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…. · What perspectives did the 3 new research articles offer?
· How do they inform your study and methodology? · How do they relate to your driving question? This week I read three articles which contained studies by Bruce Lander and Elizabeth Cudney and Julie Ezell. Two of the three studies were carried out by Bruce Lander who based his research on Japanese students who were learning English. These articles were much more general than previous articles I have read, only two of the research studies contained Quizlet, and one of those was in combination with other programs/apps. The first study by Bruce Lander was carried out to see if adding a blended learning component would aid professional development and improve student ability. There were two groups who were following an identical syllabus. Group A worked in the computer lab for both semesters and Group B worked in a regular classroom for the first semester and then in the computer lab for the second semester. The study suggested that technology can enhance student test scores and raise teacher and student awareness of technology. Technology, according to this study, can change student opinion from a negative stance to a more positive one. It mentioned that there were issues with the study, such as how tech savy the learner is, and it also suggested that using the computers/technology may be too much for computer-illiterate students. This is not something that I had at all considered. When in class at school I think I probably take it for granted that my students know how to use Quizlet and know what its capabilities are, but maybe they don’t? I have never really sat down with them and explained all of the features on the app. Also it raised the issue of how many people actually have smartphones and so have the ability to use this app. At Justin-Siena each student is issued a school-IPAD so I know that they do have access to the app at least at school, but at home they may not, depending on their internet connection. The second study I read was also conducted by Bruce Lander, again with Japanese students. Again it compared 2 groups of students with no prior experience of Quizlet. Each student had to create word lists which they could autonomously use at home and were asked to use Quizlet for the entirety of their one year course. They were surveyed at the end of the year and asked if they felt that Quizlet was a useful learning tool. The majority of the comments were positive, and critical comments were very much in the minority. He used a program called Wordminer to help him define those positive and negative comments in Japanese. For both studies done by Bruce Lander, he used 2 groups of students, but I am not going to be doing that, so I am wondering if my study is now going to be less effective. Unfortunately, I don’t have two parallel groups to compare, my other classes are higher level. The reason I chose my French 1 class was because they have no real prior knowledge of French so I thought the results would be more true when learning new vocabulary. In my other classes I have native Spanish speakers who already know vocabulary prior to it being taught in class, and so I thought the study would be less effective. Another issue I hadn’t considered is the fact that students will use the Quizlet app with me in class, and then also they will use it autonomously at home to help them study. However, I will not know how long they are using the app at home, and how they are using it. Some students may use it very little, some may use it a lot. When the students take the test they may have studied for different amounts of time, and so depending on their abilities, they may do better or worse on the test. In my survey I do ask how much time they spend using Quizlet in a week, so maybe I can try and look at that when I analyze my test results. I haven’t included a question about general studying though, so I may look to re-write, or add a question to include this. The third study I looked at was by Elizabeth Cudney and Julie Ezell. It evaluated the impact of teaching methods on student motivation. 6 different types of teaching methods were used: face to face lectures, Ted-Ed videos, Quizlet, scoop, Group Projects and Homework assignments. The students were then given a survey at the end of the semester to analyze motivation. There were 28 questions in the survey – I only have 9 questions - also their questions were much more content-based re: the subject matter taught than mine are. It asked questions about their class material and if it challenged them and also if they could apply what they learned to future employment. My questions deal with student experiences with Quizlet, not learning a foreign language itself. I think that surveys are so subjective and it really depends on the spread of students that you get in your class, as to what kind of answers you might get. I have a broad range of abilities, but if I did this study with an honors class, would I get the same kind of results I wonder? I think it is really hard to measure motivation too, and it is such a personal thing. A part of my study was to evaluate how learning is enhanced with Quizlet, but as it is so subjective I am wondering if it may be difficult to gain clear results from just one class of students. I also feel that I need to become more equipped with how I am going to present the results of the data – charts, figures etc, as looking at all three of these studies, it is much so much more complex than I had imagined. Does the Quizlet app help students learn new foreign language vocabulary more effectively?10/24/2018 In today’s world of learning language students need to keep pace and be able to acquire new vocabulary quickly and easily. When trying to communicate it’s imperative that students have the relevant vocabulary to hand and don’t have to rush off and look up every word in a dictionary. To this end, I am looking to find new methods to help my students do this. In high schools today, students are learning languages using different formats and it is important to get them engaged and focused on the new topics and vocabulary at hand. I have looked at many research papers that seem to indicate that online learning is helping students become more engaged and make progress. Ferit Kiliçkaya and Jaroslaw Krajka conducted a study in 2010 which showed that students retained vocabulary longer when using online digital flashcards as opposed to traditional teaching methods. Emrah Baki BAŞOĞLU & Ömür AKDEMİR also conducted a study in 2010 and found that students who used vocabulary apps on their smartphones learned more. There have been several other studies including those by Gilbert Dizon and Daniel Tang in 2017 and by Neil Davie and Tobias Hilber in 2015 which also compared the use of traditional flashcards with digital ones, but their results were inconclusive.
