Delaware World Language Teacher Leader Network Meeting

U of D Carvel Center

April 18, 2013

In Attendance:Linnea Bradshaw (Appoquinimink), Grisette Rodriguez (Appoquinimink), Bronwen DuHadaway (Brandywine), Claudia Laet-Reis (Brandywine), Marian Darcey (Caesar Rodney), Greg Berman (Cape Henlopen), Sandy Spangler (Capital), Oscar Gonzalez (Capital), Elyse Seitz (Christina), Katie Sevilla (Christina), Kristin Roach (Indian River), David Spencer (Indian River), Celeste Landon (Lake Forest), Erik Mancini (New Castle County Vo Tech), Estefania Becker (Polytech), Holly Schnittinger (Red Clay), Del Swartzentruber (Seaford), Kerry Stewart (Sussex Technical), Lynn Fulton-Archer (DOE), Juan CarlosMorales (DOE), Kimberly Rodriguez (DOE), Liu Xiao (DOE)

Absent:Christine Alois (Caesar Rodney), Linda Smith (Capital), Vilicia Cade (Christina), Etienne Seck (Christina), Andea LaCombe(Colonial),Sylvia Cintora (Colonial), Emily Ritchey (Delmar),Tracey Kackley (Delaware Military Academy), , Vonetta Pierce (NCCVT), Sarah Vieni-Vento (NCCVT), Terri Villa (NCCVT), Gina Travalini-Rubini (Red Clay), Ali Alalou (University of DE)

Introduction to Poll everywhere

Answer the question, how do you define proficiency? Log into: and submit 231141 or text 231141 and your message to 37607. If you are able to use cell phones in the school, you can have your students do a poll and have them view the answer on the projector.

Introduction of JC:

A brief introduction and overview of Juan Carlos Morales was given by himself. Juan Carlos is able to contribute to others by helping others gain the knowledge that he has.

Teacher Proficiency

Proficiency is the ability to use language in a real world situation and a spontaneous interaction and non-rehearsed context and in a manner acceptable and appropriate to native speakers of the language.

Spontaneous reaction:

  • Greg: A piece that really speaks to him. A Goal
  • Sandy: Appropriate to native speakers – Spontaneous interaction in classrooms doesn’t always do the same in the classroom. Go to someone good at planning assessments.
  • Elyse: Doesn’t always need to be grammatically correct. Think about communication. What is the goal of community rather than accuracy?
  • Needs to see people produce.
  • Culture is important. Needs to be able to understand each other’s culture.
  • Marian: Non-rehearsed.

What matters in the World Language Classroom?

  1. The WHY – Teaching should be transparent and has to make sense. The can do statement. Giving them a destination. Language learning and language teaching has to make sense. We prepare them for life in this century.
  2. The How – Important to speak the language of our students. Don’t speak in the 70’s. Speak in today’s technology and embrace what the students know. They will teach you something.
  3. TheWho – We invest in our students and reap the benefits. Get to know your students (personal lives and what their likes are). Let them know you care. We have different opportunities that other teachers don’t.
  4. Our Goal – Take them from being a parrot, to a survivor, to the level of life and then level of issues. They will be novice, intermediate, advanced, superior. Start with comprehensible input. Output of oral language. Vocabulary acquisition. Literacy. If a teacher is not speaking in a comprehensible way, the students will not get it. Lynn can help with target language input. Students will acquire the vocabulary if the get to use the language. They need the output of the language. This will lead to literacy. Comprehensibility is the beginning of all literacy.
  5. Successful language learners are:

Risk takers - Comfortable trying to communicate. Have them find their “L2”voice.

Vulnerable – The better ones are not typically the students that are not getting good grades in their other classes. Not focused on their grade. Have trust and an investment in that person that they will not be laughed at.

Use their intuition – Not afraid to be a risk taker. Have to make mistakes to learn. Make connections with what they know. Use what they have. Don’t think what they are saying is ridiculous. Be a good guesser. Look for their own patterns and start to create and figure out what the rules are on their own. Be a risk taker.

Five tenets of World Language Teaching:

  • Comprehensible input
  • Checking for understanding
  • Engaging all learners all of the time
  • Scaffolding and modeling
  • Use of the target language

Language is at the service of a linguistic task. Students don’t care what it is called but they care about what it lets them do. We need to move from language functions to functioning in the language. Communication occurs despite errors. Teachers are not editors. They are motivators.

