Author Archives: Ruoran Liu

Surviving Chinese Measure Words

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I demonstrated my lesson plan on Chinese measure words for trade fair as I found the activity incorporates several concepts I learned in Curriculum Design this semester.

The class will start with inductive approach. Students will be given a number of Chinese noun phrases, such as a car, a cat, a laptop, etc. It will be easy for them to notice that in Chinese, a measure word has to be inserted in between the numeral and the object. Then I will ask students to walk around and group authentic materials using the same measure word together. For instance, book, magazine, exercise book should be grouped together as they share the measure word “běn”, usually used for book-like objects. This activity involves TPR and the use of authentic materials. In addition, students will conclude the characteristics of each measure word on their own. Some are obvious but some requires the teacher to give additional explanation. Measure word is one of the most difficult grammar points in Chinese as there are not exact rules for how measure words should be used.

After introducing measure words, the teacher will guide the students to use it into the “I have…” sentence structure that was already learned. At first, students will say “I have books”. Now, they are able to produce “I have a book” using the correct measure word. Then, students will practice with their possessions.

The last 15 minutes of the lesson, students will be engaged in an Island Survival Game, in which they will be told that they are on an isolated island and they can each choose five items that they consider to be the most necessary for survival. They may choose from bread, clothes, tents, logs, fresh water, money, passport, etc (represented by candies, origami and other crafts). Afterwards, the teacher will draw a survival situation from an envelope, for example, the next boat arrives on the third day, survivors need to have three bread (the latter part of the sentence will be in Chinese). Student who chooses three bread will announce “I have three bread…” and pick the next survival situation.

The original lesson is planned for 50 minutes. If I have extra time, I will also introduce the question form so the last activity will be more interactive. Students may ask “how many/much … do you have?” and others respond. The question form will allow the activity to take on a TPR approach. Students may walk around, ask each other questions and write the survivors’ name next to the survival conditions.

From P&P to CD, I realized that fun activities work for everyone. As teachers, we need to integrate age- & level-appropriate content into these activities in order to make them effective.

 

Reflection on Dr. Lyster’s Presentation

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Yesterday I gave a presentation in my Chinese class regarding that language and culture cannot be separated. From today’s talk, I learned that content and language cannot be separated as well. The traditional approach restricts the inputs by teaching only the language features or the content. However, students are capable of learning “subject-matter content while bypassing grammar” (Lyster, 2015, presentation). Therefore, Dr. Lyster proposed the idea of integrating language and content through counterbalance.

There are two approaches: proactive and reactive. I appreciate that he gave concrete examples for the four steps in proactive approach to help us better understand. The four steps for planning the integration are noticing activity, awareness activity, guided practice and autonomous practice. It reminds me of the teaching method I usually use in weekend Chinese school. I always ask my students to highlight the new vocabularies while I was reading the text (noticing). After teaching the new characters, I made up a riddle; e.g. “hóu hóu hóu hóu, hóu zi dè hóu – “hóu” is the newly learned character; “hóu zi” is a word that contains the newly learned character (awareness). Then I ask them to pick their favorite ones to write a paragraph. I wonder whether this last step counts as guided practice or autonomous practice. My initial thought on the design was to create more opportunities for the students to practice and help them remember these characters. Now after hearing the talk, I realize that I have already started the integrating process of language and content.

Different from proactive approach, reactive approach focuses on giving corrective feedback during the process. We just had an engaging discussion on error correction in SLA class, and I was almost convinced that feedback could be harmful. Therefore, I was glad that Dr. Lyster pointed out that the effectiveness of corrective feedback has been confirmed by different studies. There are different types of corrective feedback, including explicit correction, recasts, request clarification, repetition, etc. Personally, I prefer repetition, so I can hear the error and fix it. However, in a real classroom setting, teachers cannot correct all mistakes or errors made by students. In order to not interrupt or humiliate students, I recommend the way my Spanish teacher gave feedback. While we were talking, he took notes on our errors and quickly categorized them. A few minutes before class ended, he summarized the errors on board using the content we provided earlier.

I have always believed that language learning is not about knowing the language, but using the language. I hope to continue learning from gurus of the field and working towards the direction.

Pedagogical Trade Fair-Escape the Chinese

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In recent years, Escape Room becomes a popular activity in Asian countries. There are also mobile and online games. I thought it might be a possible assessment for language class so Kim and I decided to work on it for the Pedagogical Trade Fair.

The hardest part of our project is to come up with clues. The point of the game is that all the clues are connected, and eventually lead people get out of the room.  For our project, we also need to add in the Chinese language factors. We used Chinese idiom because advanced students had previous knowledge with it and they could also learn new idioms.

