The best way to neutralize criticism in our buildings is to flood our critics with information that supports what we do, using email, stopping them in the hallway, etc.. The other primers can be used as well:
Ben:
I wrote up this email to send to my principals, my district administrators, and my five colleagues in a different high school feeder pattern that is 100% CI at the middle school and 75% CI in French in the high school.
The email said:
I wrote this to share how I am implementing PPS’ recommended best practices in my teaching.
This is from PPS, with my reflections in blue. I would relish a dialogue about this document and the points I wrote in blue below.
World Languages Best Practices
Portland Public Schools’ world language instruction places a high value on developing a world language program that is based on performance of the language rather than knowledge about the language.
This is the same position statement that the majority of CI teachers hold. It is NOT the stated goal of my students’ future teachers at Lincoln; a French teacher there has stated that the aim is to teach students ABOUT the language.
Students are engaged in meaningful, authentic and purposeful language learning tasks which include an integration of listening, speaking, reading, and writing as well as building cultural understanding.
At this point in the school year, my students listen and read on a daily basis, and they are beginning – some of them – to voluntarily output speech on a daily basis. I began the year honoring their silent periods – the time when they need to listen and build interlanguage in order to have a linguistic system to draw from in later speech. However, in three weeks I predict that I will be having to train them in turn-taking, because many will be attempting to talk the language out of turn. Of course, some of them are going to be ready for output later than others. Therefore, I will conduct speaking assessments in late spring and never publicly, but in a private unscripted (and unannounced) conversation. I have been asked to have the students write daily. However, I am concerned that taking the time to transition into and out of a daily writing task will eat up five to ten minutes that could be better-spent providing input through reading or listening to the language. This use of time for writing is especially problematic to me as the research I have read seems to indicate that the best way to build students’ writing abilities is through reading. Taking daily time for writing would rob time from reading and listening, which truly engine students’ development. We do write on a periodic (weekly or bi-weekly) basis and students are already showing growth in the three-week period that we have been collecting samples.
Teachers, as much as possible, emulate authentic language use. They:
• Use the target language extensively and encourage the students to do so.
• I speak in French or Spanish (L2) about 90% of the time in class, except on certain days when procedural information needs to be transmitted. For instance, recently we began our reading program (ten minutes of free voluntary reading at the start of class) and I spent about half the period setting them up and explaining the goals and procedures. But the vast majority of the days, 90% + is the rule.
• Establish an affective climate in which students feel comfortable taking risks.
• Part of the affective climate is honoring students’ silent periods. Many of them are coming out of that period. However, this is why speaking is downplayed in class. I do have them, starting in late fall, do a lot more turning and talking to retell in L2. This is, in my understanding of the research, not a necessary component of building robust and accurate interlanguage, but many students crave the opportunity to try speaking.
• Provide opportunities to use the target language to interact with others, to understand others and to make oneself understood.
• Students spend about 90% of the time in L2 – listening, reading, giving ideas, and seeing those ideas become part of the class experience, as well as periodically writing their own stories and sharing them. Speaking to summarize the class’ discussion or stories will become more and more a part of the class as the students move out of the Novice level (which I might point out is not the PPS expectation until the END of the SECOND semester, which is next year for my first-year classes).
• Use a variety of print and non-print materials including authentic materials.
• We have just begun reading authentic easy books in free voluntary reading time. Students begin with books written for native speaker kindergarteners (unless they are heritage learners or have had prior L2 exposure) and gradually work their way up to more complex authentic texts and readers designed for language learners.
• Value students for whom this is their first language.
• These students really do not belong in a Spanish 1-2 class, but I know it happens. I do not have any heritage speakers in my classes but I do have immersion students and native speakers of other Romance languages (Spanish speakers in French) whom I praise heavily and have do more advanced tasks such as writing and editing readings for the class.
Teachers understand that language learning is not additively sequential but is recursive and paced differently at various stages of acquisition. They:
• Utilize class time for listening, speaking, reading and writing which is appropriate to course objectives and to the language skills of students.
• At the Novice level, the class time should be used primarily for listening and reading. And during the first term, it should be mostly listening and reading (using the Language Experience Approach model) class-created texts.
• Use the textbook as a tool, not as a curriculum
• I use the textbook (because of alignment issues with LHS) as a resource for the lexical sets that students will be exposed to (though by all means not the ONLY lexical items) and I distribute those exposures throughout the year, not in one session, unit, or term. This, I have been instructed, is more educational for the kids than having massed repetitions and practice of a lexical set during, for example, a thematic unit on clothing.
• Use explicit error correction in activities when the focus is on discrete language points and uses indirect correction when communication is the focus.
• We use a focus on explicit error correction when editing our writing for publication. I would argue that extensive reading leads to “implicit error correction” through building more and more accurate visual interlanguage.
Teachers understand that language proficiency involves both comprehension and production. comprehension abilities tend to precede and exceed productive abilities.
• Classroom assessments reflect the way students are taught.
• I use whole-language assessments based on narratives to assess listening and reading, and have students write using language they acquired in class storytelling and discussions, and have them (eventually) retell stories and information from class.
• Student tasks and teacher questions reflect a range of thinking skills.
• I ask students to answer comprehension questions (basic, recall level), create with the language orally and in writing (application level), and to offer personal opinions in L2 (evaluation level).
• Students are explicitly taught second language learning strategies and are encouraged to assess their own progress.
• I teach students about second language acquisition, tell them ways that they can gain input on their own (One great way is watching movies they already know well from childhood with L2 audio and L1 subtitles, then again with L2 audio and L2 subtitles, then again with just L2 audio. Another great way is extensive L2 reading, of course!), and have them assess on the ACTFL scale using a rubric.
• Culture is systematically incorporated into instruction.
• We use many traditional tales from the Spanish- and French-speaking worlds.We learn about holidays when reviewing the calendar.
• Students are enabled to develop positive attitudes toward cultural diversity.
• We speak positively about the presence of language minority groups in our community.
• The physical environment of the classroom reflects the target language and culture.
• The physical environment is full of L2!
Teachers understand that language learning is complex. Instruction takes into account individual learning styles and rates, and also attends to teaching process strategies for successful learning. They:
• Use a variety of print and non-print materials including authentic materials.
• We use videos, websites, authentic legends and tales, authentic L2 children’s books, and class-created texts.
• Use technology resources to assist in language learning and practice.
• We use video to review our work, and we are creating an end-of-year video to have a review and record of our work over the year. We use websites for input and practice.
Teachers understand that the ability to perform with language is facilitated when students actively engage in meaningful, authentic and purposeful language learning tasks.
• Use activities that simulate real-life situations.
• The students work as a group to think of ideas, create together, write together, and share their writing. We discuss the weather, date, our plans, our weekends, our ideas, and our lives. These are real-life uses of the language.
Teachers assess oral proficiency in open-ended tasks as well as achievement of specific skills. They are familiar with oral proficiency interviews and use them to assess students’ proficiency.
We will do short open-ended OPIs in the spring. I formatively assess students’ oral abilities during in-class retells and dialogue. The only thing in this document I feel unclear on is the “achievement of specific skills”. What are these skills?