SWOT Analysis – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Strengths:

  1. Small DE Community
  2. Have a network
  3. State curriculum
  4. Ability to collaborate
  5. Compromise. Have people who want to do it and want to do it well
  6. State Director and 4 Department of Education Associates
  7. Governors interest in work.
  8. Immersion program
  9. Component 5 testing. Entire country is looking and evaluating how students grow.
  10. Increase in AP / Middle school language
  11. State location
  12. Different strengths
  13. All 3 counties working together

Weaknesses:

  1. No time and too many initiatives
  2. Need more middle school programs
  3. 3 counties – Becoming a cohesive group
  4. All teachers are not on the same page
  5. Administration doesn’t understand the need for World language
  6. No statewide in-service days / Professional Development
  7. Financing- teachers / programs being cut
  8. Sharing information from the World Language Teacher Leader Network
  9. Not given the same status as the core subjects
  10. Lack of involvement in the community
  11. What we call global education, the world calls it education
  12. There are benefits to learn (Questions every day. Why is it important to learn?)

Comments from Juan Carlos: Go to your district and share what the Teacher Leader Network is all about. Communication needs to improve with the districts.

Opportunities:

  1. Create a collaboration for lo-ed. students
  2. Work closely with post-secondary
  3. Use the immersion program as model to our middle/high schools
  4. Use Governors World Language initiative as an opportunity to grow AP programs
  5. Know what to look for in a successful World Language teacher. Guidance from the teachers. Teacher/Administrator forums. Have the student’s advocate why this is important.
  6. Be an advocate for the new Governor’s term. Reach out to the Legislators and make them aware.

Threat:

  1. Post-secondary discouraging teachers wanting to teach a certain language
  2. Number of World Language students
  3. Bad personal experiences. Ask the guidance counselors what are their experiences.
  4. Universities do not recognize the middle school level
  5. Teachers are not prepared to teach in the High School levels
  6. Teachers work here then go back to Pennsylvania
  7. Governor funding
  8. What will happen when the new Governor starts? Will he have the same agenda and what kind of support will we have in the next term.

How do we want to move forward with the strengths / weaknesses we came up with? Plan this for the next meeting. Discuss what our plan is so we area on the same page.

Suggestion:

Invite an administrator or counselor to a meeting. Make the department chairs aware of where the information for the World Language information is coming from. Address the administration at one of the school meetings. There are too many initiatives being distributed among the school meetings and World Language is not a priority. This may address the threat of teacher cuts.

Juan Carlos - Create an advocacy plan!! Assessment is advocacy. Find a better way to identify who are the model/star teachers. We need to get the word out. Who can we send the teachers to? We need to be able to learn from the model teachers. Get the next guard of leadership teachers. We need to develop them.

Bring in the knowledgeable teachers who you know as presenters and who are outside the network.

Common Core and the World Language Classroom – Lynn Fulton-Archer

See crosswalk document from ACTFL (Use the new one handed out today).

Learning Targets

  1. I can identify core components of literacy
  2. I can identify shifts in literacy in the ELA Common Core standards
  3. I can connect World Language tasks to the ELA Common core standards

What is Literacy?

  1. Reading for knowledge
  2. Reading, writing, listening
  3. Using methods of communication
  4. The ability to read and write
  5. 21st Century Skills Map
  6. Language (symbols, comprehension, words)

What is it to “know” a word?

  1. What it looks like and does in real life. Understand the nuisance
  2. Evaluate if what you meant to say is what the other person said
  3. Different meanings and different contexts
  4. Different words in different situations.
  1. The three “legs” of literacy.
  2. Understand the print of the word. See it.

How do you help kids understand print? Pictures with the word, sound out the word (decoding), make them write

  • Sound: Model it, natural disasters, opportunities to make them speak it
  • Meaning: TPR (Gestures), group them together, Frayer models, definition of examples, learning focus, graphic organizer
  1. Literacy and the “Three Models”
  • Interpersonal (Meaning)
  • Interpretive (Sound)
  • Presentational (Print)

World Language Arts vs. ELA

World Language:

Interpretive (Reading or Listening)

Interpersonal (Reading and writing)

Presentational (Speaking or Writing)

English Language Arts:

Reading

Writing

Speaking

Listening

Language

Proficiency Levels = Language according to the Common Core Initiative. Create sample curricula for any language program. How do we build in to a curriculum that is language based and that is in an appropriate way? Rethink and re-evaluate a way to present this.

How does this shift the thinking? What do students read?
Level 1: (Websites, letters, stories, advertisements, weather forecasts, dialogues, situation dialogues, informational text). Level 4: (News articles, novels, poems).

Instructional shifts of Common Core

Shift 1: Building knowledge through content-rich literacy non-fiction and informational texts.

Instructional Shifts:

PK-5 – Balance of informational and literary texts

6-12 – Building knowledge in the disciplines

Shift 2: What do students do with what they read?

Act it out, write about it and talk about it, reproduce it, create an advertisement to what they read.

Instructional Shifts:

Reading and writing grounded in evidence from the text

Text-based answers

Writing to and from sources

Shift 3: At what level do students read?

