Teacher(s): Jacqueline Wearing, Christi Gilbert
Main Contact: Jacqueline Wearing Email:
Date: 9/25/12 Building: Godfrey Elementary School Grade Level: 3rd- 5th
First Trimester: XSecond Trimester: XThird Trimester: X
Name of Project: Love of La Lectura
Project Overview
Give a brief overview of the project you are planning.
-As an ELL teacher, I see a great need for further efforts to be made to connect Spanish speaking families to the academic lives of their children who attend schools where they are taught in English.
Many Spanish speaking parents do not know that reading to their children in Spanish will help their children develop literacy skills that will transfer to their reading in English.
Therefore the plan for this project is:
-Start a circulation of bilingual books to connect Spanish speaking parents and families with the school and promote bi-literacy.
-Students will provide the service of writing and publishing their own bilingual books to donate to the school library to allow other students to bring home and read.
Effective Practice: MEANINGFUL SERVICE
Service learning actively engages participants in meaningful and personally relevant service activities.
What community need will you address and how did you determine the need?
Literacy (especially literacy for Spanish speaking students and families, to help maintain native language literacy and culture)
Poverty (students living in poverty often have less access to age-appropriate reading materials in the home).
What service will you provide to address the need?
-A circulation of bilingual books to regularly be read at home
-Free bilingual books for students to keep and build their own at-home library
-Students will get involved by writing their own bilingual books to be published and donated to the lending library.
-Students could also provide the service of reading/tutoring younger students using these bilingual books
-Students could plan a night to invite parents and show a public service announcement that explains the benefits of reading at home, and the benefits of reading in one’s native language how literacy skills transfer to a second language.
Effective Practice: LINK TO CURRICULUM
Service learning is intentionally used as an instructional strategy to meet learning goals and/or content standards.
How is this project related to your curriculum?
This will promote the goal of proficient readers in our school. This is related to our school improvement goals.
What are the educational goals?
To encourage a life-long independent readers who read at home.
To improve reading ability
Curriculum Crafter Connections
Strand: 03ELA:(Reading)
TLW: Read informational selections and poetry, using a variety of reading strategies to construct meaning. (Gist: Construct Meaning)
Additional State Standards and Benchmarks
List standards and benchmarks met by this project.
By the end of the year, TLW read and comprehend literature, including stories, dramas, and poetry at the high-end of the grades 2–3 text complexity band independently and proficiently.
TLW demonstrate increasing awareness and competence in the areas of phonics and word recognition.
TLW read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension
Effective Practice: REFLECTION
Service learning incorporates multiple challenging reflection activities that are ongoing and that prompt deep thinking and analysis about oneself and one’s relationship to society.
What form(s) of reflection will you use with the students to help them identify what they have learned and accomplished?
-Group discussion about project
-Journaling
-Video and photographs of students as they work on writing their books. The videos and photos will be used to facilitate discussion of the process.
-Students will be asked to reflect about being bilingual and what it is like to speak Spanish at home and learn English at school.
Effective Practice: DIVERSITY
Service learning promotes understanding of diversity and mutual respect among all participants.
What types of diverse perspectives and experiences will be explored as part of your project?
(i.e.: cultural, generational, abilities/disabilities, learning styles, etc)
Culture is the main theme that will be explored. Students will learn the benefits of not only being bilingual, but being bi-literate.
Effective Practice: YOUTH VOICE
Service learning provides youth with a strong voice in planning, implementing, and evaluating service learning experiences with guidance from adults.
How will students gain ownership of the project?
Students will write their own bilingual stories that will be published and put into circulation for other students to check out and read.
Students will also create their own public service announcement to share with parents and families.
Effective Practice: RECIPROCAL PARTNERSHIPS
Service learning partnerships are collaborative, mutually beneficial, and address community needs.
Who will you partner with for this project?
The Hispanic Center.
How will students benefit from this partnership?
The Hispanic Center could share resources they have for acquiring more bilingual books for the lending library. They may have other suggestions for how to encourage bi-literacy and at-home reading with Hispanic families.
How will the partner benefit from this collaboration?
The center could build relationships with the students involved and ask them to work as tutors for younger students at their facility.
Effective Practice: PROGRESS MONITORING
Service learning engages participants in an ongoing process to assess the quality of implementation and progress toward meeting specified goals, and uses results for improvement and sustainability.
How will you assess the student learning goals?
ELL students in Jackie Wearing’s lit blocks will set their own goal of reading at home, and reading in their native languages with families when possible. Students will complete reading logs to document/ and assess their completion of this reading task.
How will you assess your service goals?
The assessment of the service that students are providing will be when they have successfully completed their bilingual books that they write and donate them to our school media center.
Effective Practice: DURATION AND INTENSITY
Service learning has sufficient duration and intensity to address community needs and meet specified outcomes.
How will you prepare students for this experience?
Discuss the importance of reading.
Discuss the advantages of being bi-lingual and bi-literate.
Research and discuss elements of a story.
Examine elements of a published book.
Learn how to write and create a story to be published as a book.
What are some sample possible activities students might do as part of this project?
Students will take home a variety of bi-lingual books to read with their parents.
Students will write and publish their own bi-lingual books.
Students will visit and become familiar with the Hispanic Center.
Students may tutor younger students at the Hispanic Center.
SUSTAINABILITY
The three arms of sustainability are environmental stewardship, economic growth, and social progress. Think planet, profit, and people.
Describe how your project addresses the issue of sustainability?
-By creating a bilingual lending library, this project can go on and on, by continuing to circulate books to students’ homes.
-By working with the Hispanic Center, I hope to find further opportunities to build the bilingual library.
-This project will not only develop the bi-lingual skills of the students, but can enhance those skills in parents as well.