Littleton 10-3-2013
October 3, 2013 75 cents
Arapahoe County, Colorado • Volume 125, Issue 11
A Colorado Community Media Publication
ourlittletonnews.com
Schools offer new English program LPS serves 830 children who speak about 50 different native languages By Jennifer Smith
jsmith@ourcoloradonews.com
Members of Littleton Rotary Darlee Whiting, right, and Dale Flowers; exchange student Veronica Zabala, standing at left; and teachers Deb Sabato, left, and Stacey Helbig help fourth-graders with their new thesauruses, donated by Rotary. Photo by Jennifer Smith
Rotary helps kids look it up Club puts reference book in every desk at school By Jennifer Smith
‘It makes their writing so much better. It encourages them to think more and make better word choices.’
jsmith@ourcoloradonews.com Littleton Rotary is on a mission to prevent hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia among students at Centennial Academy. No, it’s not their latest health cause like Shots for Tots or Project CURE. Neither is it a service project to help lonely hippopotamuses (or hippopotami, if you prefer). It’s the fear of long words, and Rotary is battling it with free dictionaries and thesauruses (or thesauri). “They’ve really been just so helpful in getting the materials we need,” said
Teacher Stacey Helbig teacher Stacey Helbig. “It makes their writing so much better. It encourages them to think more and make better word choices.” Rotarians Darlee Whiting and Dale Flowers visited the school Sept. 26 to deliver the books, but neither is a stranger to the school. Whiting, the Littleton club’s first female president, taught there before she retired. It’s where she started Rotary’s I Can Read program, pairing members
with students for one-on-one reading time. “I saw this sea of people out there, and I thought, ‘We need to get them involved in this school,’” she said. “It’s great that there are these positive male figures, gentle, intelligent and caring, who come in and work with some of these kids.” Flowers recalled his first little reader, a timid little girl who got picked on a lot. Rotary continues on Page 11
Trailmark resident runs for city council Dean wants more inclusion for his neighborhood By Jennifer Smith
jsmith@ourcoloradonews.com Trailmark resident James Dean is taking on two incumbents and another challenger for the two at-large Littleton City Council seats up for grabs. “I feel very disconnected and abandoned by the city,” he said in an email to the Littleton Independent. “Living in Trailmark, we have waited 10-plus years to get a promised emergency response center located near us.” POSTAL ADDRESS
Dean is far from a rebel without a cause. “I have felt somewhat frustrated by what I have seen on the local and national levels of government,” he said, citing partisanship and stalled legislation as examples. He’d like to make Littleton friendlier to business by lowering taxes — he’s opposed to Dean the lodging tax that will be on the ballot in November — and offering certain incentives to bring jobs and revenue.
“I’d help all citizens feel a sense of belonging and of responsibility, not exclusion because of where you live or what you look like,” he said. Dean has a master’s degree in communications and broadcast journalism from Brigham Young University, and he worked as a television sports anchor in Wisconsin from 1999 until 2002. Since then, he’s worked in the medical sales industry. Today he owns Colorado Care Rehab Inc., which sells orthopedic medical devices. He and his wife, Mindy, have lived in Littleton since June 2003. They have Dean continues on Page 11
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A shift in how Littleton Public Schools teaches kids who are learning English is going smoothly, say administrators. Rather than pulling students out of regular classrooms to focus on language acquisition, LPS is piloting co-teaching at two of its schools. Under that model at Field Elementary and Goddard Middle School, a second teacher comes into a classroom to work on English acquisition. “With our old pull-out model, students were spending lots of time in transition,” said Andrea Scott, an English-language acquisition teacher at Field. “They were leaving during tier-one instruction, not finishing the tasks in the classroom and then coming back into the classroom as lost little lambs, trying to catch up with what they missed. Now instruction feels more seamless. Students are a part of the magic that happens in the classroom.” This year, Field has 45 students who are not proficient in English, 114 with limited proficiency and 20 who are fluent but not quite ready to exit the program. It has five full-time ELA teachers. Across the district, there are 830 English learners who speak about 50 different native languages. There are ELA programs in place at Centennial, East and Field elementaries; Goddard and Newton middle schools; and Littleton High School. Mandy Leensvaart, the district’s ELA specialist, told the board that all incoming students are tested, and those who could benefit are offered spots in those schools. “But some parents really want their child to be in the neighborhood and be in that community, and we support that choice, as well,” she said. There are about 195 of those kids scattered throughout the district, served by two specialists. Leensvaart said the ELA program also has a new emphasis on teaching academic language and requiring proficiency not just in English, but also in the subject being taught. “English-language instruction should not stand alone, but be anchored in content,” she wrote in her memo to the board. She likened it to a little girl in a wheelchair waiting in the snow to get into school while the maintenance worker shovels the steps. If he had shoveled the ramp first, all the kids could get in; instead, he made one wait. “Co-teaching opens the door for our EL students to access the grade-level curriculum,” said Crystal Reid, ELA teacher at Field. “It eliminates the disconnect.”
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