During my stay at Longwood University in Farmville, Virginia, with the help of our friend Cindy, we paid a visit to a local school—Cumberland County Public School.
According to our schedule, we stayed in the Middle School and High School for a whole day from 8:00 a.m., when we saw the school buses coming, to 2:40 p.m., when we saw the school buses picking up students and leaving, observing different foreign classes teaching and listening to some teachers explaining and talking about how they teach in classes. What I wanted to know is how the teachers in this local school deal with SOL in their teaching.
What is SOL? It refers to Standards of Learning (SOL) issued by state departments of education in America. Cumberland County Public School is located in Virginia, so it follows Virginia Standards of Learning (SOL) issued by Virginia’s State Board of Education. Students who graduate in 2004 will need to pass a prescribed number of Standards of Learning (SOL) tests to attain verified credits required for graduation (http://www.virginiasol.com/). So far, SOL tests have been taken for almost 10 years.
Because the students were taking SOL tests that day, we just listened to two teachers talking about how they teach classes and deal with SOL in their classes. The first one, a teacher who teaches English for Grade 9, talked a lot about how he teaches English and what kind of projects he usually assigns his students and how he assesses his students. He said that he uses SOL to guide his teaching rather than be a slave of SOL.
The second one, a history teacher, gave us some copies of his teaching plans. His teaching model is highly interactive one, guided by the teacher. His teaching method is a little bit complicated, which does take him a lot of energy, a lot of preparation and a lot of time. His classroom design is also different from others, with a lot of different maps on the wall, which make you consider it as a geography classroom rather than a history classroom. He divides his classroom into three sections: computer section, video section and project section. He also divided his students into 4 groups with different tasks given to each group. After they complete all the tasks and pass the exam of the one unit, they can move forward to the next unit. SOL are just his guidelines, he said, but he has his own way to encourage his students to study.
In America, second language study begins in middle school and continues in high school. American students must complete required credits for a second language so that they can get a high school diploma. Take Spanish course as an instance. Spanish 1 begins at Grade 8, and the students have to complete Spanish 2, 3 & 4 if they continue to choose Spanish as their second language. I am also curious about how SOL influences the second language teaching in this school.
The teacher who teaches Spanish 2, 3 & 4 comes from Columbia. She said that she has been teaching Spanish in three different school systems. She said that she also has to follow SOL but there is no SOL test for foreign languages. The other teacher who teaches Spanish 1 at Middle School talked about her ways to teach Spanish for beginners. She uses her son's favorite story to teach vocabulary and sentences. Context teaching and projects are the ways she uses to teach her students. The project she assigned her beginner students was to make booklets in Spanish after one semester’s study. The booklets made by her students are amazing! She said that SOL are just her guidelines and there are no SOL tests for second language learning.
The German teacher spoke German most of the time in class. English is one of the tools for him to use from time to time in order to help students better understand new German words, grammar and content. In his classes, he tried different teaching ways to get all the students involved in the classroom activities. The role play he used in his teaching created a real context for the students to comprehend the language. The pictures attached below show how active the students participated in the classroom activities. He told us that he may refer to the SOL in his teaching, but he does not want his students just to do the boring drills in order to pass the test. He believes it is crucial to help students to construct the connection between a second language and its meaning.
From the talk with some students during the 30-minute lunch time, we got to know about the students’ thoughts about SOL tests. Both the parents and the students take the tests seriously because if they can not pass the tests, they will retake them until they pass, otherwise they can not get the high school diploma. Besides, the results of the tests are closely related to their GPA. The school superintendent said that their school has been undergoing teaching reform for several years—Project-based Learning and shared her thoughts about SOL tests with us.
After a whole day’s stay in the school, I’ve really benefitted a lot from this school visit.
History teacher is sharing with us his own ways to teach history in class
The German teacher is distributing the playing tools to his students
The students and the teacher are doing role play in German classes
The teacher for Spanish 1 is showing us her context teaching ways to teach beginners Spanish
The teacher for Spanish 2, 3 & 4 is talking about her teaching methods in class
The teacher teaching English 9 is talking about his ways to teach American literature
By Anna TANG
责任编辑：王威
