“The focus of a 21st Century curriculum for world languages is on looking for the skills needed to build target language proficiency and cultural understanding in real-world contexts. (Clementi and Terrill, 2017, p.2)
For a district of Pentucket’s size, providing multiple options for various languages for students to study presents us with challenges to ensure the students are all engaged in meaningful and challenging learning experiences. Focusing our efforts in fewer languages, but overhauling our approach to a proficiency or competency based model has been our focus in recent years.
The Massachusetts World Languages Framework vision statement is as follows:
“All Massachusetts students will acquire a high level of linguistic and cultural proficiency in at least one world language. Proficiency in one or more world languages will empower students to use languages other than English to tell their own stories, understand the stories of others, and engage with their communities.” (MA DESE)
According to the Massachusetts Department of Secondary and Elementary Education (MA DESE), the Seal of Biliteracy is an award given by a school, school district or county office of education in recognition of students who have studied and attained proficiency in two or more languages by high school graduation.
Currently, 49 states and Washington DC have approved a statewide Seal of Biliteracy. Massachusetts approved the state Seal of Biliteracy in 2017 (DESE), and just two years later, Pentucket awarded the Seal of Biliteracy to two students. In 2022, seven Seals were awarded to graduating seniors from Pentucket. While the changes in numbers are not staggering, developing proficiency in more than one language is not something that is accomplished in a few short years. This is done with systematic and programmatic planning, along with establishing a district wide culture that values bi-literacy and sees it as an asset to learning in general. Recent research from Lexia, published in the Association of Supervision and Curriculum Design Smartbrief (ASCD) supports this notion. For Pentucket students, their path to bi-literacy can vary. For some, their first language was English and they became proficient in another language through Pentucket programming and additional experiences. Yet, for others, they develop literacy proficiency in a language other than English before or simultaneously as they learn English from an early age. The partnership between schools and families is critical for either of these situations to happen.
The ACTFL (American Council on Teaching of Foreign Language) Proficiency Guidelines from 2012, which focus on the 5Cs-Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities, has therefore been adopted by most World Languages programs and was the model for the Massachusetts World Languages Curriculum Framework adopted in April, 2021. The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines inform World Languages Educators on how to explore real-world spontaneous situations by skill or level. (ACTFL)
ACTFL promoted a paradigm shift in World Languages Education away from the Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) and Audiolingual Method (ALM) to Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). In her book, Leading Your Language Program, Catherine Ritz uses a baseball analogy in which she compares students’ learning under GTM as sitting in class and taking notes and doing drills about how to learn to play baseball compared to the CLT model which teaches baseball skills hands-on with bats, gloves and balls. ALM concentrates on memorizing dialogues, and Ritz argues that this method is like simulating playing baseball but not really being able to play the game when language learners are confronted with native speakers. CLT makes communication the goal of language learning. Ritz also points out the benefits of multilingualism.
Multilingualism supports reading skills, leads to more effective cognitive functioning and develops important social skills. Emerging research, cited in this March 2023 article from the BBC, also suggests that students with language based learning disabilities, such as dyslexia, can benefit from becoming multilingual. For too long, learning a second language was seen as “an extra” or a “challenge” for those with disabilities, and also viewed as deficit for those students whose first language was not English. We know it is an asset, and the the research supports this as well.
As early as 2016, Pentucket educators began embracing this paradigm shift and, therefore, have been attending MaFLA, ACTFL and Bureau of Education (BER) workshops and conferences which focus on the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines and communicative teaching strategies.
Pentucket Global Languages staff attended a workshop, Assessing Student Performance in the Proficiency Based Classroom, facilitated by Leslie Gran, a veteran educator and a MaFLA facilitator. In the workshop, staff learned that tiered tasks are an integral part of assessing students, who should be met at their level. For example, a few students may need sentence starters or word banks to begin a writing assessment while other students construct sentences, albeit not perfectly grammatically, with no supports at all.
In Spanish I classes, students were asked to write an article for the school newspaper about their daily routine in school, and they were given three different tasks with three levels of difficulty to choose from. With Task 1, students wrote paragraphs using sentence starters. In Task 2 students leveled up and used connecting words which were provided in a word bank, and by Task 3 students compared their schedule from last year with the new waterfall schedule. Tiering tasks enables all students to write at their own level and feel confident about their writing skills.
Task 1
Task 3
In 2019, the Global Languages Department developed a plan and adopted goals for the years 2019-2023:
Establish a Performance Based Curriculum, Assessments and Instructional model for all Languages
Create common assessments that align with the ACTFL can do statements
Use 90% target language
Increase language participation for MS students to 90% of 8th graders enrolled in a full year course and 90% of 7th graders enrolled in a half year course
The Global Languages performance based curriculum ensures vertical and horizontal alignment throughout all language levels and concentrates on the modes of communication which are assessed for the Seal of Biliteracy: interpersonal speaking and listening, presentational writing and interpretive writing and interpretive listening.
According to ACTFL, a proficient speaker has sufficient skills to be understood, can ask questions, clarify, self-correct and circumlocute. A proficient presentational writer can create one-way communication to inform, persuade, explain or narrate. A proficient listener or reader interprets and comprehends the main ideas and supporting details of simple stories, routine correspondence or descriptive texts. Below is a video of German students on the path to proficiency and their work and a photo of Spanish AP students engaged full discussions.
Common Integrated Performance Assessments (IPA) mobilizes staff to concentrate on analysis of achieved skill level and plan for adjustments in instruction. “The advantage of the IPA within a backwards design approach is that the target for performance is always in focus, and consequently both learners and instructors understand what the goal is and how instruction and assessment work as one system to enable learners to reach that goal”. (Implementing Integrated Performance Assessment, Adair-Hauch, Gilson and Troyan, 2013)
“Research indicates that effective language instruction must provide significant levels of meaningful communication and interactive feedback in the target language in order for students to develop language and cultural proficiency.” (ACTFL) Students and staff staying in the target language 90% of the time puts high quality, student focused lessons at the center of the classroom.
Video of 90% Target language from our AP Spanish class
Apart from focusing on language skills, the Pentucket Global Languages Department also builds skills around multiculturalism, a situation in which all different cultures and racial groups in a society have equal rights and opportunities and none is ignored or regarded as unimportant. Pentucket students come to celebrate diversity and similarities between cultures as well as better understand their own culture and perspectives to unite with others in their own communities and around the world.
Ultimately, the goal of building cultural knowledge related to language study while also focusing on language proficiency, is to give students the opportunity to engage with authentic use of the language. With travel in recent years preventing that from happening, we turned to technology and have arranged for frequent zoom calls with students overseas. For example, our German students participate in the German American Virtual Exchange with students from Rheine, Germany. This has provided our students with the opportunity to use the language and it is mutually beneficial as the German students have the opportunity to use English and ask cultural questions of our students.
By embracing the new proficiency model, creating a three-year action plan, implementing and analyzing common assessments, reaching out to communities of other cultures and assessing for the Seal of Biliteracy, Pentucket has come far on its path to proficiency.
Linda Hackett
7-12 Global Languages Dept. Chair
Brent Conway
Assistant Superintendent