ELA Across the Board

(Transcript Of the December 1, 1999 Teleconference)

Transmitted via New York 's Public Broadcasting Stations, produced by the New York State Education Department and the New York State Satellite Broadcast Network; recorded at the studios at Bulmer Telecommunications Center, Hudson Valley Community College.

For additional information, call or write:

John Quinn
Room 668 EBA
Office of Curriculum and Instruction
New York State Education Department
Albany, NY 12234
(518) 474-3954
E-mail: jquinn@mail.nysed.gov

For copies of the videotape and Facilitator Guide, contact Teresa Moore, Questar III BOCES, (518) 477-6749.

>> Rochelle: Good afternoon and welcome to the New York State Education Department's Satellite Broadcast Network program "Tools for Schools." I'm your moderator, Rochelle Cassella.

During today's program, you're going to see a lot of reading, writing, listening and notetaking, everything you would expect to see in English classes at all grade levels. The classes we'll show you today are elementary level classes in social studies and middle school courses in science.

So what's going on here? If you saw our October program, "Introduction to Tools for Schools," you heard one teacher state that we're coming to a time when all teachers will need to be English teachers. And from today's program, you'll see that that statement is true. Our program "English Language Arts Across the Board" takes you to schools in the districts of North Warren and Burnt Hills Ballston Lake where E.L.A. skills have been integrated into all subject areas and since the next opportunity for students to take the Regents Comprehensive Exam in English is a scant seven weeks away, we'll go to Buffalo City School District where special programs have been put in place to help seniors who have not yet made competency succeed on the exam, the exam they must pass in order to graduate in June.

We remind you that this year's program theme is "Tools for Schools" with six basic elements common to high-performing schools everywhere. So, as you watch today's program, keep these tools in mind: Responsive leadership, comprehensive planning, ongoing staff development, engaging curriculum, flexible resources and supportive involvement of parents and community. Here in the studios at Hudson Valley Community College today, I have with me representatives from the schools featured in our videos, as well as Patricia Webster. Pat is representing the State Education Department. Pat, why is it so important that we place more emphasis on English language arts and that all teachers become English teachers?

>> Patricia Webster: Rochelle, all students will be using language throughout their lives. We like to think, however, not that all teachers become English teachers, but that they become teachers of language and that they provide learning opportunities for students in which informational, literary, critical and social reading, writing, speaking and listening activities are provided.

>> Rochelle: The idea that we begin to see it integrated in other areas of the curriculum is basically no matter where you go and what you do, you'll have to communicate with somebody; you will have to read, will have to write?

>> Patricia: That's correct. We think of the content area teachers as teachers of language, too.

>> Rochelle: Okay. We're going to see that happening. Before we do that, however, there are still some questions surrounding the accommodations allowed for students with disabilities who are taking the fourth and eighth grade English language arts exams and the English Regents. The department will be sending out a field memo very soon, but to answer some immediate needs, we spoke with Rita LeVay, Coordinator of Special Education Policy and Quality Assurance from the Office of Vocational and Education Services for Students with Disabilities.

>> Rita LeVay: I.D.E.A. really requires us to do two things in the schools: It requires us to make sure that all students with disabilities, regardless of where they receive services, whether it's in the resource room, general ed classroom, private school, that they all receive access to the same curriculum as students in general education. That curriculum may be modified. There may be instructional strategies that are used; there may be some additional resources that are required, but those students have to have access to the same curriculum. That's really important.

The federal government also requires the second thing, that all students with disabilities are assessed against state standards. So for the vast majority of students with disabilities, that means that they need to take the same statewide assessment as their non-disabled peers, so the fourth grade assessments, the eighth grade assessments and the Regents examinations.

For students with very severe disabilities, we're developing an alternate assessment system that will assess them against the same standards but at their level, so that's going to look very different. That will be available in July of 2000. We're in the process of developing that.

The important point is that the federal government is saying that for 100% of students with disabilities, you have to account for them in the assessment system; you have to give them access to the same curriculum, and you really have to begin to raise expectations for them.

>> Rochelle: What about testing modifications? Are they allowable on those assessments?

>> Rita: Yes, they are. Testing modifications, accommodations as we like to refer to them, are available for students. During this last couple of years, we spent a lot of time talking to national experts in the field of assessment and disability issues, test construct. What's really important with testing accommodations is that we level the playing field for students, but we don't give them so many accommodations that we change the construct of what the test is really assessing.

>> Rochelle: Students with disabilities, how do they do them at fourth grade with English language arts exams?

>> Rita: Well, this last spring when we took a look at the results and, as you know, in the English language arts assessment, there are four levels. If you scored a level three or four, you're pretty much on track for achieving the skills that you need. Level two indicates you've got some work to do, and level one means you've got some significant intervention to do. About 18% of the kids with disabilities scored at level three, meaning they were right on their way towards achieving the skill sets that they needed. Another 46%, we felt with some additional assistance really could meet that standard. So we were looking about 64% of the kids we felt were pretty much on their way, with some additional assistance in some cases.

>> Rochelle: What about the English Regents exam?

