In order to create these lessons, I prioritize the information gathered from my students’ bio cards for the purpose of planning instruction and assessment.  I did this to keep my CLD learners at pace with grade-level curricular content while simultaneously building their English language capacities identified from their WIDA Can Do Descriptors.  My students’ and their families’ backgrounds provided invaluable information to differentiate mine and theirs instruction.  I wanted to help my students “add on” and "build on" their English language, all the while, lowering their affective filter.  I focused on contextualizing my lessons to include the assets, skills, and knowledge that each brings to every class!  All four of my students are advanced fluency English learners.  For this, I continued to support their ongoing language development through intercurricular activities.  Each of my students had a different learning style.  I used a plethora of metacognitive, cognitive, and social/affective strategies (cognitive approach) learned from EDU380 to help these student develop the English language.

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The information that I had gathered from my students’ cultural quilts was for the purpose of planning instruction and assessment so as to support my preparedness to accommodate their individualized student readiness.  There was a collaboration between me and my students.  I used the cultural quilt to review and identify the espoused and practical understandings that each student had.  I was able to use the Accommodation Readiness Spiral to critically reflect on the cultural quilt using the 6 progressive levels.  This helped me to make informed decisions about Elk Creek Elementary's curriculum and how to adjust it to make it culturally relevant for my CLD students.  Most of the time, I achieved this by keeping the content but changing how the students interacted with the it (multimodal and differentiated).

 

In my teaching experience, I have had a lot of interactions with parents.  I was only able to conduct one home visit with my Student A.  I visited my student twice (I was enrolled in EDU234 Multicultural Education as well - this was an expectation for the class) and I went by myself.  Conducting the home visit, I felt confident and excited to see STUDENT A’s home life.  I gained valuable information from these visits.  Specifically, Student A and I were able to reflect on what she needed the most help with: math, reading, and writing.  I was able to communicate my expectations for future our lessons and together we created the foundation for my Mini Lesson 1.  STUDENT A was immediately engaged.  I would recommend home visits because they can give you an intimate perspective into that student’s life to better accommodate for their readiness in the classroom, school, and community.

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My biggest takeaway from this semester in EDU380 is that biography-driven activities are essential for guiding the direction of my pedagogy.  It is my wish to learn as much information as I can about my students so as to determine which methods and practices of teaching will be the most effective for their success and achievement.  The data I retrieved from these biography-driven activities cultivated within me a culturally responsive teaching.  I found it as my duty to be as prepared as I can be to accommodate all students.  Especially those who are culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD).  I believe in a mutual accommodation between teacher and student.  Where both parties collaborate to maximize the resources that each brings to the educational process.  I want to incorporate the four dimensions of the Prism Model in relation to each of my students so I can gain an indispensable understanding on the foundation of their growth and development.  It is most important to me to make my lessons meaningful and relevant to them.  And to do this, I need to connect my lessons to my students’ cultures.  Opportunities will be provided in my classroom to celebrate all students’ heritage and culture.  I will bridge the pedagogies of the students’ home life and school.  I do not believe that we should assimilate our students to the more dominate culture of Americanism.  There is empowerment, enrichment, and identity within our cultures that can add to our understanding and learning of the world.  I will bond the two concepts of contextualization and instructional conversations to my lessons.  And I can do this by implementing the following:

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• elaborate upon students' experiential (social/personal) and academic backgrounds

• elicit student-generated questions and ideas

• encourage students to in taking ownership of their learning

• promote natural language acquisition

• encourage student articulation of perspectives/positions

• encourage students to share their thinking and explain why they may have recorded a given word, image, or piece of information

• use their own creativity to find ways to use what students have shared in order to make connections between the lesson and what is already meaningful to the learners

• build upon students' background knowledge and emerging understandings to validate their learning

• encourage students to make connections to the real world, and highlight how individual contributions advance the learning of the entire classroom community.

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The students are cultural assets to our classroom.  They bring funds of knowledge that can contribute to our teaching and to the learning community that has been built within our classrooms to support student language development and use.  This is an asset perspective and growth mindset.