San Francisco International: SIFE (Students with Interrupted Formal Education) Program

During a visit to SF International, a school in San Francisco with a high number of SIFE students, I visited two literacy classes taught in a similar way by two different teachers who are using a promising model. The target group for class are SIFE students, and it is a single period, one-semester class. All the students in the school have been in the country for fewer than five years (in most cases.). Please see the School Model section to see a description of the Internationals model.

Other programs and approaches reviewed in the phonics section could be combined with this already outstanding instructional approach. Below is a description I wrote to try to capture the essence of the class I observed and what I learned from interviewing the teachers.