The Teacher that Students Remember

My searches through Twitter this week have led me to a site that discusses what makes students remember a teacher. This is a topic that has surfaced continuously throughout the semester in all of my education classes. In this article it lists eleven habits that make an effective teacher; enjoys teaching, makes a difference, spreads positivity, gets personal, gives one hundred percent, stays organized, is open minded, has standards, finds inspirations, embraces change, and creates reflections. I would say that all of these qualities are ideal for an educator, but many times some of these can be discouraged by administration, for example, gets personal. More often than not teachers are dissuaded to become too personal with their students because it can create misunderstandings amongst other people. On the other hand, has standards is an important aspect of being an educator, because if a teacher does not set limits and boundaries students can take advantage of the situation. There is no need to be a dictator in the classroom, but just letting students know that they will not get away with everything is necessary for a safe environment. Overall, I find these habits essential for educators. 

Link to article. 

Reading Comprehension in Target Language

Many students have difficulties with reading in their native tongue, well just imagine the problems they face when attempting to do this in a foreign language. This week in señora Hitz blog she focuses on the tactics that she uses to see if students understand the text that they read. She mentions that the typical way of doing this in any language is by having the children read the story and then giving them questions to answer. When doing this in a foreign language this approach can be utilized in two different ways; one having students read the story in the target language and respond to the questions in target language, or have the students read the text in the target language and respond in their native language. Giving these variations is important because a student can match the question with a phrase from the text and not necessarily know what the phrase means, therefore, having them write it in their native tongue makes them translate the meaning before they write it down. Also, by having them respond in the foreign language they can practice writing in the language they are learning. Both ways are valid in teaching students another language.

Reflection on Salman Khan's Flipped Classroom

Salman Khan began posting flipped classroom videos on math topics to help his cousins. After a short amount of time he started getting views beyond his family, and they were positively responding to his videos. Then he was receiving messages from teachers saying that they were using his videos to use a flipped classroom, which is assigning the videos to watch for homework and doing the actually exercises in the classroom this way students can interact with each other and the teacher can pin point what the students are not understanding.
I can say that I have watched these videos when I was taking AP chemistry and AP statistics in high school, and they helped me comprehend certain topics that I did not understand. More so I used them for chemistry because my teacher was not the best, and I had difficulties passing the exams. After seeing the videos I was able to better understand the subject. Also, I used them to refresh the material the teacher presented in class and that would be on an exam. Viewing this through my personal experience the videos are extremely useful for personal learning new material.

Using Literature to Teach the Subjective Tense

In this week's blog post by Señora Hitz she discusses how she uses the book Bianca Nieves y los 7 toritos to teach her students one of the most difficult grammatical tenses to comprehend; the subjective. The reason why this tense can be particular difficult for an English native speaker is because the manner in which the subjective is used in English is much less complex and similar to the indicative. Meanwhile in romance languages, such as, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish the subjective incorporates the tenses from the indicative (e.i. past, present, future, present progressive, etc.), but changes the way that the verbs are conjugated. Therefore, Señora Hitz uses a story to teach her students this tense. This way they are able to see in what context it is used and how it is properly used. After the students read five chapters she gives them handouts that ask which character said which phrases and all the phrases are in the subjective. Including this method in the classroom helps students fully grasp the idea of the subjective tense.

Twitter Reflection

This week on twitter it was interesting to see what new information I could find. One post that I came across was by Perla Jones, who shared a link to, "The Cold, Hard Truth About Employee Engagement". This article states several captivating statistics about the workplace, starting out with that only 48% of employees are happy at work. A large part of why people are not content at work is because they do not feel as though they have been recognized for their work progress, achievements, or given timely feedback. Another factor is that people feel like they do not fit in culturally, and 70% of employees say that they do not know their companies cultural value. This fact was among the most fascinating for me because many employers strive for a diverse workplace, yet, most of their workers do not the role that culture plays in the workplace. With this in mind people in general must become more culturally sensitive in this ever diverse world.

Instructing Higher Level Classes

When the material that a instructor is teaching becomes harder it can also become more difficult to incorporate interesting and captivating activities in the classroom. For language educators Señora Hitz provides an example of what she does with her students who have 4+ years of Spanish experience. She selects 3 short fiction or non-fiction books for the students to read in the beginning of class. Then she will allow them to share their thoughts and opinions about the readings. This struck   such a discussion among the students that a 20 minute activity took the entire class time. Hitz mentions that this is because we communicate through sharing and having conversations flow naturally in our native language, making it a great way for using a second language. Then she explains that high frequency words can be used to strength the students' vocabulary. In this post the example she gives is the word "crecer" over time this word was used in a variety of different ways to demonstrate all the possible manners to use this word, and sure enough the students began to integrate this term. Using this many be a better manner to teach students vocabulary rather than giving them a list of vocabulary words.

