Working hard to master English

Mike Swanson

A room full of 6- and 7-year-olds more familiar with Spanish than

English tackled parts of speech at Oak View Elementary School,

showing a strong resemblance to first-graders who aren’t English

Language Learners.

More than half of the students in Tiffany Shikuma’s classroom wore

“College Bound” T-shirts as they wrote descriptive sentences about

spiders.

Emiliano Clara, 7, zipped through the sentence-building drawing

exercise and started mowing through “Green Eggs and Ham,” reading

proudly aloud as he followed the words with his finger.

“He’s an incredible reader,” Shikuma said. “They’re all really

starting to read a lot, reading everything they see on the board and

the walls without being asked.”

About 90% of Oak View’s students are English Language Learners,

Principal Karen Catabijan said. Most of the children in Shikuma’s

class are from the first crop of a preschool program begun two years

ago, which Shikuma said has made a tremendous difference in her

class’ progress.

“I don’t have anyone who says ‘I can’t do it,’” Shikuma said.

“They’re all independent and work really hard.”

Oliver Arrieta and Jorge Aguilar, both 7, discussed their spider

projects in English together, but switched to Spanish after they

started arguing about using the same sentence. They got over the

disagreement quickly and switched back to English.

The children assembled in groups to draw pictures of spiders,

color them, then write three descriptive sentences using a noun,

verb, then an adjective. Six-year-old Jony Amador, however, kept to

himself and spent several minutes on an elaborate drawing that he

credited himself for on the cover.

He wrote, “Written and illustrated by the famis Jony Amador.” Jony

lifted the correct spelling of “illustrated” from one of the books on

his desk, but the author’s apparent lack of fame forced Jony to try

“famous” on his own.

“I put lights around my name so people can see it good,” Jony

said.

One of the most common struggles pervading the classroom was the

question of where to put spaces and periods. Some melded the noun,

verb and adjective into one long word, one inserted periods between

each word, but Fredy Rios used a method that ensured success.

After writing one word, Fredy put his left index finger at the end

of the noun before starting on the verb.

“It’s better doing it like this,” Fredy said.

Oak View made the greatest improvement of any Huntington Beach

school in the Academic Performance Index scores released by state

officials last month. Shikuma said she wasn’t surprised.

“If it’s not in our state standards, we don’t have time for it,”

Shikuma said. “We’re getting harder on the kids, and they’re

responding.”

During a math lesson at the end of the day, one student supported

his teacher’s claim after she handed out an exercise on addition and

subtraction.

“Is this a test?” 7-year-old Mikey Mora said. “Give us a hard hard

hard one.”