Monthly Archives: December 2015

Pedagogical Trade Fair Reflection

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Now that I have had some time to ponder the events that took place on the final day of class, I found it fitting to write a reflection. The day of the pedagogical trade fair was a day of charged excitement, not only due to the fact that it was the final day of my first semester of grad school, but also because I got to present something that I was really passionate about, with someone who was equally passionate about it (shout out to my awesome partner Sally!)

Upon arrival that rainy Friday morning, was that everyone had clearly put in a ton of effort on their visuals. I was wowed to see how far some people had gone, bringing in props, handouts, and other things to assist their presentation. It was really inspiring to see so many people presenting something they had obviously worked so hard on, and to do so in such a professional way. Way to go guys!

When I got a chance to walk around (I only got a chance to go to maybe half of the presentations) I was so surprised to see how many different directions my fellow classmates had taken in terms of their activities. Some people presented whole lesson plans, others focused on one activity, some tied their activity together with learning goals, etc. It was just such broad umbrella of useful things for all types of teachers and different class scenarios. I really do regret not taking any notes on what I saw so I could use some ideas for later.

Once we came to an end of the pedagogical trade fair, Sally and I had a chance to talk about some things that we noticed after repeatedly explaining our activity and lesson plan, and hearing responses and feedback from our visitors and classmates. One of the biggest things that surprised us was the outcome of the sharing portion that we had put on our visual. What we had, for those of you who didn’t have a chance to stop by, was a lined sheet where you could  jot down some places where you felt you were local. We thought that this was a fun and easy going way to involve every passerby, but it turned out to be a very complicated and even somewhat uncomfortable thing to ask some people. By the end of the time, my perspective of this question was much more emotionally charged than it had been before and I learned to be more sensitive when asking these types of question, as they can bring out a lot of emotions depending on who you ask.

I am hoping that I’ll be able to build upon the concept of Heimat and that one day it’ll be applied in an actual classroom, whether it’s mine or someone else’s.

Informal Classroom Observation Report_Bayview Chinese Lesson by Andrew & Kathy

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Kathy’s Bayview Chinese Lesson:

 by: Andrew Sansone

Getting to observe this class was a lot of fun, and very different from the typical observation experience. Kathy did a great job of getting the students into the lesson- they seemed to really enjoy participating!  The students also did a good job of focusing on the TL- in this case, animal vocabulary. Kathy used PPT slides of the various animals she wanted to focus on, and verbally drilled the pronunciation of each animal with the class.  Students then reviewed the TL in tandem with the PPT, and provided various adjectives in L1 to describe the animal vocabulary in L2.  Throughout the lesson, the students seemed really interested in the novelty and fun involved in this lesson.  The activities were really creative and engaging, and I thought the instructor did a good job and had paid careful attention during the LP phase. Lesson transitions were smooth, seamless, and were carried out quite well.  The final activity involved students creating their own zoo filled with the animal vocabulary which they’d just learned- a really nice freer practice activity!

Andrew’s Bayview Chinese Lesson:

by: Kathy Yang

On the field-teaching day at Bay View Academy, Andrew and Kim co-taught a beginning-level Chinese class in fourth grade. There were 28 students in the class, and they were sitting in three rows. Starting this class with greeting kids, Andrew didn’t use English at all but in Chinese. He used higher pitched voice with exaggerated gestures, saying “nihao, xiao pengyou” (literally means: hello, little friend). He repeated the phrase several times, and asked students to guess the meaning. Students recognized “hello” instantly and “little” after he used body language showing them what is big and what is small. However, kids had trouble with “friend.” Kim and Andrew held hands to show they are good friends so students figured the meaning afterward. After greetings, Andrew began teaching numbers in Chinese. He spoke the numbers aloud in Chinese while showing the students the hand gestures for counting numbers. Kim, standing on the other side of the classroom, also performed the hand gestures to the class. Andrew managed to relate the Chinese sounds to English; for instance, “five” in Chinese sounds to “woo” in English. He slowed down a little bit after number six because he wanted the students to realize the difference in hand gestures. After teaching all numbers, Andrew guided the lids to review for three times. The second and third times went faster as the students picked sounds up better. Then, Andrew instructed the students to apply the new knowledge into counting off groups. After finishing the counting activity, Kim started to lead the second half of the lesson.

