During these summer months, I've been practicing martial arts. I studied in a dojo for four years, so I have a pretty solid basic set, but I haven't been to the dojo in almost four years, so my skills were not what they could have been. Besides, since that was the last time I had any regular exercise, I was powerful out of shape. So I've been practicing the basic skills, and trying to make my form as good as I know it should be. After today's exercise, a story from one of my high school classes bubbled up to the forefront of my mind.
In a conversation about band class, Tara* said, "I don't want to do concerts. I just want to play my instrument." This confused me at the time, but since that wasn't the topic of conversation, I didn't explore it too deeply. But it stayed with me, and now, 6 months later, I've been chewing on it. If you don't want to play in a concert, don't you just want to practice your instrument? Can't you do that on your own?
Then the parallels between my situation and Tara's occurred to me. If I never get into a real fight, if I never even test for another belt level, am I really practicing martial arts? If I'm not really, I don't know, "doing" kobudo, why practice? The answer came back, "I like doing it, and I need the exercise." In other words, the practice is worth doing on its own merits. If Tara felt the same way about band class, what would be my issue with that? Come to that, did I think of my high school band or choir classes as practice sessions for our thrice-annual concerts?
And then I thought about the way Tara behaved in my class. Did she engage whole-heartedly in my classroom activities? Well, most of them, with varying levels of enthusiasm. Now that I think about it, though, I can tell which activities were worth doing on their own merits and which ones were just "practices for the concert" by the way Tara acted towards them. I used to think that the class sessions that Tara and her classmates would get worked up about were the "fun" ones, the ones that involved cutting out shapes from paper or playing with toys ("utilizing manipulatives," in teacherspeke.) But now I think students worked harder and better on the activities that were worth doing on their own merit.
In contrast, they blew off the activities whose only value were as practices for other activities. You can tell these kinds of activities because, in response to the question, "Why do we have to do this?", the best answer you can come up with is, "You'll need to know it later."
I don't excuse the students' lack of personal responsibility, and in lieu of a more detailed examination of the specific activities, I stand by the value of the activities I gave my students. (I give my students practice activities I think will help them learn Spanish. I don't use "time filler" activities.)
So, I want to start looking at my daily practice activities. I've already sort of ranked them according to utility--if they're not a certain level of good pedagogy, I don't use them (or I change them so they are good pedagogy). Now I need to start ranking them according to "inherent worthwhileness." (There's got to be a better word for that.) One of my main struggles as a good teacher is student motivation, and I've done a lot of research to increase my skills in this area. Could it really be as simple as imagining myself as a 16-year-old, looking at the activity, and say, "Is this worth doing?" If the answer is "yes," then we're good. If the answer is "if I want to be able to do X, then yes," then the answer is "no."
*This isn't her name, although it's close. If you're reading this, Tara**, you know who you are. You should also know that I really do remember. Credit where credit's due, while maintaining students' privacy.
**Still not her real name.
Showing posts with label Education Fu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education Fu. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
What a language teacher's job is
On Thursday, I had a long, intense conversation with my colleague Kris. She's our instructional coach this year, and I strongly hope that she will continue that role in the years to come, even as she returns to full-time teaching duties. She expressed the concern that I jump the gun in my classes--I move too quickly from building buy-in, directly to speaking Spanish. She worries that the students don't get why they're doing what they're doing, and thus never engage, and thus never really learn. I take her observation to heart, because I'm pretty sure my kung fu is strong, but my students are not learning Spanish at the rate they should be. Good practice done badly is bad practice, and if my students aren't learning, I'm not quite doing something right.
According to Krashen, as cited in Lee and Van Patten (1995), "...as long as there is motivation and the right affective environment (e.g., low anxiety), a person cannot avoid learning a second language if there is sustained comprehensible input" (29). They cite other researchers that say this is overstating the case somewhat, and they themselves stake out the position that using the language in communicative settings is necessary for learning languages. However, to the extent that this statement is true, it has powerful implications for language learning and, by extension, language instruction. The whole rest of their book is dedicated to outlining what those implications are.
But for now, I just want to worry at that one sentence for a little while, pick it apart and apply it. I'm writing lesson plans right now, so the action items are immediately applicable--I can go from this blog screen to my unit plan, to my weekly plan, and apply what I figure out.