I will carry out my study with a class of 25 French 1 students. I will teach them two different vocabulary lists, the first using traditional teaching methods (ie paper flashcards and reading/writing activities) and the second I will use traditional teaching methods, plus Quizlet. Before any vocabulary is taught I will give students a pre-test to see how much vocabulary they know. I will then teach approximately 25-30 words of new vocabulary using the different methods and give students a vocabulary test with 20 different words - 10 to put into English and 10 to put into French. Once complete, I will compare the results of the tests. I will also compare them with 1 other test that I did where I taught the vocabulary using the Quizlet app. I will also investigate: Does the Quizlet app engage students more in the classroom? How do students perceive the Quizlet app? I will do this by giving students a survey monkey. This contains 9 questions which ask students about their study habits with regard to Quizlet and their perceptions of the app as a whole. I will then analyze this data once the study is complete. The data from the survey will be recorded in percentages. References: What would a teacher do? 5/29/17 Useful Tech Tools: Quizlet. Retrieved from: https://www.whatwouldateacherdo.com/wwatd-blog/archives/05-2017 Eftychia Xerou, Salomi Papadima-Sophocleous, and Antigoni Parmaxi, 2015 A social constructionist approach to teaching and learning vocabulary for Italian for academic purposes. Retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED572145.pdf Neil Davie and Tobias Hilber, 2015, Mobile-assisted Language Learning: Student Attitudes To Using Smartphones To Learn English Vocabulary. Retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED562454.pdf Gilbert Dizon & Daniel Tang, 2017, Comparing the Efficacy of Digital Flashcards versus Paper Flashcards to Improve Receptive and Productive L2 Vocabulary. Retrieved from: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1154334.pdf This week there were many interesting ideas offered up by the various speakers that we listened to and articles that we read. John Seely started off talking about the world of constant flux that we live in, and how technology has changed the half life of learning a skill from 10 years to about 5. According to Seely learning is about "creating the new, not teaching the old." He suggests that we need to rethink how we learn, and that learning is more tacit. He shows us that when people play together on online games it is like learning online in a study group. He talks about the Wow mantra - "if I'm not learning, then it ain't fun." He tells us that when users play online games (he uses the World of Warcraft as an example) players are constantly tinkering and that it is too complicated to play it without complex analysis tools and dashboards. These dashboards are nearly always handcrafted by each player and are key to masterful play. This blends tacit with cognitive learning. Wow's knowledge of the economy helps players gain and create knowledge faster. He then moves on to talk about the bigger picture - man as a knower vs man as a maker. He makes reference to Homo ludens - a highly nuanced concept of play which gives people freedom to fail and fail again without fear, where people can use their imagination and can have an epiphany where things suddenly fall into place. Learning as 'riddles' leads to reframing or re-registering of the world.
