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by Margo Gottlieb
Table of Contents
The first couple of hours are a whirlwind of activity for Ana. It is registration time at Lincoln for the upcoming school year and rectangular folding tables have been set up all over the gym. A bilingual paraprofessional who serves as the school's community liaison escorts Ana and her mother to a table that has a looming sign above that says 'Screening.' First, they complete some paperwork that includes demographic, health, and education information. Fortunately, the paraprofessional has remained with Ana and her mother throughout the process; she now asks Ana's mother the remaining questions on the language-use survey, a statewide tool used to identify the potential pool of ELs, in Spanish:
The purpose of this initial screening is to determine whether students are exposed to and use languages other than English in daily interaction with family members. If any of the answers to this short language-use survey indicate daily contact with other languages, students then take a standardized English language proficiency screening test to determine whether they meet the criteria for ELs and qualify for language support. The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), the 2015 reauthorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, requires that each state create a uniform process for identifying ELs, provide language services, document the progress of ELs, reclassify students when they meet the requisite criteria, and monitor students post reclassification for up to four years.
As Ana is a newcomer to a U.S. school, screening in English requires less time than the 90 minutes that have been allotted. Additionally, as part of the district's enrollment process, writing samples in the student's home language are collected. Ana happily responds to the question written in Spanish for primary grade students: 'Describe tu animal favorito con detalles. Después dibújalo.' (Describe your favorite animal, with details. Then draw a picture of it). She proudly produces a short narrative and illustration of her dog, Pecas, who she misses dearly.
Results of Initial Screening. The results from these multiple measures—the demographic data, the survey questions, the screening test, and the writing sample—indicate that Ana qualifies to participate in the school's language education program. Here is a synopsis of Ana's results from the initial screening:
— Listening: 2
— Speaking: 1
— Reading: 1
— Writing: 1
— Overall composite: 1.5
Knowing that Ana has had continuity of educational experiences starting in preschool, has attended school regularly, and can produce a story in Spanish makes her the ideal candidate to prosper in two languages—and Lincoln has several options for students like Ana to do so. Ana will be able to continue her education in Spanish while simultaneously be exposed to grade-level language and content in English.
Placement Decisions. The information gleaned from the initial screening helps determine Ana's classroom placement. Ana's mother listens very carefully to the choices and decides that the dual-language program—which enables Ana to continue to further her academic Spanish development while simultaneously accruing knowledge and understanding of English through content-area instruction—would be ideal for her daughter. In the dual-language classroom, Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) and proficient English speakers, some of whom are heritage-language speakers and former ELs, sit side-by-side as instruction is delivered in two languages throughout the day.
The following is a summary of the placement decisions for Ana based on the initial screening phase of assessment:
The community liaison walks Ana to her classroom, where she is greeted by a smiling teacher who bends over and says to her newest student … ¡Qué lindo que estés en nuestra clase! (How nice that you are in our class!).
Ana's placement in a 2nd grade dual-language classroom where instruction and assessment are delivered in two languages exemplifies the growing trend of this instructional design across the nation. The surge of enrollment in dual-language education has been prompted by legislation, most recently the passage of Proposition 58 in California, the growing body of literature and research from multiple fields (neuroscience, cognitive science, economics, linguistics, and language education, to name a few) that boosts the benefits of bilingualism, efficacy studies, program evaluations that substantiate its positive effects, and passionate advocates.
As it's the beginning of the school year, classroom teachers in Lincoln School are dedicating this month to the collection of baseline data on students' initial performance in the content areas as well as their language and literacy development. Luisa, Ana's teacher, sets up a chart to capture the data that she gathers on her students and then transfers the information to a software program that she and other teachers maintain throughout the academic year. Later, during collaboration time, she will discuss the overall performance of her classroom with her grade-level team.
Luisa, an experienced dual-language teacher, makes sure that she always relies on multiple sources of data for decision making. For some content areas, such as language arts, Luisa uses measures—such as Informal Reading Inventories in Spanish and English, diagnostic tools designed to ascertain students' frustration, instructional, and independent reading levels—agreed upon by her grade-level team. She notes data on the students' word recognition and comprehension on an Excel spreadsheet that is shared gradewide to document the reading progress of all dual-language 2nd graders in the same way and in the same place in both languages. These pre-post measures, selected by the dual-language instructional coaches and participating teachers, are administered again in May (the close of the academic year) to determine individual student growth in biliteracy development.
