B.V.M Visitation has a large Hispanic demographic. There is also a presence of African American and Vietnamese students. Statistics have shown that over 30% of all school -aged children come from homes where English is not the primary language. This number percentage may be even higher for B.V.M Visitation. A majority of these students come from Spanish families and a good portion of these students speak Spanish at home. Ms. Bandura tells me that there is only one student in her class whose primary language is not English, but that there are about 10-20 students in all of Visitation who are in the same boat. This student goes to an English Language Learner’s classroom where he gets direct help with English. In this classroom, the student receives one-on-one attention from a teacher. The teacher works on his speech and use of the English language with him. He specifically struggles with reading and decoding words. This student is on level 3 when it comes to English Language Proficiency. A level three student is able to use and understand series of related sentences, able to understand and use simple written English …show more content…
There is a standard curriculum that the third grade teachers follow on what topics need to be taught each week, but the teachers use this as a guideline and they go about their class lessons as they choose based on what they think works the best for their individual students. With having this flexibility, the teachers are able to modify the curriculum to suit the individual learning needs of the students. I would not argue that the curriculum is based on the student’s funds of knowledge, as they are introduced to many new topics and information in the third grade. Ms. Bandura attempts to incorporate the student’s diverse cultures or heritages in many lessons, but this is not part of the curriculum guidelines nor included in reading and other materials in the