Phase 2
Implementation:
For the second phase I decided to have students articulate their thinking with their peers. During the first phase they had articulated their thinking during whole class discussions, which meant that they had to speak in front of the entire class. During this phase I thought it best to allow students to work in pairs.
I chose to pair students from the entire class but maintained my focus on the same 10 students I selected for this investigation. I decided on partners based on my observations of language production in the classroom. I partnered students who exhibited high production levels of Spanish with students of low production levels of Spanish. I also took into account the level of Spanish fluency of each student. I wanted each pair of students to have a student who could model Spanish for the other partner. In creating partnerships this way, I was hoping that the student who was acting as the model would be able to practice and continue to develop his or her oral skills, while the student with a relatively lower level of Spanish production could use and learn from that model. My intention was for students to feel more confident and comfortable by only having to practice their Spanish in front of a peer instead of the entire class.
To implement this change, I assigned students to sit with their partners daily. I would present a CGI problem, the same way I would during Phase 1. Students would each solve the problem independently. Once I noticed that most of the students were finishing the problem, I would ask students to take turns with their partner explaining their rationale for solving the problem. This worked better than I thought with little interruptions from the partner whose turn it was to listen. I believe that having set up the class in a way that students were used to listening to peer rationales in a whole class setting allowed them to transfer those skills when having these particular conversations with their partners.
Students were reminded that they were supposed to be using as much of their Spanish as they could. I walked around to monitor that students were on task, that they using Spanish, and to gage the amount of time needed. In doing this I was able to observe whether students were actually speaking Spanish with one another or reverting to using English, as is common in dual language classrooms. Students often feel comfortable speaking English to each other and will revert to doing so, even within a dual immersion program. As I observed students I noticed that the students with higher language production capacities were trying to use the Spanish words they knew when articulating their thinking. They would also prompt their partner during the partner’s turn by reminding them “Maestra said in Spanish, remember?” This allowed for all students to gain some experience trying to think and produce oral language in Spanish. Even if students did not produce any language, most were thinking about how they could.
To measure student progress I continued the individual student conferences that I had started in Phase 1. This allowed me insight into whether or not the partner talk was actually helping students in their language production capabilities. Would students be able to retain what they learned during all their partner talks and in turn use that knowledge to articulate their thinking in Spanish? The following is a graph documenting student improvement during Phase 2:
For the second phase I decided to have students articulate their thinking with their peers. During the first phase they had articulated their thinking during whole class discussions, which meant that they had to speak in front of the entire class. During this phase I thought it best to allow students to work in pairs.
I chose to pair students from the entire class but maintained my focus on the same 10 students I selected for this investigation. I decided on partners based on my observations of language production in the classroom. I partnered students who exhibited high production levels of Spanish with students of low production levels of Spanish. I also took into account the level of Spanish fluency of each student. I wanted each pair of students to have a student who could model Spanish for the other partner. In creating partnerships this way, I was hoping that the student who was acting as the model would be able to practice and continue to develop his or her oral skills, while the student with a relatively lower level of Spanish production could use and learn from that model. My intention was for students to feel more confident and comfortable by only having to practice their Spanish in front of a peer instead of the entire class.
To implement this change, I assigned students to sit with their partners daily. I would present a CGI problem, the same way I would during Phase 1. Students would each solve the problem independently. Once I noticed that most of the students were finishing the problem, I would ask students to take turns with their partner explaining their rationale for solving the problem. This worked better than I thought with little interruptions from the partner whose turn it was to listen. I believe that having set up the class in a way that students were used to listening to peer rationales in a whole class setting allowed them to transfer those skills when having these particular conversations with their partners.
Students were reminded that they were supposed to be using as much of their Spanish as they could. I walked around to monitor that students were on task, that they using Spanish, and to gage the amount of time needed. In doing this I was able to observe whether students were actually speaking Spanish with one another or reverting to using English, as is common in dual language classrooms. Students often feel comfortable speaking English to each other and will revert to doing so, even within a dual immersion program. As I observed students I noticed that the students with higher language production capacities were trying to use the Spanish words they knew when articulating their thinking. They would also prompt their partner during the partner’s turn by reminding them “Maestra said in Spanish, remember?” This allowed for all students to gain some experience trying to think and produce oral language in Spanish. Even if students did not produce any language, most were thinking about how they could.
To measure student progress I continued the individual student conferences that I had started in Phase 1. This allowed me insight into whether or not the partner talk was actually helping students in their language production capabilities. Would students be able to retain what they learned during all their partner talks and in turn use that knowledge to articulate their thinking in Spanish? The following is a graph documenting student improvement during Phase 2:
In this graph
each individual student’s progress is depicted with his or her own line. Student’s are labeled A-H and have maintained
the same letter designation from Phase 1.
The three conferences are labeled Phase 2 SWP (Spanish Words Produced)
and then designated with a number for each individual conference that was held,
1-3. The first point on each line
designates the number of Spanish words that each student could produce during
the individual student conference, after having practiced partner talk for a
week. Each point after that reflects
what they could do after weeks 2 and 3.
Every student improved in his or her abilities in some capacity throughout this phase. Most lines begin, have a dip, and then go up again to demonstrate improvement. In reviewing student work to try and figure out why almost every line takes a dip for the second individual conference, I found that the question that I asked on that particular day was a subtraction problem. We had worked with both addition and subtraction throughout the both phases, as they are both part of CGI and the kindergarten curriculum, but subtraction is harder for students than addition. This may have been why almost all students in the investigation seemed to have trouble that day articulating their rationale. After that point however, almost all students make some kind of progress in using their Spanish to explain mathematical thinking. Many of the students were even able to surpass the number of Spanish words that they were able to produce at the beginning of Phase 2. I believe that partner talk did allow students to practice and make improvements in their use of the Spanish language.
Every student improved in his or her abilities in some capacity throughout this phase. Most lines begin, have a dip, and then go up again to demonstrate improvement. In reviewing student work to try and figure out why almost every line takes a dip for the second individual conference, I found that the question that I asked on that particular day was a subtraction problem. We had worked with both addition and subtraction throughout the both phases, as they are both part of CGI and the kindergarten curriculum, but subtraction is harder for students than addition. This may have been why almost all students in the investigation seemed to have trouble that day articulating their rationale. After that point however, almost all students make some kind of progress in using their Spanish to explain mathematical thinking. Many of the students were even able to surpass the number of Spanish words that they were able to produce at the beginning of Phase 2. I believe that partner talk did allow students to practice and make improvements in their use of the Spanish language.