One way in which Luisa documents individual students' gains throughout the year is by making anecdotal notes of their conceptual knowledge in the content areas in conjunction with their academic language development. The evidence she collects is from the students' everyday instructional activities. Figure 1 shows Luisa's notes for Ana. (Luisa tries to complete a chart for each student every month and often jots down pivotal moments based on observation or interaction with the students.) You can see how Luisa capitalizes on Ana's strength in Spanish as a springboard for her English language development. As science is taught in English and social studies in Spanish, Luisa makes notations in the corresponding cells.
Name: Ana
Month: September
In English
In Spanish
Language Development
Transfers meaning from Spanish to English
Recounts personal narratives with much detail
Mathematics
Calculates raw addition to 1,000
Uses manipulatives in base 10
Science
Classifies physical properties of real-life materials
Social Studies
Collects interview data on the community
As second graders are not yet well versed in taking surveys, Luisa takes time throughout the month to interview individual students to get to know each one better. This year, Luisa has designed an interest survey to find out her students' passions, experiences, preferences, and even their dislikes. In that way, she can personalize instruction to motivate and engage her students to maximize their opportunities to learn.
Today, at the close of the interview, taking all her baseline data into account, Luisa sits down with Ana. Together they recap the first several weeks of school and decide on personal language goals in English and Spanish for the marking period. Knowing that Ana has strong literacy skills in Spanish, her teacher reinforces that strength in Ana's additional language, English. Here are the goals on which the two agree:
Luisa's professional learning community of K–2 teachers has been studying theory, research, and practice related to the advantages of bilingualism and their impact on learning. Consequently, she is quite aware of the literature that points to the benefit of Spanish-speaking students' use of cognate knowledge to infer meaning in English. In this case, Luisa believes that since Ana's literacy in Spanish is very strong, she can readily and intentionally transfer information from one language to another, thus increasing her metalinguistic awareness. Having this strategic tool (that is, use of cognate knowledge) will be advantageous for Ana as it will enable her to gain a richer understanding of language use in her biliteracy development. As building cognate knowledge has been set as a language goal for Spanish for Ana and other multilingual students this initial quarter, Luisa notes that it should also be incorporated into the assessment repertoire of the classroom.
The second graders are very excited about Halloween and El Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), so Luisa and her teacher team have been busy crafting a multidisciplinary unit that integrates the content areas of language arts, mathematics, and social science with art, music, and language development. The teachers adhere to a methodology that includes a gradual release of responsibility so that the students begin to exhibit self-regulation and independent learning. As they wish to give the students choice and voice, the team decides to share with their classes a menu of three projects to be completed during the last two weeks of the month. Students are to work in pairs to:
Since Ana is familiar with the Day of the Dead and has seen ofrendas in Mexico, she selects this project—which will give her an opportunity to explore her ancestry and her cultural roots. Ultimately she can share her language and culture with her partner, create an ofrenda that is significant for her and the members of her close-knit family, and start to make comparisons with the American holiday.
Ana chooses to combine video, a new technology for her (which she learns from her partner), audio storytelling about her ancestry (from information she has gathered through interviews with her family), and a written description of how she puts together the ofrenda. While Ana decides on Spanish as her primary mode of communication, she carefully labels the pieces of her ofrenda with brief descriptions in English to show she is beginning to communicate in her new language.
This common performance assessment for this month's 2nd grade project consists of the product each student has chosen, the agreed-upon criteria for success, and each student's personal reflections. It's considered common assessment as all 2nd grade teachers have reached consensus on the project's two-week time span, its three final products, and its associated rubric based on the criteria for success used to interpret student work. The overall purpose of this project is to determine the extent to which the students:
This multidisciplinary project spans several content areas. The teachers rely on multiple sets of grade-level content standards for language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies as well as corresponding language development standards, including:
The second grade teacher team is committed to having students actively explore, experiment, and engage in learning. Therefore, the teachers rely on performance assessment in their instructional routines (in which students work with partners or in small groups) as well as for the culminating projects for each unit of learning. They realize that the students, as they work together and participate in academic conversations, are developing critical 21st century skills, are engaging in social interaction, and are being exposed to a variety of language models.
