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In the 21st century, technology has become inseparable from our life and students learning as well. It helps teachers to provide more interactive, fun, exciting, and creative learning materials and chances to students. Our group also suggest that, with all due respect to the pros of technology, it should be implemented wisely with organization and purpose.

In the following notes, we are going to share several technology examples we found instrumental to foster students’ learning.

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In a student-centered learning environment, technology is usually a key component as it can help to better prepare and equip students with skills and knowledge.

The use of iPads in class can really draw students’ attention and highlight the teaching and learning content. When I taught how to describe people in Chinese , I used iPad to hold an online game of finding differences. They were intrigued immediately, played well with Chinese utterances, and even wanted to play again.  Later, I also used the iPad as a mirror to show their own images when students had difficulty describing themselves. It shows how use different devices like iPads properly can facilitate teaching and learning.

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Wordwall is a wonderful free online platform that enables teachers to create fun, interactive, and most importantly, technology-based activities for students. The most intriguing feature of this platform is its resourceful templates to make learning and assessment easier. Activities like match up, missing word, group sort, open the box, true or false can be easily made. One content can be made into various templates, which can bring fresh and arousing experience to bilingual students.

In my Second round teaching, I used this website to create a Group sort activity for my students. As you can see from the picture, they can use either an iPad or a tablet to move around the cards and sort them into the right place. I only typed in a few words and it came out so beautifully and neat! The most interesting feature is that you can switch the template just by simply clicking the ones you want. My students were very excited when they played the Group sort game. Besides, when the teachers designed one for themselves, they can also share it with other teachers just with one link! It helps build a warm teacher community as well.

Link: https://wordwall.net

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For homeroom instruction subjects (reading, writing, maths...), the teachers teach according to standards of New York State. For instance, in kindergarten class, students learn adding within 10 and also shapes (square, rectangle...). However, for Chinese language class, Chinese art class, Chinese music class and social emotional class, the standards come from what the teachers discussed. For instance, the themes in Chinese language classes are deliberately selected, which are close to students' daily lives. The standards are decided by teachers themselves. Kindergarteners should memorize all the words taught in the classroom, on the basis of which first and second graders are expected to recognize Pinyin and write simple Chinese characters. In social emotional classes, students learn "kindness", and the following themes would be "family" and "traditions", which are all decided by homeroom instructors.

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Relationships with and among students and their families 

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Relationships with and among students and their families 

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At International Academy of New York, we have witnessed several times of effective communication chances with parents in variety of forms, such as emails, Parent’s conference night, Parents’ meeting, and even the Halloween party. Here we would like to especially present one event, the parent’s conference night. The Parent conference night takes place once in every semester that serves as a platform for all the teachers and parents to communicate, ask concerns and questions, report students’ progress, giving advice, getting to know the family background, etc. At that night, all parents were invited to join the zoom conference (usually in the form of in-person when situation allows). The teachers shared the curriculum process, and all the highlight moments happened during the semester with the parents. This was a great opportunity to build and maintain the community as a whole with participation important for the students.

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Smartboards allow teachers to flexibly use the unlimited digital paper to write, draw, jot down information, etc. Teachers can simply stretch out the paper by making the zooming out gestures. It is also easy to erase because the user design was very friendly with just wipes with hands. It also functions as a search engine where teachers can move the pictures from website to the digital paper simply by searching and dragging them.

For example, the picture above demonstrates a smart board writing from the Chinese art class. Teachers can use the board to draw colorful cartoons, write characters, and move around the elements on the board easily. Students can also use the smart board to share their knowledge and insight. They are always excited to try out on the smart board!

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Blooket is a online math game platform for students. It aims to match action with education to create amazing learning experience. Students in our class was very drawn to playing with math on the website, because math equations became rounds that they get to pass in a game.

