Wyoming — Parkview Elementary third-grader Jeycon Cortez-Fajardo sounded out the word “broth” while working in a small group with teacher Casey Quick.
“You put broth in soup,” Quick explained.
“We eat caldo! Caldo with mango!” exclaimed another-third grader, using the Spanish word for hot soup.
“Caldo with mango! I’ve never tried that,” Quick responded.
The students are English-language learners who meet with Quick for dedicated ELL development group sessions focused on phonics. During the recent lesson, they practiced finding the right words to fill in the blanks in sentences. “It says the blank sat on the wet rock,” said Josiah Morales-Velasquez before choosing from the list of words that might fit. “Duck! The duck sat on the wet rock.”
With magnetic letters on metal trays, the students formed the words “cash,” “bash,” “crash” and “crush.”
“Like, somebody got a cru-ush?” asked one student, sing-songily. Quick explained the multiple meanings of the word.
Students then assembled sentences using puzzle pieces — paper squares with words on them. “The frog can jump,” Jeycon pieced together.
A half hour later, Quick worked with four fourth-graders, also ELL students, to prepare for their upcoming English Language Arts test. They completed a lesson from Language Studio, an ELL development program that aligns with the district’s new reading curriculum and focuses on listening, reading, writing and speaking. They also practiced using adjectives and adverbs, and identifying subjects and predicates.
Quick, in usual fashion, turned the lesson into a game, giving students a chance to throw balls at a Velcro dart board to tally points after they answered correctly, with the highest point-getter declared the winner.
“She’s amazing. She makes everything fun,” said fourth-grader Natalie Madrigal.
School-wide Support
Along with working with small groups, Quick spends her days co-teaching ELA with general education third-grade teacher Beth Weld-Wallis and fourth-grade teachers Krista Mead and Jody Hartigan.
“In co-planning, I am looking at the lessons through the lens of language and thinking about how we can teach it in a way that is accessible to our English learners in those classrooms,” Quick explained.
‘I loved school growing up. I love languages. I love literacy. Learning a language is such a fascinating process.’
– ELL teacher Casey Quick
Between 100 and 115 Parkview students — or about 25% — are English language learners. The majority are native Spanish-speaking, and others speak African and South American languages, such as Swahili and Kinyarwandan.
Quick, who has been teaching at Wyoming Public Schools for nine years, is passionate about working with the ELL population. She is originally from upstate New York, and first studied intercultural studies and Spanish at Houghton College in New York.
She lived in Ensenada, Mexico for a year working with a church group teaching English, where she helped build houses and developed a summer school curriculum. She realized she wanted to be a teacher while there.
“I really saw how hungry people were for education and learning English, and how powerful literacy instruction was for people,” she said. “I did some research about ESL and thought, this is a population I really want to work with.”
Quick returned to college to earn her master’s in teaching English as a second language from State University of New York at Fredonia. After moving to Michigan, she taught for a year at a preschool with a high percentage of bilingual students, and for a year at a middle school at a charter school before starting in Wyoming Public Schools to return to elementary teaching. She has also taught at West and Oriole Park elementaries.
“I loved school growing up. I love languages. I love literacy,” said Quick. “Learning a language is such a fascinating process.”
Quick is a leader in ELL instruction, said Lisa DeMaagd, the district’s English learner program coordinator. She was part of a Wyoming team trained in teacher leadership for School-wide English Learning, which helped the district structure ways to support ELL students by including a high level of collaboration between general education and ELL teachers.
Co-teaching is a great way to do that, DeMaagd said.
“It has given Casey a first-hand view of what our multilingual-learners need to be successful within the core curriculum (and) gen ed classroom, and how she can support teachers in providing access for those scholars,” she said.
Weld-Wallis said having Quick at her side allows them to better meet the needs of all students, whether it be through the power of having two highly qualified adults helping different students at the same time, or having a “thought partner” to plan with.
“Casey has so many ideas about how to meet students where they are at, but still meet those high expectations. We are going to get to that end-goal standard. It just might look a little different,” Weld-Wallis said. “She’s helped me learn so much about what it means to think about language that I think it’s helped me be a better teacher overall.”
Meeting Them Where They’re At
Quick reaches her students in various ways. Small group work gives them a chance to focus on particular skills. Support during large group instruction helps them stay on track with their native English-speaking peers.
Many students start at Parkview as beginning English speakers, and Quick helps them go from speaking and writing short phrases to producing longer sentences with more specific vocabulary and transition words.
“I try at the beginning of the year to get a sample of their writing. One of my favorite things to do is for them to compare and contrast how much they’ve grown in their writing at the end of the year,” she said. “That’s one of the easiest, most visible ways to show them their language growth.”
She challenges students to “stretch” language by building verbal responses from one or two words, like “It broke,” to complete sentences such as “The cookie jar fell and it broke.”
“The more they can practice that oral language, the more of that transfers to reading and writing,” Quick said.
It also transfers to other subjects, students showed. For example, as fourth-graders reviewed subjects and predicates, they did so in sentences about ancient empires, which ties into social studies.
“She plays games on Fridays, and she helps us learn about the Middle Ages,” explained fourth-grader Yvan Ganza.
Quick also listens a lot, leaning in close as students discuss with each other what they are reading and the language they are using.
“There are some kids I have to really draw out a little bit because they’d rather not say anything, and I know they have some good stuff to say,” she said.
She reminds them to write in complete sentences, capitalize the first letter and add a period at the end. On the fly, she clears up misconceptions as students learn idioms and words that have multiple meanings.
Finding Joy in Words, Each Other
School is also about fun and creating a sense of belonging, Quick said.
“Part of the reason I went into education is because school was a really safe place for me. I want that to be true for the kids that I serve. I want them to have a safe place to be themselves and to learn things, because they deserve it.”
An ELA lesson with Quick might look like this: third-graders making Earl Grey tea, experiencing the boiling water, waiting while it steeps and taking a sip. The classroom-turned-tea room then becomes a setting for putting a list of sentences in order about how to make tea.
Fridays are all about games, weaving reading and writing into Kerplunk, during which students read sentences focused on specific phonics or vocabulary skills before they can pull a stick. She puts similar spins on Jenga, Candy Land and UNO.
“It is a way to ‘trick’ kids into practicing a skill while doing something fun together,” she said. “I get to listen to and see their language, and gauge their understanding of concepts we’ve covered that week in a non-threatening way, and they get to play new games and learn how to play together.”
While students may be tricked into learning through games, they also view everyday learning activities with Quick as games.
Third-graders begged to “play” making sentences out of paper squares again after they finished the lesson. They would do it again tomorrow, Quick promised.
“She’s the best teacher to be in a group with,” said fourth-grader Dylan Ramos. “She makes everything more fun.”
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