Criteria for Needs

To construct needs assessment for my design project I used the article, A Needs Assessment Audit (Kaufman, 1994), organized by the levels of results from Maga to Micro. This is based upon the ADDIE Instructional Design Model. This being highly recommended both by our professor and the author Hannum (Hannum, 2005), seemed the most fitting choice for my design. I chose this both as a learning experience to familiarize myself with the ADDIE model, and as a challenge to an out-of-school educational program for children.

The performance goals would be literacy in Spanish and basic familiarity with the history and culture of Latin America, similar to that expected of students in Latin American countries.

There is a great need for instructional intervention on a daily basis (Mathes, 2007). Native Spanish speakers, in order to transfer skills in their mother tongue, Spanish, to their second language, English, must have these skills in Spanish on a continued basis.

Classrooms would be used after school and on weekends in the school adjacent to the Church that the majority of the target Latino community attends. Although the courses would be in a traditional classroom, the course would need to be interesting to the children. The environment for learning would include programs for outside the classroom as well. A form of immersion would be sought with home readings, music to listen to in their car (cassette or CD players are common in their cars or trucks), as well as videos or DVD's to watch at home of favorite cartoons or shows in Spanish on television.

The learning environment would be classrooms with well trained teachers. Small instruction groups would be used. Just the prerequesite of speaking Spanish is not enough to quality as a teacher. The parents of the children could make cultural presentations to the children to transfer stories of heritage to the younger generation. They would, however, not be relied upon as main teachers. Many of the parents are uneducated in Spanish or English. Parents would enrich the learning environment with personal connections to the history and culture of a country these children have perhaps never seen. I could teach a pilot program with the help of at least one more highly qualified teacher.

There is an existing curricula used in a study group which I could use for the beginning readers called lectura proactiva (Mathes,Linan-Thompson, Pollard-Duradola, Hagan, & Vaughn, 2001). I would have to extend and expand the program of my own design for children already reading in Spanish. I have found, through personal tutoring, that once a child is in fourth, fifth or sixth grade and does not have basic reading skills in Spanish that much of the same material must be covered, but may be covered at a faster pace than for non-readers. The reading skills learned in English may be transferred to Spanish, and with less instruction than for non-readers they may learn to read in Spanish. The philosophy of lectura proactiva is that using the same type of instruction that helps slow learners read in English will work in Spanish, with adaptations for difference in language and grammar. The strategy is small instructional groups with repetition and consistency. The learning theory will be a mix of behavioral, cognitive as well as constructivist learning. The structured course, consistency and repetiton is behavioral. The use of tie-in to the students' Latin culture and heritage is building upon knowledge they bring to the classroom and found to be effective in teaching. (Mathes, 2007) The constructivist portion I would add is allowing the children to contribute, even to write in Spanish--creative writing.

There is one set of classroom laptop computers that I may be able to borrow from the school, or at the Middle School level a computer lab. I would have to research what is available in software, probably from Spain. There are overhead projectors in the classrooms, whiteboards, and the elementary school Spanish teacher does have some limited resources she may be willing to lend me.

The class would be composed of children in the Spanish speaking community who attend the service in Spanish on Sunday afternoons at the church. These children are attending public school for the most part, some are scholarship students at the private school attached to the church.

The environment for learning would be based in elementary classrooms at the school which hold up to 26 students. There is a gym, library, computer lab, art and music trailers, as well as a science lab on the property. I could possibly visit these rooms on a rotating daily basis for after-school programs.

The philosophy of the school is faith-based instruction. Part of the classes may be parental religious education for the group, if the children are not already enrolled in religious education during church attendence time. The taboos of the larger community would not be more restrictive than the public school system where the students attend. In fact, they may have more freedom to play and meet outdoors with the existing after-school program which meets in the gym, playground, and an ajoining room to the gym.

The learners would be the children of the Spanish speaking community in our area. They could be born in the United States, or abroad, but would have been spoken to in Spanish by their parent(s) at home from an early age. All children from this community would be welcome, regardless of their reading level in Spanish or English, regardless of whether or not their parents attend this church. Class size would be limited due to the curriculum demanding small study groups.

References:

Kaufman, R., (1994) A Needs Assessment Audit. p&i.

Mathes, P. G., Linan-Thompson, S., Pollard-Duradola, S.D., Hagan, E.C., & Vaughn, S. (2001) Lecturea proactiva para principiantes: Intensive small group instruction for Spanish speaking readers. (Available from Patricia G. Mathes, Institute for Reading research, Southern Methodist University, PO Box 850381, Dallas, TX 75275.)

Mathes, P.G., Pollard-Durodola, S. D., Cardenas-Hagan, E., & Linan-Thompson, S. (2007) Teaching Struggling Readers Who Are Native Spanish Speakers: What Do We Know? Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 30, p. 260-271.