During the whole class, students were highly motivated by Andrew’s passion and fully engaged into class activities. I should say, although Andrew isn’t a competent Chinese speaker, his confidence, abundant teaching experience, spontaneous reactions and effective   classroom management contributed to this successful and impressive language class.

Gerri’s Pedagogical Repertoire

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Pedagogical Repertoire

  1. “Bad English” Error Correction Activity
    • Good for all level due to high adaptability, but primarily aimed at beginners
    • Students correct errors found from publish sources or their own work.
    • Helps to build confidence
  2. Morning Routines
    • Beginners
    • Students pick a member of their household and describe their morning routine
    • Uses familiar people to foster student participation
  3. Preference Four Square
    • All levels
    • A 2×2 matrix is put on the board with two categories of things labeled above each section. Students get sorted into blocks based on their preferences, and then discuss in small groups.
  4. Inside-Outside Circle
    • All levels
    • Students standing in two circles, one outside the other. Outside circle rotates, while the inside circle remains that same. Students are given a question and asked to discuss with peers, then outside circle switches.
  5. Make Me laugh
    • All levels
    • Students stand in two lines facing each other. They then take turns trying to make the person standing across from then laugh using only their target language.
    • Helps break the ice.
  6. Getting in the mood
    • All levels
    • Students imagine their worries as an object, and describe and discuss the object that they imagine with a partner. After the paired discussion, students imagine the object erased.
    • Helps students relax and focus.
  7. Making Rain
    • Intermediate or advanced
    • Students discuss rituals as a class, and then get into groups to make their own. After they make their own, they take turns sharing and explaining.
  8. Info Gap Direction Map
    • Beginner or intermediate
    • Students are paired off and handed maps. Each map (2) has different places labeled and missing. Students direct each other to the missing places.
  9. Personal Dictionaries
    • Beginner or intermediate
    • Students make their own pocket dictionaries with words they have trouble with. They include the word with the article, picture, and definition. The teacher then makes a class dictionary with their definitions and pictures.
  10. Life Line
    • All Levels
    • Students are placed into groups of 4. Each student receives three sticky notes, and writes a brief descriptions of a travel experience on each note, including the month and date. The sticky notes are put into chronological order to create a line to form a game board. Students then take turns rolling a single die, and move coins across the Life Line board. If a student lands on their own sticky note, the other three students ask them one question each related to the event written on the note. If the student lands on another student’s note, they ask a question to that student, followed by the other two students.
  11. Hot-Cold-Lukewarm
    • Intermediate or Advanced
    • Students write three abilities that they have piece of paper: strengths at one end, weakness at the other, and a line between the two. They are asked to think of the line as a continuum between the two extremes, the positive end being hot, the negative end being cold, and the middle being lukewarm, and then place themselves on the line. The students then list ways they can work on the abilities that are on the cold end, and share in groups, then with the class.
  12. Balloon Debate
    • Intermediate or Advanced
    • Students start by listing ways that they let people know that they agree and disagree with each other. Students then split in groups of five. Each group member is given a role (ex: doctor, lawyer, old man/woman, mother, child, athlete etc). Students are then told that they are on a hot air balloon that going to crash because it is too heavy, and to save the balloon one person must jump off. Each student must make a case as to why they should stay on the balloon, and the students must decide a group who has to jump off. Students then discuss as a group who each of their picked, and what strategies they all used to get their point across.

Bad English- Pedagogical Trade Fair

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Bad English Error Correction Activity

