I ran across William Glasser’s quote on how students learn, and I thought I would use it in class this year. I think it will be helpful in explaining active vs. passive learning. I also wanted to expose my intermediate students to some critical thinking verbs in Spanish, so I included a few.
Thanks to SuzyQ Scraps for the digital papers and alphabet and to Universidad de Colima for the list of verbs.
Photo taken in Bogotá, Colombia on International Skateboarding Day, 2011
One of my hobbies is photography so I am always looking for ways to use it in the classroom. If you have the opportunity to travel, photography is a great way to bring culture back to the classroom, but there are other ways to use photos in the classroom. Here are a few ideas:
1. Set up a scavenger hunt on Flickr or better yet have the students make one for each other.
2. Have students take photos of vocabulary for homework & then use it in class to review vocabulary.
3. Use a high interest photo as a conversation prompt for partner work. I am always looking for images to get my students talking. If you have a favorite resource for this, please let me know.
4. Pair a photograph with a sentence structure when you are explaining grammar items. Some kids need the grammar explanation, but others will remember the structure because of the image.
5. Use photos to review vocabulary on www.quizlet.com, or on a digital matching game like www.quia.com. Many of these web 2.0 tools will allow you to load photos to their digital flashcards.
I know there are many other uses for photos. What are some of your favorite ways to bring the language alive via images?
I just got back from an incredible Educators’ Tour in China with EF. Our group was very pleased with the experience, and although I am not usually fond of traveling with a tour group for leisure, I wouldn’t visit China any other way. I’ve traveled with students various times with EF, but this expedition was specifically designed for teachers and professors. We were not able to tour a Chinese school because students were on summer break when we visited, so EF graciously included a visit to EF’s Language Schools in Shanghai. (I was not aware that EF has so many different businesses, including language schools and IB programs.)
On a later post I’ll share some thoughts and insights I have on Chinese education in general, but for now I want to address English as a Foreign Language in China. Chinese students start taking English classes around year 4 or 5 in their primary schools. EF Language Schools and other language schools like this supplement the learning students do in their regular school day. According to our teacher tour guide, Natasha, tuition to a language school can be as much as 6-10% of a family’s annual income for bi-weekly sessions. One of the reasons families are willing to spend this kind of money on a supplemental language learning is because the Chinese schools teach a grammar based curriculum that requires memorization and a “formulaic” approach to learning English, but provide very little authentic practice or language usage.
Our tour started out in the EF headquarters. We had four speakers address the EFL program that EF markets & promotes. Currently EF has over 100,000 students in China alone! The school’s philosophy can be summarized with the goals of their Life Club program. EF wants to expose their students to authentic tasks, encourage autonomous learning, incorporate motivation, promote mixed ability learning and use language in a meaningful way.
Currently they are launching Trailblazers, a multimedia textbook series, written and created by EF. The manga inspired textbook follows the adventures of some teens as they battle aliens who are trying to cause havoc. The target audience is 11-15 year olds, but I think it may appeal more to the 9-12 crowd. I like the concept of having a plot based textbook (rather than a grammar-based), but I have to question how “authentic” scenarios with aliens will be. I understand how the cartoon videos that come with the series may engage a young language learner, but I have reservations about how well they will work for listening comprehension exercises. It is important to keep in mind how drastically different this curriculum is compared to rote memorization that comes with the language classes in a traditional Chinese school. EF is trying hard to create a product that will keep students motivated. EF also has several iPad apps and computer games that supplement their program.
After the presentation our group of 35 teachers & friends broke up into four groups and each group was assigned one specific Shanghai EF language school. Our group had the best experience. Our school was located in an affluent area with beautiful high-rise residential buildings all around it. We had personal student tour guides for our school visit: Sabrina & Jenny. Sabrina, 12, was a fluent English speaker and ballerina, with more poise and personality than I ever will have. Jenny, also 12, was a little shyer, and sometimes required a little help from Sabrina. Our students ranged in ages from 5-16. We visited the youngest language learners’ classroom first just to say “Hi” and “What’s your name?”. Another classroom was testing. The third classroom had presentations going on. After presenting their dialogs, we sat in a big circle and had a Q & A. The students had prepared questions for us, but they felt awkward & self-conscious trying to have a conversation with such a big group listening on, so instead, we turned to the kids sitting next to us and tried to engage them with one-on-one conversation... much more effective. The next activity was a group game using a smartboard. Although classes ended at 4 pm, most of our students stayed on to talk to us in the school’s lobby. A few of the students had traveled to English speaking countries and were pretty close to being fluent English speakers. Most students I talked to wanted to go to the US, England or Australia for university (one of the advertising billboards tag line was “From EF to Harvard”). We found out the school’s director had had a two days to prepare for our visit. We appreciate their time, and I was very impressed with what I saw.
I understand that our experience was not shared by the other 3 groups. One group only had a few minutes of contact time with the students, and another group’s visit was not as organized as our visit was.
Most of our tour guides during the trip spoke English well, even if a couple had some problems with pronunciation at times. I was surprised that most of the staff at the hotels did not speak English at all. Several times during our trip we had young language learners come up to our group to practice English. Obviously the Chinese value speaking English quite a bit, and as tourism in China grows, I believe conversational English will be more prevalent.
