WATSONVILLE >> A few days before ending the school year, students of Maria Luisa Rios’ second-grade class learned a lot about ants. During one of their reading comprehension classes they took turns reading passages out loud, pausing when Rios wanted to make sure they understood all the words in the text.

“These ants cut up pieces of leaves, then carry them on top of their heads. When they march together they look like a parade of umbrellas or parasols,” a boy read in Spanish from the text.

“Parasol? What’s a parasol?” Rios asked the group.

“It’s like an umbrella?” the boy responded.

“It’s a synonym,” she said.

It is the first year that students at Freedom Elementary learned under the Common Core Standards, and Rios’ students responded well to the different type of instruction, she said. They became more adept at judging the level of difficulty of the questions and at inferring the meaning of new words and using them in sentences.

“What we want the students to be doing is thinking critically, to go back to the text to support their answers or be able to discuss their questions after,” Rios said.

What has been more challenging, Rios said, is getting appropriate instruction materials.

As one of the 13 schools in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District with bilingual programs, students at Freedom Elementary receive instruction in Spanish for part of the day that teachers say reinforces their knowledge of English.

Whether it’s in English or Spanish, the Common Core Standards require a different type of instruction and the transition has not been hard but labor-intensive, administrators said. Teachers have had to invest many hours on preparation and in some instances, the preparation time required has been increased by the need to translate materials.

“We’re lucky if we can find it in Spanish,” Rios said. “If we can’t, we’re translating it or creating material in Spanish to be able to do what we’re doing in the classroom.”

At the bilingual transference programs in the Alisal Union School District, officials are piloting new Spanish Language Arts materials from two publishing houses, but they had to adapt the materials they had been using to the Common Core. 

Those teachers are not alone, said Jorge Cuevas Antillón, coordinator of language acquisition and biliteracy at the San Diego County Office of Education. In California more than 1.4 million students are English learners, and if teachers want to use instruction in other languages, materials may not be readily available, he said.

“I have a lot of sympathy for the teachers; they are suffering,” he said. “They need a lot of resources, the most essential are the standards which establish guidance and goals. That’s been developed, but the materials … that’s where we have a problem.”

A team of educators with the San Diego County Office of Education translated the Common Core Standards into Spanish, which are very similar to English except for a few concepts pertinent only to the language, such as the use of accent marks.

To be sure, finding instruction materials for the Common Core in English has also been a challenge, as the California Department of Education has not adopted new ones. Top education officials are now in the process of reviewing proposed materials that could be adopted for use throughout the state in November.

In spite of the increased workload, Rios welcomes the changes the Common Core has brought about.

“I enjoy planning this way, I’m not alone within my four walls,” she said. “I’m constantly in collaboration with my colleagues. This is our sixth unit in language arts we’ve have planned from scratch. Our kids are expressing themselves more. Their academic language is Spanish but whatever we do in Spanish will support English and strengthen it as well.”

Claudia Meléndez Salinas can be reached at 726-4370.