Sixth International Conference on Immersion and Dual Language Education: Connecting Research and Practice Across Contexts

Symposium (2 hours + 15 minutes)

German

One-Way Second/Foreign Language Immersion

Our presentation includes three components: curriculum planning, assessment, and student support. We will address our vertical-horizontal curriculum alignment and the development and implementation of screeners and data-based decision making for one-way German immersion students in a public Minnesota charter school (K-8), involving our School-Wide Support Team, teachers, staff and parents.

With Growing Pains Come Opportunities: Curriculum Planning, Assessment, and Student Support at the Twin Cities German Immersion School (K-8)

From 44 students in 2005 to 478 in 2016, our school has morphed from a small public charter school to a larger K-8, soon bursting at its seams in its third school building in the Como Park Neighborhood. This increased growth required us to focus on aligning our curriculum vertically and horizontally, assessing our students in language-, math-, and content- skills; and providing student support in the areas of literacy, math and behavior.

We will provide a brief background of some of the challenges the TCGIS has been faced with in order to focus on the opportunities of building a K-through 8- aligned curriculum taught by German and American English native speakers from various cultural and educational backgrounds. Assessing our students as primarily foreign language learners and as Minnesota students required to pass state-mandated tests is a huge undertaking. Our assessment model for K-8, which is in its early implementation stages, has been chosen to provide background information about students’ skills and abilities, particularly in literacy, math, and social emotional learning to provide baseline data and information about students in need of support. Our growing school is using this opportunity to set up multiple tiers in literacy, math, English and behavior to help struggling students in all grades. With the help of a newly formed School Wide Support Team, which includes specialists in the fields of language acquisition/curriculum planning, literacy, and psychology, internal structures are built to filter out those students who struggle. These include teacher- and parent- involvement, across-the board school-wide buy- in, as well as comprehensive data collection.  

Michael Mullins, Curriculum and Instruction Coordinator, TCGIS

My portion of this presentation is action research, in which I describe the successful academic situation at the Twin Cities German Immersion School in terms of test scores and school rankings as well as its short comings. Among them a) The lack of collaboration among faculty, administration, and specialists  in regard to curriculum content b) The lack of collaboration among faculty and specialists in regard to student assessment and intervention and c) The creation of structures that allow teachers to learn from each other and exchange  information about their most needy students. Our approach to a vertical and horizontal alignment across the school goes beyond the traditional ‘what’ and ‘when’ of lesson planning by including the ‘why’ and ‘how.’ It is part of a larger Teaching/Learning Mapping Strategy developed by the Appalachia Educational Laboratory.

Gesa Zinn, Literacy Specialist, TCGIS

In close cooperation with the goals and objectives in our curriculum mapping, I am responsible for the design and implementation of assessment tools in the area of literacy (primarily German literacy). While I will briefly address how students are assessed in other areas (English, math, behavior), my focus is on German language skills and the tools used to: a) establish a baseline of student literacy in the minority language, b) screen struggling students that profit from short- term interventions and c) provide Tier 2 interventions for struggling learners. Based on research by K. Kohnert and A. Petzold, second language learners acquiring the language of instruction share similar general traits (in behavior and language skills) with students with language disorders and/or learning disabilities. While our assessments and interventions aim to identify and support struggling students, they also provide valuable information to indicate ‘late bloomers’ and those with a language disorder or disability.

Kirsten Newell, School Psychologist and practicum student, TCGIS

The specialists at TCGIS, whom I represent, are working to build multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) for students.  A MTSS model requires educators make decisions based on systematic data gathering (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2006). This data-based decision making is used to identify whether the general education curriculum is functioning well, which students need extra support or intervention, and whether those extra supports or interventions are working for students (Fuchs et al., 2003). Our biggest hurdle in implementation has been in streamlining our data-based decision making process, particularly as we struggle to align assessments with interventions in the right language. We have made some progress in procedures to differentiate students in need of differentiated instruction (Tier I), students in need of targeted intervention (Tier II), and students who have a disorder or disability and are in need of intensive services such as Special Education (Tier III).