Link: https://www.blooket.com

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When going back to my four-field model, I connected every nod according to the dates and found a meandering trajectory of my transformation. At the beginning of the semester, I located myself at the fourth quadrant where I centered at strict and rigid drills and differentiation. I understood the importance of giving flexible and student-centered practices to students through their on-going performance. However, since it was a math session and students were not making too much progress on the ten facts. I felt it was necessary to let them practice the abstraction again and again so that they got familiar with them. However, I realized later that the goal did not have to be carried out in strict and rigid drills/practices, because this would only diminish students’ passion in math. So in the following weeks, I always tried to give more flexible and student-centered practices, and I kept in mind to always give differentiation to students, seeing them as students with unlimited potential. The second week where I had my first round teaching, I placed myself at the second quadrant. The learning objective of this class is the skill of guessing the meaning from illustrations. Although the two students have not read enough Chinese books before and one of them even was labeled as slow-reader, I still tried to set a high  expectation of them and provided scaffolding along our reading together. Surprisingly, that kid was the one who correctly inferred the meaning from the picture. You can see how seeing students from a merit-based lens help them achieve more.

After the second week, I started to have a down-and-up trajectory. I realized that the “going back-and-forth” indicated that not all things were going smoothly. The biggest challenge in working with the four-field model is that you always need to be alert and creative. It also takes time. For the differentiation, as I mentioned earlier, I modified the book according to their needs, which cost me a lot of time. And in order to give more flexible and student-centered practices to students, bilingual teachers should always learn to adapt their teaching based on students current learning status. For instance, in my second round teaching, when students were not doing so well at their first round trying on the Group Sort activity, I gave them a second a chance to play it around with my scaffolding. These were also the things that worked very well. In terms of those went departed from my plan, the first one was the rigid practices of the ten facts. In order to solve it, I believe teachers should come up with ways to build students interest in math, and maybe try a different method, such as simulated math game, to give students a more authentic learning experience.

For me, it is very different to be in each of the quadrant in the four-field model. I have never been in the first and third quadrant, which means I always remember to give differentiation to my students. To me, differentiation is essential in the classroom. In terms of the second and fourth quadrant, I do not necessarily believe that the second quadrant was the best one compared to the others. In some practices, teachers need to give a little drills to let students familiar with certain sequence. However, in most scenarios, bilingual teachers should be in the second quadrant. Although there is a long way to go, keep thinking about how I move up to the quadrant will be a good reminder of improving myself.

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Starfall is a free public service to teach children to read. Since then it has expanded to include language arts and mathematics for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and third grade. Starfall’s emphasis on phonemic awareness, systematic sequential phonics, and common sight words in conjunction with audiovisual interactivity has proven effective in teaching emergent readers. Starfall activities are research-based and align with Individual and Common Core State Standards in English language arts and mathematics.

The program emphasizes exploration, play, and positive reinforcement—encouraging children to become confident and intrinsically motivated. Starfall is an educational alternative to other entertainment choices for children and is especially effective for special education, homeschooling, and English language development (ELD, ELL, ESL). It is widely used in schools that serve children with special needs and learning difficulties.

Link: https://www.starfall.com/h/index-grades123.php?mg=g

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It’s always been a problem for bilingual educators to design appropriate and diverse curriculum and pedagogy due to the limited resources. Fortunately, I witnessed bilingual curriculum transformation in the bilingual classroom in IANY. To begin with, there was culturally responsive pedagogy happening in the classroom. In the first week of observation, we experienced the Mid-autumn festival. In the school, the bilingual teachers offered all the staff and students mooncakes and taught Chinese culture about the festival. Students benefited a lot through such activities. During the process of bilingual education, not only the teaching of language itself should be involved. More importantly, culturally responsive pedagogy should play a role. By eating mooncakes, students know that Chinese people get familial reunion and eat mooncake together, and they would know the origins of traditional Chinese festivals. I also used similar pedagogy when it came to Oct 1st, which is the National Day in China. I tell all my students about that, including how Chinese people will celebrate the National Day. Through this, students are given opportunities to know more about the oriental world on the other side of the earth, which also boosts their Chinese language learning.

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As shown in the picture, the 3D work was completed by all the students in the bilingual art classroom. It depicts a scenario in a rainforest, where there are lots of animals and insects. While doing this work, the students also learned words such as "蚂蚁", "雨伞"... Language learning itself had just been perfectly integrated into bilingual art education.

