Category Archives: Focus

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World Language Meeting 11/9

Submitted by: Adele de Biasi Pelz

The World Language Department devoted this meeting to discussing the abstract entitled: Diversity and Inclusion in World Language Instruction by Sheri Dion. The article talked about four main topics :

-Cultural Diversity
-Student Diversity in Assessment
-Student Interest
-Teacher experience
Our conversation focused on the area of integrating Critical Cultural Awareness (CCA) into our curriculum with the goal of preparing our students for intercultural relationships with greater diversity.
The role and inclusion of both student and teachers’ identities, monolingual classrooms, and multilingual students were also discussed and used to highlight the importance of personal experience and student diversity and interests, which are considered resources in teaching WL and empower students to reflect on their impact in a global world.
As a department, we navigated  beyond our cultural projects towards creating an environment of balance through culture and content which provides a safer space for our language learners.
We came away with enrichment activities to bring to the fore our students’ personal history and narrative by conducting interviews, making oral presentations and writing personal reflections.
El Dia de los Muertos celebration at the LS was discussed and we talked about putting together an interconnected cultural event in the Spring through a festival of languages throughout the dvisions.
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World Language Departmental Focus 2019-2020

Submitted by: Adele deBiasiPelz

  • Documenting the “story” of the preK-12 curriculum
  • Doing a professional development “deep dive” around some aspect of subject related progressive practice. This could draw on within department expertise and/or work with an outside consultant
  • Continuing to document the skills we teach and how we teach them throughout the three divisions and across languages

Continuing to look at how reading informs the other major skills  : speaking, writing, and listening comprehension which relate to each of us in every language. For this we may choose another  skill as our focus and explore how we teach it and its relationship to reading.

*Building a library in each of our classes complete with different levels and topics that interest a range of student passion and interest to motivate and move forward our “reading” projects. 

We plan on using the Tuesday meetings with perhaps one full or two half PD days because that was very productive for us.

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2018-2019 World Language Departmental Focus

Type of Work Focus: 

      • Documenting the “story” of the preK-12 curriculum.
      • Doing a professional development “deep dive” around some aspect of subject related to progressive practice. This could draw on within department expertise and/or work with an outside consultant

Description of Work Focus: Taking a deep and rich look at how we teach reading and the written word in World Language and how this skill informs both oral and written communication throughout the three divisions in Spanish, French, and Mandarin.

We will explore the common vertical strands, share student work, classroom techniques, and talk about how we assess the skills that are embedded in our standards for grading.

We will also have as a common objective to share resources, take stock of our current materials, and add to our current collections. We would like:

  • To take an inventory of our existing collections and resources that we are currently using in our classes.
  • To build our repertoire by visiting  libraries and world language bookstores that will help us develop curriculum and expand program.

Schedule for Work: Tuesday meetings usually work for us.