Language Workshop Celebrations incoming 6th Graders

Language Workshop Celebrations

By D Garcia

On the first day of school, I had the pleasure to visit 8 schools, and in those, I visited all three middle school Dual Language Sites at Horning, Butler and Les Paul Middle Schools.

What I heard, not just once, but multiple times from teachers and coaches, was the cognitive, linguistic and socio-cultural impact Language Workshop has had on our incoming 6th grade students.  Our 6th grade students have had the benefit of experiencing Language Workshop intensively as fifth graders with Ms. Lunar at Blair, Ms. Coronado at Heyer, Ms. Torres at Bethesda and Ms. Hegg and Ms. Carey at Banting, and in regular education classrooms around the district.

6th and 7th grade Dual Language Teachers and coaches noticed the following:

• Students demonstrate academic maturity and expect high expectations and teacher preparation from their learning experiences.  Student own their learning and are expecting to be engaged!

• Students can and want to collaborate to share their voices and build learning together.

• Students ability to engage in inquiry (questioning, discussion and building ideas) is developed way beyond past cohorts.  Students expect to be asked to do these things with the skills they have developed as elementary students.

• Students engagement in the curriculum and with each other around the complex cognition of thinking and making meaning has risen to a totally different level.

Maybe I have said the same thing in four different ways.  The bottom line is this:  Middle School Teachers have reported that the student preparation in elementary Dual Language has shifted their thinking on student learning, what is possible, what can be expected and what will become!

Let's consider ourselves a team and partners in growing Comprehensive Literacy as Culturally Responsive Practice across K-8 so that ALL of our learners have the opportunity and expectation to become more than they were as the result of their learning with us!

"Culture is what we allow", let's continue to build our learning and collective capacity around our CLM Practice.