This week’s topic of challenged-based learning was just so interesting and made me really start to think about how I could try and make things different in my classroom. When writing our UBDs (curriculum design) we always start with our essential questions and then our learning, topics and themes emanate from there. With challenged based learning, it seems that this same process is followed, except that different groups of students would each adopt a question as opposed to the whole class answering all of those questions collectively as a whole. I would love my students to be able to reach out to those in the community and build ties overseas, and for my more advanced students this would totally be possible, but not sure how that would work out for my French 1 students, being that they have a very basic level of understanding. I am wondering if there are any other foreign language teachers out there who may have successfully used this method, and how they went about it with their more basic level students.
CBL and Culturally Responsive Teaching are really linked as topics. The key is that they both envision a community of learners where student and teacher relationships are totally redefined. They provide challenge to stimulate brain growth and connect new content to culturally relevant examples from the student community. They give authentic opportunities to process content, they make space for student voice, they build classroom culture and learning around talk and task structures and teachers support each student to take greater ownership for their learning. According to Dan Pink, autonomy, mastery and purpose are the building blocks of a new era of learning. He believes that engagement needs self-direction and that the secret behind high performance is that people do things because they matter. In the project that we were shown, all of these things would come into play. Students were well motivated as they worked independently in groups on one part of the project that they had chosen to work on. They knew that what they were working on would affect other communities directly and would make a difference. They organized bake sales and book donations as part of their study and monies/books were sent to these other communities that they were supporting. The research that I am currently undertaking really only deals with language acquisition through the App Quizlet, so in this case I’m not sure how challenged-based learning could affect my study. With flip-based teaching, I could certainly make screencasts for my students to view at home introducing new grammar points and vocabulary and then practice more with Quizlet and other activities in the classroom. I would be really interested to meet other world language teachers to see how they may have used CBL within the confines of a foreign language classroom, especially for beginners. The benefits that this methodology could offer seem huge.
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· Why did you choose the analysis methods that you chose?
· How did each method that you chose answer your research question? The study that I am doing about Quizlet will be using both qualitative and quantitative data. When first considering what kind of study I wanted to do, initially I was going to analyze test results and compare them, and so I thought that I would just be using quantitative data. However, as I read more and more studies, it became clear to me that that really wasn’t enough, as it wouldn’t provide me with the whole picture regarding students’ learning. With quantitative data the results are much more cut and dried, but learning also involves emotions as the study deals with people, and it is not just simply a question of if you study in one particular way then a certain result will occur. It is for this reason that I decided to also use qualitative data as well. To this end, students will be given a survey at the end of the study where they will answer questions about their feelings towards Quizlet and what it has to offer, and how often they use it to help them learn new vocabulary. I will be starting my study over the next week or so and will be using quantitative data analysis first. Before teaching students about 20-30 words of new vocabulary, they will be given a pre-test to see how much information they already know. The pre-test will contain 20 of the new vocabulary words and the students will have to write 10 of them into English and 10 into French. These pretest results are likely to be very low, since the students are in French 1 and none of them has any previous knowledge of French. The students will be then be taught the new vocabulary words just using traditional teaching methods (no Quizlet) and given a test on 20 of them – they will have to put 10 words into English and 10 into French. The tests will then be graded and the percentage of correct answers for each student will be recorded. (The difference in percentage between the pre-test and actual test scores will also be noted.) The same procedure will be repeated but this time when learning the new vocabulary words, students will use Quizlet flashcards both at home and in the classroom, and they will also play the game Quizlet live. When the students have taken a vocabulary quiz, which again will include 20 of the new words, their scores will be recorded as a percentage. Once both quizzes are taken, a comparison will be made between the two lots of data. The data recorded will show how many students scored 90% and above on each quiz, between 85-89%, 80-84%, 75-79%, 70-74%, 65-69% and below 65% in each quiz. The number of students who got a better quiz score when using Quizlet as a study aid will also be reported as a percentage. These results will help me determine if Quizlet has helped students acquire new vocabulary more effectively and if they are able to perform better in quizzes. It may also show me that there is no real difference in their test scores if they use Quizlet or not, which is why the second part of study is important, because this will determine if the students enjoy using Quizlet to learn. In this second part of the study students will answer a series of multiple choice questions about their study habits regarding Quizlet. They will record how they feel about using it and whether they believe