What is ACTFL?

While browsing through twitter this past week I came across the acronym ACTFL. In today's world there are a plethora of acronyms most of which I have no idea what they mean, including this one. My curiosity urged me to look into the significance of this phrase, which lead me to Charla Lorenzen's twitter account where I learned that ACTFL stands for American Council of on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. This took me my surprise because I am a junior in college studying to be a language teacher and have never heard of this council before. As I further looked into ACTFL and Charla's twitter feed I was connected to the site for the program guide for the most recent ACTFL convention. Here I noticed that their conventions focus on new ideas and technologies to teaching world languages, and the more I read the more I was able to learn about the myriad of techniques that can be used to teach languages. Seeing this gave me hope that the days of instructing languages strictly through text books and learning conjugations will come to an end sooner rather than later.

Link to Charla Lorenzen's twitter
Link to ACTFL program guide

Interactive Reading for World Language Class

Many times it is difficult to engage students in reading activities in their native tongue let alone in another language. One tactic that señora Hitz utilizes is interactive reading. Her way of doing this is by writing a story and giving certain words or phrases physical gestures for the students to do while the story is being read, and to insure that the students are learning relative information she writes the story using particular vocabulary so that the class can see how they are applied properly. The example that she gives in her blog is "Larry el vampiro", in which she color codes the text so that the students know when and what to do or say as the story is being told. I think that this is a wonderful idea to include not only visual and auditory aspects, but also physical. This way the teacher is covering a wide range of learning methods making it possible to reach almost every student.  

Link to blog

BeeLine Reader

Just a short time ago Diego Ojeda tweeted out about BeeLine Reader, which helps students read better in any language. The way that this works is that the color of the font slightly changes colors so that your eye better follows the text, and claims that 90% of people who use this app have seen benefits. It also states that 20%-30% of people show that they can reader faster than reading regularly colored text. The main drawback to this app is that it does cost money to use, and could just be an additional charge of schools when on standardized tests and almost all texts are written in the standard black ink. I believe that there are better ways to improve someone's reader other than only changing the color of the font, because they could still be encountering problems with comprehension.

Link to twitter

Language Teacher Spotlight Series

In this blog post by Marie O'Sullivan she interview Garry Jones, who is the founder of Independent English and is a English teacher. He discusses what drew him into learning other languages and why he decided to become a teacher. One thing that grabbed my attention about this article was when Jones speaks about his experiences as an instructor, especially, the time when he was teaching exchange students from England and one of them caught his desk on fire. Not something I am looking forward to when I began teaching my own classes, but every experience makes someone into a better instructor. On the other hand, he mentions his best experience teaching was when they had international day at the college where he taught and that he could experience a small part of the culture of every country. After reading this post I further understand the difficulties and rewards of becoming a teacher.

Link to blog

Applying Badges in the Classroom

Society today is heavily focused on new innovations, and everyone desires to develop the best ideas. When it comes to the classroom a different notion has been considered, which is gamifying or using game elements in school to encourage students' learning. One aspect of this is using badges to reward students' behavior. In this post by Chris Aviles he describes how he has used badges or achievements as he calls them in the classroom, despite that many believe awarding students this way will, "intrinsic motivation to learn." He gives several examples and do's and don't's of using badges. A point that he makes that is valid is that educators should make badges as concrete as possible. Having badges along the lines of the friendliest student of the day or the most helpful makes it difficult to determine which student deserves the badge, and it can cause trouble between the students. Therefore, he suggests to make badges something more measurable, such as, giving rewards to those who hand in their homework early. The idea he presents does show that students will be inclined to want to participate in class. Chris also mentions that pupils should receive timely recognition for their achievements, because the child is more likely to repeat the good deed if they rewarded immediately or soon after they completed the achievement. With these aspects in mind it is possible to effectively use badges in the classroom. 

