Today Hannah Turns 9

She is 9! 9 wonderful years. And 9 years when she had to learn things that children do not learn until much, much later in life.

In many ways, she is a wonderful 9-year old. In many other ways, she is way to conscious about life and death, way beyond her years. She is well aware of death and is afraid of people around her dying. She had to experience loss at a very young age and this has made her overly concerned about things may seem to be dangerous in her eyes: Snorkling? No mom! You can't do that, it's dangerous. Careful when you drive mom! What do I do if something happens to you? These are questions that no child should have to ask. But unfortunately, this is life!

Happy b-day Hannah! Today is a happy day! Let's celebrate life! We are proud of you and your accomplishments!

Podcasts for learning

This topic is more related to my computer class and language learning than to Hannah's literacy experiences.

In the link below, you will find a variety of podcasts that can be used for learning, or in the case of language teachers, can be used for language learning purposes. Radio Lab is among the new podcasts recommended. I still have to become a fan of Radio Lab. I listen to lit, but it is not yet one of my favorites. Who knows? Maybe in the future, it becomes one of my faves.

Check out the list:
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/film-festival-podcasting-classroom-resources?utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=FMFF&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=socialflow

Reading Strategies and Common Core

While Common Core is supposed to teach children how to read academic texts by implementing reading strategies, missing from my daughter's classroom is an awareness of what strategies good readers use. So when I tell her "before reading the text, read the title and then go to the comprehension questions at the end of the text," Hannah says to me: This is not what my teacher tells me. This is very frustrating since I try to tell her what good readers do, but she fights me because she thinks I don't know.

Reading strategies are critical for anyone who is in school. You have to read long and complex texts, therefore, you need to know how to read and what strategies to use. So this summer, our focus will be on reading strategies so that she become a strategic reader. As Grabe and Stoller put it, what readers need to do is learn how to become strategic readers rather than apply strategies.

Conversation between Hannah and her grandma Betty

The weekend of May 25 was not easy. It was my husband's death anniversary. So we went to visit my mother-in-law in El Paso. We also went to visit my father-in-law at the cemetery. On the other hand, Hannah had a wonderful time with her grandma. I was impressed about her maturity. HEre is a dialogue:

Grandma, do you feel lonely (without grandpa)?
Yes Hannah, I was married to him for 70 + years. So I miss him.
So why don't you find a boyfriend?
No Hannah, I don't need a boyfriend.
OK.... Then you and my mom need..... Botox! (laughing).

How much is going on in her head thinking about death and life? If this is not maturity, what is it?

Accelerated Reading....

Accelerated Reading (AR) is a program developed by Scholastic. The program is designed to promote/help with reading fluency. Specifically, children select books that are at various levels of proficiency, as determined by grade level. For example, a book that is 2.3 is at the second grade, third month of school grade level.

Kids read and then they take a test. Picture books have 5 questions. Chapter book tests have 10 questions.

Our challenge is reading chapter books. I tried finding books that would be of interest to Hannah based on topic (e.g., books about dogs, for example). But clearly I did not choose the right book since the Puppy series is at a higher level of proficiency. We also tried expository textbooks, example, books on science like the life on penguins in the Antartica. Way tooo difficult.

Hannah likes Ivy and Bean the series on the two friends who are very different from each other. It's a wonderful series.  But getting her to read several chapters on one day is the challenge. So what to do? I decided that besides working with her wonderful tutor, she needs more support, like Kumon. We went there today and Hannah had no trouble concentrating. She was focused. Should we try it? I know it is drill and kill, but they will also work on the basics to give her some confidence, which is what she needs. Any feedback? Any thoughts?

This year....

This year, we have gone from over editing to little writing. So it has been hard to keep Hannah motivated to write. It is interesting to see that in my teaching, I seem to find strategies to help my students become motivated to write (or at least I believe so). However, when it come s to my daughter, I struggle to get her interested in writing.

In part, I attribute this problem to her struggles with concentration. It is hard to write when you can't concentrate. She is doing better though. This summer, no Argentina trip. So she will be going to summer camp and hopefully to the Writing Project at CSULA. This should help her with her reading, which is good, understanding (which is what she struggles with), and writing.

I am proud of her accomplishments. A girl who can deal with obstacles and so many life losses is to be commended!