it is an effective study aid. The results of each answer given will then be recorded as a percentage, and conclusions will be drawn from what the data says. If students respond positively towards Quizlet, ie they say that it’s more fun than learning using traditional teaching methods, or they use it a lot (inside and outside of class) or it makes them feel engaged/motivated to learn/focused or they would be likely to use it to help them study the night before a test, then my study will show that students view Quizlet as a very positive thing and that they believe it helps to advance their learning. In many previous studies qualitative data has been shown to support the use of the Quizlet app when using teaching new vocabulary, but the studies using quantitative data have been much less conclusive. It will be interesting to see the results of the study to see which of the data is most conclusive, qualitative or quantitative, and whether my hypotheses of Quizlet enhancing students learning will be shown in this study. I’m looking forward to analyzing the results! Students learn in many different ways, and at times it is easier to reach some more than others. In my classroom I try to include all skills & different learning path ways so that if a student does not grasp it using one method, they will grasp it with another. When introducing vocabulary to students I like to show them pictures and say the word aloud in the foreign language and get them to repeat it. Once I have gone through all of the new vocabulary words I then go back through all of the words asking students “What is it?’ but giving them a choice of two words and they have to pick the correct one. Finally, I review all of the words in the hope that the students will be able to tell me what they are without prompting. Once this is complete we then take a look at the written words so that students can process those and write the English meanings. At this point they are generally gaining confidence and becoming much more familiar with the words. At home they make flashcards of the new vocabulary and they bring these to class to review with a partner, putting to one side the ones that they are still unfamiliar with so they can look over them again at the end. We review these new words over the course of a few lessons – students complete written activities and also oral activities, but it is generally the oral activities where students are less confident. Much practice and getting them to present in a group/pair seems to help improve their confidence, although some students are still really nervous to talk in front of their peers.
Over the last couple of years we have been trying to organize foreign language exchanges with other schools in France to give the students that confidence boost that they need. They go to France and stay with a host family for 10 days, and so are completely immersed in the language. The French students in turn come to the US for a similar amount of time. Some of the Freshman that I had 4 years ago have radically improved because of this – the trip just seemed to give them much more time to consolidate their language skills, being immersed in the language and having to communicate. When students are in that kind of environment I think they do some ‘deep’ learning – it is not a question of having to do an in-class speaking assignment – they have to figure out a way to communicate with their French-speaking peers as a matter of importance. After this experience they seem to come back to school with an inner confidence and a sense of renewal, and a totally different rationale. Technology today can help students with individual learning needs, as they can focus on their areas of weakness more readily when they need to. For example the Quizlet app that I use with students to learn new vocabulary is a great tool for students to use. They can listen to how the words are pronounced, they can play games so that they can recognize the new vocabulary words more easily and they can also do a test if they want to. In the test they are given multiple choice answers or have to spell out the words to see if they are correct or not. Other apps out there such as Duo Lingo can help students focus in on new vocabulary words/structures that they are unsure of. Kahoot is also another great app where teachers can prepare a multiple choice quiz that they can play in teams or individually in class. Students love the competition. Also they can look at that same quiz again, if the teacher shares it with the class, and work on it at their own pace. This is invaluable. I still do teach from the front when teaching grammar or more difficult concepts but more and more I am trying to become the facilitator. When students are assigned projects – they get a choice with a partner so that it is much more individualized, and I as a teacher I learn something too. Students go ahead and do the research and I guide them when they have questions, but then they ultimately make a presentation to the class using google slides, which they can work on almost anywhere and don’t have to be with their partner to do so. Things have changed so much in these last 5-10 years in teaching. I can assign/make videos presenting the content for students to watch at home, so that I can be there when they are doing more of the practicing, to help build up their confidence, as opposed to them trying to do that at home. When reviewing for quizzes or finals now, I assign topics to different groups, so that they can make a presentation to the class (with the help of technology), which in turn helps improve their confidence as they have understood the concepts and have been able to regurgitate that information successfully. Using technology to help students learn their subject matter has certainly revolutionized the teaching profession – students can have access at any time to information to help them learn – it is just a question of them prioritizing their time and focusing in on what they need to learn and when. So we, as teachers, are starting to play a totally different role in our students’ lives. The onward march continues…. |
AuthorI am a French & Spanish teacher at Justin-Siena High School wanting to get new ideas to motivate my students. Archives
March 2019
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