Helpful Classroom Apps

As technology becomes more available to everyone it is plausible to believe that these advancements will be used in the classroom. This week in señora Hitz's blog she makes note of the three apps that she has being using at school. One of them being Tap Roulette, which makes it easy for a teacher to choose a student or students that they need to volunteer. Each child places a finger on the iPad and the digital roulette wheel is spun. Then whosever finger appears with a red rim around it is chosen for the activity. The downside to this is that it will only work with a small class size, and unfortunately most classes are fairly large. Another app that she uses is called, Team Shake; this quickly divides the students into groups, and if a student is absent you can simply tap on their name to take them offline. Using Team Shake takes the time out of assigning pupils to groups, and does it randomly so they are not working with the same classmates repetitively. However, the app is not free. Lastly, she mentions an application named Touch Blur. What the app does is blur over a section of a picture just by tapping on which part of the picture you want blurred. Thus, educators can share pictures of their students without showing the faces of the children they teach. All of these apps provide handy tools for teachers that maximize time in the classroom.

Link to blog

Reflecting on Teaching and Tea's Blogpost

Since Marie O'Sullivan's post from this week provides a less interesting topic to my research of how to enhance teaching a world language, I decided to reflect on her post from September titled; Debates and Discussions in Language Lessons. In this post she remarks on the issue of involving students in class. Her solution to this is by giving opinionated questions or arguments that provoke students to give their own ideas. Then she goes into more detail about how she would construct a class using this concept. I found her suggests useful for teaching students if they have enough of a command of the language to do so. It would be difficult for students who do not know the language well enough to answer and discuss; "Is it too late to prevent, or even reverse, climate change?" A better way to do this is to ask these types of questions when or after students have learned helpful terms so that they can fully develop answers to these questions. Also, this technique would be difficult to do with younger children, because they do not have the information to talk about these topics. Overall, this is a proper way to engage students in class.

Link to blog:
http://www.sanako.com/language-teaching-blog/debates-and-discussions-in-language-lessons/

Thoughts on Sharing Lesson Plans and Juggling

Señora Hitz focuses on the struggles that can be an obstacle when not using a standard textbook method of teaching world languages. By sharing some of her lesson plans señora Hitz gives other teachers some possibilities to cut down the time that they must spend writing up lesson plans so that they can spend their time with their families or on other school work. One educator wrote a comment that by putting away the textbook and redoing her lessons plans to fit the curriculum was taking over her life, which makes sharing lesson plans the perfect way to feed off of other instructors and try methods that fit their way of teaching. This is more relevant with languages because the manner in which languages are taught is not conducted for learners to efficiently remember what they were taught in the classroom. When using other approaches pupils will be given different ways to grasping a concept making it possible for all students to understand the material. Making sharing ideas a beneficial method for educators to give alternatives to the standard way of teaching so that students will be able to truly learn another language rather than have only a few key phrases memorized.

Link to señora Hitz blog:
http://palmyraspanish1.blogspot.com.es/

Reflection on Blogpost from Back to School Night

This week's post by Señora Hitz was about how she conducted her back to school night. She explained to the parents how she uses TPRS (teaching proficiency through reading and storytelling) and CI (comprehensible input) in her classroom. What I found interesting from this post was that many parents appeared to be skeptical about this form of teaching. However, when Señora Hitz asked parents to finish this sentence; "I took four years of Spanish/French/German in high school and I..." they knew what she was implying. Most people who study a language throughout high school will not remember a large part of what they learned. With this form of instruction there are clear outputs in this case they are; timed writings, story recalls, and alternate endings. All of these outputs are reasonable for the students to achieve, and they are not the standard vocabulary and grammar tests. Through this approach the students can learn vocabulary and grammar in a nontraditional manner, which will allow them to better retain what they were taught. I believe with this and a combination of different teaching tactics will provide an excellent environment for children to learn another language.

Link to blog:
http://palmyraspanish1.blogspot.com.es/

Thoughts on the Article: George Lucas, Life on the Screen: Visual Literacy in Education

While reading this interview of George Lucas and his thoughts on the American education system, I realized that he made a plethora of valid points. First, he stated that our way of teaching dates back to the nineteenth-century while we are well into the twenty-first century. George mentions that students should be able to learn skills that will be useful for them in today's society, which is an accurate statement. How will our country advance if our youth is not educated to work in a modern and highly technological world? However, many school administrators see incorporating technology, filmmaking, and music as an extra aspect to the school day instead of essential to a child's learning process. Another point that George Lucas makes is that learning how to communicate is a circle, with math being the most straightforward, and music being more emotional, yet all are important for us to be able to communicate with one another. If this notion was implemented in schools it is likely that we would see a change in the way students behave, because they will be able to express themselves freely. With this being said there has been some small steps in regards to modernizing our education system, and hopefully there will be more actions taken to provide students with the best possible education.

