Author Archives: Chandra Rapley

Equipo Español- Needs Assessment Reflection

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A little belated, but so it goes…

We were very fortunate in many ways through the process of writing our needs assessment. Our first bit of good fortune was geographical: unlike several of our colleagues, the target context for our curriculum design project was local, just 20 minutes or so away at Bolsa Knolls Middle School in Salinas. Due to the convenience and proximity of this site, we were able to visit the school and have an in-person interview with the teacher of the Spanish for Heritage Speakers class. Upon arrival, we realized another bit of good fortune had come our way: Chandra had previously visited this very same class for Classroom Observation in the Fall, and had written an observation report which served as valuable information in the final needs assessment.

We felt lucky to be able to work on such an interesting local project, and especially to work with Kristal Gaskell, the teacher and MIIS alum, who was incredibly helpful, responsive, and gave us the freedom to really do what we wanted with the curriculum. She even took class time to administer our Google Forms survey to her students, which was the third major component of our needs assessment. However, while we wanted to acknowledge the many ways in which the needs assessment was a positive experience, this is not to say that we didn’t face any challenges. A major challenge for us has been the time constraints that we face as grad students, with many time commitments from school and work, and that made it difficult for us to meet with Kristall and unable to visit the class while it was in session this semester, while we would have liked to. This also affected our needs assessment in terms of a lack of revision and careful planning on the survey we gave to the students; after receiving the data back, we realized that there were some questions that didn’t reveal as much as we had hoped, other questions that should have been worded differently or in a different format, and additional questions that we wished we had thought to ask. While we did receive some valuable insights from that survey, we feel that we could have done a better job of designing that tool in order to maximize the usefulness of that data.

Our additional challenges have been more in the form of figuring out what to do with the information that we gained from the needs assessment; there were many limitations that we did not forsee, such as the issue of a too-strong web filter that blocked many educational and video-streaming sites that we would have liked to use, and the limited classroom resources. However, we have tried our best to rise to that challenge and develop a curriculum that takes advantage of the many strengths and hidden resources of that classroom.

Overall, the needs assessment process was a great learning process for both of us. We gained valuable insights from what we were able to do, and probably learned even more from our mistakes and struggles during the process. We are very grateful that we were able to spend as much time as we did on the needs assessment portion of this project, and hope that our investment in that portion will show in the final product at the Trade Fair!

-Chandra and Tom, Equipo Español 🙂

Nuestro Libro

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Hi Friends!

I just wanted to share with you the final product of my Make-A-Book booth at the Pedagogical Trade Fair. My booth consisted of three different variations of a make-a-book activity for various levels of learners: an about me/about my family book, a personal dictionary and class dictionary, and a mini short story. (Read more about this in detail in my Pedagogical Repertoire!)

Everyone who visited my booth contributed to a collective book, and I have posted the pictures above. I love having an artifact that represents a collective effort as well as a shared experience, and I greatly enjoyed sharing this experience with all of you. Have a great break everyone!

Academic Conversations: classroom talk that fosters critical thinking and content understandings

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The other day in class we read a series of classroom conversations in which the students took on the “teacher” or facilitator role for their peers as they discussed books, short stories, and articles that they had read. The students had clearly been coached on phrases and key words to use in order to facilitate discussion and prompt elaboration, and so the actually conversations were probably the product of a few class sessions of preparation. The conversations that emerged were really quite remarkable, in that the students encouraged each other to think more critically and develop their ideas more. For this reason, I want to highlight the last conversation as a great example of preparation for writing a persuasive essay, and also for giving effective peer feedback. Here is the text of the conversation:

Lenora: I think guns should be against the law.

Hilario: Why?

Lenora: Because the more guns around, the more people get killed. For example, those shootings at schools and in malls.

Hilario: Yes, but a counterargument would be that we have the right to own guns in the Constitution. What about that?

Lenora: It should be changed. That’s what amendment means. We should amend it.

Hilario: But if we change that one, we might have to change many more.

Lenora: Whatever, maybe something that makes it harder to buy guns.

Hilario: Maybe, but I know a lot of people want one in their house to defend it.

Lenora: So we need to weigh the right of having a gun and its protection against counterarguments of more people dying from lots of guns around. So, is less deaths worth giving up this right?

Hilario: How do you know less deaths will happen?