>> Rita: The English Regents exam, there were two main points that came out the way kids did on the exam. One is that fully one-third of the kids with disabilities who were eligible to take that examination did not. So we have an issue then of making sure that kids take the examination. We don't know how well they're going to do. We don't know if they need the safety net if they don't take the examination. But out of every 100 students who were eligible to take that English examination this last June, 46 of them passed it at 55 or above or got alternative credit. 22 did not pass it, but 32 did not take it at all. So we have some concerns. Are the results where we would like them to be? No. Are they better than a lot of people thought? Yes. We have some work to do and we have to make sure that the kids take the exams.

>> Rochelle: And some of that work that we need to do, what do parents and educators need to think about in terms of helping students with disabilities get ready for the Regents exams?

>> Rita: Probably there's three or four things they need to keep in mind. One again is access to the general education curriculum. These examinations are not one-year assessments against what you learned. They're multiple years, milestones on the way to achieving that diploma. So access to the curriculum, no matter what the setting is; are my kids learning what they need to learn in order to pass those assessments? Taking a look when those assessments are completed, the fourth grade assessment, the eighth grade assessment. Both parents and teachers need to take a look at individual student results. What do we need to do to help this particular child gain the skills to do better the next time to be able to pass the Regents examination? The other thing, probably more than anything else, is to really help raise our expectations for kids. Very often we're finding that the expectations have been really too low. Congress said that. The experts have said that. That's always a fine line for parents. How do you raise the expectations and challenge kids without really -- making them feel as though they can accomplish it. That's what we have to do together, raise the standards and support them as they do that.

>> Rochelle: To help parents become involved, the State Education Department has developed a brochure and this will be available to parents soon and Rita recommends visiting the VESID web site at www.nysed.gov/vesid. You can sign up for something called listSERV, and you'll be able to get the latest and greatest information from VESID on all testing modifications, changes or adjustments or new information related to that. So www.nysed.gov/vesid/.

Time now to visit some classrooms to see how this integration of E.L.A. skills works. We go first to the fourth and sixth grade social studies classes of North Warren Central School District.

>> Wanda: Tucked away in a rural setting at the foothills of the Adirondack mountains sits North Warren's new kindergarten through 12th grade school.

>> If you like music, art or dance, boy, does India have some interesting activities for you such as Indian folk painting, wood and ivory carving, metalware....

>> Wanda: These six graders are a world away from the foreign cultures they are studying.

>> Lori Korniak: Margaret read it once. I'm going to have someone else from India come up and read what they have. Just with those two readings, I want to see how much you can get without doing any sort of question and answer yet.

>> Wanda: Social studies teacher Lori Korniak has developed a multi-task lesson for her students. It is designed to be a bridge between cultures. The lesson links English language arts to other curriculum in order to prepare students for the state's E.L.A. assessments.

>> Lori Korniak: The lesson that I came up with was a lesson about what is culture? This is a fairly homogeneous community and when I first taught ancient civilizations and culture last year at the sixth grade level, I realized last year it was very difficult for the children to understand world history without really understanding the people that live in the world today. That was one of my motivations. So what this lesson is designed to do is to really solidify the idea of culture and its importance and using all the language arts standards at the same time.

>> Daniel MacGregor: Part of the philosophy to integrate courses in North Warren School is to try and use the skills and have the students learn the skills and then apply them in the other disciplines so that as we're working on English language arts skills, they could apply to science or social studies or another subject.

>> Trudy Walp: What was the name of the book that Ms. Rooney was reading?

>> Wanda: North Warren's English language arts specialist is reading teacher Trudy Walp.

>> Trudy Walp: I think the fourth grade E.L.A. test is right on the money in terms of assessing reading and writing and listening in authenticated ways. I find that sometimes teachers are complaining because "all we're doing is spending our time preparing for the grade four E.L.A.," but when I look at the types of tasks on that test, I think, "these are things we would want our students to be doing all the time in our classrooms anyway." It's not so much as "I'm preparing for that test" but "I'm building a curriculum, a way of instructing students that should be part of our every day routines."

I have a follow-up question to Robert, and this is not in the book.

>> Wanda: She and other instructors met as part of staff development to design curriculum that incorporates core studies with daily instruction.

>> Lori Korniak: I was sent last year to be a scorer and table facilitator for the eighth grade E.L.A. They sent the sixth grade teachers with the mind-set that we would be starting or at least continuing what had been already started but getting the children ready for the eighth grade. So it was very clear to me how the kids were going to be assessed and what they really needed to know how to do.

What we're going to do today is we're starting the culmination, which means we've done a lot of things in preparation and now we're coming to the end of our study about what is culture. One of the first things we did is we defined culture. Michael, can you read that for me, please? What is culture?

>> All the things that distinguish one group of people from another.

>> Lori Korniak: Whether you live in Brazil or whether you live in Iran, there's certain things that you need to live. Those are basic needs. Every human being in the world also needs to have the ability to express themselves. What we're going to talk about today is what's different.

All right. How do people in Brazil meet their basic needs that's different from people in the United States and different from people in Norway, for instance? What we have done in preparation, as you guys know, is you've gone on to the Internet, in the electronic card catalog, gotten resources, books, and read and collected the information and wrote an informational article about one of those cultures.

