“STEM and Spanish!!”
“STEM Professional Development is never for Dual Language educators.”
Those comments are the answers that two participants at a recent Bilingual ELA Performance Task workshop gave to the question, “Why attend?” Spanish-language resources for science and STEM are indeed rare. PEI’s Multicultural Engagement Coordinator Lourdes Flores is engaged in making sure that Bilingual and Dual Language teachers throughout Washington know they exist.
The virtual statewide workshop was part of that effort. Thirteen teachers attended the workshop, which Flores co-facilitated with PEI’s Lower Columbia FieldSTEM Coordinator Emily Newman. The verbal component was almost entirely in Spanish, while the presentation slides were bilingual.
Participants learned about ELA performance tasks by creating scientific models of their backyards or schoolyards that included natural and built elements to demonstrate their understanding of the impact of engineered surfaces on water transportation. They also learned about the role of plants in groundwater filtration and the impacts of permeability on wetland ecosystems.
“I’m very happy about people signing up and finding out about these resources.”
— PEI’s Multicultural Engagement Coordinator Lourdes Flores
Next, they used mapping technology to locate the nearest wetland and considered how their backyard/schoolyard study might relate to or impact that wetland. “They liked that because they could see what wetlands were close and notice things that they hadn’t realized before,” says Newman. “They were excited to put that map into immediate use with their students, to go out and explore the wetlands around them.”
Participants also learned about the dual-language resources available to them through PEI and the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). These include WIDA, a comprehensive approach to
supporting, teaching and assessing multi-lingual learners and the accompanying Marco DALE framework, which supports Spanish Language standards development. Eventually, PEI will revise the Spanish performance tasks to meet the Marco DALE standards, but for now, those standards are still being created. “Lourdes did an awesome job of explaining the standards connections for Spanish language and the Marco DALE,” says Newman.
Flores was glad to see the number of workshop registrations (26) as well as the percentage that attended. “It’s difficult to offer Spanish-only workshops when we have very few people attending,” she says. “I’m very happy about people signing up and finding out about these resources. Bravo to PEI’s FieldSTEM coordinators who announced this to the teachers in their region. We had a lot of new people attending.”