  • What is it?
    • Students point out errors in the English around them through published example (newspapers, signs, etc) or samples from their own papers.
  • Who is it good for?
    • Beginning to advanced level students (see adaptations)
  • Materials
    • Power point of signs up on board/ screen, signs are numbered
    • Students each have corresponding worksheets that are also numbered, each sign’s English on paper, three questions underneath
      1. What do you think the sign was trying to say?
      2. Why/ how do you know? Explain what you think the context is.
      3. How would you correct it? Re-write it.
    • One example as class to start
    • Small groups meet next (depending on the class size), have them agree on a re-write out  of each sentence in each groups
    • Share group responses as a class, discuss over-arching themes, ex: all mistakes were in articles, use of past tense, auxiliary verbs etc. Teacher facilitated discussion also allows students to go back and pin point why they’re making certain mistakes (as listed in question 1 & 2).
  • Expansions
    • Signs from internet, newspaper headings
    • Can uses student’s own work as material for correction (advanced students, after work has already been handed in). Make sure if this is done, particularly shy or self-conscious students are should not be selected for “bad” examples either at all or without good ones too. You could also use non-specific examples from patterns of errors that you notice.
  • Why Use it?
    • Boosts student’s confidence shows students that while they may not be able to produce that they can still recognize correct English. This is why this activity is good for beginners, because beginners might not be able to produce just yet. This helps cut down on the “I’m bad at English” attitude that can pop up in unconfident students.
    • B y having students correct their own work, you help them recognize areas of strength and weakness in their own work. This helps give students a strategy for success in your class and others.
    • Shows students that everyone makes mistakes, even native speakers. Helps bring up the discussion between how language is taught (prescriptivism) vs how it’s actually used (descriptivism). This activity allows students to see that there are multiple ways to correct the same sentence.
    • Lowers affective filter

The pedagogical trade fair was a really incredible experience. Everyone was so excited to share what they had created, and it was especially nice to have faculty members from different departments come and see our work.

My main take away from the experience is that, first of all, there are so many different ways to teach. We all had very different activities that tackled different aspects of learning, and yet I think they all had one thing in common: they all tried to make learning fun and engaging.

The collaborate aspect of the trade fair also struck me. It was tremendous fun to see my peer’s work, but what I found beneficial was being able to go and talk to those peers and having them talk to me. When other people are able to comment on your work, you’re really able to work out some of those troublesome kinks that might remain, or even see issues you hadn’t even thought of. It is also very rewarding to be able to help my classmates talk over their ideas. The whole experience reminds me of a saying that people sometimes use “it takes a village to raise a child” While I don’t have kids of my own yet and can’t comment on raising them, I think I can say with certainty that it takes a village to teach them.

Informal Classroom Observation Report_Kelly’s BUILD Chinese class

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Informal Classroom Observation Report

11/9/2015 6-7pm B.U.I.L.D. Beginning Chinese Morse A200

Teacher: Kelly Donovan

Description of the learners:

Five students: two males; three females

One TESOL student; one TFL French student; one TFL Chinese student (me)

One IEM student with two-year teaching experience in southern China,

One current Arabic learner at DLI who studied Chinese before

Topic: Food and how to order in Chinese restaurant

Teaching strategies: Content-based Instructions + grammar translation drill

Handouts:

Glossary of food

Sample of dialogue in a Chinese restaurant

Although this is a Chinese class aimed for beginners, the two actual language learners both had Chinese learning experience in the past. So the teacher spent a very short period of time greeting everyone and went straightforward to introduce new vocabularies. The glossary contains 8 major categories, including meat, side dishes, beverages, basic verbs, adjectives, adverbs, measure words, other nouns, question words and useful phrases. It has three rows with the simplified Chinese, Pinyin (the Romanization of Chinese sounds), and English as their headers.

To begin with, the teacher introduced the general term for meat in Chinese, and then taught the words of different kinds of meat one by one. Her pattern is, read one Chinese word first and let students guess what it is, then provide the word meaning in English and in the end, read the word aloud again and students would repeat after her. Since the pattern for meat-related words in Chinese is rather fixed, as it is the name of an animal plus meat, students were able to follow the pattern easily and expand vocabularies falling into this category quickly. They had so much fun that even mentioned the bad joke that Chinese people eat almost everything so they can put every species’ name after the character meat to make a new word. Then one student recalled her experiencing of eating in China and asked, “So how do you say chicken feet or pig feet in Chinese? “ The teacher responded her with the answer and confirmed the fact that Chinese people do eat them, for there were other students who were shocked by this question.

