Participant Responses

–Teacher Collaboration
Carey and I have been co-teaching all the comprehension lessons and we have become an awesome team!! The more we co-teach the better we are at cueing each other and communicating about the needs of the students as we work together. When Carey is leading the activity, I am able to pick up kids who may not be understanding the concept. I can also scaffold EL's as she leads. The reverse is true when I lead the lesson. It sure is a great way to meet the needs of kids! One thing that the program has certainly shown us is different ways of collaborating with our peers. Both Carey and I go over the objectives at the beginning of the lesson and try to tie our lesson very closely around those objectives. This has certainly helped me in becoming more focused regarding what I want my students to achieve. I am really enjoying collaborating more with my fellow teachers.

Paula Barr, 1st grade teacher Hillcrest Elementary

-Outcomes based instruction
For me the hardest has been to come up with language objectives. However I have started focusing on what I want my students to do for listening, speaking, reading and writing for a particular lesson and start aligning the specific language skills that I wish my students to achieve. This is a great way to stay focused and to organize my instruction around the outcomes that I want for my students. Taking ESL methods has also helped us in focusing on various aspects of sheltered instruction as they pertain to our students.
Rebecca Peronteaux 2nd Grade teacher

-Outcomes based instruction
I have always posted the language and content objectives for my high school students. However, I started getting away from this habit as I worked with my 5th grade class here. I guess I just thought that younger students do not need to know what we are going to do for today’s lesson. I have always taught my social studies with the help of language and this helps me putting up the content and language objectives for my students. I look forward to getting in this routine again.

Kathy Hanes, 5th grade –School Language

It is really good to see that all the teachers at Hillcrest are talking about the things that we have been focusing on for the last few years. I have always stressed upon the importance of using students’ culture, language and background for their instruction. It is nice that ESL endorsement is providing teachers a chance to learn and understand the various strategies and techniques of focusing on students’ instruction.

Neal Ballard, ESL teacher

It is true that the needs of our school are changing and so are the demands on the teachers. We have experienced an increase in demographics at a very fast pace in the past few years. I hope that we are looking at all the resources that we can in helping our students. We are dealing with organizational change and I want to maximize the appropriate usage of my staff and finances for the students. Project New Horizons has guided me in thinking our long term programming issues regarding the needs of students and capitalizing upon these resources. I believe that it is extremely important for the teachers to be ESL endorsed to be able to create the much-needed sheltered classrooms at Hillcrest. ESL endorsement and SIOP came at just the right time for our school. I am going to talk to the board of education regarding all the programming changes that are required for Hillcrest and New Horizons will be a big part of this systemic change. I definitely want my teachers to get on board with SIOP. In time, I will start using the SIOP protocol for observing and evaluating my teachers.

Tammy Becker, Principal

– Principal-teacher collaboration
The process of change started in my school with ESL methods that we took last semester. Just by listening to the dialogue that some of the teachers conducted was remarkable. We all truly enjoyed the class and that kind of put us all in the thinking mode for all the things that are missing at Hillcrest and the changes that are required. Biggest eye-opener for me has been the understanding of the fact that it can take a students 7-10 yrs. to learn the cognitive language. As a result of ESL Methods, we also started more parental involvement opportunities in our school and started thinking of ways to align curriculum around the dimensions of Prism Model.

Tammy Becker, Principal–Peer Observations

Peer observations were certainly helpful in helping us look at what our fellow teachers are doing regarding SIOP. It was interesting to see how different teachers create visuals for their kids to understand the objectives for the day. I really liked the schema strategy that you used today with your students. I think I am going to steal that from you and use it in my classroom.

Kathy Hanes, 5th grade