The Four Shifts

Four Shifts for Nuestro Mundo's Future

(These shifts were presented to classroom teachers this week during grade-level team meetings)

The Vision: Nuestro Mundo will utilize an educational model and teaching practices that promote the development of biliteracy K-5.

Why the shifts?: Over the course of this school year, the School Based Leadership Team (SBLT) has looked at multiple sources of data, conducted root cause analyses, conducted many walk-throughs and "deep dives, dug into recent research around biliteracy, and completed self-assessments with regard to all aspects of the educational experience here at Nuestro Mundo.  The most significant findings include:

• There is a significant gap in achievement data among our ELL and non-ELL students that persists throughout middle school.
• Nuestro Mundo essentially conducts two parallel monolingual programs that operate independently from each other.
• English Language Development has not been prioritized in the primary grades.
• Lack of structure and cohesion for English Language Development goals in the primary grades.
• Spanish dominant students are put at a disadvantage by waiting to introduce English literacy until 3rd grade.  Contrary to prior misconceptions, recent research has proven that children's minds can handle learning literacy in both languages simultaneously and even benefit from doing so.
• Teacher knowledge of their students is limited in the intermediate grades because of our practice of separating teachers based on language of instruction.
• Instructional materials and assessments are not aligned, which has limited teachers' ability to collaborate in intermediate grades and the school's ability to track progress K-5 in both languages.

What are the 4 shifts?:

1. Move to a Literacy-based English Language Development system starting in Kindergarten.
2. Align curricular resources (within a balanced literacy framework) and assessments K-5 in English and Spanish.
3. Move to 50/50 in 3rd grade as opposed to 4th grade to provide more time for students to develop the language of Mathematics in English.
4. Self-contained classrooms in 3rd-5th grades (i.e. no more student rotation).  Among other benefits, this allows teachers to teach to the full potential of the bilingual and biliterate child.

When?:

• All shifts in place for the 2014-2015 school year.
• Professional learning begins tomorrow in staff PD.  Learning and work will continue throughout this school year and the summer.

I am aligning the full force of our monetary and human resources around this plan.  Our School Improvement Plan will be built around biliteracy and these shifts.  Remember the MLK, Jr. quote I presented at the beginning of the year about "the fierce urgency of now"...the time is now.

Josh

Kudos to:

• The Third Grade Team for their effort to bring parents and community experts into the classroom!

Updates:

• Make sure to respond to Erin's request for counts and inventories from ASAP.  These are always made in direct response to central office communications and, more importantly, impact what gets ordered for us for next year.

Important Dates

• 3/21 Josh out all morning (Stephanie Principal Designee)
• 3/21 Early Release (kids leave at 11:30) Staff Development Day
• 3/21 Family Math and Literacy night in the evening
• 3/22 MMSD Strings Festival
• 3/26 Deep Dive with Dep. Asst. Superintendent, Nancy Hanks
• 3/28 Early Release (kids leave at 11:30) Report Card Entry for Q3
• 4/24 State-wide Tornado Drill