Reflection/Highlights of the class:

The teacher focused on the most important points rather than spread out. For example, for the meat part, she didn’t even bother to introduce the different cooking styles of meat since there are so many and it’s impossible to pour into students’ brains in a minute. However, she taught only one meat dish containing its cooking style, that is, the braised beef for it is the most common dish you can find in a regular authentic Chinese restaurant. I think this is a good example of her combing the knowledge of pragmatics with personal experience of living in China. As a result, students can acquire the most essential, practical and authentic language from her. Writing Chinese is a never-can-be-easy task, but Kelly handles it very well by guiding learners to find the patterns of writing Chinese characters (the logic behind it is the Chinese characters consist of radicals, i.e. meaningful graphemes).

Glory to Arstotzka! Multimodal Learning, Learner Autonomy, and Video Games

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Andrew Sansone

Video games are a new addition to the toolkit used by language educators, and a great deal of their effectiveness is a result of their focus upon learner autonomy and contextualization.  It also offers new ways to engage learners who themselves enjoy video games in their leisure time.

One example of learner autonomy is the use of Papers, Please in a lesson focused on travel document vocabulary.  Normally, this lesson would be conducted using a textbook and traditional approach, including vocabulary presentation, contextualized reading, and listening comprehension activities.

However, this lesson could be enhanced by using multimodal learning.  Papers, Please involves a simple conceit- you take on the role of an Arstotzkan (a lightly disguised version of East Germany) border guard.  Your job is to decide which people enter your country, and which are rejected.  Your basic salary is based upon the number of people you process, and is usually insufficient- but you can earn extra money by reporting ‘criminals’ and taking bribes.  Your family requires money for food, medicine, and heat.  Students get to use the TL in a new and creative way- and given the role playing aspects of the game.  Students are asked to spot forged passports and visas by checking the issuing city, biographical details of the subject, and by analyzing their conversation with those looking to enter Arstozka.  The following PDF illustrate the various visa/passport/biographical details that students must juggle and engage with with playing the game. Obviously, all of these factors use the TL in a natural and authentic way.

Passport and Visa Details

Students in a class can play collaboratively, with the teacher controlling the mouse and the students telling him or her what to investigate or do.  Student autonomy is central to the success of the lesson, as the directions players take in game can shape the atmosphere their character inhabits. For instance, students who take bribes to allow resistance members into Arstotzka can personally profit, but weaken the foundations of an immoral state.  Those who choose to follow the ‘party-line’ will find the state strengthened, but their own moral compass malignly affected.


After playing the game, students then fill out a response to how they feel about the game and what they learned.

Interest Four Square: Pedagogical Trade Fair

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For the pedagogical trade fair, Brieanna and I presented a non-TPR adaptation of the Four Square activity that we played in P&P at the beginning of the semester. This is an activity that stuck with us and that we felt could easily be adapted depending on the class content and context. We also felt that it was a great icebreaker activity to do with students to get them engaged in conversation and moving around the classroom. 

In this game, students interact with one another by answering and then discussing their answers to multiple choice questions asked by the teacher or facilitator. Normally, this would be TPR activity, with students moving around to different squares on the floor that are representative of the answer they choose: A, B, C, or D.  However, in this adaptation of the activity, game pieces will be given to the participants, and they will place these on the square for the answer that they choose. Students should be prepared to explain why they choose a specific answer; this is designed to promote friendly discussion among people with common interests.  After this brief discussion, the group on each “square” provides some reasoning for why they chose their specific answer; this allows the students to listen to their peers and be exposed to other opinions.

An example of a question might be:

If you could learn another language, what would you choose?

A. French                B. Mandarin

C. Arabic                 D. other

In our adaptation of the game, students would simply move their game piece onto the square with the answer of their choice. However, in the TPR version that we did as a class, students jump/walk over to the square that applies to them.

Purposes and Goals

This activity works on listening comprehension, since students need to listen carefully to the question and remember the possible answers.  It also works on speaking skills, since students participate in informal discussion with their peers. This activity could also be adapted further to address writing/reading skills; students could contribute their own questions, and a student could act as the facilitator of the activity.

Why this activity?

This is an excellent ice-breaker activity to do with a class; it is a quick TPR activity to get students moving and talking, and it allows students to mingle and speak with like-minded individuals. The questions can easily be adapted and focused on any topic that is relevant to the curriculum. On the whole, it can promote not only language learning but also community building and can foster a comfortable classroom environment.

