Sheltered Content Curriculum
The
bilingual staff at Chelan High School has been creating sheltered
content curriculum for transitional bilingual students since 1993-94.
Chevy Kneisley, the original high school transitional bilingual
teacher at Chelan High School, was named master teacher and curriculum
writer as part of a Title VII grant. Since then, twenty courses
have been created and taught in the sheltered content format. Fourteen
of those courses have been field tested in both day and night programs
and prepared for dissemination to Washington State schools with
limited English proficient populations.
All of the sheltered content courses are based on comparable goals
and objectives to courses taught in mainstream high schools. All
of these courses have been aligned with the state essential learnings
in communication, reading, and writing. We are convinced by five
years of experience with sheltered content that limited English
students perform better in mainstream classes and increase in their
desire and ability to graduate from high school when they include
sheltered content curriculum into their early second language acquisition
process.
Monolingual students begin the process of acquiring English at both
day and night schools in a Newcomer Center. The newcomer curriculum
consists of ten units of study that develop a vocabulary of 600
English words. Students learn through the trilogy of speaking, reading,
and writing and they participate in dialogues, chants, role plays,
T.P.R. exercises, games, and traditional academic exercises. The
sheltered content curriculum we use builds on the basic 600 word
vocabulary and expands into the social studies, science, math, health,
literature, language, and composition areas. This curriculum answers
a need that all teachers of secondary limited English students have:
A need to provide content at a second grade reading level, but at
an adolescent interest level that meets district goals and objectives
and allows L.E.P.' s to learn and to experience success. The sheltered
content curriculum that we are creating keeps students in school
and steadily moves them towards English fluency and graduation.
In
addition to our sheltered content curriculum, students have the
opportunity to studay academic courses through on-line programs:
NovaNet and Conevyt. Students may also take courses through Washington
State's PASS program which offers numberous content courses in all
academic areas. Additional new courses have been developed such
as: WASL Reading, WASL Math, and WASL Writing in order to help students
pass the rigorous WASL standards.
Sheltered content courses are taught each semester for credit. They
are rotated so that students who are still part of the transitional
bilingual program can have access to different contents. In the
night program, all of the classes are sheltered content. They are
rotated over a three year period so that students passing out of
the Newcomer Center can take different courses each semester and
eventually complete all nineteen credits for a Washington State
diploma. We are very proud of the options and opportunities sheltered
content provides for students. We are proud, also, that students
in the night program have the opportunity to work toward a diploma.
Since the beginning of Chelan Preparatory High School, 42 students
have graduated. About a third of those students are dropout retrievals
from our day high school or other school districts. Night school
Chelan Preparatory High School graduation is separate from the day
school. It is a celebration of great significance because students
who had no hope of graduation are wearing the cap and gown and marching
towards their diploma. |