>> Wanda: Lori introduced the graphic organizer as a tool to help students organize their thoughts and set an outline for the articles they are presenting.

>> Mexico is a federal republic divided into 31 states.

>> Wanda: This class may be motivating and fun, but it's a lot of work for both teacher and student.

>> Lori Korniak: Folks, why don't you finish your notes. I'm going to have Ben come up and get his paper.

The activity was designed really to incorporate reading, writing, listening and speaking, all of it together. This is a long lesson. It takes a long time to teach. One of the things I had to do was give myself permission to say, "it's okay to spend two and a half weeks on this one lesson." There are a lot of mini-lessons inside the lesson, but many of them have never even logged on to the Internet before so we started the first week of school teaching them how to log on to the Internet and getting permission from their parents to be on the Internet. Then I have to start teaching study skills and how to read for information. Then we start the writing process and that writing process itself is very long, so we're laying the groundwork for the whole year.

Tomorrow we'll work through the whole process on the piece and we'll have a sharing circle in the afternoon right before we go home.

The culmination of the whole activity, what is culture, is what we are going to get in our sharing circle. The children will read their creative pieces and the other children have to be listening carefully because it's been made into a little game for them, where they're going to jot down what culture they think that that person is from. There's a little edge of competition there to see who can guess correctly and a little bit of a game for them.

Okay. See you tomorrow. Bye-bye.

>> Mary Matrose: What I would like to do today is start off remembering how we started off this year in social studies. Right in the very beginning we talked about how we're going to start studying social studies. We talked about looking at it as a big bullet and starting exactly in the middle. Jeremy, who was in the middle of our bullet?

>> Me. >> Mary Maltrose: Once we finished the "me" part of our bullet, we moved on to family. And after family came local history of our town. And that brings us to what we're going to be doing today. We're combining, some of us are combining learning a little bit about our family and hopefully a lot about our local history today. Your grandmothers and grandfathers or your next door neighbors are going to be coming in and you're going to be interviewing them.

About four or five years ago, the three fourth grade teachers were working as a team. We realized that a main portion of New York State was learning about your local history and we came up with the idea of talking to senior citizens and asking them about what life used to be like in our area, because change is a big part of the social studies curriculum.

Excuse me, Mrs. Hayes, do you have any brothers or sisters?

>> Yes.

>> Mary Matrose: Yes, Mrs. Hayes does have some brothers and sisters. Casey, where am I supposed to go now? I'm going to put yes in that number 3. Where do I go now?

>> To 3-A. What are their names and where do they live?

>> Wanda: Fourth grade teacher Mary Matrose is coaching her class on styles and techniques they'll need to do interviews with the senior citizens who are set to visit their classroom this afternoon.

>> Mary Matrose: The more they tell you, the more you're going to learn, either about your family or about the community or both.

I believe that English language arts is the core curriculum. Children need to know how to communicate. This social studies project has them take everything they have learned in our English language arts and use it. They have to listen to the seniors; they have to ask them questions; they have to take notes. They have to be able to take their notes and put it into a finished product and actually do some communicating. Not just in social studies, but English language arts needs to go across the whole curriculum. You have your own section of English language arts that you teach in the morning and for the rest of the day you practice it, in math, social studies and science.

>> I-C-O-N.

>> I dressed up in a dress with a backpack on my back. So off we went through the fence to Germany.

>> Wanda: With hours of practice behind them, it's now time for these fourth graders to put their newfound skills to work, probing the past with their senior subjects.

>> Do you have a favorite story?

>> James Dingman: My father, when they first started having grocery stores, as I remember, in the '30s...

>> Wanda: Linking community to classroom offers endless opportunities to learn for students and seniors alike.

>> Mary Matrose: This is very important to our community up here because we live in a small, rural community, and we would like to get the community a little more involved in what's happening in the classroom. This is kind of bridging the gap between the fourth grade students and the senior citizens.

>> James Dingman: He's getting an overall picture, I guess of what his parents and grandparents grew up with. I think he knows by us being here that we are taking an interest in how he's doing in his school.

>> Wanda: More than just a great experience, this lesson with seniors incorporates curriculum that's aimed at preparing children for the fourth grade E.L.A. exam.

>> Mary Matrose: This project will be touching on almost every aspect of the English language arts standards. They have to have listening skills. They have to have communicating skills to be able to ask the questions. They have to have notetaking skills in order to take what the senior is giving them and actually write it down so they remember what is going on, and then they have to have the writing skills in order to take the information and put it into some type of project at the end.

>> Wanda: These students are wrapping up the interview segment of this social studies lesson. The students and the seniors will meet again for a Thanksgiving meal to celebrate their collaboration. In the meantime, it's back to work for the children, writing articles on the history they have learned.