Performance Assessment. As Lincoln's teachers are committed to having students actively involved in their own learning, they craft each unit's products or projects (often with input from their students) that serve as the basis for performance assessment. Following is the list of specific features of performance assessment that Lincoln's teachers treat as their ongoing design checklist at grade-level meetings:
Performance Assessment—
◻ Represents students' identities, languages, and cultures
◻ Consists of authentic tasks with real-life application, ideally that take on social action
◻ Requires hands-on student engagement, preferably in collaboration with peers
◻ Exemplifies original student work that includes multiple modalities
◻ Is built from features of universal design for learning
◻ Connects to students' lives, interests, and experiences
◻ Offers evidence for learning based on standards-referenced criteria for success
Student evidence for learning is embedded in the teaching cycle throughout the two-week period (which may be extended, depending on the depth and breadth of the theme). Guided by their teacher, students have opportunities to self-reflect on their progress in their journals. Ultimately students decide which artifacts of their projects, including explanatory videos, descriptive written samples, and photos are worthy of being placed in their portfolios along with justifications for their selections.
Criteria for Success in Project-Based Assessment. Performance assessment of students' original work on their projects is interpreted using grade-level common rubrics with a series of descriptors that serve as criteria for success. For the dual-language classrooms, the teams of teachers and data coaches from each grade design oral and written analytic scales in English and Spanish that cover students' conceptual and language development. The rubrics have components that align vertically from grade to grade for all students, and that for ELs scaffold horizontally from one level of language proficiency to the next.
Dedicated time is allocated for the 2nd grade team to meet to co-create and discuss the descriptors for the project-based rubric. This month the students have a choice of presenting explanations for their projects either orally or in writing, in either English or Spanish, along with their exhibit. The team identifies a common set of criteria across modes and languages for the students, who are categorized as Beginners, Intermediate, or Advanced dual-language learners.
Their project rubric consists of criteria related to both language development and achievement, but today the team is focusing on language development. Together the teachers adapt grades 2–3 Can Do Descriptors, Key Uses (WIDA, 2016) and los descriptores Podemos (WIDA, 2016) in conjunction with the language development standards' Performance Definitions as starting points. They take individual descriptors related to productive language—speaking and writing—and convert them into a developmental five-point scale.
As all the projects require students to either describe in detail the 'how' or 'why' of a process, the team crafts criteria for success associated with explanations. The following is a sampling of agreed-upon criteria descriptive of oral and written language development in English and Spanish for the 2nd grade project for multilingual students at each language proficiency level. To show various ways of organizing criteria for two languages, the sample oral criteria are translations of one another while those for written language offer two complementary criteria.
Sample Criteria for Oral Explanations
Beginners Level (Nivel emergente):
Beginners + Level (Nivel emergente +):
Intermediate Level (Nivel de desarrollo):
Intermediate + Level (Nivel de desarrollo +):
Advanced Level (Nivel de tranformación):
Sample Criteria for Written Explanations
As Luisa wants to ensure that all her students understand the expectations for the project, which includes the oral or written explanation and the exhibit, she spends some time with her class translating the criteria for explanations in the grade-specific rubric into student-friendly language. In addition, she converts the criteria into a checklist for her students which, with its two options, is developmentally appropriate for second graders. Luisa introduces the notion of student self-assessment early in the school year, and believes that this project is a concrete example of how every student can determine whether or not their display and explanation have met the specific criteria.
With the criteria presented in two languages, Ana is excited to participate in determining the extent to which she has met the project's targets—something she wasn't able to do in her other school. Ana enthusiastically delves into the checklist, which, as part of the common assessment, contains criteria similar to those used by the 2nd grade teachers when they come together to score the projects.
Inter-Rater Reliability. Having settled on the criteria for success specified in the rubric and having collected the students' final projects after the schoolwide exhibition, the 2nd grade team must now determine their inter-rater reliability—that is, the extent to which the teachers agree on the assignment of language proficiency levels for the projects. Establishing inter-rater agreement ensures the maintenance of consistency in scoring of all teachers and instills confidence that students would receive the same score in any of the 2nd grade classrooms. The higher the reliability (generally 85 percent agreement or greater) in exact and adjacent scores on the five-point scale, the greater the assurance of accuracy in the results. As the principal of Lincoln School relies on grade-level common assessment as part of the school's local accountability for its dual-language program, it is important to keep track of this statistic project by project.
The project rubric serves as a criterion-referenced scoring guide. In this case, the teachers match the criteria for explanations to those that the students produce in their projects. They then assign beginners, beginners +, intermediate, intermediate +, or advanced language development levels to 2nd graders other than their own. At the beginning of the year, the teachers double-score each student sample to validate their inter-rater agreement; later they only double-score when there are discrepancies by more than one level. Ana's language development for the project proves to be at the beginners level in English and the advanced level in Spanish.
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