Sorry to say, I only picked up a little bit of Chinese during my visit. How do Chinese programs in the US compare? Here is a 2010 article from the New York Times that summaries Chinese language learning.
Thanks to Ant McNeill for photo via Flicker.com
Many believe Generation Z children seamlessly manage technology for a variety of purposes. The kids who grew up with the Web, MP3 players and cell phones have been exposed at a much younger age to technological tools that have drastically changed the way we complete tasks. These same technologies have also added a plethora of entertainment options. Despite the exposure these children have had to these digital tools, they still compartmentalize entertainment, their social life and “formal learning”. I believe that students will develop skills that will allow them to navigate more fluidly between each of these compartments, but I have to continually remind myself to be patient about the process.
As some of you have read before I am fortunate to have a classroom set of netbooks. Many, many things have changed about the way I run my classroom since we have had access to them, but I am surprised every year by the time we spend in class learning or reviewing some very basic digital skills. These are a few things I took for granted my students knew how to do:
-Email a document to themselves
-Trouble shoot a frozen screen
-Set up a user name and password that they could remember easily the rest of the school year
-Retrieve the password and/or user name if they forgot it
-Find and use a web site’s help center/support
-Embed a link
-Load an image online
-Use a web site’s navigation menu to find specific information if it is not the first thing that pops up on a site
You get the idea... To be fair, many of my students negotiate these tasks and are a huge help in class as they troubleshoot issues with their peers. However many students who successfully use Facebook, do not transfer over the skills they use on that site to similar tasks needed to do work for Spanish class. This is one example of compartmentalizing.
Here is another example of compartmentalizing outside interests with educational goals. Toward the end of the school year my students had an option to self-select a topic of interest to them and work on it over the course of two weeks. (I’ll describe the project in more detail in a later post.) When given the opportunity to select any topic of interest to them and use it Spanish class, many kids really didn’t know what to pick. Several wanted to do fall back on a traditional report & posterboard. Not only did they have problems considering their hobbies and outside interests as a viable topic, but some still wanted to print out and paste images to card-stock despite having experience and exposure to several multimedia tools.
This was not the highlight of my week. Thankfully I talked to my colleague and Art teacher Rod Vesper (you can read his blog here). He had just visited some students in our district that were part of a 7th grade pilot program that allows students to bring their laptops to school. He was very impressed with the learning and the manner that these kids used digital tools to learn. Seamlessly. He also had experienced some of the same issues that I had been working through. And he reminded me to be patient.
Our students revert to what is comfortable to them. They are well acquainted with reports and posterboard visuals. They are accustomed to teacher-directed activities. It will take some time to shift this mindset. Student need to be exposed to digital tools that can be used for learning as well as personal enjoyment. They need to have the opportunities to develop digital skills to perform tasks for learning. They need to understand that digital skills and tools are not exclusive to entertainment and chatting with their friends. These tools can also be used in the classroom effectively. I look forward to having those 7th graders in my classroom in the next couple of years. Until then I will remind myself that I am doing my part to shift that mindset in my classroom.
If you use digital tools in your classroom, how do you work in the learning curve into your lesson plans?
I love any kind of story, and I enjoy using stories in my classroom. This year I wanted to move the storytelling responsibility to my students. One of my homework options is for kids to create a cartoon using the lesson’s vocabulary. They can use an online site like Goanimate or they can draw it on unlined paper. Initially I only had a couple of students who would turn these in, but the more we use cartoons in class, the more students are doing as a homework option.
As cute as the Goanimate cartoons turn out, my favorite are still the paper ones. I find they are very versatile. My favorite way to use them is for partner storytelling. I will set the timer to 5-8 minutes and have partners take turns narrating the events in the cartoon. Sometimes, I will turn that activity into an assessment by having them call into GoogleVoice after a quick run through with their peer, and re-tell the story individually. Sometimes I will use the cartoons to practice asking and answering questions. For our semester exam this year, I used different cartoons as writing prompts for the written preterit vs imperfect assessment.
I have purchased several storytelling cartoon books, but none have been as effective as what my students are producing. The vocabulary in their cartoons is specific to what they have learned or are currently learning, and even the kids who draw stick figures come up with some creative stories that are perfect to use in a partner conversation. The students who are drawing the cartoons are also reinforcing their vocabulary knowledge. Many label items or provide a basic dialogue in the target language. My students like seeing their cartoon used in class, and their classmates provide an authentic audience for their drawing & storytelling.
Here are a couple of examples:
Dana S - Realidades 2: 5B Accident & Injury & Body parts topic
Paige W - Realidades 2 6A: Sporting event vocabulary
I have several different posts I'm working on right now, but I wanted to brag on my students until the other pieces are written & posted. Friday was Homecoming, Class Color Day & Game day for us. My students created all the beautiful board games in the photos. I am amazed by their creativity and their effort. What you see here is just a sample of some of the games that my kids developed for the Realidades 2, 3B lesson. My students designed the boards and the questions as part of their homework. I really, really think this is working very well. Feedback from my students has been positive, and my students are actively generating products and using the lesson vocabulary for an audience of their peers. I hope to post the second part of my Favorite Tech Tools soon...