SIOP Video

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The SIOP model, or sheltered instruction observation protocol, seeks to accommodate non-native speakers and learners in a classroom setting. Some general ways to do this are to speak at a slightly slower pace, provide simple explanations when necessary, and avoid using slang or idioms that students might not be aware of. In the video we watched in class, they also stress the importance of making lesson objectives clear, both at the beginning and at the end of class. Although this can definitely be beneficial for ESL students as it lets them know what they should be focusing on and what they should be taking away from the lesson, I believe that clarity of lesson objectives is crucial in any classroom context. 

The video presented 8 components of the SIOP model, and provided clips of lessons that put those components into practice. These 8 components were very much related to the 5 precepts that we discussed in class:

  1. Preparation- providing content and language objectives to students (even posted on the board)

2) Building background- links to students’ lives and links to past learning

3) Comprehensible input- appropriate speech for language level, clear task explanation, visuals/models

4) Strategies- Modeling the activities, having students make predictions about their reading or    the content of the lesson

5) Interaction- Small group discussions/activities, ‘supportive group patterns’ such as starting in pairs and then moving into small/whole group, using the native language in the classroom when it is useful

6) Practice & Application- hands-on activities that relate to the language goals and content of the lesson

7) Response Groups- working together in groups and coming to an agreement, then expressing and presenting their ideas to the whole class

8) Review & Assessment- referring back to lesson objectives, reviewing content, assessing whether or not the goals of the lesson were met, getting feedback and seeing if anything needs to be explained again, students contribute something they learned from the lesson

It was interesting to see all of these steps written out and organized, because in a way I believe (or hope) that teachers use many of these steps without even knowing that they are following an established model. After watching the video, someone in the class (I forget if it was Peter or a student) pointed out that “that’s just good teaching.” I had never heard of the SIOP model before watching this video, but I have followed and incorporated a lot of these components into my teaching before without necessarily knowing what to call them or what to compare the structure of my lessons to.

Using Jeopardy as a Tool for Review

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I have played Jeopardy with my students before as a review activity, and in my teaching experience thus far, it has worked with all ages and gotten everyone involved in friendly competition. Playing it in a graduate level class further proved its flexibility and success as a tool for review.

The first time that I encountered Jeopardy in a pedagogical context was at the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy (for high schoolers), where I worked for three summers. Towards the end of the 4-week program, at one of the evening assemblies, one of the teachers orchestrated a group game of Jeopardy having to do with French culture. The categories included history, music, food, etc. In addition to reviewing some of the things the students had covered in their classes, some of the tougher questions also provided an opportunity to learn. In my own learning, I’ve found that the questions that stump you are the answers you never forget.

When I taught in France, I used Jeopardy as a review activity every couple of weeks. Since I didn’t see the students every day, this was a fun way to refresh their memory of what we had been working on. Since I was teaching elementary schoolers ages 5-10, reviewing and repetition was crucial. After four units such as weather, seasons, months, and numbers, I would create a jeopardy game with the content. I would split the classes into four groups, and each would come up with their own team name in English, which was very limited so they came up with some pretty silly stuff such as “the pajamas” or “the Barack Obamas”. All of the classes got really enthusiastic about the game and looked forward to the days that we played it.

I played Jeopardy with my high schoolers last year as well, and it had the same result: fun, friendly competition, and successful review. They were taking French for the first time, so I adapted the content of my previous Jeopardy games from English into French, since the language level and much of the vocabulary units were the same. However, I incorporated grammar and tenses into the questions more, since they were older and had more language awareness than my previous French youngins.

Playing Jeopardy in Principles & Practices similarly provided a successful review and wrap-up of the concepts and units we covered throughout the course. This particular game had more categories than I have ever employed in my own adaptations of the game, which just goes to show how much we have learned this semester. I really liked that our knowledge of our classmates and our professor was also incorporated into it, since we spent a great deal of the first month reading each others’  language learning histories. Overall, using Jeopardy in P&P further solidified my faith in Jeopardy as an enjoyable and effective tool for review.