Proficiency

Instructional shifts:

Text Complexity

Regular practice with complex text and its academic vocabulary

Staircase of complexity

Academic vocabulary

Part II -Kristin Roach

Activities to keep students engaged in the World Language Classroom

TELL Document

How do you rate yourself with regards to planning and the learning experience of your students?

Are teachers planning with destination in mind?

Teachers need to know what is expected.

What are three strategies you use to maximize student learning through planning?

1. Takes a break from planning so the kids can refocus.

2.Create word origami books

3.I can statements. Check off what you can or cannot do.

Comments about textbooks:

Loves not having text books. There are websites for free activities. Great for a resource but loves not using the textbook. Curriculum is not tied to the textbook. Better able to think outside the box without the book.

What are three strategies you use to provide a meaningful learning experience that advances student learning?

  1. Rewrite what they learned from the book
  2. Let the kids know where they are going. What am I getting from this chapter?
  3. Write an e-mail to the Principal in Spanish. How can this affect my life? Put a fundraiser together and let the principal know.

Good grammar doesn’t make communication possible. It just makes the form more accurate.

  1. How do I learn? How was I raised? Bothers teachers when students speak Spanish incorrectly or when the announcements are misread. When the grammar is not appropriate?
  2. Japanese is important to have correct grammar. This could change the meaning of the sentence. Sometimes you can’t overlook it.
  3. Don’t need to be perfect. However, if you grammar is not perfect, you will not get a 5.
  4. Kids learn by hearing a good model.
  5. If you don’t speak properly, this reflects how you have been trained.
  6. The immersion model does not go along with proper grammar.
  7. If you have a person coming from a different country, do they speak fluent English? Sometimes you have to pick and choose where you will correct the student for grammatical errors.

DPAS Component 5 Question and answers – Diane Donohue

Goals not set from the beginning of Pre-Post-tests. Foreign Language teachers were not allowed to give pre-test until very late. Gave a pre-test in October. Now needs to write goals in April. Various teachers have not given the pre-test and are required to write goals. What should be done?

Answer: Baffled that goals were not set in October / November. Districts were told this needed to be done in the districts. DOE cannot make them do this. Teachers have some authority. The system falls on the shoulders of the teachers and administrators. Need to tell the administrator and have them take into consideration when evaluating. Educators who were not with students the full year or If the student has not been in the classroom for 85% of the teaching time, their scores should not be counted in the calculations.

Comment: The Fall conference was done but never had goals. There was no baseline for data.

Question: How is the Component 5 graded? How do I prove that my students are being graded when they teach on different levels at each school district?

Answer: The test is based on the statewide curriculum and should be consistent across the state.

Question: Is there a plan? The department is going through a refinement process. There are options to help Juan Carlos go through all of the ones that were done in the beginning. The rigor is all over the place and needs to be reworked. No assessment can have more than 1/3 of the depth of knowledge.

Answer: Go to the DPAS Website. If you need to develop a pre/post assessment. These will be reviewed by an outside vendor. This is not done at the DOE level. If accepted, the vendor with work with the group who wrote these assessments. Window is open until June 7th to submit to Diane Donohue. E-mail Diane or go to DPAS site.

If you are having problems with performance plus, you may contact Steve Garner and send a copy of the e-mail to Diane Donohue. Steve may be reached at: . Everything with DAPS 5 falls on your administrator.

Question: Can there be an administration guide so there is consistency across the state? Everyone is giving a different response. Wants dates guidelines with specific dates, timelines. The Schools need this for the administrators.

Answer: Local decision has to remain intact. They need to have some decision making power. Will ask for a something short guide with a recommended guide.

Component 5 will be calculated this year. You have more control as an educator than you know. You have 2 measures, perhaps more depending on how you used them. Only 20% is component 5. The rest is from component 1-4.

If your administrator allows you to use component 3 for component 2 you may use it.

Your state code and regulations are in the DOE Common Core website. DPAS evaluation. Teacher guides – Code / Regulation.

What are the 3 most important points of the meeting? We can set the network’s priority. Take this back to the districts. We will do this at the end of the meeting.

  1. Move toward proficiency.
  1. Send out Juan Carlos’s Prezi ext.
  2. Importance of grammar
  1. Create a World Language Advocacy group. (Guidance counselors, teachers, students, etc.). What do you need? What do you want to see? What ideas, activities at the school? Do you need documents, etc.?
  1. Develop an action plan locally
  1. Discussing literacy and what we do to promote it
  2. Prepare students for the university level

Next Meeting:

  1. CCS & World Language
  2. 2 year curriculum across the state for lower level students

Suggestion to get Aspira Academy involved.

April 17, 2013Juan Carlos Morales1|Page