I have been teaching languages for the last 24 years and I have always been troubled by the achievement gap and also by those students who have the intellect for the subject but just never really participate or do the work. I have always felt that if a student is capable but doesn't really try then I haven't really reached them or made some kind of connection.
It is so important to build a rapport with each student, finding out a little bit about them, how they tick and importantly what motivates them, which is they key. In language classes it's imperative that students speak in the foreign language in front of their peers so they can get some kind of practice, but more often than not, they are very shy to do so and get nervous. In my higher level language class (Spanish 4) I arrange for them to attend Napa Valley Language Academy in the second semester of their course. They go each week and work in a classroom where Spanish is spoken most of the time by the teacher and also by the students. There my high school students seem to be more at ease and don't mind being corrected by younger kids, although they can get nervous in front of the teacher. This has been successful in getting students to try out some of their language skills without feeling so intimidated. I really like to use technology in my classroom and would love to explore new technologies and try them out on my students to see if they make a difference in how they learn. When in the UK I took an A level in Psychology and used to conduct "behavior" experiments all of the time with my peers. When reading about the scientific method & researching, it took me right back to those days when I used to do just that. I would like to use traditional learning techniques with one half of the class (say get them to review new vocabulary with flash cards) and then use some kind of app/information technology with the other half to learn some new vocabulary and see if it made a difference when they were tested on the words. It would be really interesting to see who had retained the most. I'm also wondering though if using technology can be an issue for students at home if they don't always have access to the internet. When educating our students it has been shown that one size does not fit all and that our schools should not be like factories trying to educate everyone in the same way, to the same standard, so that they will come out the same. This is not a viable model. All students are different and they need to be reached at the point where they are in their educational journey. More onus should be put on our students to explore things that they are interested in and are pertinent to their lives and and we as teachers should try and relate that back to the concepts that we are trying to teach them.
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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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