The key thing for that really stuck in my head this week is that we need to keep in mind that we are "educating kids for a future that we are not yet familiar with." This seems like an almost impossible task - how can we prepare our students for their future when we don't really know what that will actually look like? It seems that most schools today are still somewhat in the factory based learning phase dating back to the industrial revolution where we believe we need to teach our students using traditional methods, train our students to do well in exams and if they succeed then they should be able to get a good job. If we continue to do this then we are missing out on the talents of those who under traditional methods would not be considered academics or of high intellect, yet they still have much value and innovation to add to the world that we live in and our society. How do we reach those students?
To my mind being a teacher in a classroom is really a two-way street and we can learn as much from our students as they can learn from us. Relationships really are key. It is so important to build a good rapport with students and reach out to those who are on the outside, so that they can feel welcomed and supported and know that you are there to help them if they need it. At the beginning of the year I generally ask students to fill in an information sheet telling me a little bit of their language experience, if they speak a foreign language at home and what their interests are - I find this really helps me to hone in on their particular needs in the classroom. For example in my Spanish 4 class I often have native speakers who have excellent speaking and comprehension skills but they really need to work on their writing. Finding out this information when we are starting out is key to helping students work on what they find challenging and bring them up to the level they should be at. Students learn during a variety of ways and they should be taught using different strategies, and making curriculum appropriate and relevant to our students is paramount. Learning in classrooms today needs to be much more student centered and much less teacher led/focused. Students really need us to believe in them, because if we believe they can do something then they hopefully that will make them take that leap of faith so that they can. My lessons typically still are more teacher-led, but we do many different types of activities. I feel it is important to keep students moving and interested with short succinct assignments as opposed to those which are long and drawn out. We work on all skills incorporating speaking, reading, listening and writing into most class periods. In the upper levels I do have students collaborating on projects, and also they ask other groups about their presentations using google docs in the foreign language, but I am still working on group norms and what that looks like. One of the videos I watched showed great ways to keep kids focused and on task by having them let other group members know what they would be focusing on each week and what they had already achieved. They also had posters defining a timeline and what still had to be completed. I've been working on this for 23 years, but feel that there is still so much left to learn about teaching and education. It is a constantly moving feat!
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I have been pondering over the essential question for my action research this past week or so, but things seem to becoming more concrete. For some time I have been trying to use more technology in my classroom to enhance learning and motivation and I am curious to know if it does help students retain more and keep them more focused on their studies. In a Language classroom technology can be used in many ways; students can hear the voices of authentic native speakers; students can make connections online with other foreign students; students can research and make presentations to other students in their class in the target language about what they have found out & students can also use different types of apps to help them learn and become more familiar with the target language.
In this action research, I am hoping to focus more on using apps /tools which help students learn vocabulary/grammar concepts as opposed to other types of educational technology. In particular my French 1 class is in the beginning stages of learning the language and so need to become more familiar with new vocabulary. What I would like to do is to compare a sample of their quiz results to see if using traditional methods alone, or using traditional methods with educational technology gives them better test results. First of all I will teach students using only traditional methods and not use any apps in the classroom. Students will be introduced to the topic of classroom vocabulary and will work on activities from the textbook. I will get them to make flashcards of the new words that they are required to learn and they will then bring these to each class and review them with a partner over the course of a couple of weeks. We will also complete other speaking/reading/writing activities around this same topic. Once the two week period is up, I will test the students on their vocabulary to see what they have been able to retain, and can spell. When this test is complete the class will move onto the topic of school subjects. For students to absorb this new vocabulary I propose to use a variety of teaching techniques and this time include technology. Students will still make their flashcards to work on with a partner, but they will also use quizlet to review the words and test themselves and as a class we will play quizlet live where students get into teams and have to choose the right answer. Kahoot is another app that I will use to help students review and again after two weeks I will give them a quiz and see how they do. All students will complete the different activities in the assigned way but only a few students will have their test results analyzed and compared. It will be very important to get a good cross section of people taking part in the research, other wise it could be somewhat bias. Students also all need to be at the same starting point, otherwise some will have an advantage over others. I have chosen to conduct my research in my French class as most people there have very little or no previous knowledge of the language. My Spanish classes on the other hand vary and some students are native speakers, so they could have an unfair advantage over other students. I think the test should probably be as simple as possible just to test students' vocabulary and spelling, as to include other information could perhaps be too complex and it could be difficult to compare or interpret the data accurately. Also knowing if students have access to the internet at home could influence the results as they could use educational technology on their own time to help quiz themselves on the new vocabulary. Overall, I am thinking that they were will be a correlation between technology being used and better test results, but obviously I will need to gather the evidence to substantiate this hypothesis. 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. I thoroughly enjoy teaching, although it can be very challenging, and I think this is probably because when I was at school, I really enjoyed it and it was one of the happiest times of my life. When I think back to my school days there were certain subjects that I really loved and although I may well have had more of an aptitude for them, I think it was really the teacher's passion for the subject that affected my attitude towards it. I was inspired by my French teacher who really made me want to learn new words and vocabulary and become proficient in French. She made me see that it wasn't just about speaking in the classroom, there really was a whole other world out there where French was spoken by regular people, every day to communicate. I think this really sank in when I went on a French exchange for a week and was totally immersed in a family where no-one spoke English. It was really hard to begin with, but so worth it.
For me I think it is important that I can show my passion for my subject and transfer that over to my students so as to inspire them and get them excited about learning another language.To be successful you really need a variety of tools to keep students interested and motivated. Doing an activity for too long causes kids to lose interest. You need to keep them moving and inspired by new concepts and ways of learning. For me taking this course is going to help me fulfill this goal by giving me the ability to investigate new ways of delivering material and giving students a more individualized education. I already use many apps in my classroom, but am looking forward to gaining much more breadth and knowledge to prepare my students for living in the 21st century. |
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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