PBTIL - Comprehensive Grammar School Team

Coming To America

Introduction:

It has long been recognized that school practices, which involve families in education and children's learning, are linked to school achievement. In view of this we designed two parent participation activities which fall under the general heading of helping children at home.

The first component was to help parents provide meaningful help to their children at home with a non-trivial task. The second component was one of providing parents with specific information about how to help their children with early literacy.
Project One: Coming To America
This activity is relevant ethnically in its focus. We integrated eighteen Latino Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) students with twenty-seven mainstream English speakers, which included bilingual families who immigrated from Syria. This diverse group collaborated with staff from the school community, which includes people from Italy, Lebanon and Puerto Rico. The activity involves two teachers and two integrated classes in which first and second language children are paired to encourage language acquisition while students engaged in early literacy practices, purposeful use of technology, and in the social studies content area.

Specifically we worked with History Frameworks Learning Strand Two: "Evidence: i.e. Students will identify what can be learned and presented about themselves and others from first hand, primary information sources as well as with books, internet, maps, and atlases." Additionally, our TBE students will use their home language and English to communicate in social settings, for personal expression and use learning strategies to extend communicative competence.

A translator is available at our school so documents sent home were in Spanish and English to eliminate barriers to Hispanic families. A school liaison was unavailable for a home visit or call so the already existing communication with the two teachers was expanded.

The specific objectives were:

To have students learn how to interview sources for primary information about themselves and their families and communities.

To involve families and community members in school learning.

To provide students with the opportunity to talk about their families, as well as talk to school community members about where they are from and to communicate in both home languages and English.

To expand the concept of geographical differences to the study of the seven continents, locating family's continents of origin.

To use Internet, atlases and books to garner information about continents.

To summarize information, and use computer technology to both report and graph all the data collected.

Description of the Activities

Both groups began with a literacy event in English, in which teachers read How Many Days to America (Bunting 1998), the realistic fictional account of a Caribbean refugee family's days in a boat. Children worked in pairs to answerquestions about the story orally and in writing, connected personal experience to characters feelings, located areas on a map, and interviewed and questioned classmates about personal responses to events and characters.

Following these activities the children helped to construct an interview sheet for family members and each other about coming to America. In the classroom children engaged in role playing, and thus learned and practiced interview protocol. Each day four went home with disposal cameras, and their interview questions so that they could photograph and interview relatives. Information was brought back to class and reported in Spanish or English. As a class, we used graphic organizers to categorize interview information into countries, languages, modes of transportation. Later we summarized information in a group narrative. Pairs of L1 and L2 students also located and marked identified counties on a map. They also used a computer graphing program to visually display their data.

We interviewed a total of twenty-four people from Italy, Puerto Rico, Lebanon, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Canada, and Syria. These included students, families, and three adults from the school community. French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic, and English were the languages represented by our interviewees. All but two came to the United States by plane. The remaining two came from Canada by car. Some were children and some were adults upon arrival. Many indicated they had come to the United States for freedom and opportunity.

As this is an ongoing project we also worked in class to learn about countries and continents. Using the Internet, books, and atlas data we listed information about the seven continents. Children then wrote reports in drafts using a buddy writing strategy, in which L1 and L2 learners were paired. Lastly, we published our reports using the computer. As a final phase we will read them in class as a book, and review them on the PBTIL website.

Project Two:

The second component, which provided parents with information about how to help their children develop literacy was implemented in April 2001. We invited parents to come to school for an evening of specific information regarding helping their second graders to read. The workshop was entitled "What Do You Do When They Come to a Word They Don't Know?"

Background, Goals and Objectives:

This project is multiculturally relevant and includes parents of eighteen Latino, Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) students and twenty seven mainstream parents, among whom are two bilingual families who have emigrated from Syria. It is a part of an ongoing Community Centered Project Based Technology Integrated Learning (PBTIL) grant with the Methuen Public Schools, Lowell Public Schools and the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

As part of the PBTIL project, a mainstream and TBE second grade class teamed in order to encourage language acquisition in the curriculum areas of social studies, technology, and early literacy, as prescribed by the Methuen Public Schools. As mentioned in the introduction, school practices to involve parents are strong predictors of school success as well as parent feelings of involvement. These practices include activities, which help parents to help their children learn at home. (National Center for Educational Statistics 1996). Involving limited English proficient students is important because parent/ family involvement at home has been shown to positively influence students' success in school. A translator is available at our school so invitations were sent home in Spanish and English to eliminate barriers to Latino families. A school liaison is available through the PBTIL grant project and she also contacted Latino families by telephone as a follow up to the written invitation. The specific objectives are:

To have parents learn how to use the newest reading strategies being taught in school as sources for information and home help. (These can be used in Spanish or English.)

To involve families members in school learning and

provide parents with the opportunity to talk about their families, as well as talk to teachers about literacy.

To summarize our reading program information, and show parents how to help their early readers use the strategies we are teaching.

Description of the Activities.

To meet the diverse needs of the families involved in this project, we were careful to translate materials into Spanish and have an interpreter present. We also scheduled the workshop for seven o'clock in the evening, which has been historically the most requested time for evening parent conferences.

Parents were welcomed and our bilingual director was also introduced and available to help with Spanish translation. We opened with a video showing children reading at various stages of emergent and early literacy. I stopped the tape a few times to point out specifics such as, "wait time" or how a child was using his strategies to read a text he had never seen.

We then looked at several overhead graphics that are used with children at school when teaching specific, "tricky word" and comprehension strategies. I demonstrated how these graphics work on text.

I also taught parents the technique that we use with the children to determine if a book is too hard or just right. The technique is simple. On each word error the reader, who begins with an open hand, puts down one finger. If the reader has five fingers down and thus has made a fist by the end of the page, the text is too hard. After the workshop we had coffee, refreshments, informal conversation about language and literacy, and two door prizes were awarded.

This program is supported in part by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, University of Massachusetts, Lowell.