Berkshire Elementary is a public school in Dundalk, Maryland and is part of the

Baltimore County School System. There are currently 511 students enrolled and the school

capacity is 428. There are 32 teachers currently at Berkshire with 22 classrooms and 1

relocatable. The average class size is 22-25 students. Berkshire offers inclusive education from

pre-K through grade five. The demographics of the school population is majority White

students at 68%, followed by Hispanic students at 14%, Black students at 9%, students who

identify as two or more races at 6%, Asian or Asian/Pacific Islander students at 2% and

American Indian/Alaska Native students at 1%. About 73% of the students receive free or

reduced lunch and the population of female and male students is split at 50% each.

The classroom in which these lessons were taught is an inclusion Kindergarten class at

Berkshire Elementary. There are 18 students between the ages of 5 and 6. Within the class

there are nine girls and nine boys. The class is extremely diverse with multiple exceptionalities

including 2 students with a cognitive delay, 2 students with a diagnosis of ADHD and 5 students

who receive speech services. In regards to Cultural Differences, there are two students currently

receiving ESOL services, but only one of these students speaks another language other than

English at home. This particular student speaks Hebrew as his family is originally from Marco.

One other student, who does not receive ESOL services speaks both Spanish and English at

home and is fluent in both. Oral language development is a concern for some of the students.

As mentioned before, there are four students who currently receive speech services and two of

these students are also receiving ESOL services. One students speech is particularly hard to

understand and he has been receiving speech services since he was 3 years old. The other 3 are

only minimally impacted by their speech concerns, but have difficulty within conversations. One
particular student has an extremely difficult time answering questions and is currently working

on this goal. Written language development is not as concerning at this time as even struggling

students are copying words and beginning to identify and write the first sound in unfamiliar

words.