>> Mary Matrose: We go on to either writing a biography of the senior citizens' life or a newspaper article and making a whole newspaper -- it's usually called "The Senior Gazette" is what we call it. So for the next few weeks, this is what the children will be working on. At the end of it, the seniors will come back and we'll hold a Thanksgiving dinner for them. Parents donate turkeys and we have pies and all kinds of goodies for the seniors. They come in and eat dinner and the student presents them with either the newspaper or the biography. They get to read it to the senior individually and the senior gets to take it back home with them when they leave, so they have a -- they can see that this is the end process, that the children have worked with what they have give them and learned something from what they have told them. The seniors take it home with them.

>> What we're trying to do here is in a sense, the standard four that you think about in the English language arts standards, that students are using their reading, writing, listening and speaking in a social interaction format so it's woven into the curriculum through these activities. There is a larger scheme in operation here and that's being driven of course by having curriculum developed across grade levels, so we have back and forth grade focus on New York State, local community history, regional communities, and then we move by sixth grade into the world, get a larger community, if you will.

>> Wanda: The next day, sixth grade teacher Lori Korniak prepares students to recreate pieces they have written overnight.

>> Lori Korniak: Michael, would you like to read yours?

>> Hi. My name is Mike. I will tell you about a day of mine. After school, I wanted to go outside with my mom and Dad. My mom said okay but my Dad said no.

>> Wanda: Kids take notes during student presentations on boards they use to reveal their guesses on the mystery culture.

>> In the sixth grade, Lori is working on a social studies project which integrates the reading, writing, listening and speaking in a very natural way and directed toward a very specific end and it's done in a very almost playful type manner. It feels a lot like being on "Jeopardy," and I think the kids get into that form of learning.

>> Lori Korniak: The fourth grade and eighth grade E.L.A.s, they're just a check on really what the kids know. We want the kids to learn, and reading, writing, listening and speaking is the foundation for all their learning for the rest of their lives.

>> Mary Matrose: Tweaking our English language arts to help us facilitate them to take the test helped immensely. Their writing has improved 100% last year. We were amazed how well their writing came about and it came about across the board again. We could see it in their social studies writing, in their science writing, in their math writing. It's been a very, very good experience.

>> Daniel MacGregor: There's no question in my mind that we'll achieve better writing scores by the emphasis. I have a great deal of faith in what students can do, and I think if you give them a challenge and prepare them well, they can do it.

>> Wanda: North Warren School administrators and teachers say they are pleased with how their children have tested on the E.L.A. exam so far, yet they are still looking for ways to improve curriculum development, instructional practices and student achievement on future tests.

>> Rochelle: What beautiful lessons. Here from North Warren is superintendent Dan MacGregor. I welcome you.

>> Daniel MacGregor: Thank you.

>> Rochelle: Dan, what is key to making a program like this one work in your school district?

>> Daniel MacGregor: Well, I feel the changes come with the new standards, that it has to be a team effort. Too often in the past we have acted in isolation, and by teachers working together and planning together, doing good planning, and the time has to be provided. You have to have an opportunity to do that planning, but you can facilitate and do what you have to do to get the students where you want them.

>> Rochelle: You say that you're still looking for new techniques, new things to be done. Any idea what's next and planned for your school district?

>> Daniel MacGregor: Nothing specific that I'm aware of at this point.

>> Rochelle: Okay. Any resistance on the part of teachers or parents or anyone in some of the changes that were made?

>> Daniel MacGregor: I think the toughest resistance is finding time, time to plan, and as an administrator, I feel that I have to look for those opportunities, whether it's a case of bringing in substitutes so they have a day to plan or an after-school time or in the summer, in providing opportunities for summertime.

>> Rochelle: So you really have to leverage some resources to make that happen?

>> Daniel MacGregor: Absolutely.

>> Rochelle: Thank you very much and congratulations to your teachers for doing so well and to your students as well. One of the things that Pat pointed out as she was looking at the lesson, particularly the one that involved the senior citizens, was the talk about social interaction. Explain that for me, Pat?

>> Pat Webster: Yes, Rochelle. I was glad to see that piece, because the students were really addressing the skills of social interaction. They as interviewers were asking questions in which they took a backseat, so to speak, and they let the other person speak to them, because they were building on a relationship. Often we don't always do a good job with the social interaction skill in English language arts because we forget that it is mainly to help build a relationship, a different kind of speaking.

>> Rochelle: Okay. Terrific. Not only that, but we're really creating that connection between the generations as well, a lot going on in that piece there.

Now we're going to take a look at Burnt Hills Ballston Lake School District. It's in the fourth year of a five-year staff development and curriculum mapping plan. That map revolves around the new learning standards and incorporating E.L.A. skills into all class areas.

>> Jim Schultz: Today we're meeting to go ahead with the planning of the new S.T.C. kit, to look at ways we can integrate language arts and social studies into this science kit. Can we talk about some of the ways you have integrated language arts into the previous units?

>> Nancy Ingersoll: I think now that we know a little bit more about how the E.L.A. test is set up in terms of....

>> Jim Schultz: This meeting is like many we have at different grade levels at which we take a look at the content that teachers are already delivering and trying to examine ways that we can integrate the language art skills, social studies skills, math skills, technology skills into those units.

>> Nancy Ingersoll: It's not that I have anything against our frog friends. The frog is obviously different.

