We had a very successful and fruitful week at La ola del lago. Our students are listening, writing, reading, and speaking so much Spanish! I would like to once again commend our fabulous teachers and Amity interns for the dedication and work they put into their planning, preparation, and professional learning. This past Monday, January 18 all our LODL teachers participated in the following activities/workshops:
- Created a systematic instructional schedule to best meet the differentiated needs of all our learners
- Examined student data to best align our instruction to students’ varied levels
- Created and prioritized major next steps for the collective work we need to accomplish over the next 30, 60, and 90 days
- Looking at curriculum, and mapping out a scope and sequence for the remainder of 2015-16
- Analyzed existing Reading Units of Study (which is the English Language Arts curriculum the rest of PLSAS uses) and figured out which was most applicable to Spanish immersion curriculum. This includes translation, finding appropriate resources, looking at the instructional strategies and tweaking to Spanish, etc.
- Participated in a seminar in how to best integrate technology into our curriculum
- Attended a session on E-STEM learning and how to get students learning about environmental education
- Created and discussed grade level common assessments which will be used to guide our metrics on the report cards
- Discussed which instructional strategies and activities are best utilized to meet students’ personalized needs
I received a few questions last week on how we use student data (again – all in Spanish) to guide our practice and instruction at La ola del lago. Last week I had the following paragraph in my newsletter:
“All of our LODL students completed Benchmark 2 of AIMSweb testing. In this short test, all students are assessed on Letter Sound Fluency and Syllable Reading Fluency. Each student receives a mark for how many letters (sounds) they are able to read in a minute. Our grade 1 students are further assessed on their reading level. This has to do with fluency, accuracy, rate of speed, comprehension, and being able to retell the story. This is valuable information (data) for teachers, as it allows them to guide and differentiate their instruction. If you have any questions, please contact your child’s teacher or myself.”
I would like to introduce the concept of leveled texts, or guided reading. Teachers use a student’s reading level, or fluency metrics (letter sounds, syllable sounds, oral reading fluency, sight word fluency), coupled with reading accuracy percentage and reading comprehension, to best select appropriate instructional reading levels. Students that are at a certain level are given materials to instructionally differentiate the curriculum. Students are evaluated on reading levels based upon the assessment package created by Fountas & Pinnell. Again, all of the data we evaluate students on is in Spanish. Please check out the following link for more information about the characteristics of different reading levels in leveled texts [guided reading].
Leveled texts link
http://www.kenoshastjoseph.com/lancers-for-life/files/2012/08/Fountas-Pinnell_levelsA-Z.pdf
If you have not yet liked our Facebook page or joined Twitter, I would highly encourage you to. We share many pictures, videos, and information through these two medians of social media. Our La ola del lago hashtag is #LODL, my Twitter handle is @RKucinski, and our Facebook Page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/EdgewoodPLSAS
If there is anything I can help you out with over the course of the school year, or if you have any questions about Spanish immersion education, I am always happy to hear from you. I can be reached directly at 952.226.0903 or [email protected].
Hasta luego,
Richie