Procedure:

  • Students imagine themselves locked up in a room; they need to find clues in order to find the key and get out
  • The clues are hidden in different parts of the classroom; students need to have certain knowledge on Chinese idioms in order to solve the clues

Escape the Chinese Room video: https://youtu.be/7z83L52Ardc

English Escape Room Games:

  1. http://www.tvokids.com/games/bigescape
  2. http://www.tvokids.com/games/bigescape2

Escape the TFL Room

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Overview:

This project will take place in the middle school TFL classroom. The project will be completed by groups of 4 students at different times throughout the semester. The course content of this semester is focused on mystery and adventure stories. Each week, one group will present a mystery project for their classmates to complete. Students are encouraged to incorporate class vocabulary and content they’ve learned into the project. The following class period after each project, the teacher will lead a reflection in which they will discuss challenges that the students experienced while designing and participating in the project.

Procedure:

Near the beginning of the semester, the teacher will demonstrate an example of the project the students will produce. The project consists of a backstory, and problem, along with a series of scavenger hunt clues for solving the problem. Students will form groups of four near the beginning of the semester, and each group will design their mystery over the course of a couple of weeks and then implement it for the class, having a different group present their mystery each week. The rest of the class will wait outside while the group which is presenting hides clues and props around the classroom. Then the rest of the class comes in and tries to solve the mystery. The presenting group will observe and take notes while their classmates are sleuthing. They need to write a reflection based on their observations and possible things to improve on in the future.

Variation:

One variation is to have the clues based on the grammar themes; for example, prepositions, nouns, etc. Each teaching language will also have variation in authentic material use and cultural context, for example, Spanish mystery stories or TV series. Another variation for higher-level learners is to take their back stories and expand them into short stories. Students can also film the escape room project and create a documentary on their experiences.

By Josiah, Jerry, Kim, Chandra and Amy

Bayview Observation

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Teachers: Andrew & Kim

Observation date: 11/13/2015

Site: Bay View Academy

Description:

Andrew and Kim collaboratively taught a beginning-level Chinese class in fourth grade at Bay View Academy. There were 28 students in the class, and they were sitting in three rows.

To start the class, Andrew raised his voice and said in Chinese, “hello, little friend” (literal translation). He repeated several times, and asked students to guess the meaning. Students quickly recognized “hello” and “little,” but had trouble with “friend.” Kim assisted Andrew to help students guess the meaning.

Andrew started with teaching numbers. He said the numbers in Chinese while showing the students the correct Chinese hand gestures. Kim also showed the hand gestures to the other half of the class. To help students remember the numbers, Andrew used exaggeration and connection with English (e.g. “five” is the similar pronunciation as “wooo”). 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, they reviewed three times. The second and third times were faster as they got better. Then, Andrew made the students apply the new knowledge into counting off groups. They did a quick group activity, in which the class got too loud and Andrew ordered, “One at a time.” His classroom management was very effective.

After finishing teaching numbers, Kim started her TPR activity. Students need to push aside their desks and chairs, which took about three minutes. Kim explained the game: she would throw the mini basketball to a student; the student would say “I am + name” and throw the ball to the next person. She then introduced the words “I” and “you,” and the sentence structures, “I am” and “you are.” The students were very loud; I could barely hear Kim from the back. In addition, the circle kept getting smaller because the classroom was crowded. Andrew helped coordinate so Kim could do the activity. Kim scaffolded well by first teaching “I” “You,” and then “I am” “You are” structure. But when doing the activity, most students have trouble producing the “I am + name” sentence. Kim patiently explained.

After this activity, students were told to sit on the floor. One of the teachers (I forgot which one) asked, “would you like to learn some adjectives in Chinese?” A few students said loudly, “No.” Andrew continued, “We are going to learn it anyways.” There were only five minutes left for the class. At this point, students were even more excited, so the last part of the lesson was quick and hard to carry out as planned.

Reflection:

I know that Andrew and Kim have prepared a lot for this class, and I feel bad that they didn’t get to go through all the interesting content. Apparently, they were unaware that the classroom setting was in rows, which made their activity harder to carry out. I wonder if the setting was meant for better classroom order. However, the students were too energetic, and the circle activity energized them even more. I think meditation should be added into course design for these students. I also think that if the current seat chart doesn’t work as well, the teacher should consider changing the setup and make it more effective. I noticed that the two corners chatted a lot during the lesson. A suggestion for Andrew and Kim is that be alert about students’ reaction. Students showed that they could no longer take any more inputs during the circle activity. In order for the lesson to be more effective, it would be better to stop teaching new content, and review what they have learned instead.

