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Por Favor Maestra. Spanish, Please Teacher." So, I Began Going Over The Results of

The document discusses a teacher's experience with a student named Fernando who was performing below grade level. Despite interventions, Fernando continued to struggle academically. The teacher also had similar experiences with other English learner students not progressing as quickly as their English-dominant peers. The teacher hopes to identify what supports higher-achieving English learners and apply those lessons to help struggling students. In their current kindergarten dual immersion class, the teacher aims to build collaboration skills from the start to foster success for both native English and Spanish speakers.

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145 views3 pages

Por Favor Maestra. Spanish, Please Teacher." So, I Began Going Over The Results of

The document discusses a teacher's experience with a student named Fernando who was performing below grade level. Despite interventions, Fernando continued to struggle academically. The teacher also had similar experiences with other English learner students not progressing as quickly as their English-dominant peers. The teacher hopes to identify what supports higher-achieving English learners and apply those lessons to help struggling students. In their current kindergarten dual immersion class, the teacher aims to build collaboration skills from the start to foster success for both native English and Spanish speakers.

Uploaded by

hpapandrea
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Introduction Fernandos mom showed up to our fourth grade parent teacher conference rushing in, still in her restaurant

uniform. Shes a young single mom with threes kids less than nine years old. As I typically do, I asked her if she would prefer if I spoke in English or Spanish during our conference. Espaol, por favor maestra. Spanish, please teacher. So, I began going over the results of Fernandos assessments, starting with his third grade CST scores, which were far below grade level. I then shared with her the results of the beginning of the year benchmarks tests, also below grade level. She then said, No entiendo lo que pasa, hes always so low. I dont understand whats happening, hes always so low. I asked her if she also spoke English and she said, A little. I asked her where she went to school and she told me she went to an elementary school in our district since kindergarten and continued on to the high school across the street from my school! This was an eye-opening experience for me. I was sitting across from what could potentially be one of my current students fifteen years from now. She had gone through twelve years of public school and still only felt like she could speak a little English and clearly felt more proficient in Spanish. Fernando had been at Ocean Knoll since kindergarten. He had been receiving academic intervention since first grade. The school offered leveled literacy time four days a week for forty minutes. Fernando had consistently been in the lowest group with a 6:1 ratio. He had also attended after school intervention since second grade. This class focused on improving reading comprehension and vocabulary development. However, in spite of these interventions, he continued to be one of the lowest performing students in my

class. Hes not alone; I have had students similar to Fernando in my classes since my first year of teaching. Since I started teaching in 2000, I have grappled with how to address the inequities that exist between the academic progress of English Learners and English Dominant students. I have taught in an Alternative Bilingual program in the Vista Unified School District, a Mainstream English program in the school I mentioned earlier, and currently I teach Kindergarten in a Dual Language Immersion program. In all three instances, I have seen the same discrepancies amongst English Learners who come from seemingly similar backgrounds. Some students excel and progress, while a substantial group struggles despite interventions. I hope to really get at whats working for those that succeed and find a way to share these bright spots with all students. Its important to note that my district, the Encinitas Union School District, is considered high achieving. Our overall API has remained consistently high. In addition, the San Dieguito Union School District, the middle and high school district our schools feed into, has one of the highest overall APIs in the county amongst high schools. They must be doing something right. Even though conventional measures would indicate that the system is working, I worry that there is a large group of students that are slipping through the cracks. When I taught 4th grade, I noticed that by the time students came to me, it seemed that determinations had been made: high achieving students continued to achieve and low performing students continued to struggle. Now, as a Kindergarten teacher in the Dual Language Immersion program at Capri Elementary, I have the opportunity to help both English Learners and English Dominant Students feel successful at the beginning of their school experience,

and to create a classroom community where both groups are learning from each other. Last year in my fourth grade class at Ocean Knoll, with my dilemma of inequities in mind, I began to have students do more partner work. They enjoyed working this way and through guided protocols became more productive during partner work time. I tried different methods of paring students: allowing them to choose a partner, paring by ability level (low with high), and by gender. Honestly, I didnt put a lot of thought into the methods of pairing, I focused more on modeling good listening skills, and offering kind, specific and helpful feedback. Students reflected on partner work time through exit cards and commented they enjoyed hearing someone elses ideas and having someone listen to their ideas, without interrupting. After seeing and hearing such positive responses from my students, I decided this was something I should pursue further in a more systematic, researched-based way. As I made the change to Kindergarten, I knew I would need to begin by helping students build collaboration skills from the ground up. This brought me to my research question: How do native English speakers and native Spanish speakers interact and communicate in Dual Language Immersion Kindergarten Classroom, and how will this change as we grow together as a classroom community? I was hopeful this would help get at my ultimate goal: to ensure that all students feel successful in my class.

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