This dialogue is incredibly useful for the skills development of both students, and could easily be applied to an academic writing class in a foreign language or in a TESOL class. Hilario, in this example, is developing her ability to give useful feedback, to analyze an argument, and to fully develop her ideas. Lenora is also learning how to fully develop ideas, as well as how to respond to feedback, how to include counterarguments in a persuasive essay, and how to properly support her ideas with evidence. I really like the idea of using this activity as a pre-cursor to writing persuasive essays and peer reviews, because it is communicative and student-centered, and a great opportunity for learners to develop the skills they will need to become effective writers and peer reviewers.

On teaching at Bay View Academy

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There are many, many things that I could say about our Spanish lessons at Bay View yesterday, but first I want to mention something more general about teaching itself, specifically teaching younger ages. One of my absolute favorite parts of teaching, and something I really loved about yesterday, is the immediacy of it, the fact that you have to be completely present and in the moment, constantly responding and adjusting to your students’ needs. This was especially evident in the context of team teaching, because we also had to be aware of what our colleagues were doing so that we could properly support them and help our students work towards the best possible learning outcomes.

This was my first time teaching Spanish in a formal setting, and I loved it. We had the second and third grade classes, and it was really cool to see how much they already knew (hooray for multilingualism!) and their eagerness to learn more. Our first activity gave them the chance to learn how a compass works and practice direction-related vocabulary. I was surprised and pleased to see how interested they were, and I think this could easily be turned into a full lesson, like “basic orienteering in Spanish” or something along those lines. The next activity was a silly story about a character (Mike from Monsters Inc for the first class, Snoopy for the second class) travelling to different geographic features (desierto, bosque, montaña, etc.). I read the story and demonstrated the actions with a storyboard I had made, and when I got to each vocabulary word, Aaron and Willow would show a card with the word and a picture, and we would all repeat it. At the end of the story, which went a lot quicker than I anticipated, I put my little “Mike” figurine or Snoopy sticker at different locations on the storyboard, and asked the students “Donde está Mike (or Snoopy)?” The students in both classes actively participated, and even corrected me when we began to move on to the next activity, “You forgot lago! You forgot parque!” I was thrilled to see that they were so actively engaged in the lesson, and they continued to be for our final two activities: Bingo, and drawing features on a map.

Upon reflection, I feel that my biggest area for improvement is making sure that there is a clear purpose and learning objective from each activity. Sometimes I get so caught up in wanting my students to have fun, and to make language learning fun, that I forget that there needs to be an underlying goal in everything we do in the classroom. I think that by challenging myself to articulate these goals in a more thorough way, I will be able to create more effective and engaging lesson plans that will truly support my students in their language learning.

Echoing Danna’s post, I wish we could do this every week!

 

Reflection on the Use of Groupwork in the Classroom and Creating a Safe Space for All Learners

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This week, we had to complete readings on interaction and the use of group work in the classroom. I read the chapter from Ways of Doing, which included many sample group activities for the language learning classroom. This reading surprised me, actually, because the majority of the activities were focused on creating an environment in which all learners feel safe and encouraged to participate, and included possible variations depending on the dynamic of the class and their relationships with one another. Some were also focused on mindfulness, and becoming aware of one’s own thoughts and perceptions of one another.

I found these activities to be incredibly useful, and important to consider as a teacher. Many times, when we get really focused on the outcome or product of student work, we forget about the importance of the individual student’s well-being and sense of safety and comfort in the classroom. Students come from all walks of life and have a variety of life experiences; some have experienced trauma, that may make it difficult for them to communicate and participate when they don’t feel completely safe and supported. Some have anxiety, and need a lot of extra support in order to perform at their full potential. One element of supporting these students is getting to know them, individually, and allow their fellow students to get to know them too. One activity from the reading that I feel would help with this process is called “Biography in Pictures.” In this activity, students will interview each other about their life history (similar to our language learner histories, but in interview form), and then draw pictures of the life of the fellow student that they are interviewing. The interviewee can help with the pictures, describing people and places in more detail, and can also include words so that it becomes a sort of pictorial timeline of their life, posted on the walls of the classroom when completed. I think this is a really lovely, low pressure way to support students in building stronger bonds with one another, and creating a safer, more close-knit community in the classroom.

As teachers, we need to be patient, empathetic, and compassionate to our students; we also need to help our students develop these qualities in themselves, so that they can better support their peers. Through activities like the one above, or our language learner histories, or even just including a few minutes of mindfulness practice in the classroom so that the students can stay present and relaxed, we can do more than teach a language. We can build a community of language learners, that supports and engages all members of the group, regardless of their anxiety or trauma or social issues.