First Grade TPR Activity

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My Chinese class gets an opportunity to teach Chinese at Stevenson School this week. I taught a 15-minute first grade class on family members. There are 25 students in total. They have been taking Chinese class once a week since this August, and they just finished learning about family members recently. Therefore, I designed a review lesson using Total Physical Response.

My original design for the class is going over vocabulary words from a family tree and teaching the sentence structure, “this is…” I did the demo class in Chinese class and received suggestions from Professor Dai that songs and riddles are more attractive to first graders. I have no experience teaching first graders so I decided to take her advice.

In my updated lesson plan, I made up a simple and rhythmic riddle using the five vocabulary words (grandfather, grandmother, father, mother, and baby) and onomatopoeia. I found cute cartoon pictures for the five characters that match with the riddle. In the pictures, each character is doing something that distinguishes him or her from the rest. For example, grandmother is dancing. I thought that movements might engage the students more, so I designed five easy moves to match with the characters as well. When I saw them enjoy themselves singing and dancing, I knew I made the right decision.

Good classroom management contributes to the success of this lesson. Students have two ways to sit on the carpet: circle and number spot. They sit in a circle when hearing the “circle” command and sit on their numbers after hearing “number spot” command. It saved me much time on re-arrangement. I also appreciate their attentiveness on learning the riddle and the moves. Seeing them singing and dancing made me feel so happy and accomplished.

Decoding Chinese Pictograms

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When we first brain stormed on the lesson plan, Andrew inspired me on the decoding idea. I am a big fan of detective fictions, and I recently become interested in integrating escape room model in language assessment. Decoding is the core concept of escape room.

Decoding is interesting in a way that students get a good amount of information; based on these information, students need to stretch a bit and find out the unknown information that they could use to solve the problem. It is similar to the i+1 approach advocated by Krashen. Decoding is also a fun activity that initiate self-learning and improve students’ critical thinking ability. Students love fun activities, especially elementary school students. A good activity design can well capture students’ attention and engage different types of learners.

Here’s my specific design for the decoding game:

  • Each student gets a “I Love Chinese” booklet. They form groups based on the color of characters they receive. There are 6 groups in total, with 5 students per group.
  • Each group/table gets an envelope with 3 pieces of hints. Considering they are fourth graders, I put 2 useful hints (that help them get one answer right away) in the same envelope so they get a clear idea of what they should do for this activity.
  • After 2 minutes of decoding, the groups will move to the next table to look for more hints.
  • After the groups return to their original table, I will ask different groups to report their findings.

Clarification:

  1. Pictograms are ancient Chinese characters (pictures in fact) that could be drawn from objects (the Sun, the moon, person, animals, etc.).
  2. Hints: I found pictures on how pictograms evolve to modern Chinese characters. Each pictograph evolves 5 times. I put the original object and first two evolutionary characters on one hint; the later evolutionary character and the modern Chinese character on the other hint. Students have the modern Chinese characters on their booklet. They will need to line up the two correct hints, and find the original image of the modern Chinese character.

While I believe that my activity design is interesting and is appropriate for real beginners, I wasn’t aware of that there were 30 students in the room, and moving around is not a good idea. Fortunately, the students are well-behaved, which helped me achieve my goal. But from the actual teaching experience, I realized that my decoding activity would be best for class size of 12 to 20. In addition, I need to work on time management. I had 20 minutes for this activity, but I spent too much time on students sharing and giving instruction, so I went over 5 minutes. I didn’t know how to effectively stop students from sharing and transit to the next section.

Overall, this is a great start and I look forward to the next teaching demo!

Lesson Plan for English Weather

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Warm-Up

1) Review basic weather words and key expressions through flash cards [2 mins]

2) Charades game [5 mins]

  • Divide students into two groups: Group A & Group B
  • Group A selects one student to guess first while Group B choose a weather word from the flash cards
  • One student from Group B shows the selected word to Group A, and Group A give clues (if the word was said, Group B need to choose another word)
  • If the student (from Group A) guessed right, Group A would switch another student to guess
  • If the student (from Group A) guessed wrong or used “Pass” (each group has 1 Pass), he/she stayed for another round
  • The groups switch after 2 minutes
  • The group that guessed more words wins

* Charades! could also be found on App Store

Poem

3) Read individually, and underline/highlight all weather words and words they don’t understand [3 mins]

4) Talk with a partner, help each other define difficult vocabularies, discuss the content and come up with one question [5 mins]

