Student Language Synthesis

As I look at Solin’s language development, I find many distinct and clear facts about Solin’s language development.

Due to the fact that Solin’s parents are both bilingual individuals, their choice to try to speak in Spanish ( non-dominant language in the society they lived in) has facilitated Solin’s great progress in developing his Spanish language skills. Even though these measures were taken, the recent events in Solin’s life (such as his parent’s recent divorce and new daily interaction’s with his mother’s parents) have increased his English language proficiency. Therefore I would say that that under Urow’s category of bilingual learners Solin would be considered a simultaneous bilingual student. He has some characteristics Code Switching in his Speech which he tries to avoid since there is a daily stated rule in class to try to speak as much Spanish as possible in class. For the most part he avoids code switching as much as possible, and avoids speaking all together is he cannot come up with the full sentence he wants to say in Spanish.

His Spanish reading and writing proficiency make him one of the strongest readers and writers in my Kindergarten class. Solin has been able to learn his vowel and consonant sounds, and has effortlessly been able to blend them together to make syllable sounds, and now has moved on to reading full sentences. In the Spanish language DRA I administered for him, he scored a level 3 instructional level.

His English reading and writing proficiency provided mixed results. I originally predicted that he would not score as high in his English DRA since he has only received formal reading and writing instruction in school in Spanish at Park Spanish Immersion. I was blown away to find out that his reading level in English matched that of his reading level in Spanish (level 3 instructional). I attribute this success to the fact that he does dominate English orally better than Spanish, and therefore has a higher vocabulary base in this language than in Spanish. I also give his mom credit for continuously reading with Solin at home in English.

What did not surprise me at all was the fact that for his writing sample, he showed signs of using Spanish spellings and applied it to the English words. Like the Writing Miscue Analysis outline stated, “using code from one language to record sounds in another.” After further analysis of his English writing sample, I was able to realize another significant observation. In the Beeman and Urow article they stated, “In English, consonants emerge before vowels. Thus the teaching of consonant letters and sounds is done before teaching vowels.” It is amazing to me to see Solin’s English writing sample, and see that he has already made this connection.

When looking back and trying to analyze my student’s language development I find that even though he is a simultaneous bilingual, I worry about his future development of English. In school he is going to have a lot of great native Spanish speaking educators, but not much time to develop his English proficiency. What he has going for him that many other simultaneous bilingual students have is that he has a strong English speaking support system at home. After concluding my research for this project, I have started to reflect on the fact that language development is far more complex than we have imagined. Each individual varies so much. And to  serve our growing and diverse bilingual population, I don’t think that our educational system is designed to serve their needs.  I think that at the very least we need to push to have district wide assessments which would allow us to look at the language development of oral proficiency and writing for students. I am very happy to see that there are Spanish DRA’s available, but we need more assessment tools to help guide us and see where our students are in their language development (specially our simultaneous bilingual students who make up such a large proportion of our native Spanish speakers whom we teach).

Lastly, what I would like to point out is that Solin’s situation is not a common one for most simultaneous bilingual students. The fact is that he is able to have a lot of support both in English and Spanish at home due to his family make up (half Peruvian, half American) and educational level of family at home. (Mom is pursuing her Masters). High academic achievement is something that is expected in the household and is being modeled by family members. Therefore I feel Solin has innate motivation to excel in school, and understands that it is very important for him to develop his linguistic abilities in both Spanish and English. In the end, I think that because Solin has such a strong support system at home (mother and grandparents), he will excel in school, and will be able to continue developing both of his languages long after he leaves Park Spanish Immersion.

I have therefore come up with the following instructional plan catering to Solin’s needs. This instructional plan includes instructional tactics and tools that I have already executed in my classroom, and instructional methods I plan on implementing for the remainder of the year.

Plan

Instructional Plan

I think that the program that would serve Solin’s needs best would be to be in a Dual Language Program. In this program he would be exposed to 50% of his general class make up of native English Speakers, and 50% of his class being native Spanish speakers. I think that following this model it would help Solin develop his Spanish speaking proficiency since he would be exposed to other Spanish speaking students, who could bring a wider array of vocabulary to the spectrum.

