Stevenson High School has more than 200 courses in mathematics, communication arts, science, social science, applied arts, fine arts, physical welfare, and foreign languages. The school curriculum places a great emphasis on a core of fundamental courses in English, mathematics, science, and social studies. Since these are the areas tested by national examinations such as the ACT and the SAT, students should be better prepared to achieve high scores on theses exams (http://www.d125.org). In addition, the high school’s homepage lists around 30 AP classes that are offered for Stevenson/ELL students. Stevenson uses traditional grading system that fuses feedback, achievement results, and performance expectations into a single percentage. However, …show more content…
A lot of what Stevenson High School ELL curriculum currently focuses on is based on text and for medic units, and ELL teacher uses those units to construct the rest of our curriculum. For example, based on the conversation I had with our ELL teacher if she is teaching the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, not only is she talking about the Holocaust, but she is also talking about the history of the WW2, genocide and human prejudice. A lot of what Stevenson High School teachers teach with their texts has to do with a bigger picture, and they use their novels as the foundation to help guide the conversations and lessons. They construct grammar and writing activities, so that they are being applied in context of this theme and are not learning grammar and writing separately, but …show more content…
The school year 2016/2017 was the first full time year since around 2006. In my classes I have monolingual English students, but also students with simultaneous and sequential bilingualism. In my opinion, as a teacher who builds the program from the scratch, I do believe two main factors are here essential: student’s language portfolio, and emphasize on SEL. Portfolio in all German classes is a holistic way to measure and support students’ progress, proficiency level, their reflection on learning, and their Social Emotional Learning. Portfolio has two main goals: Portfolio – after chapter where students can reflect on their work and discuss the chapter’s theme in L2. The second goal is Portfolio – Theme of Choice at the end of each semester. Here students work on their theme of choice that is presented at the end of each