>> Lisa Febraio: You're limiting yourself with just the crab and the snail.

>> Bridget Patton: If it's shell, body structure, then you can differentiate.

>> Lisa Febraio: I believe the process of brainstorming for us is to become a better teacher.

It makes me see things in a different perspective. I often have an idea but don't know exactly how to organize or don't have the creative aspect of it, where my colleagues will come in and say, "that's a great idea. Let me pick up on that." I believe the process of teamwork really makes us better professionals.

>> I was thinking earlier when we were talking about crabs and snails and their defense mechanisms, how you can draw a comparison between that and when the first settlers came to Schenectady and they built the stockade right by the river, so they had the stockade for defense and it's a similar kind of thing....

>> Nancy Ingersoll: You can relate that back to colonial America, what did they do for their food, for their fresh water, for their environment to protect themselves...

>> Jim Schultz: What you saw in the meeting today was a collection of the experts from the district. You saw the K-12 science person, social studies and K-12 language arts, coming together with the people who are going to deliver this curriculum, the classroom teacher.

>> Bridget Patton: We are so focused on the skill and the content that we need to get across during our lesson that it's nice to have an outside-- an outside person to say, "hey, here is a great idea in social studies and have you thought about this in your lesson?" And it's nice to have someone else to bounce those ideas off of and say, "oh, that's the connection I was looking for."

>> Jim Schultz: I'm hearing a lot of rich discussion about the ways we can integrate this kit into language arts and social studies. Why don't we start to take a look at what the lesson plan is going to be tomorrow?

>> Bridget Patton: I think to present the background information of the snail, I want to start with my original idea of sharing the articles; they're responsible for reading a certain portion of the article but prior to the lesson, I'll pull out eight or ten words that I want them to focus on and use that to-- kind of as a basis to write their facts down. They'll still have to present it to the class....

>> Nancy Ingersoll: After the brainstorm, we came up with a step of three basic strategies that we were going to do to present the material. The first thing I think we decided to do was to present the material, the background information on the snails, so they could go into the activity understanding the snail as well as they understood the frog and the crab.

>> Bridget Patton: What I would like to start to talk to you about this morning is what we're going to be doing today in science. The first thing we're going to talk about this morning are our lovely snail creatures. You did wonderful notetaking and you've researched excellent information about the dwarf frog and you did the same for the fiddler crab. What do you think you are going to do right now? You're going to work on the snail. In just a minute, I'm going to pass out an article to you. As you're looking through your article and you spot your word, you have detected where that word is in your article, what do you think you're going to do with that word? What are you thinking? Go ahead, Dave?

>> Highlight it?

>> Bridget Patton: That's an excellent strategy to use. Audrey, what are you thinking? In your science spiral, the perfect spot. In your science spiral, jot down information about the word.

What was your other word... the radula, yeah. What's located on the radula that helps the snail to eat food?

>> When I see teachers integrating the other areas and they're seeing the usefulness of science as a tool to teach reading and writing, to teach history... I feel we're working as a team.

>> Bridget Patton: Who was our person who did mollusks and mantle? Kimberly, come on up. What did you find out about the mollusks?

>> It's a type....

>> Bridget Patton: Excellent. Heather, how about mantle?

>> It covers the body from the inside of the shell.

>> Bridge Patton: Exactly right. Okay. Let's see. We have invertebrate and the foot...

>> Nancy Ingersoll: From there, after we do the background information, then I think it's a good idea to give them a little preface before the story, that I want to -- as we're listening to the story, I want you to be thinking about those needs that we have now learned about our particular creatures. These are the needs that they have met and how they have done that.

>> Bridget Patton: I'm going to have that chart right in front of them.

>> Jim Schultz: My suggestion would be that you do a reading without the chart in front of them and then give them the chart so they have a purpose for the second reading.

>> Nancy Ingersoll: That's a good idea.

>> Bridget Patton: I'm thinking to give them that graphic organizer and what you're saying is have them notetake on that and afterwards say, "look at how this graphic organizer started out. It was divided up into those categories. As you were listening to what was being read, can you differentiate in your mind the difference between food and shelter and water?"

I would like you to sit very still as you listen to the story the first time through. "The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse": A little country mouse lived in a hole under the stones of a wall where he stored up all sorts of food for himself. Every autumn he collected wheat and Barley from the fields of grain...

"What? Going so soon?" Said the town mouse? "Yes," said the country mouse, and shaking his head wisely, he headed for home thinking that country food and peace would be better than town food and fear."

>> Jim Schultz: I'm confident that when the language arts skills become invisible, when they're part of every content area, that our students will internalize them. It won't be a skill that they learn for an hour in the morning and then don't use again for the rest of the day. So that as they move through the grade levels, what we see is increasing mastery.

>> Nancy Ingersoll: So I'm going to take a moment and I'm going to give each of you this chart and we're going to listen to the story a second time.

The door bursts open and the merchant came in with two big dogs, "Hey, get out of here!" shouted the merchant and set the frothing, yapping dogs upon the mice. But the mice whisked beyond a hole in the fireplace.