5) Discuss the poem as a whole class [15 mins]

  • Ask each group to contribute two words they understand better after discussion
  • Teacher writes them on board and talks about them in context (poem)
  • Go over the difficult/important sentences in the poem
  • Let the groups ask their questions and everyone helps answering them

5) Dramatic reading [10 mins]

  • Give the students a few minutes to prepare
  • Ask student volunteers to read the poem out loud

Song

7) Listen to the song [6 mins]

  • Students write down the words they recognize (listen for the first time)
  • Distribute lyrics with missing words and have students fill in blanks (listen for the second time)

8) Discussion [3 mins]

  • Teacher shows the average temperature in Britain
  • Which one is more realistic?

Homework [1 min]

9) Creative writing: write a poem using the actual weather data

 

 

Ayako, Phil, Amy, Annabelle

Second Blog Post on Metacognitive Learning

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During a language course, there are many ways to incorporate metacognitive learning strategies in order to maximize language acquisition. One option is to create a pre-reading routine in which learners are asked to say or write one thing they hope to learn from the text, one thing they will look for in the text, and any initial questions they may have. This can then be followed by reflection activities, in which the students reflect on one (or more) things they learned, something interesting or new that they noticed, and any lingering questions or clarifications. In general, metacognitive strategies can be used to guide learning and check in on learner progress throughout the course.

Metacognition, the process of understanding one’s strengths and weaknesses as a learner, can help students become more effective learners. There are a number of good metacognition strategies one can use to succeed in graduate school. As there will be some big projects and papers throughout the semester, it would be helpful for learners to plan ahead and prioritize in order to avoid a chaotic situation at the end. If making plans was not a strength of the learner, one could also seek help from useful resources, like professors or their classmates. After years of education, everyone should have developed some strategies that bring success to learning.

As for cognitive learning during a language course, there are many strategies that can be used. Students can group new items that have similar meanings or sounds as a way of memorization. When they have trouble remembering them, they can also link them to certain images in their mind. If understanding meanings of words help them memorize better, they can translate words or sentences of a foreign language into their own language. As to go a little further, they can rehearse and repeat certain phrases on their own. Other strategies such as cognate recognition, deduction, induction and inferencing can allow students to speed up their learning and remembering as well. Finally, as in any other course, it is important to take notes, review and summarize what they study in class.

Possible Applications to success in learning in graduate school using metacognitive learning strategies combines a variety of different techniques that harbor strong practices in how individuals understand their own learning styles. Besides knowing what technique works best, be it note taking, reviewing, or organizing depending on each individuals needs, it is also important for graduate level students to understand that with the responsibility of putting metacognitive learning strategies into practice that they consider their well-being in the process of figuring out their best learning strategies.

By Chandra, Amy, Jerry and Danna.

Thoughts on Life Line Activity

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Each of the group members come up with 3 questions that can be shared with other members and then write each question on a sticky note. A total of 12 sticky notes will be used as a board game, and each member takes turn rolling a dice. If a player lands on his or her own sticky note, then each of the other 3 members will ask one question to that player and the sticky note will be removed from the board. If a players lands on a sticky note of another member, then that player will ask one question to that member but the sticky note stays on the board. The game will continue on until all the sticky notes are removed from the board.

The benefits of this activity vary greatly and serves a dual purpose, if not more. On the one hand, it brings students together, helps them learn interpersonal skills as well as act as a sort of icebreaker for students and bring them together in a fun and collaborative way. On the other hand, this activity also creates buzzing conversations relating to the topic of the course, discussions of their experiences relating to the subject they are all learning, and other relative topics having to do with the course.

This activity would be a great opportunity for beginning level learners to develop their descriptive vocabulary and capacity to ask questions. For younger children, whose writing skills may not be as advanced, the activity could be adjusted to picture drawing rather than writing, so that time is better spent on the oral interaction portion. For beginning level learners, games are a wonderful tool to make language learning interesting and engaging, and I think this would be a great game for the beginning classroom.

A variation of the game could be used in beginning language classes. Students would be put in groups of four. Each student would write down names of three animals that were considered “special” to them on the sticky notes (e.g. favorite, least favorite, most scared of, first pet, etc.). Afterwards, they would put the sticky notes in random order and start rolling die. When landed on the animal written by other players, current player could ask a question using “is it?” (e.g. is it your first pet/favorite animal…) If the answer was yes, the player got a point. When landed on the animal the current player wrote, simply moved forward one step (or until the first one that was written by other players). The main goal of the game was to encourage interaction among players.

By Chandra, Danna, Jerry and Amy