The reality is that I work in a One-Way Spanish immersion school. So based on that fact, I will be making the following recommendations based on the environment which he has available for him in his current setting.

Supporting Language Development

In order to support all my students, I have set up this schedule which breaks down my focus during the time they are here at PSI. As you can see, I have at least one 30 minute literacy block in which I focus on reading or writing. By the end of the day, we usually have 60 minutes focused on literacy, since our morning meeting includes time to review what we have learned thus far in class.

      Monday                Tuesday                  Wednesday            Thursday               Friday

Morning Meeting	Morning Meeting	Súper María	Morning Meeting	Morning Meeting
Math	Music (English)	Morning Meeting	Math	Math
Writing	Library (English)	Music (English)	Gym	Art Project
Work Centers	Reading	Math	Reading	Writing
Dismissal	Dismissal	Dismissal	Dismissal	Dismissal

Reading and Writing: Strategies recommended

I think it is necessary to state the fact that this was the first year Park Spanish Immersion had four Kindergarten groups, two of which were full day Kindergarten groups, and two of which were half day Kindergarten groups. Traditionally, parents have only had the option to enroll students in half day Kindergarten. I was hired to take teach the two half day Kindergarten groups at PSI. Like any new classroom, I have found that I have had a lack of resources. Though even with the lack of resources, the following strategies have been used to help support language development in the classroom.

Tucker Signing Method

To help students start making the the connection with Spanish alphabet letters and sounds, PSI uses the Tucker Signing Method.  This method “provides a mental model that students need in order to decode words easily, accurately-- and fast. It uses a system of 44 hand signs that prompt associations between letters or word chucks and their sounds.” This has been a strategy that has been used to teach the alphabet since the beginning of the year to all the students, and has facilitated the progress which the students have made while transitioning into reading.

Súper María

That’s right. We have our own school super hero, and her name is Súper María. At PSI our Reading Intervention Specialist has a super hero persona whose super power is to read. She comes in once a week for 30 minutes to work with the class and incorporate large motor skills tactics to get the students to understand vowel sounds, and syllable blends. During the first half of the school year, she came in and worked with all the the class, but for the second half of the year she has focused her attention on small group interventions for the lowest readers.

Weekly Theme/Unit Books

Each week we provide new books which the class creates together. For example, when we learn about Manzanas, we got a chance to read Las Manzanas book. In it we got to read each page, use context clues to figure out which color we had to use to color in the apple, and have the students focus on consonant/vowel blends. It also introduced students to sentence structure in Spanish (Yo tengo una manzana verde/roja/amarilla). While we make each book during the week, we also use techniques such as in the  “Using Writing to Make Cross Language Connections” article. We “prioritize explicit and direct teaching and formal opportunities for children to make cross language transfer.” This has allowed for the students to confidently make the connections between the languages, have a strong foundation in their L2, and continue to learn Spanish.

 Read Alouds

Like the “Literacy Essentials” article outlines, there are good points towards using both recognition and sociopsycholinguistic models. After further analyzing my teaching methods, I find that we use both models in the classroom in order to cater to our student’s diverse needs. I have found that for Solin, he has benefited more from the sociopsycholinguistic model since he already holds a language base in Spanish, he seems to “interpret and reinterpret what we read in part based on our social interactions as we clarify or deepen concepts presented in the text.” After each Read Aloud we talk as a class about the book we have read and look at the sequence of the story, and take time to make points of clarification in order to help the students attain more vocabulary in Spanish.

 Adaptations to Classroom Literacy Instruction

This school year I had a small bookshelf of books in my classroom, so for the beginning of the school year, I have focused my attention in creating materials, math, and writing. Now that I have collected a growing amount of materials to teach my reading block, I feel that I can definitely help Solin continue to grow academically.