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Curriculum transformation between language and art classes

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Curriculum transformation between language and art classes

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The interrelationship between Chinese language class and Chinese art class is also significant and worth noticing. Before the language class begins, children will be asked to draw pictures about something interesting they found recently and then explain their works to the teacher (in Chinese if possible). In the art class, the students complete their works, and then they learn some specific words appearing in the work (See the picture attached above). It is a good way to integrate different kinds of contents of learning into one class. On the one hand, it no doubt attracts students' attention better. On the other hand, students learn more than just language in the class, which is absolutely beneficial to the bilingual learning.

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Notes to newly inducted, mid-career, and veteran teachers

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Notes to newly inducted, mid-career, and veteran teachers

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Social emotional learning plays an important role in bilingual education! This can be overlooked by many bilingual educators especially novice teachers. Students come to school not only to learn knowledge and skills, but also how to be a good and mentally sound person. I appreciate the social emotional teaching and learning in my classroom very much. "Kindness" is the theme that went throughout the whole semester. Before learning kindness, the teacher conducted interviews with everyone in the class about their thoughts about kindness, what they needed and what they wanted and recorded their answers. After the whole semester's talking about kindness, the kids were asked the same questions with previous ones. Lots of them gave us satisfactory answers, which showed that they learned a lot through those months (See the picture attached below).

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It is happy to see that I was consistently making progress in my bilingual teaching itinerary. You can see that I struggled a lot in the first three weeks shown in the graph. At the very beginning, I barely had any concepts or sense of differentiation and student-centered teaching. I knew so little about my students. I knew neither their cultural backgrounds, personal interests, nor their current ability in Chinese language literacy development. In such situation, it was hard for me to implement effective pedagogy or teaching. It is the successive observation and discussions in Monday seminars that gradually changed me into an eligible bilingual teacher. I started to pay more attention on students themselves. Bilingual teaching is not only a matter of what the teacher want to teach. It's more like a matter of what students actually need, and this could be known if teachers focus on student-centered teaching.

In the following teaching experiences, I altered my minds and worked more on a more reasonable and scientific teaching. I got to know more about each student, including what their Chinese language levels are. In classes, I had differentiated teaching for everyone, based on their own situations. Students with higher levels helped others perfectly. I also noticed what they were interested in, and led them in my lessons to evoke their curiosity. That's why you could see a rising line in my four-field model, which shows the growth of an emergent and passionate bilingual teacher.

It is relieving and glad to see that the students in my class made HUGE progress in Chinese language with the evolving teaching notions and strategies. At the very beginning of this semester, the students could barely utter a single word in Chinese. However, some of them were able to say a complete sentence now. I think this is also what makes the four-field model meaningful.

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FA21 A&HB4323 Group 3 Four-Field Model Template (Exit Ticket) Jiayu Qiu-1-2

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In our Chinese language class, students can participate in all kinds of activities with different mediating artifacts and manipulatives (cards, printed slides, worksheets, etc., all of which contain Chinese characters (written texts), Pinyin (phonetic system), and pictures (visuals)) in a welcoming and immersive learning environment. As “[the environment] should also allow students to move and make real choices, to interact with each other, to build, to create, perform, […] express themselves in a variety of ways” (Ayers, 2019, p.34), the class space has really rendered the students’ everyday learning practices and activities possible and contextualized.

From the very beginning of the semester, students have engaged in many vocabulary-learning, game-based activities with songs, videos, and movements, such as the game of hiding and seeking cards, guessing cards, matching. Students were all interested in such activities and also had a chance to practice their Chinese vocabulary. As the day progressed, students were more comfortable and willing to give responses and communicate in full Chinese sentences.  In doing so, the students also got the chance to learn about their situated environment and community. Students managed to learn vocabulary about their surroundings and community (family, friends, school) and were capable of using them in daily conversation, hence student-centered learning.

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The students also had the chance to make real-life connections to what they have been learning in Chinese beyond the classroom. One time, all the first and second graders went out to Central Park with specialist teachers (language and music) and us interns. The major task for the students was to pick some leaves in Central Park, which can be used as a learning object in different classrooms. We can see the collaboration between languages and subjects. I noticed that both students from the Chinese track would speak Chinese proactively to us during the trip. For example, when they find some red-orange leaves, they would say “红色… 橙色” to us. It was a great opportunity for them to speak Chinese and make connections in real life. They also sang the song “together”, the special trilingual school song showing the sense of community and inclusion. When they returned to school, they sang the song “铃儿响叮当” along the way and went to language class for some more color game and make the leaves they picked into something else, like a fish or a sword. As we can see, students were learning all the time and took responsibility for their own learning because they were intrigued and given freedom in such an activity as student-centred practice.