Gardner talks about 5 minds for the future - the disciplined mind the synthesizing mind, the creating mind, the respectful mind, the ethical mind and how it is imperative that we educate them. Some of the things discussed really resonated with me, especially with regard to creativity. He points out how kids "cannot think outside the box, unless there is a box to think outside." It is important that students deal with things that don't work out and keep working. This means a lot with regard to classroom learning. Students need to keep trying and working through things until they have that 'aha moment' where they feel they have grasped the concept - but how do we motivate them to do that and not give up because they are not succeeding at first? He suggests that young students (15-20 yrs old) have a very different ethical sense to teachers and some may not realize/believe that it is wrong to cheat. We need to educate them and show/model examples of good work. We need to call attention to negative examples and they should have consequences. He also goes on to talk about the fact that there is tension between respect and ethics. If someone you respect does something wrong, how do you deal with that? We need to create a school and local community atmosphere which is characterized by ethics, and then need to spread this nationally. He shows how everything is different in the digital world and so many things need to be retaught. You can be a different person online, can plagiarize easily - we as teachers need to get down to the kids level and start where they are. Out of all of the speakers I found Ken Robinson to be the most engaging. He discusses creativity and how in today's world we are not fostering that in our schools. All students have talents, but depending on what they are, they can be squandered. Our education system prioritizes subjects according to what we believe students will need to be educated in to get a job. Some subjects such as dance or theater are really on the periphery and are not seen as that important. We tend to judge students on whether they are good at those key important subjects, and if they are not then they are brushed aside or ignored. We need to educate the whole child and the idea that we should judge kids by whether they are good at the key subjects we believe are important needs to change. We need to see kids how they are. He suggests that creativity is as important as literacy and like Seely, he believes for kids to be creative they shouldn't be frightened of being wrong. The final speaker Dan Pink talks about the puzzles of motivation. This was very interesting. He talked about studies of groups being incentivized by money to complete a task more quickly but they actually took longer if the task required the use of rudimentary cognitive skills. He says there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business knows. According to these studies financial incentives can actually lead to a negative impact on overall performance. He suggests we need a new approach - intrinsic motivation. People should be paid well but given autonomy. Some companies who gave workers 24hours to work on things they were interested in came up with many creative ideas. Students should be given more freedom to work on what interests them so that they feel empowered. By doing this they may well take more risks and strive to achieve something that normally is beyond their limits. The final article I read "Can creativity be taught" was written by Louis Mobley, Director of IBM's Executive school. His insights were most interesting - he talked about how we are taught to think in a linear way but to be creative we need to think in a 'non- linear' way. Students need to get out of their comfort zone and be provided with humbling experiences to learn to be creative. When educating IBM's executives he never used books/classes/lectures, their learning involved riddles, simulations and games. In his opinion, the fastest way to become creative "is to hang out with creative people." Students need to be given permission to be wrong as every great idea grows from hundreds of bad ones. People should not be afraid to make mistakes. "Creativity requires treating the impossible as possible." We should refuse to quit and have faith. There are many takeaways from these videos and articles. The biggest thing for me was that students really to need to reach for the stars when trying to be creative and not give up. We need to encourage students when working and even if they are wrong, motivate them to keep going so that they eventually get to where they need to be & hopefully be able to think outside the box. Traditional methods of teaching are really not working - we need to recognize what students are good at, and even if it is not something traditional we need to get them to focus on that so that they can have success. We have core subjects that students need to study - is that really necessary? The world is changing so much and by the time these students graduate it will have changed significantly. Giving students freedom in my classroom to focus on the assignments that they are truly interested in seems key. Giving students choice so that what they are studying is relevant to them and resonates with them may help improve motivation and levels of creativity. In my classroom 'getting people out of their comfort zone' would involve them speaking much more in the foreign language as this is what most people struggle with. Getting students to focus on speaking and practice in a non-threatening environment could I believe improve their confidence. I often get students to do presentations in the foreign language - getting them to do more of these