Book in a Box

We have recently incorporated the Book in a Box method in the classroom. The students were able to choose their own books and are using them while we practice the Daily Five. As Kindergarteners, their focus is to learn how to 1) Sit in one spot, 2) Read the Whole Book, 3)If you can’t read the text, look for context clues in the pictures, 4) When you finish reading your book, re-read the book, or read another book, 5) Do not distract others.

I think that the Book in a Box will allow for Solin to improve his Spanish reading fluency, as well as allow for him to become a more independent reader. He is at a stage where he can read on his own and needs the opportunity to read on his own.

Reading Centers

Going back to the Literacy Essential’s article, I find that my new interventions go along with the Word recognition model outlined by the article. As the article states, “Readers can recognize words by using various skills – phonics, sight words, structural analysis, and context  clues.” The centers cater to the reading skills listed by the model description. During the reading centers time, students are sent to reading level appropriate centers to work in partners. The lowest proficiency level students sit with me and work on reviewing the Tucker Signing Method. The next group works with my assistant using the scaffolding Nacho Book which builds on syllable combinations (ma, me, mi, mo, mu, pa, pe, pi, po, pu, etc).  Then there are additional centers where the students can play either syllable match games, or sight words match games. The last center we have is one level 1 books which the kids can independently read.

Word Walls

I would like to include a display in my classroom like Cornejo’s Spanish Word Frequency List. I feel that my students could use having such a tool readily available for them to continue to grow as readers and writers.

Reading Portfolio’s

Based on the “Reading With Purpose” article, I would like to somehow incorporate reading porfolio’s with the students. I think that I would have them choose a book which they would like to read, create a book report in which they reflect on the reading as well as practice writing. I would provide students with sentence starters for them to use while writing. This would allow for students with varying reading levels to read and comprehend the text at a higher order thinking level.

Conclusion

Overall I have full confidence that Solin will be a successful student. During a very hard time in his life (his parents’ divorce) he has flawlessly mastered how to read at a Kindergarten level, and is continuously making strides to improve his Spanish language proficiency. I feel that Solin would be able to make greater gains if he was in a Dual Language Immersion Program, in which he would get to be able to use lessons such as “The Bridge” and “The Dictado.” It is lessons like these that make language acquisition and differentiation that much more meaningful. I feel that the best way I can support Solin and other bilingual students such as Solin is to continue talking to the PSI community at large about the benefits of having a DLI program instead of a One-Way Immersion school.

References

Daily Five http://www.thedailycafe.com/

Tucker Signing Method  http://www.tuckersigns.com/

Solin's Reading Analysis

Solin’s positive attitude towards reading has helped him become the good reader that he is both in English and in Spanish today. He shared with me that he enjoys reading funny stories and books about monsters. When Solin reads he understands the left-to-right directionality and he identifies basic punctuation. Most of all, Solin is very ready and motivated to read. Solin’s reading abilities seize to amaze me. For being a student who is only in a half day Kindergarten group, his reading level is jumping by leaps and bounds both in Spanish and in English. For this assignment, I felt that administering a DRA would be the best choice to get the most accurate data regarding Solin’s reading level.

                Solin’s instructional text level in Spanish was a 3. This was as to be expected. He has great ability to decode, but at a DRA level 3 he is being challenged by a wider array of words he has to decode. He however had some trouble coming up with verbs to describe what the children in the book were doing. Rather than getting frustrated about not having the vocabulary to describe the main action in the page, Solin opted for choosing something in the page which he could describe. For example, the picture showed a girl sliding down a slide in the park, with a boy looking at her (the main focus of the picture). When he was asked to look at the picture and describe what was happening in the picture, he paused for a long time while he looked at the girl, and then looked at the boy, and decided to say that the boy was smiling (which he was). He understood that he had to say it in Spanish for it to count, so he did the best he could with the language background knowledge that he had.