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Inspired by such teaching practices, we student teachers intended to make the best of the materials and create flexible and student-centered learning practices with a focus on student engagement. Students’ voices and choices were highly valued and integrated into the content.

When we were under the reviewing unit, the students were able to better recognize and practice words after a hook game of finding the differences. Then they played a game where they would pick cards from piles out of their own choices and organize them in order as to how they would describe people in full sentences in Chinese with the teacher as a facilitator. Then in the following games, students did a great job in describing themselves, their friends and families, and cartoon characters. In the worksheet, they managed to find traits of the person they would like to describe and describe them in full sentences.

Apart from the whole-class instruction, students also got the chance to do peer work and individualized learning. In individual work, we can better focus on and cater to students’ needs. Although we had a small-sized class, differentiated learning is still crucial as every student has his/her unique personality and learning style, allowing students to progress at different paces while still demonstrating their knowledge. “Product also expects and requires students’ active engagement in classrooms in which they are working on the same content with varying tasks at different levels” (Santamaria, 2009, p.219). I tried to prompt students to compete more with their own past performances than with others. For example, when working on the worksheet, they could choose how they write down the sentences we learned in class. Student A chose to write down Pinyin and had characters pasted below while student B chose to write down both Pinyin and characters by herself with teachers’ help, hence the differentiated process and product of learning.  Through activities, students have gradually gained agency to engage in flexible and student-centered practices.
Overall, based on our narratives and empirical and anecdotal evidence, we would say that it can be situated in the first quadrant (both fits flexible and student-centered practices and differentiation) in our four-field model.

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Ayers, W. (2019). About becoming a teacher. Teachers College Press. (Chapter 4)

Santamaria, L. J. (2009). Culturally responsive differentiated instruction: Narrowing gaps between best pedagogical practices benefiting all learners. Teachers College Record, 111(1), 214-247.

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Learn from co-teaching and collaboration as a community 

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Learn from co-teaching and collaboration as a community 

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In our first-round teaching, the two of us had tried co-teaching; and we also learned several different models of co-teaching in our seminar. I think the collaboration really helped develop our teaching ideas and actual lesson plan as we had the chance to discuss the lesson, see it from multiple perspectives, and build on each other’s ideas, etc. Co-teaching also offers a means for educators to move from feelings of isolation and alienation to feelings of community and collaboration.
For bilingual teachers, especially newly inducted teachers, it is of great help to work closely with community members to do your due part and actively seek new ways to address important educational issues. In doing so, collective intelligence emerges and the professional identity arises and evolves from teaching practices in different contexts with a holistic view of you as a teacher among different communities and various teaching environments.

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For my bilingual teacher trajectory under the framework of the four-field model, I have recorded my different places in different quadrants (from level-based to differentiated learning; from strict and rigid drills/practices to flexible and student-centered practices). It was never meant to be a linear one; I had placed myself backwards and forwards. Oftentimes I just focused more on one axis that I thought needed improvement judging from the previous reflection and tried the keep what worked well at the same time. It is uplifting to see that I have made overall progress and learned more about my practices as a bilingual teacher in this visualized trajectory.

At first, I paid attention to the differentiation and needs for different students (talking about the book levels; individual lessons for the emergent bilingual) but I still needed to come up with more engaging practices to keep them concentrated. The next week I had my first round of student teaching where I managed to design intriguing and student-centered practices in line with my teaching objectives. I started to think about how to provide more types of teaching strategies that are open to more possibilities and can tap the potential and agency of the students. In my one-on-one instruction next week, I tried to cater to students' different learning styles and needs and to avoid strict practices of telling what they should do, which was the first time I placed myself in the first quadrant. For the following two weeks, I felt like my individual instruction was more flexible and student-centered (focusing on students’ choices in individual instruction) yet needed more differentiation. Then I participated in the flexible and student-centered independent work where the students could follow their own pace and interest, so the individual needs were met.