Overediting in first grade

Hannah's teacher is having her students edit the writing they do. I think this is, at least in part, a consequence of the many years that we spent on making sure that the kids were fluent writers. So much emphasis was placed on fluency that now the pendulum has moved to accuracy. Kids in Hannah's 1st grade class writing several paragraphs in which they have to do pre-writing in a graphic organizer that asks them to write the intro sentence and then what happened first, next finally and a conclusion sentence. When the kids turn in their writing, the teacher writes a lot of red on their papers. Then, much like we do in an academic ESL class, she gives them a handout with some "mistakes." She asks students to correct the mistakes. The problem with this handout is that there are way too many mistakes in each sentence. And there is no pattern to the mistakes. My concern is that if you are going to have your students edit their work, don't overload them with problems, and find a pattern if there is one. As I wrote in another entry, teaching goes well beyond giving out handouts and getting students to do a lot of busy work.....

It's hard to see your parents getting old

It's very hard to see your parents getting old. Especially when they have always been strong and not scared of anything and now suddently they are terrified about death. They know it's coming, this is what is happening to my dad. He escaped from the 2nd WW, was a child who travelled all over, from Italy  to Morocco, back to Italy, from Italy to Israel, then to Brazil, Uruguay and finally entered illegally into Argentina where he has lived ever since. Never afraid of anything and now terrified and angry... Difficult year for the Kamhi family!

Meeting with the school principal

Last Friday, I had a frank conversation with my daughter's school principal. After she and the other teachers told me that eventually H. would catch up, I frankly asked her how a child could catch up if instruction is in piecemail fashion, and all kids do is worksheets and not motivating work like the other kinds in the classroom. I told them, very nicely, that I felt that was being done to the kids in the RR is exactly what is often done with ESL students. I said that as a parent, I am concerned because there is a difference between "modified instruction" and "watered down" instruction. And I felt that what my daughter is getting is the latter. We had a good talk, though the keep insisting that kids eventually catch up. My feeling is that probably  the ones who catch up are those who don't have a significant problem. The others are lost in the stats....

Standards: Guiding light, but used poorly

Hannah is now finishing first grade. She is a great reader, though she wants to read about the topics she likes: Animals and princesses. Last summer, with her kindergarten teacher, we spent a lot of time helping her learn how to read by reading fun, interesting materials + learning how to decode. Now, my focus is to get her to improve her vocabulary and sentence length. So I am doing a lot of expansions, I expand on what she says + then I ask her to the complete sentence and repeat! Yes, I have her do this so that she produces the complete sentence. We do this as a game. I think it's working.

At the same time, it is clear that kids with special needs are quite similar to ESL students, in the sense that they need accommodation. Now, accommodation is very different from watering down expectations. I do not want the curriculum to be dumbed down. I want it to be modified so that she can access the curriculum. I am hoping to make my expectations clear to the school when I meet with the

principal and teachers of Friday.

Teaching children how to read

I am witnessing the failure of reading that is decontextualized. So much emphasis is placed on teaching kids how to decode, but they, or at least Hannah, does not have a clue what she is reading. Instead, when I ask her to read from a book that has context and she likes, she attempts to make meaning from the text. So why this emphasis on decoding and measuring kids ability to read from reading decontextualized text?

This week

Hannah has been reading and writing every day this week. She is much more confident, but she has trouble pronouncing words in which there does not seem to be a clear pattern, from her perspective though what has been working is using reading strategies. For example, she had difficulty reading The and all words starting with the, like them, there then so I taught her how to read the and then add the other syllables. The other strategy is pronouncing /u/ when there are two o's in a word, like room, pool, root, moon, etc. these two strategies are working but I have to build on them....

Reading in English

Hannah is beginning to read. She is in the process of developing automaticity. But she has trouble remembering some of the sight words she is supposed to remember by now. I keep questioning whether this is the effect of having to work with two languages or whether she has a learning problem. Those little books that have a lot of sight words repeated allow her to repeat the words, but she is simply repeating and does not retain the info. This is because she looks at the pictures and she relies on her background knowledge. What seems to be helping is having her read a book she really likes, like Pinkilicious. This book has a lot of the sight words she is supposed to know. But at the same time, it has content! And she is more interestered an invested in reading this book than in reading those little books that only provide repetition.

I need to have Hannah develop reading confidence, which is what she lacks. As a parent, it is very difficult to see your child struggling and you are telling her. Yes! You see! You can read! This is great! If anyone can give me suggestions on how to help her develop confidence, I would really appreciate it!

The bilingual brain and Hannah's first language? Does she have only one?

Hannah's teacher thinks that Spanish is her L1. This is based on the fact that Hannah’s stronger language is Spanish. It is true that Hannah's more dominant language is Spanish, but she is growing speaking and learning two languages concurrently. So she is not an English as a second language learner. I don't, in any way, have a problem wit her being an ESL learner, but what I fight is the assumption that speaking a language other than English creates a deficit. And this seems to be the attitude her teacher has.