                Solin’s instructional text level in English was a 3. This was shocking to me, considering the fact that Solin consider’s himself to be much better at reading in Spanish than in English. He has confirmed that he reads in English at home (he is being taught how to read in English by his mother). It was interesting to see that while reading in English, Solin did not use picture clues, unlike in Spanish. He was very focused and tried figuring out each word on his own. He had five instances where he came up with approximations (examples: said for side, the for they, dough for do).

                Overall, Solin showed that he would monitor his reading in Spanish, but not in English. When reading in Spanish, he would work through words, even if they were challenging.  But in English, he would just get frustrated and blurt out whatever came to mind that would fit in the context. I find that he finds reading in Spanish much more predictable and overall easier than reading in English, therefore he is more motivated to continue the reading process, rather than getting the reading done as soon as possible as he does with the English text.

Solin's English and Spanish Writing Sample



In case you do not understand what is written in the samples:




1st WRITING SAMPLE (English)

(girl on bike) a Thegrwr

(girl with dog) Thegrwr

(boy drinking water) The BORI

2nd WRITING SAMPLE (Spanish)

(girl on bike) una ñina en Bisiceta

(girl with dog) una niña cn Perro

(boy drinking water) un nino conawa

Solin's Writing Analysis

Since Solin is a perfect case of a true simultaneous bilingual student, I feel that it is hard to choose which language is more dominant. However, since when he communicates orally he is much more dominant in English, I will be referring to English as being his L1 and Spanish his L2.

In these writing samples Solin was given three pictures to write about in Spanish and then in English again. Solin was expected to write a description of what he saw in each picture. When I took a look at Solin’s writing samples, I was able to easily identify his writing patterns and the reasoning behind what he wrote.

Since Solin is a Kindergarten student in a 90/10 model Spanish immersion program, he has not had any formal instruction in English. (Mom has tried to teach him some basic reading skills in English, but his overall literacy instruction has been in Spanish). So based on this fact, we can see that he continues to apply his literacy knowledge of writing from Spanish into his English writing sample. If we use the Rubin and Carlan’s stages of writing development, we are able to see that Solin’s L1 is semi-phonetic stage. He is able to see that there is a relationship between letters and sounds, but cannot fully match them with the letters he is writing. Solin is heavily relying on consonant sounds and includes very few vowels in his writing. As you can see he is able to identify a high frequency word like “the” but the rest is still confusing for him.

As Rubin and Carlan’s would describe Solin’s writing sample, he showed many signs of being in the phonemic stage of writing development. We see that Solin is able to write letters to represent most sounds in words in his Spanish writing sample.

As you can see in the writing samples, he is much more confident and skilled when he writes in Spanish. He has the academic knowledge and is able to execute the task fairly easily. However, when it came to writing in English, he looked anxious, since he really did not know what he was doing when he wrote. (Which is very interesting, since he was able to communicate orally much more easily his message in English than in Spanish). While he wrote his Spanish writing sample, he would write, stop and sound out the word, and then write some more. During the English writing sample, he would focus and write, and when he stopped to think, got frustrated and he would give up on the sentence. He proceeded to the next picture and wrote the next description. He did not seem as proud of his work in English as he did in his Spanish writing sample. In the English writing sample he used many spelling approximations due to his Spanish literacy development in class: “grwr” for girl, “bori” for boy.

Once we finished gathering the data for the assessments, I took some time to talk to Solin. I asked him how he thought he performed in the writing samples. Here is what was said:

Paola: ¿Y cómo te fue?

Solin: En español, bién. En inglés, no muy bién.

Paola: ¿ Y eso por qué?

Solin: Pues, porque no sabo escribir en inglés. Mi mamá me enseña leer en inglés pero no mucho.

Solin is very conscious of the fact that his L1 writing skills are not as well developed as his L2, but he is not worried about it since his mother has explained to him the process of going to an immersion school. He understands that in second grade he will start taking English class, and he will continue to develop his English literacy skills. But for the time being, he is enjoying himself as he develops his Spanish literacy skills.

Oral Language Analysis

(As I stated in my previous blog, Solin is a Kindergarten student at the One-way Immersion school I work at.)