We know that these two mice have similarities, and yet we find out that the habitat or the environment they live in is very, very different. He said to his cousin, the country mouse, "how can you live like this?" What do you think he meant by that statement, "how can you live like this?"

>> Like look at the food you eat? How can you eat that kind of food?

>> Nancy Ingersoll: What else do they need? Gabriel?

>> Bridget Patton: If we focus and then diagram on one concept, of one characteristic of the living creature, you could have a Venn diagram going on about the shell and you could focus on the frog and the crab and someone else could have a Venn diagram on habitat and then you can involve all three.

>> Lisa Febraio: Or as a class, you could do a Venn diagram on a snail, I could do one on a snail, on a crab... then we pull all three classes together, put our three circles, go into crossing out what they have in common and then making that inner circle.

>> Lisa Febraio: So if you notice, we have three separate circles. What do you think is going to go right here? Claire?

>> You're going to put like what's in common with the frog, crab and snail?

>> Lisa Febraio: Excellent. And I know that you could probably tell me a litany of things you learned about the frog. Please tell me just one thing.

>> The African dwarf frog belongs to a group called the pippids.

>> It has no movable eyelids.

>> After they molt they...

>> Lisa Febraio: After they molt, that's a good one. I had forgotten that one.

>> Jim Schultz: The graphic organizers have been important for us. We start in K, 1, and build in 2 and 3 and become very sophisticated as we move into the middle school and high school.

>> Mrs. Ingersoll's class and Mrs. Patton's class are going to be coming in now. Mrs. Ingersoll is going to fill the snail circle. Mrs. Patton is going to fill up the crab circle. Do you think we're going to find anything in common in the middle between all three animals?

>> Lisa Febraio: We are amazed by how much you learned about these animals. If you take a look at them, is anyone seeing two things or a green card, a blue card or a pink card that might agree?

>> I think you have to encourage teachers not to work in isolation. They need teams to be built; the atmosphere needs to be created in a school district where teachers know that they can be comfortable working together as teams, critiquing one another and growing as professionals.

>> Bridget Patton: We have air, water, food, light, adaptations or change. Fantastic. Fantastic.

>> Nancy Ingersoll: Can we try to come up with some kind of a statement... what is this Venn diagram actually telling us about the living creatures? What kind of a statement can we say this Venn diagram says this?

>> They all need a lot of things that we also need.

>> Nancy Ingersoll: "we" meaning?

>> Us people.

>> Nancy Ingersoll: Humans?

>> Yes.

>> Nancy Ingersoll: Wonderful.

All living creatures have certain things in common and they are all the things that we have up here on yellow cards that help us survive.

>> Jim Schultz: By integrating language arts into these different content areas, what we're really trying to do is address the needs of our students for the various assessments that are coming up. We're trying to put a model in place for the social studies testing. The kinds of skills that we need on E.L.A. 4 and 8 are the same skills that students will need in global studies, the same skills they'll need for problem-solving in Math A, and, more importantly, from our perspective, the same kinds of skills they'll need for the 21st century.

>> Lisa Febraio: Okay? Thank you. You did a great job.

>> Rochelle: Like no science class I was ever in. Joining our discussion now from Burnt Hills Ballston Lake, Jim Schultz, E.L.A. coordinator, and teacher Lisa Febraio. Thank you very much for joining us.

Once again we hear those themes of teachers can't work in isolation; they need time to plan. That was a terrific planning session that we saw. When do those kinds of planning sessions take place and how are they possible at your school district?

>> Jim Schultz: We try to provide a multitude of opportunities for our teachers so that in terms of our five-year plan we look at planning time during the summer, we have some curriculum committees for different levels and during the course of the school year we have been trying to model this planning with individual grade levels. Last year we met with third grade teachers and did all kinds of planning for an S.T.C. kit, a science kit. This year we decided to do it with fourth grade.

>> Rochelle: Lisa, as a teacher, how does this impact what you're doing in the classroom? Lots of changes there.

>> Lisa Febraio: I think planning is the key and I think our district has always been very supportive in giving us planning time. First we meet as a team. For example, social studies is not my forte so as we meet together as a team, we then can go to the K-12 rep in social studies and say, "how can we integrate social studies in?" Our principal and administration is very supportive in giving us that time.

>> Rochelle: For a district who would like to start doing some of the things you're doing there, what do they need to begin?

>> Jim Schultz: One of the things we started with was the basic premise that we didn't want to go out to commercially produced products, that we felt our greatest resource was really the expertise of our classroom teachers. We have a knowledgeable group that spent a lot of time looking at training research, and based on those kinds of studies they know for the language arts skills to be really assimilated, they are going to have to be integrated into all different content areas.

>> Rochelle: So you need to begin by looking in-house. What do you have available to you? Moving on from there, making time for the planning?

>> Lisa Febraio: Correct.

>> Jim Schultz: We looked at a five-year plan, Rochelle, in which we started of course with third and fourth grade as target areas, but over the course of the five years we moved down to first and second and as our fifth year of the plan, we're going to kindergarten this summer and work with those teachers.

>> Rochelle: Very good. So take it in chunks and work slowly and know that you're going to take some time before everything is in place. Terrific. Congratulations.