and giving them choices as to what they want to talk about and are interested in may help their level of engagement. Doing less book work and formalized lessons but more group activities, language games and active participation are certainly methodologies I could use to help my students be more creative. There is much food for though, and the goal posts seem to be continually moving - how do we educate today's child for tomorrow's world? Research has been carried out for over the last 20 years or so into whether digital flashcards are more effective at helping students learn a foreign language as opposed to just using regular paper flashcards. Back in April 2010 Ferit Kiliçkaya & Jarolslaw Krajka wrote a research paper about a study they carried out where some students used wordchamp (online vocabulary program) to learn new vocabulary words whilst others used paper flashcards and traditional methods instead. The vocabulary activities in wordchamp helped students develop better memory connections with the vocabulary words that they learned and when tested they scored significantly better than those who had used paper flashcards. Even 5 months later when tested again they still scored better than those who had used the traditional methods & paper flashcards to learn the new vocabulary. In that same year Emrah Baki Bascoglu & Omür Akdemir carried out another study whereby 30 students used ECTACO (an online flashcard program) on their mobile phone to help them learn new vocabulary. Another 30 students just used paper flashcards and traditional methods to learn that same new vocabulary. Again when tested the students who had used the online flashcards did significantly better, as opposed to those who had just used the paper flashcards as a study aid. In 2014 Robert Stroud carried out a study entitled "Student engagement in learning vocabulary with CALL". This was a study to evaluate peoples feelings towards using Quizlet as a study aid. They were Japanese students who studied English as a second language and were of mixed gender. They all used Quizlet instead of a traditional textbook to learn new vocabulary. At the end of each class students were given 10 minutes to enter new words from the class content and then another 20 mins to play games of their choice on Quizlet. This study lasted for 14 weeks. At the end of it the students were surveyed and asked if Quizlet was more fun to use than a textbook, if it made them try harder to remember vocabulary, and they were asked what types of games they played on Quizlet. 91% said that it was more fun to use than a textbook & 87% said that it made them try harder. Overall this study showed that Quizlet motivated students to learn.
In 2015 Neil Davie and Tobias Hilber carried out another study looking at student attitudes to using smartphones to learn English vocabulary. When surveyed students said that they found the use of flashcards to be "very efficient, convenient and enjoyable learning method." However, at that time "it did not lead to an immediate improvement in exam performance." In that same year Chin-Wen- Chien carried out another study with Taiwanese college Freshman students where he evaluated the effectiveness of three online vocabulary flashcard websites. Participants were very favorable towards the use of online flashcards as opposed to traditional methods. There were no pre-test or post-test vocabulary quizzes and the students only demonstrated their knowledge via the websites. Statistically on this occasion improvement in vocabulary learning could not be shown. In 2017 Gilbert Dizon and Daniel Tang compared the efficacy of digital flashcards versus paper flashcards to improve receptive and productive L2 vocabulary. Japanese students took part in a 12 week study and they were tested before and after the study had ended to see if the students who used Quizlet got better test scores. The authors stated that while " both groups made significant improvements in receptive and productive vocabulary the difference between the gains was not significant." When surveyed the students thought the games within Quizlet made a positive impact on their learning and higher levels of students favored the use of digital flashcards. I will be studying the use of Quizlet in my classroom and from the studies I have seen it seems that there is still a lot of research to be done to see if they really do make a difference. Students seem to be very motivated to use digital flashcards as opposed to paper ones and in some studies test scores have shown to have been higher when digital flashcards have been used. In other studies when surveyed, students have said that they feel more motivated to learn when using digital flashcards but their test results have not been significantly better. I know that when I use Quizlet in the classroom my students are certainly more engaged and seem to be motivated, but it remains to be seen if it does make a difference with vocabulary retention in the end. According to Darling-Hammond the US educational system trails badly behind many countries in terms of the quality of education that American students receive. There is lack of funding, discrepancies from area to area as to the quality of teachers & amount of funding received, lack of training for teachers, low wages and lack of time for teachers to collaborate, plan or attend professional development. She defines the areas where improvement is needed - these are the 5 main topics:
1)Meaningful learning goals 2)Intelligent, reciprocal accountability systems 3)Equitable sources 4)Strong professional standards and supports 5)Schools organized for student and teacher learning I will address each in turn. When talking about the meaningful learning goals she suggests that we need to adopt high quality standards with regard to curriculum and assessment and these standards should draw on national standards. When teaching curriculum we as teachers should cover less but in more depth and we should foster students' own creativity and originality. The types of assessments should be open-ended and focus on higher-order skills, problem solving and data analysis. Gone should be the days of teaching students a pile of facts which they have to learn by heart and then be tested on using a multiple choice scantron test. Students should be taught about real world problems and then tested on what they actually can do, not what they can recognize from choices. There should be many different types of assessments - projects, portfolios, observations, self-evaluations and students should be taught in sophisticated ways by well-trained teachers so that the needs of diverse learners are met. We are still very much in the factory style mode of teacher where one size fits all, but this does not work for many students and every child is entitled to an education which is relevant to them and addresses their own needs. We are so far behind on what other nations are doing. With regard to the topic of intelligent, reciprocal accountability systems the most important thing that struck me was her suggestion for an overhaul of the preparation and licensing standards. This I think is probably key - developing from the inside out. Students need to be taught by competent teachers who have received the in depth and thorough training before entering the classroom. Teachers need to be flexible and "client-orientated and knowledge-based" as opposed to "rule-based". Teachers & schools should be regularly evaluated and tenure should be earned on performance. Back in the UK where I taught before coming here we had regular inspections where a whole team of people would observe classes, talk to students, talk to teachers and administrators and then they would write a report which was available to the public so that they could be well-informed on the type of education their son/daughter was receiving and the type of improvements that needed to be made. For a teacher it was a lot of preparation before the inspectors came, but I believe it was important from the point of view of accountability, to make sure we were all on track and teaching in the best way possible. We would all each receive feedback on each individual lesson observed as to the quality of the lesson given. If you had a good report this would occur every 4/5 years, but more frequently if improvements were needed. The government also went on to develop performance-related pay to motivate good teachers to stay in the profession. Her third topic "equitable and adequate resources" I think is probably one of the most important. In the US there seems to be very high discrepancies with regard to the amount of money schools receive. It is imperative that high poverty states receive more money so that they can provide what students actually need. She suggests that the dollar amount per students should be adjusted according to specific student needs. Students in poor areas have so many other problems to deal with including access to health care, quality housing, it is so important that they receive an education that is going to enable them to improve their quality of life. To achieve this schools will need to attract good quality teachers, have good leaders within the school together with salary improvements. Teachers are attracted and want to work in schools which are well-led and have people who have similar mindsets and teaching philosophies. She says that "expert teaching needs to be the rule not the exception." For this to happen teachers need guidance, an improved teaching preparation program and should be encouraged and rewarded. Finally her last topic - "schools organized for student and teacher learning" discusses how teachers "need time for collaborative and collective planning, lesson study, peer coaching and to develop curriculum and assessment." Her idea of for teachers to have 10 hours per week for joint planning and collaborative learning and that investment is needed in technology and new systems of assessment. Teachers need freedom to incorporate these new practices into their classrooms, equal access to school resources and the time and training to build thoughtful assessments. We need to ensure to all of our people "a rich and inalienable right to learn." It seems that we have so much to do and so much to learn from other nations who seem way ahead of the game. Our system is so fragmented, probably because the country is divided up into 50 states and policy makers have so many conflicting opinions as to what is needed to improve this country's education system. More funds are needed and fast. They need to be foremost directed to deprived areas and then a revamp of the whole system of how we teach and what we teach needs to be addressed. Our students have the right to an education that works for them and addresses their needs, and our country needs to get its leaders together to investigate and figure out how we can do that most effectively. This has been a long journey, but I think I'm starting to see what my essential question might look like and how I might be able to carry out some kind of study. It was hard to find research articles on my particular topic, as I don't think many people have looked at the effects of technology on language learning. The three that I did find are studies about learning vocabulary which was helpful, and two of them do focus on quizlet in particular which is what I am hoping to look at.