The way Solin interacts with language shows me that he is a simultaneous bilingual. He has been exposed to English and Spanish since he was born and uses both. He does have a tendency to be more expressive and comfortable using English. However, he is very proud to be able to use both languages, and continuously is trying to increase his Spanish fluency. After analyzing his speaking in English and Spanish the results suggest that he has more fluency in English. This is in part due to the fact that his mother and grandparents (the main caregivers of the child) speak English.

Solin has a tendency to use English to communicate socially with his peers. He is very a very kind individual. When classmates are frustrated with the instructions to perform a task, he will whisper an English translation of what I said to his classmate. He however tries to speak in Spanish as much as he can with me and my assistant. I am very proud to see that he pushes himself to try to think through and find the right words to say under any given context. Since this is Solin’s first year in school, he has only been exposed to reading, writing and speaking in Spanish for 90% of the day (the school uses a 90/10 model, and music and library time are the only times in the day where Solin receives English instruction).

In Solin’s English speaking sample, I find that has high fluency skills in this language. Looking at the WIDA Speaking rubric, Solin’s linguistic complexity resembles a level 5 Bridging. He has a variety of sentences with different linguistic complexity. He uses technical language related to the content area. When he spoke to me about his love for Pokemon games, he used technical language and used vocabulary with ease to describe the powers of each Pokemon as well as his favorite Pokemon. Solin’s language control level I would say is a 4 Expanding. I was able to understand everything he was trying to communicate to me with ease since his sentence structure and speaking fluency was optimal. When we spoke about how he likes to go to the lake, he said, “Me and mom found this beach, and the first thing we are going to do is go there and start swimming with the goggles.” He had some semantic errors but it did not impede the overall meaning of what he was trying to say.

While speaking with Solin in Spanish, I needed to give him more promps to get him to talk than I did with English. Here is a small sample of what we discussed during his interview:

Paola:¿Qué es algo que te gusta hacer?

Solin: Jugar en el parque.

Paola: ¿Y qué te gusta hacer en el parque?

Solin: Jugar donde esta tu.

Paola: ¿Y con quién juegas?

Solin: Mi amigo…mi amigos y mi hermano. Isaac y Edward y un niño que se llama Christopher.

Paola: ¿Y qué hacen?

Solin: Pues, nos escondamos y alguien trae contrarnos.

Based on Solin’s Spanish sample, I find that his linguistic complexity is a level 2 Beginning. He showed that he has control over phrases and short oral sentences.  Looking that the sample I also see that Solin’s vocabulary usage is at a level 2 Beginning as well. He seems to be familiar with every day  language but beyond that he seems to struggle. He takes risks and tries to convey his ideas. He seems to try to phonetically sound out words that he has previously heard, even if they don’t come out right, he generally can communicate his thought process. He also gets singular/plural agreements mixed up. (Mi amigo vs. mis amigos).

Introducción

El niño con quien voy a trabajar en esta clase se llama Solin.  Solin es un estudiante de mi clase de Kinder. Solin es un niño muy listo, juicioso, y amable. El tiene muchos amigos en la clase gracias a su buen caracter y amabilidad. La mamá de Solin es de EEUU, pero a vivído mucho en México y su padre es de Perú. Solin nació aquí en Minneapolis. Los padres de Solin estan muy orgullosos de poder tener a Solin matriculado en Park Spanish Immersion para que el pueda aprender mucho más español del que ya sabe. Para poder matricular a Solin en PSI, ellos tuvieron que ganar una lotería que ofrecia el distrito de St. Louis Park.

Aquí en PSI Solin recibe 90% de su instrucción en español. Todo el tiempo que esta conmigo, el esta en un ambiente donde se habla español. El otro 10% del día donde oye inglés es en música y cuando vamos a la biblioteca.

Aunque Solin ya sabía un poco de español, la verdad es que no era mucho lo que podia entender y producir cuando comenzo en PSI. El entiende más de lo que produce oralmente.En relación a sus compañeros de clase, está más avanzado en la lectoescritura.