HUNTERDON CENTRAL REGIONAL HIGH SCHOOL DISTRICT

In many classes across all languages, the One-to-One Pilot program was the impetus for significant changes in
the ways teachers delivered instruction and students participated in learning activities. The extensive use of
teacher-developed Moodle sites also extended learning opportunities and experiences beyond the school day.
Through the use of netbooks and Moodle, teachers have been able to provide students with access to authentic
listening activities, opportunities to practice interpersonal speaking activities, and opportunities to use authentic
sources for research and reading in preparation for presentational events.
The ever expanding use of technology provides students and teachers with improved and relevant ways to share
information. Students create comic strips, animate characters, provide voice-recorded PowerPoint presentations
and access live reports of events in other countries, as well as taking advantage of the opportunity to hear and
see how other countries represent events and activities in our country to gain an understanding of other
perspectives and points of view. Students have used Elluminate to communicate with teachers on days when
school was not in session. Students learned to select presentational formats such as Prezi and podcasts, along
with Skype and Glogster, to share their learning. Social networking such as Twitter, DIIGO, YouTube and
Facebook provided access to other learners around the world and provided a means for students to share their
work with authentic audiences. These powerful tools and the teachers’ growing understanding of different
learning styles and needs are leading the way in helping students to gain global understanding and the
communication skills they will need in the future.
New Program Highlights
Spanish for Heritage Speakers was offered for the first time this year. Thirteen students completed the course.
The course is designed to work with students who have heritage capability in Spanish. While these students may
speak and understand the language well, there is often a gap in their reading and writing skills. Research
indicates that improving the literacy skills of an individual’s first language will improve their likelihood of
gaining higher achievement in second language skills. In view of Central’s concern regarding testing scores for
the Hispanic subgroup, the Spanish for Heritage Speakers course focused on improving overall literacy as well
as increasing the students’ understanding of the importance of achieving balanced bilingualism. The course
addressed their needs more appropriately than would have been possible in a traditional Spanish class, which
addresses the needs of English speaking students. Overall, the course was well received by the students. In the
coming year, Heritage I will be offered as well as Heritage II.
Spanish for Communicators continues to be an important option for special needs students to complete the
World Language graduation requirement, and to gain basic communicative skills and cultural awareness. Since
regulations regarding the needs of these classified students keep class size small, a pilot program ran this year
which combined classes to provide a Spanish content area teacher for each section working with one Special
Education teacher, serving the needs of two sections meeting in the same time and location. The co-teaching
experiment was a cost-saving success and also benefited students by providing them with a year-long program
during which two content teachers worked together to team teach the classes. Teachers were able to collaborate
on planning, work with different instructional strategies, and experiment with ways to effectively meet the
needs of the students. The approach was evaluated in March and teachers reported that they clearly saw benefits
to the team approach, including the ability to maintain more instruction in the target language, build
relationships with students, and maintain the momentum of instruction without the usual regrouping that occurs
at the end of a semester when students are reassigned to new classes and teachers. The pilot will continue in the
coming year.
Next year, a new course will be offered to German students: Modern Germany for Today’s Young Adults. The
course will serve to provide additional opportunities for German students and to support authentic use of
language while gaining contemporary views and insights. Additionally, a quarter course is under development
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