Link to article:
http://www.edutopia.org/life-screen

Reflection on Using Blogs as Part of your PLN

This article explains the significance of blogs for educators, and how to properly run a blog. For teachers, blogs are the perfect means for sharing information and collaborating ideas amongst other teachers. Also, blogs give insight into an educator's classroom so that parents are able to see what and how their children are learning. However, the most important aspect is the fact that they can help expand someone's personal learning network (PLN). This reading suggests that the best way to broaden a PLN is by following other educators' blogs. By doing this new teachers can ask bloggers questions in the comment section and receive timely feedback.  I believe that this is an accessible resource for all because blogs are easy to update and follow through apps and smartphones. With the technology there is today it is necessary that we as educators stay connected so we can provide our students with the most knowledge possible.

Link to article:
http://teacherchallenge.edublogs.org/pln-challenge-5-using-blogs-as-part-of-your-pln/

Reflection on Teaching Spanish with Comprehensible Input: Using CI to Make Comparisons

In this weeks blog post Señora Hitz mentions how she uses comprehensible input to teach her students how to make comparisons in Spanish. She discusses in detail how she prepares this lesson by putting together a power point and using pictures of famous people for the students to compare. Then she has her pupils name other famous people and compare them to their classmates. I find this method of teaching comparisons effected because it allows students to make up their own comparisons and learn from each other by making comparisons to their schoolmates. In doing so the children are able to better remember how to properly make comparisons. This instruction also requires little preparation on the teacher's part because the only material needed is the power point. By using this method Señora Hitz is able to reinforce her student's knowledge of making comparisons in Spanish.

Link to Señora Hitz blog:
http://palmyraspanish1.blogspot.com.es/

Reflection on Teaching Spanish with Comprehensible Input: Reading, Storytelling, and Ideas for Technology use in the Target Language.

In this blog post by Señora Hitz, she mentions a teaching method called +1 Quiz ?, which gives students an opportunity to earn an extra credit point if they write a sentence at the end of their quiz about something that is happening in the students' lives. The examples she gives here are written in English because she wanted to let her pupils express themselves freely. Señora Hitz then wrote a comment back to her students after she read their sentences. I find this approach helpful in understanding what is happening in the students' lives, but it also runs the risk of having a student give too much information. Also, I do not see how this method enforces a student's understanding of the subject material. It seems to be an appropriate means of getting to know the children in class, but it is not an aspect I would incorporate on every quiz. Maybe, I would use this method more if I limited the +1 Quiz ? by giving them a more specific topic for them to respond to, such as, what did they learn in class this week, what is something exciting that happened in school today, or what is something they did not understand in class. This way you can learn about the students without them being able to give too much personal information. Perhaps, every once in awhile I would make the +1 Quiz ? a free response to allow them to be creative. While thinking about my own teaching methods this is one aspect that I will keep in mind.

Link to Señora Hitz's blog:
http://palmyraspanish1.blogspot.com.es/

Reflection on Tea and Teaching: Language Teacher Spotlight

The blog that I read this week was Marie O'Sullivan's Tea and Teaching blog, where she demonstrates and provides helpful information on how technology is useful for teaching languages. In this weeks post Marie interviews Kieran Donaghy, a teacher of languages at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona. Donaghy's response to the question: "What is the best thing that has ever happened to you while teaching?", is one of the aspects that I found most interesting. He stated; "There’s no one incident which stands out but there have been lots of times when I’ve seen that helping a student learn English has had a positive impact on their education or career which is very satisfying". His statement reinforced the notion that teaching is not about the teacher, it is about the student, and how we as educators can better someone's life by teaching them a valuable skill. Another aspect of this interview that was thought-provoking was when Donaghy mentioned that many people of an older age have been able to learn English and that this went against the common conception that people can only learn languages when they are young. I found this inspiring because it shows that given the proper resources anyone can learn a new language and that people should not put up barriers for themselves while attempting to learn something new. When I begin formally teaching it will be beneficial for me to kept these aspects in mind so that I can educate my students properly. 

Link to Marie O'Sullivan's blog:
http://www.sanako.com/language-teaching-blog/

¡Welcome!

This blog has been created as a requirement for INTC 2610, Instructional Technology for the K-12 teacher. Its goal is to show future teachers the benefits of blogging for communication, professional development and public relations.