefore, these are perfect examples for the idea that code-switching should not be viewed as a deficient or a negative in one language or the other.  Most likely, Jessica was speaking fluently in Spanish and just used the word that first came to thought.  Each time that Jessica used code-switching, she always used a word with the same meaning for her sentence, so every code-switch made sense to someone who is also bilingual.  I have also heard Jessica code-switch often with her mother.  Although her mother speaks only in Spanish, Jessica will use a combination of Spanish and English when speaking with her mother.  At times, I believe that Jessica is using the English word because she does not know the Spanish word; however, at other times, I have heard Jessica use both the Spanish and the English word before and know that she knows both and is somehow choosing which word to use during the conversation.

          For the language domains of reading and writing, Jessica is clearly more dominant in English due to her English-only schooling instruction for the past four years.  This current year is Jessica’s first exposure to formal instruction in Spanish and the Spanish instruction has been limited to a 20 minute, small group, mini-lesson every day.  In her English reading, Jessica is currently reading on-grade level (level 23)  based on the Rigby running record and comprehension questions that are given three times per year.  The two areas that Jessica still struggles with in her English reading are in comprehension and vocabulary, which is appropriate for both her reading level and because she is an English language learner (ELL).  Most of Jessica’s running record errors and misunderstandings during the comprehension questions were due to not knowing the specific vocabulary within the story.  Interestingly, some of the words she was able to decode, but clearly did not know the word because when asked later on about the topic, she answered incorrectly or gave a miscued response due to her lack of understanding.  For example, some of the words were:  gallop, fully, tufts and browsing.  In terms of using comprehension strategies, Jessica stops to ask questions, using the pictures and tries to use context clues to figure out the new vocabulary.  Again, this is developmentally appropriate for her reading level and she is on par with the other students in her guided reading group.

          In terms of Jessica’s reading ability in Spanish, she is about a full grade level below (level 11), according to the Rigby reading assessment, although she has made wonderful gains throughout this year to reach that point.  Jessica is able to easily understand the stories that she reads in Spanish and can retell the story, including the problem and the solution.  Occasionally there are vocabulary words that are unfamiliar to Jessica, but she is normally able to figure out the new words due to context clues and picture clues.  Most of Jessica’s errors are because she predicted the word instead of stopping to decode the word and her prediction was wrong.  Another unique mistake that Jessica made when reading in Spanish was mispronouncing the words, possibly because she has not heard the correct pronunciation nor has she seen the word in a written format.  For example, she read the word silla as the word “sila” and the word ruedas as the word “redas”.  However, when I asked her what a silla de ruedas was, she pointed to the wheelchair on the page, therefore, she clearly understood the word, but simply did not pronounce all of the sounds in the word.

          Finally, Jessica is also more dominant in her English writing as well, and this is because of her substantial formal instruction in writing in English.  Jessica uses a more typical English discourse pattern when she writes in both English and Spanish.  In her writing sample in English, Jessica gave a variety of sentence lengths, used difficult and unique vocabulary and wrote for a sufficient amount of time.  Therefore, in Jessica’s written English development, I would place her at the transitional stage of writing, according to Rubin and Carlan.  Whereas in her writing sample in Spanish, Jessica struggled with coming up with ideas and was continuously guided to add more details and thoughts to her paragraph.  Jessica did not use many unique words, nor did she add many thoughtful details to her ideas.  She began all of her sentences in a similar way and made a few spelling and grammatical errors.  I would place Jessica closer to a phonetic stage and possibly moving into the transitional stage, according to Rubin and Carlan, in terms of her abilities to write in Spanish.

          Overall, Jessica is a typical simultaneous bilingual who has been enrolled in an English-only school environment since the age of about three years old.  She has a somewhat balanced level of oral language in both of her languages; although I would argue that her English academic vocabulary is stronger than her Spanish.  She is dominant in English in both reading and writing, due to her language of instruction, although she has been fast to transfer to skills to Spanish throughout this past year.  Overall, if Jessica were able to continue to receive formal instruction in Spanish, I believe that she would be able to be on-grade level within a year or two because of her positive attitude, her motivation to learn Spanish, her on-grade level abilities in English and her ability to transfer skills between her two languages.