My study itself will just help students in my school; I am trying to get some of my Department members interested in what I am doing so that they might try and use more educational technology in their classrooms. My driving question is "Does educational technology enhance student learning & help improve foreign language vocabulary retention? This may seem quite a far reaching question and if more research is done I do think that it could affect how we approach language learning globally in the years to come. In this particular study I will use quizlet as my vehicle to determine if technology has any effect on how students acquire new vocabulary. In the studies that I looked at they said that teachers should provide students with tasks that promote engagement and motivation. They defined engagement as being made up of 3 elements - behavioral, cognitive & emotional (enjoyment) & that students should experience all 3 of these elements when learning new vocabulary for them to be more likely to retain it. They also suggested that students need to have a sense of control over what they are learning and that when students felt they had this together with elements that grabbed their attention, then they became really focused on the topic in hand. Quizlet is an app that does possess some of these capabilities as students can choose what part of the app they want to focus on. They can learn new vocabulary using the flashcards, they can play a scatter / matching game, they can give themselves a quiz. As a class they can also play quizlet live which involves students working in teams competing against each other to match all of the vocabulary words given as quickly as possible. If they are the fastest group, then they win the game, If they get make one mistake however, they go back into last place, so they really have to be sure to think before selecting their final answer. In the studies that were carried out, all of these relied upon students opinions about whether they felt that quizlet helped them learn the new vocabulary or not. They had scores on the relevant websites saying how well they did on the games/quizzes on the website but no formal assessments were given. My study will be different in the fact that I propose to get students to learn 2 sets of new vocabulary, one will be using traditional methods, ie the textbook, hand-written flashcards, listening/reading/writing activities, the 2nd will use these same techniques but in addition we will use quizlet. Students will be able to look at the flashcards in class online, they will be able to play the matching game and we will also play quizlet live in teams as the classroom. When students have spent 2-3 lessons learning the first lot of vocabulary I will give them a vocabulary quiz to see how well they do. I will then teach the second lot of vocabulary using the same methods plus quizlet and again test them after 2-3 lessons. I will compare the results to see if there is any difference. I would think that there should be, but I am also thinking that this one study may not provide that much data. I am also hoping to do some kind of survey with the students to see if they think that quizlet helps them learn new vocabulary. This would be very similar to the other 3 studies that I looked at. One of the studies focused on primarily comparing 3 programs for learning vocabulary, one of which was in fact quizlet too. I'm hoping that this research will give me real insight into how my students learn and how I can help them achieve more, but really I think it is probably only just the tip of the iceberg. It seems that we are dawning on a new age with the use of educational technology and its role in the classroom. Wouldn't it be wonderful if our research could really make a difference... 'This week I feel as if I am still on an unending journey, but a gaining some clarity into the path ahead. There is much to do. Critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity seems like a lot things to have to include when thinking about a lesson. For me as a language teacher, communication is a key skill and I can get students to collaborate or be a little creative but critical thinking is a tough one. In my subject students do not often have the vocabulary to be able to express themselves in a more in depth way & "think critically". If they are learning the basics of the language they can often only give very simple opinions on something at best. My French 1 class has just learned greetings and introductions and is moving onto numbers, so getting them to think critically seems really beyond reach.
Some of the videos I watched this week have made me really think about how I could change things around in my classroom and make me less the focal point and put much more emphasis on the students. In my Spanish 4 class, students are already making presentations using google slides where they choose a topic of cultural significance to explore, but they are working alone, not in collaboration with another student. I do get others in the class to ask them a question about their presentation (once they have presented)via a google doc, and the presenter then has to respond to that particular question. I am wondering if I could get each of my students to set up a weebly page of their own where they post their projects so that others can leave comments. I saw a video about bringing poetry into the classroom and I'm thinking of getting my Spanish 4 students to pair up and investigate a certain Hispanic poet and then report back to the group. Sometimes when students report back, the other students in the class seem to zone out a little, I'm wondering how I can get them to be more focused. They do have to devise a question to ask the presenter, but sometimes that doesn't seem like enough. I would like them to be more involved. In French 1 I'm thinking of assigning pairs of students a grammar point that we will cover between now and Christmas. They would have to research it, make google slides and present their findings to the class. The would then become the 'expert' for that particular topic. As we progress and learn more each pair would present their findings to the group and then as a whole we would focus on that particular grammar point in more depth. At the end of the semester before the final exams, each pair could then present a summary of their presentation again as a type of review. I'm hoping this would help students hone in on each grammar point more effectively. I am interested in learning how to use more apps for blogging, or ways for students to comment on each other's work. I checked out & made a voicethread this week about the case that I looked at. Sometimes I am reluctant to check out new apps as you have to pay and they are complex, but this one was actually relatively straight forward and simple so I would definitely recommend it. Just plan your presentation, upload pictures, move them into the correct order and then record a comment about each one. I'm looking for inspiration for other apps / ways that students can collaborate/comment on each other's work. The search 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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