ABCD

The Goal of the Saturday School program is for students to reach a level of proficiency in their heritage language to equal proficiency levels required in Latin America for their age group. Although it may take a few years for each student to reach this goal, it remains the high standard to which the program would stirve.

The Objectives to meet this goal would be cusomized for each student. They may be generalized as per the ABCD method, (Audience, Behavior, Conditions, Degree.) Although the acronym for setting Goals and Objectives is as simple as A-B-C, the actual detailed analysis necessary for doing this is not. Without explaining customized objectives for each student, the method may be applied as follows:

Audience:

The audience this program will be addressing is composed of the children of immigrants from Latin America who speak Spanish at home, or for whom Spanish was their mother tongue. The audience is not well known because each student would have to be evaluated before beginning the Saturday School program in this design.

Behavior:

The learners will be able to speak, read and write Spanish on grade level. The learners will also be able to retain knowledge of their culture and history to encourage language learning. The specific objectives would be formed after evaluation of each student. Overall, the program's objectives would be for each student to reach grade level skills as would be judged in Latin America for Latin American students.

Conditions:

The learners would be able to perform objectives without prompts and without paper and pencil testing (ie: multiple choice questions). The learners would eventually be able to take the same tests their cohorts would be taking in Latin America for grade level accuracy and skills in Language, Reading, Culture and History.

Degree:

The degree of performance would be the same as required of students in Latin America. It would take perhaps many years to meet this degree of skill in the heritage language, but by transferring skills learned in English to Spanish the process would be sped up the older the students become.

The degree of performance required of each student would be spelled out specifically in each student's plan of study monthly. The objectives would be customized for each child and clearly understood. The degree of skill in Spanish required to meet the overall objectives would be age level skills required in Latin America.