Eight years ago, Rotterdam's Mohonasen High School began integrating technology into its classroom instruction. When State Ed introduced the new learning standards, Mohonasen's administration began incorporating English language arts skills into all subject areas as well. What Mohonasen now offers students is a marriage of technology in such skills as writing and notetaking in all subject areas. Bob Horan is an instructor in industrial technology at Mohonasen and Jackie Carrese, the instructor in medical technology. I'm delighted they could be with us in the studio today.

Bob, I want to talk with you a little about the industrial technology class and how you incorporated some E.L.A. skills. What do you do in your classroom?

>> Bob Horan: Well, what we decided to do this year in the technology and industrial technology course is try to do more than just the traditional hands-on related to our curriculum. We have thrown in more of the English curriculum. We'll ask students to do a three to five-page research paper and in the process of doing that research paper, we introduce some of the technical tools, the computer to do research on the Internet, digital cameras so that the student learns how to use the digital camera, digital scanner and then incorporate some pictures into their project and also use those for Power Point presentations, for presentations that are made to the classroom.

>> Rochelle: But one of the other things that you do is now that you have some E.L.A. skills in your industrial technology class, you now then cross over and offer the E.L.A. teachers some technology instruction, don't you?

>> Bob Horan: That's correct. What we have done is we have educated the students as far as how to use the digital camera and scanners and then we send the students with that equipment out into the language arts class and science class and social studies class and have the student actually introduce that new piece of technology to the other students in the class and the teacher in the class. So they are actually working on the presentation skills to other peers and the teachers and hopefully, the whole process falls together nicely, that they use their technical skills and bring those in to the classrooms.

>> Rochelle: And in the meantime, it creates a great deal of enthusiasm on the part of some of your students who have not been so enthusiastic about the E.L.A. work?

>> Bob Horan: Correct. A lot of the students that are traditionally outstanding in technology, they might not perform as well in their other classes. Now they see how they can bring the technology into the classroom and they're the focus point; everyone is looking at them now and they're able to contribute something to the classroom. Hopefully, by them contributing the technology to the classroom they will also pick up and increase their skills in their English language arts, science and math classes.

>> Rochelle: Jackie Carrese's class is really about medical technology for students who may want to go into medical technology fields in the future. When Jackie is developing rubrics, I understand, for how you grade your student's papers, you consulted with English teachers, did you not, Jackie?

>> Jackie Carrese: I rely heavily on our English language arts department. I need to consult with them on proper formats that are used, with research papers at the college level, specifically A.P.A. format versus Chicago style format for writing research papers and citing sources. They also helped me to develop my evaluation rubric in that I needed to know how much at this level should I be emphasizing grammar, punctuation, as opposed to content. You know, with the field of medicine, I'm more looking that they understand the medical terminology, that they're fluent with the medical language, whereas I also need to find out how much I need to emphasize with the actual English grading aspect of it. So I do rely on them heavily.

>> Rochelle: So this also again takes planning time, being able to meet with teachers who are really out of your content area. How is that possible at your school, Jackie?

>> Jackie Carrese: Right now, luckily, you know, where I'm situated, it's easy for me to consult with our English teachers, basically in my location in the building. We do also have English language arts labs so they are accessible more than just teaching time. I do have a chance to consult with them when they're in those labs assisting students with meeting those higher standards in the English department.

>> Rochelle: Okay. Terrific. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to show you some of what Mohonasen is doing at some point in the future. Everything here leads us to the grand finale, the Regents comprehensive exam in English, which students must pass in order to graduate. For this year's senior class, there are just two more opportunities to take that exam if they are to don cap and gown with their classmates in June. The Buffalo City School District began preparing students years ago but has put in place special programs to aid students who are at risk.

>> Kathleen Kreis: We really did start right away, but right away was still late in some kids' careers, because we're hoping to start-- we started as soon as we heard about it, trying to come up with a plan, but also trying to get everybody interested and feeling a part of it.

>> Now, if we're translating into the elements of what makes this good literature, what would you call suspense, if you had to give it a literary label?

>> Wanda: Preparing Buffalo City School District students for the Regents comprehensive exam in English has been a districtwide team approach, dating back to the Education Department's introduction of the new learning standards.

>> Kathleen Kreis: We started forming an assessment team or a team of English teachers, and they decided a couple of years ago to take all our exams from the seventh grade through the tenth grade to mimic the format of the Regents exam. So we varied the tasks. There's three at the seventh, eighth and ninth grade level and four at the tenth, so that the tenth is a real representation of the Regent exam, but three of the tasks at each of the other levels. Then we decided to go for it and start right away looking at the kinds of skills that were asked for there and they all integrate reading, writing and speaking in a way that the Regents didn't before and our exam didn't before. We tried to create an atmosphere of sharing where if one person came up with an idea in a classroom that worked, that teacher would send it to the central office and we would send it to 200 other people. We had an initial list of 150 teachers that we shared things with, and then teachers in the district who were not English teachers necessarily but had interest in the test who said, "can I get them, too?" and we had about thirteen a year, lessons or activities or tasks to help prepare the kids for the exam.