How did I come to this conclusion? This morning I had a conversation with her teacher. As the proud mother of a bilingual child, I said: Hannah is doing very good!  And the teacher, with an expression that showed doubt, said, well... It's coming.  Her first language is Spanish. Her Spanish vocabulary ia great (meaning that her English is not good enough) To describe Hannah, she also said: she likes to play and is not yet listening, (though I should note that she sees listening as a skill that will come with time).

The one strength this teacher identified was Hannah's social skills.

It’s unfortunate that this teacher, who is a very good and committed teacher, has not had an opportunity to see Hannah’s interest in science. Hannah loves to watch her soft warms and her cocoons develop into moths and butterflies. She knows the vocab in English and she loves to talk about animals!

Hannah is also doing a lot of inner speech, I can hear her using rehearsal as a strategy she uses to practice and learn English.

And how about the cognitive flexibility she is developing?

I have emphasized learning through play. How can a child get to enjoy school if it is not through play?

We need to change people attitudes toward bilingualism! See the article on the bilingual brain http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31conversation.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha210

Cognitively demanding questions!

We know that "why" questions are not learned early in the language development process. I have been watching Hannah as I ask her why questions in Spanish and in English. For sure, up until today, she could not answer why questions. As for Por que, Why in Spanish, at first she was able to answer the question, though with a lot of support from me. Eventually, she answered the question without too much prompting from me. She would say: por que... porque.... and then the sentence.

Today, Hannah had a playdate with her good friend Rebekah. As we were driving home, I asked her a why question: Why can't you do something...? And she said Because I have to eat lunch! I immediately gave her a high five and I think Hannah did not quite understand why I was so excited!

So one more milestone! I will keep watching my why questions!

Watching TV and Parenting

As a mother (and single mother!), I feel awful when I have to grade or work on the computer and I let Hannah watch TV. Now, she has moved from the Sprout Network to Nick Jr. What I like about Nick Jr is the fact that there is Kaitlan, who is Chinese, Diego, who speaks Spanish, and Little Billy, who is African American, but not bi-dialectical.  I let Hannah watch some of these programs, though I control how much TV she watches. And TV helps with her English language skills. And she is also learning some words in Chinese, which both she and I are excited about! The fact that she is acquiring English through TV makes me feel less guilty about her TV watching habits!

Hannah and Verbs!

Hannah will start kindergarten in the fall. Hannah's language of schooling is English. But she does a lot of code-switching. It is just great to see how flexible she is when it comes to using the two languages. I wish I could do a brain scan to see what parts of her brain get used when she switches from one language to the other. She is fluent in both languages, and it is interesting to see how, when she uses verbs in Spanish, she regularizes them. So for example a ver like "poner" (put on), the past tense if "puse" (Me puse...) but she says "ponio." Or for "hice" (de hacer), she says "hicio." Therefore, the process that she went through to learn English verbs is the same process she is going through to learn Spanish verbs. Though the process seems to be slower, which makes complete sense, given the amount of Spanish she hears.

Developing Writing Skills

Hannah has been 'writing" for some time. She knows how to write many people's names (including the members of the family, her friends, etc. However, when I started teaching her how to write, I taught her uppercase.... She is beginning to recognize lowercase letters, but I am not teaching her the difference.. Am I making a mistake?

Two-way bilingual programs

The LA Times published an excellent program on two-way immersion programs: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bilingual-20110508,0,3841220.story

Glendale has become the flagship city for two-way immersion programs. Kudos to the parents and administrators who are so invested in providing this type of education. Now, why is it that it is okay for middle class children to be bilingual, but it is not okay (by the state and the district) for working class kids to use their first language resources in the classroom? The message we are sending is: If you are a middle class kid, then we promote bilingualism; but if you come from a working class family, we want to erase your L1. What a wasted resource!

On how bilingualism is viewed in the monolingual classroom

How do some teachers perceive children who are bilingual in a monolingual classroom? Why is it that when an almost 5 year-old can't answer a "why" question with a full sentence, or can't explain himself or herself, the teacher assumes that there is a problem with the child? 

Or why is it that when a child performs a literacy task beautifully, with creative language, full sentences, etc, the teacher says "Your child did a great job, it was wonderful to see the language that she used, and she did not need any prompting..." to then add: "Well, she might need help throughout her life," as if she had special needs.... What a contradiction! What mixed messages!