From John Stanford: Brent Hester (4th grade Spanish), Karen Kodama (principal)
From Hamilton: Sue Ranney (Director of International Education)
From Seattle S.D.: Martin O'Callaghan (ESL/Bilingual)
From UW: Paul Aoki, Klaus Brandl, Jay Munson, Julia Herschensohn, Jeff Stevenson, Aki Stevenson, Paloma Borreguero, Marcos Garcia, Stephen Kerr
(representing UW Language Learning Center, Language Pedagogy, Linguistics, College of Education, Technical Japanese, Spanish Language, Spanish Resource Center)

Facilitator: Michele Anciaux Aoki

This is my attempt at transcribing fairly cryptic notes from the whiteboard.

• Resources (in immersion languages)
• Attrition
• Use of volunteers (e.g., tutors to help with big classes with students at different levels)
• Grammatical accuracy of children's speech and language
• Preparing for high school
• Assessment - Michele also outlined the more general issue of how to continue with assessing language proficiency, including writing and reading. She is proposing to put together a more comprehensive 3-year grant to support assessing students as the immersion students transition into Hamilton.

This was a fairly free-form discussion where UW people shared what they've been doing (or plan to do) in connection with the international schools, as well as insights or ideas about dealing with the issues outlined above.

Klaus

• He's been working with Ed students on lesson planning -- how to know what they learned.
• Major language issue is production vs. comprehension (comprehension comes fairly fast, but increasing production takes more focused effort).
• Teachers need training and practice to create lessons with longer stretches of discourse.

Julia

• New dissertation on gender acquisition by Donna Andrews based on research at JSIS. Julia will let us know when she's making presentation to LUA (Language Use and Acquisition) committee.
• Julia wrote paper about acquisition of inflection in the immersion students.
• Suggested reviewing Miles & Mitchell research on French in England, showing that "chunking" is learned first, then phrases are analyzed (e.g., There is...).
• Julia wonders about the issue of grammatical accuracy:
  • When does that develop in college learners? (around 3rd year of college language)
  • When would/does it happen for immersion kids?
  • What happens such that grammatical accuracy starts developing? (How do we know it's happening?)

Jeff & Julia

• Project on analysis of errors -- systematicity of them. (The children's errors are different than native speakers make, but also different from those that adult learners typically make.)

Jay

• Writing Dissertation on pronunciation of Spanish learners (adults). (There are differences with children learners.)
• Language Learning Center is creating more authentic materials (video). Might be of interest to intl schools.

Steve

• College of Ed interviewing for new Bilingual Ed person. (Will connect us with these efforts.)
• Steve will inform faculty about the opportunities here and see if there are any students doing projects that might relate to this, such as creating materials.

Aki

Karen

• Assessment is very important.
• Roosevelt H.S. coming on board as Intl High School. Planning school within school with international focus.

Paul

• Agreement with Mercedes Rico from Spain to do research in Early Language Learning at JSIS using technology.

Martin

• 2 schools with dual immersion to be set up within 18 months or sooner in South/Central Seattle, using "Pasco" model (learn both languages).
• Seattle is working with OSPI Bilingual/ESL person.
• Terry Bergeson has announced that in next year or two WASL coming in Spanish and Russian (for certain sections of the test).

* Video Materials (Jay)

Capture brief segments of Simpsons in Spanish (for example) with questions for school learners.

* Resource Development (Brent, Klaus, Paloma)

Maybe organize March in-service for teachers to do joint resource development (with lesson planning) using web lesson plans from Ministry of Spain and Mexico, with volunteers from UW.

* Summary of UW Research (Julia)

Much is happening at the UW that shows how Stanford is serving as a "lab school" and resource to the UW. We need to make sure the School District is aware of this. Maybe draft a brief summary of major research and projects conducted with JSIS students to share with JSIS community and School District and Board. We could post this on the JSIS website.

(I'm just suggesting these based on our conversation.)

Resource Development Day - March 19? (next teacher in-service day)

- Stanford and Hamilton Spanish language teachers meet with Marcos and Paloma to look at how to use web lesson plans from Ministry of Spain and Mexico

- Meet at JSIS (library or computer lab or Brent's class?)

- Karen and Sue would need to check that Stanford and Hamilton teachers could be available that day. Also, some people should do some advance review of the resources to see if they look adaptable for the schools.

-- Let me know if you're interested in this. I'm willing to help organize it. (But I can't evaluate anything! Sorry, I don't speak Spanish.)

I wonder if Paul and Steve, as UW Partnership Co-chairs could get this going (with Julia's assistance). I think we just need a 1 or 2-page handout that we could put on the web and take to the School Board. This might be something nice to have available by UW World Languages Day - February 27.

It seems that Paloma, whose students for service learning have been helping greatly at Stanford, could meet with Sue and Claudia at Hamilton and see if there's some ways to increase involvement in their program.

Perhaps organize a meeting with Jay and other LLC people (and maybe Masashi Kato for Language Partner) with Stanford and Hamilton teachers to outline possible directions for video technology in language learning. (We need a clearer pedagogical basis in order to seek grant funding for specific projects, I think.) Not sure who would spearhead this effort.

Respectfully submitted,
Michele