I would say when I valued students’ needs, voices, and choices and connected their funds of knowledge and identity, I could create flexible and student-centered practices because students felt intrigued and challenged in a suitable way. That’s why some of my bilingual teaching practices worked well.
In contrast, if I just focused on finishing the overall teaching objectives, some activities and content may not be accessible or effective for all the students. The real challenge here is to know my students as a whole person, which can be demanding and time-consuming. I feel like the possible solution is to build close and long-term relationships with the students, parents, and the community through daily interaction and observation, parental collaboration, and so on.
Also, I realized the “rubs” in curriculum transformation is how to adjust our teaching and learning practices according to students’ needs, i.e., differentiated learning. I think students should be co-constructors of the class in terms of the content, process, and product, bringing their knowledge and perspectives to the classroom.

For me, the first quadrant is a goal that I have to constantly work on and gain self-development. The second and fourth ones would remind me of what is lacking and what worked well in my class and how I can improve. Although I never placed myself in the third quadrant, it serves as a warning to always put my students in the first place. I would always bear in mind the importance of student-centered practices and differentiation as manifested in the four-field model.

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The school was a start-up private international school that features a unique curriculum setting called Integrated Curriculum. All subjects and classes are carried out in the same topic unit, such as kindness, belonging, and so forth, regardless of homeroom instruction or the content and language integrated classes in the afternoon, such as art and music. The school believes that students can develop their cognition and deepen understanding across various disciplines. The school advocates for bilingualism and is committed to developing true proficiency in Spanish or Mandarin.
Concrete example: Art class
On the campus, one can also find countless pieces of students’ art drawings are hanging on the walls and staircases, including students’ imitation works from different cultures and eras, which is an artistic environment for students to foster their aesthetic ability and interest. The classroom is also full of students’ previous artworks, with all kinds of drawing and painting supplies on the shelves around the room. The overall atmosphere is artistic and loving.
The teacher is fully aware of the importance of bringing more Chinese language environment for students because of the special curriculum setting at the school. He will try his best to use Chinese to give instructions, with the help of using direct translation, non-verbals such as pictures, body languages, etc., and translanguaging. Students understand the teacher and develop their language skills through a contextualized setting.
Concrete example: Music class
In the Chinese music class, students had the opportunity to learn lexis, such as “高/低音” (high and low pitch), “大/小声” (in loud/low voice), “快/慢” (fast/slow). Students learned about the concept of “节奏” (rhythm), “拍子” (beats) by beating time with different instruments to Chinese songs. When they were singing, the teacher or one student would give the instruction and the rest would act accordingly. Or they would sing in changeable pitches, voices, speed, and let others say the exact adjectives to depict the way of their singing.
The Suggested Adaption:
Bilingual teachers should see Chinese as a resource to help students foster their language skills as well as content areas. Balancing the content and language is of great significance. Teachers should also be fully aware of their language use. Practices such as direct translation, and translanguaging should not happen randomly, but planned purposeful in order to maximize the class time. For special curriculum and art class, attention should be further paid to the language output.
Teachers should also mediate meaning / language knowledge through multimodality with their bilingual teachers’ talk and act and intergrate students’ expected performances (in our case, singing and painting) into language learning. Learning through vivid, various forms of visuals/sounds can bring students’ advantageous learning style into full play. Young bilinguals like our students who have no Chinese background can also benefit from multimodality to build a strong connection to the sound, form and meaning of Chinese languages.

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From our four-field model and based on curriculum transformation, the one takeaway for teachers, especially mid-career, and veteran teachers, is to create student-centered classrooms where students partake in planning, implementation, and production. Teachers should become comfortable with changing their leadership style from directive to consultative -- from "Do as I say" to "Based on your needs, let's co-develop and implement a plan of action."

Plus, teachers should provide students with flexible choices about the content they study to meet the objective.

With process differentiation, teachers differentiate how students learn and what they need. We can vary the way concepts are taught: through visual, auditory, or kinesthetic lessons like our Chinese language, art, and music class. Teachers can also offer various ways for students of working on products.

See more:

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/student-centered-learning-starts-with-teacher-john-mccarthy

https://www.learninga-z.com/site/what-we-do/differentiated-instruction