The Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Education (CLDE) Department collaborates and communicates with staff and families to provide equitable, consistent, and high-quality instruction and programming that empower culturally and linguistically diverse students to achieve academic excellence, become active members of our community, and thrive in a changing world.
This approach serves all children--both emerging bilingual students and native English speakers. All students learn all content areas together in both languages. The three pillars of dual language education are: bilingualism and biliteracy; grade-level academic achievement; and cross-cultural competence. Riverview School and Basalt Elementary provide Dual Language Programming.
The Spanish Language Arts/Literacy (SLA) Team focuses on high-quality SLA programming and instruction. The program is driven by Spanish Language Arts Standards. Instruction addresses oracy, phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, decoding, and comprehension. Teachers explicitly link similarities to English and the target the unique characteristics of Spanish. The teachers emphasize teaching Spanish using authentic and educationally sound methods designed for native Spanish speakers. The SLA program is part of Dual Language programming and CLDE programming in general. Some secondary schools in Roaring Fork schools include SLA. Other schools are looking to add SLA to their CLDE programming for emerging bilingual students in the future.
The Roaring Fork Schools' goal is to ensure that students maintain their first language and add a second, including both native English speakers and native speakers of other languages. The World Languages K-12 Team is working on vertical and horizontal alignment for English speakers to learn a world language. The focus standards for World Languages are: Communication, Culture/Intercultural Communication, Connections, and Comparisons. All of Roaring Fork Schools offer Spanish as a World Language K-12. GSHS also offers French.
The Roaring For Schools' approach to teaching English to emerging bilingual students includes four main elements: oracy, metalanguage, reading, and writing. Oracy and metalanguage are skills that students need in order to think, talk, and write about languages and complex topics. Literacy-Based ELD is offered in all Roaring Fork Schools.