>> Someone in your own group is going to evaluate what you have written.

>> Wanda: Final English exams in all Buffalo Junior and Senior High School classes now mirror the Regents in content and style. English language art skills of reading, writing and listening are being woven into the curriculum of all subjects and teachers motivate at-risk students with a can-do attitude.

>> Marion Canedo: In each class, the students take an assessment that is exactly like a piece or a portion of the new English language arts Regents. And once they take that assessment, all of the English teachers get together and use a modified rubric to correct that assessment. Then they are able to tell where every single student is in the entire district as well as within their own classroom. They prepare activities that are designed to really key in and focus on those precise skills. And this goes on all year for each of our students in every single high school.

>> Kathleen Kreis: Because one of the things our kids were not able to do was take notes. You said, "take notes," and that's easy for an adult, but they didn't know what that meant, trying to listen to something word-for-word and write it all down. They didn't know how to do that. So we have put together a booklet for all teachers so that everybody can help kids learn to take notes. That's a lifelong skill, not just something for the exam. That's something that will serve them if they go to a lecture at the community center and want to write things down.

>> There may be different feelings in this essay, so what I want you to do when you evaluate the tone of the essay is to think about what feelings are there are in that essay.

>> Iana Clark: I really enjoyed the fact that we were given a beforehand chance and you read it once and read it twice. I would listen very carefully the first time, so I wouldn't write anything down so I wouldn't miss anything, not a single drop or period or comma, anything. And the second time I would take notes and see what the stress points were and what was really important. For the listening they would give you a set of multiple-choice questions and I realized that whatever the question was asking me is what was important and I should involve those questions, flip it around and answer the statements in my own words and use it. So the multiple choice questions helped me so much with the listening.

>> Kathleen Kreis: When people hear about a new requirement, sometimes some young people say, "I'll never be able to do that. So why should I try?" But if we can keep their hope alive and keep their confidence built, showing them that even though they have failed the initial assessment, that they got this far and they only have to get a little bit farther; that's one of the things we're trying to do to keep them moving and keep them going and keep them hopeful, knowing that they can pass. We know, and we have been told by the State all along that it may take people more time, or may take new methodology, but the expectation is that everyone will pass in the long run and it's just a matter of being patient and keeping at it and keep working hard and keeping focused.

>> Rochelle: Marion Canedo of the Buffalo School District is with us now in the studio. Marion, great things going on there, but you also have some additional programs you're going to start after the first of the year for some of those students. Tell me what they are.

>> Marion Canedo: Well, we're very excited about a Saturday academy that we're planning. All of our students, our special education students, our E.S.L. teachers, our E.S.L. students, are going to be able to participate in this program that's going to key in precisely to the strategies and the skills that those students need in order to meet the standards.

>> Rochelle: For those students who have already taken the Regents exam and have not met competency, what is it about these programs, the math classes and the Saturday academies, that will really help make sure they get it this time when they didn't in a classroom before perhaps?

>> Marion Canedo: I think the key is that our teachers fully understand what each individual student needs; they're focused. They're pulling out the essential skills because they know where every student stands and what every student needs. They're able to work with these on Saturdays and also before and after school. We have an extra time, extra help program before and after school. Our students are excited, but our teachers are motivated and they believe in the students and the students believe in themselves, and I think this is key. And each of the things that has happened has encouraged students to be able to assess themselves, and that's the highest level, knowing what it is you need to know in order to be successful. Our teachers are given more time, but our students are also given extra time and extra help.

>> Rochelle: Okay. What are you doing to make sure that those students who really need these programs are the ones who are actually showing up and participating?

>> Marion Canedo: Well, we have -- of course, we know every single student. We have sent letters to every single student and every student's family. We have encouraged our students to participate and we know that their parents know and they know that if they don't meet that standard in January or June, they will still be in school the following year. They need this English language arts assessment and they need to meet the standard in order to graduate from high school.

>> Rochelle: Okay. Well, we wish all of the students luck. Thanks very much. Time now to offer you some tips for adding some of the tools we have seen featured in our videos to the toolbox at your school.

(Music)

>> Rochelle: That is all the time we have available today for a topic we could go on for hours about. I would like to thank everyone here in the studio for their participation, their patience and their understanding, and thanks also to the teachers and students at each of the schools we visited for allowing us into their classrooms. If you would like a copy of today's program or if you have any comments or questions about what you have seen, contact the Satellite Broadcast Network at rcassell@twcny.rr.com or tmoore@questar.org Phone number 518-477-6739, fax number 518-477-4311. We would like to know what you thought about today's program, so we have set up a survey on the Internet so you can tell us what you think. Please take a few moments to visit www.nysed.gov then hit the Satellite Broadcast Network survey hot link button to complete it.

Our next installment of "Tools for Schools" airs Tuesday, February 1st, focusing on the new assessments in social studies, global history and geography. That airs on public broadcasting stations from 2 to 3 p.m. For a look at the entire Satellite Broadcast Network schedule, please visit our web site at www.nysed.gov/ciai/satellite.html

I'm Rochelle Cassella. Thank you all very much for watching. Have a good day.