In comparison, the Middlebury blended curriculum is grouped by overarching themes and subthemes. Each subtheme follows a predictable progression of modules that focus on vocabulary, reading, writing, listening and speaking. Students are working towards completing a project in each module. Since the curriculum is meant to be used as a supplement to in-person instruction, ESL teachers can build off the modules however they see fit, adding elements the connect explicitly back to curriculum in other classes or differentiating for individual students as they see fit.

RIGOROUS CONTENT

“None of the curricular components are watered down,” said Monica Quinones, director of English Language Learners Support Services for Hartford Public Schools. “That’s something we were very adamant about. We were able to take grade-level appropriate content and scaffold it so they can access it.”

That’s a big leap for a group of students who are often thought to be less smart because they don’t understand English as well. A big part of helping those students access their content coursework is to help them develop the academic English they will be expected to use throughout their school careers.

“A piece that’s really different is the rigor of the content,” Russo said. “We worked hard to align it to the Common Core.” For example, in sixth grade, Common Core State Standards recommend reading work by Frederick Douglass. Helping a student who only knows a few words of English understand this difficult text requires lots of supports.

The program does this by helping the learner deconstruct the text. Difficult words have pop-up boxes with visual, audio and written definitions. Activities are built in to help learners identify key words that signal an idea is being introduced or an example given. They work on identifying word roots, common prefixes and suffixes that give clues about whether the word is a noun or a verb and families of words.

The activities also use the well-worn practice of modeling by offering students examples of the written or oral statement they have been asked to produce. “We expect that at first the learner will model his sentence on the model,” Germain-Rutherford said. “And bit by bit, he will become more independent.”

Quinones and Russo said Hartford ESL teachers were wary of the pilot at first, believing the content would be too challenging for very new English speakers. “Now those teachers are coming back and saying they can’t believe the quality of work their students are producing,” Russo said.

GOOD INITIAL RESULTS

While Hartford won’t have real data for several more years, Russo and Quinones say students in the pilot courses are accelerating their reading, writing and speaking skills more quickly than those not in the course. They’ve shown improvement on benchmark tests and seem more engaged in their work. Teachers are reporting better attendance and, interestingly, more engagement from parents.

A big part of the curriculum is recognizing that students come with a culture and a set of skills from their first language that they can use to learn English. Rather than suppressing the first language, the curriculum celebrates it. “Research really shows that the more you help the students develop a multicultural and multilingual identity….the more students are engaged and motivated,” Germain-Rutherford said. The projects included in each module always connect back to the student’s culture. Students are encouraged to talk about who they are and where they come from in English. This celebration has in turn made parents feel more welcome at school.

“[Students are] so invested in learning,” Quinones said. “The discussions they have amongst each other, even if they aren’t in agreement, these are things we haven’t seen before.” Students even feel empowered to give direct feedback on the program to Middlebury. One student wrote to the Middlebury Interactive Languages CEO, Jane Swift, with some recommendations about the user interface and a complaint that his country’s flag wasn’t represented on the site.

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