Introduction
This section of my portfolio is dedicated to the academic growth students my Spanish classes have achieved. The evidence herein comes from my work with elementary school students in a weekly Spanish world language class in the District of Columbia Public Schools. Below, I describe the significant academic gains my 3rd and 4th grade students experienced as a result of our work together. The first part of my evidence focuses on the quantitative data I gathered to demonstrate student growth, while the second part focuses on quantitative data and student work samples. However, both sections combine into one cohesive demonstration of the significant growth students achieved in their ability to communicate in Spanish.
In summary, the data contained within this section of the portfolio demonstrates that students in my Spanish classes experienced the following academic growth:
In summary, the data contained within this section of the portfolio demonstrates that students in my Spanish classes experienced the following academic growth:
- An average mastery level of 82% on an EOY individual Spanish reading assessment
- An average mastery level of 84.2% on an EOY summative oral performance assessment
- An increase in the quality of written work in terms of grammar mechanics, spelling, and handwriting
Context |
In my role as an elementary school Spanish teacher, I served students in a limited context and with significant barriers to second language acquisition. First, I saw students once per week in a 45-minute Spanish class. The few instructional minutes combined with week-long gaps between classes necessitated a different instructional approach from an average Spanish class. Furthermore, the students’ budding literacy in English was an important consideration: Many of my students struggled with phonemic awareness, fluency, sight word recognition, and other foundational literacy skills. I sought ways to build students’ communicative competency in Spanish without relying heavily upon literacy in English. For this reason, I altered the instructional approach and vision for my work with students to build on the literacy skills they refined in their general education classes.
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Instructional
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To make the most of our time together, I strove for three instructional goals:
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The evidence in the quantitative data section focuses on student written and spoken performance on an end-of-year assessment. Student work throughout the school year has focused on building vocabulary and exposing learners to Spanish in highly engaging and understandable contexts through a process of storytelling and comprehensible input. In turn, student work in workstations and small-group assignments has aimed to promote literacy through guided reading, small group collaborative work, and performance tasks. The culminating summative assessment data in this section shows that student gains as a result of these instructional techniques are significant.
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The evidence in the qualitative data section demonstrates the types of formative assessment and learning activities students completed throughout the school year. The work herein is a sampling of the types of rigorous arts-integrated and literacy-building activities students completed leading up to their summative assessment. Students worked both independently and collaboratively to develop proficiency in Spanish through a storytelling approach to language learning. The analysis of work samples from the beginning and end of the year included in this section demonstrate that student writing, attention to detail, and interpretive ability have improved considerably.
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