It looks like this:
motivation + affective environment + sustained COMPREHENSIBLE input = language learning.
According to a source I don't remember right now (it was in an audiobook I borrowed from a friend, which I've since returned), as cited by Sprick (2007), motivation is a function of value times expectancy of success. So, if students value what they're learning, their motivation increases. If the students expect to succeed at a given event, their motivation to do it increases.
The updated equation looks thus:
(value of learning X expectation) + affective environment + sustained comprehensible input = Language Learning
I don't know enough about what Lee and VanPatten mean by "affective environment" to perform any cute faux mathematical operation on it. I believe, though, that this largely refers to classroom management issues, about which I've typed extensively.
Lee and VanPatten dedicate most of their book to outlining the concept of sustained comprehensible input. They later add "meaning-bearing" to the list of qualities of valuable communication.
(value of learning X expectation) + affective environment + sustained, meaning-bearing comprehensible input = Language Learning
This means that a student has to catch that there is a meaning she is supposed to understand in the utterance. The student also needs to be able to understand some portion of the communication.
This is a pretty clear description of a language teacher's job. These work out to these action steps:
1.) Sell the value of the learning. This means explaining reasons that a student should learn languages, but also why a student would want to. (I always think of the Rosetta Stone ad: "He was a farm boy from Iowa. She was an Italian supermodel. He had one chance to impress her.") This corresponds to increasing the value of learning.
2.) Increase the expectation of success. Celebrate baby steps. Define milestones, and move heaven and earth to drag your students towards them. Once they get there, make a big deal over it.
3.) Run your classroom well. I've had a lot to say about this. Marzano has a lot to say about this. Jackson has a lot to say about this, Wong and Wong have a lot to say about this, and Sprick has a whole lot to say about this. It sort of boils down to these.
4.) Give your students language they can chew. Lee & VanPatten say that if your students are at level N of comprehension, then you should communicate with them at N + 1. That's a hard number to hit consistently, especially with a class of 20, 30, 40 language learners. (Not that I have a class of 40 people, but it's probably not far off for many of my colleagues.) Lee & VanPatten have things to say about that, too.
So, there. I've defined what a WL teacher's job is. Not exactly my original goal, but that's okay. My next trick: Matching this up with Marzano's 10 reflection questions from The Art and Science of Teaching, Jackson's 7 principles of master teachers, Kryza's "Chunk / Chew / Check" lesson-planning and differentiation model, the National Board's teacher assessment tool, and Kris's "Hook your students" principle. Also, what this means to what my class looks like.
Resources:
Jackson, R. (2009). Never work harder than your students. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Lee, J., & VanPatten, B. (1997). Making communicative language teaching happen. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Marzano, R. (2008). The art and science of teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Sprick, R. (2008). Interventions audio. Eugene, OR: Northwest Publishing.
According to Krashen, as cited in Lee and Van Patten (1995), "...as long as there is motivation and the right affective environment (e.g., low anxiety), a person cannot avoid learning a second language if there is sustained comprehensible input" (29). They cite other researchers that say this is overstating the case somewhat, and they themselves stake out the position that using the language in communicative settings is necessary for learning languages. However, to the extent that this statement is true, it has powerful implications for language learning and, by extension, language instruction. The whole rest of their book is dedicated to outlining what those implications are.
But for now, I just want to worry at that one sentence for a little while, pick it apart and apply it. I'm writing lesson plans right now, so the action items are immediately applicable--I can go from this blog screen to my unit plan, to my weekly plan, and apply what I figure out.
It looks like this:
motivation + affective environment + sustained COMPREHENSIBLE input = language learning.
According to a source I don't remember right now (it was in an audiobook I borrowed from a friend, which I've since returned), as cited by Sprick (2007), motivation is a function of value times expectancy of success. So, if students value what they're learning, their motivation increases. If the students expect to succeed at a given event, their motivation to do it increases.
The updated equation looks thus:
(value of learning X expectation) + affective environment + sustained comprehensible input = Language Learning
I don't know enough about what Lee and VanPatten mean by "affective environment" to perform any cute faux mathematical operation on it. I believe, though, that this largely refers to classroom management issues, about which I've typed extensively.
Lee and VanPatten dedicate most of their book to outlining the concept of sustained comprehensible input. They later add "meaning-bearing" to the list of qualities of valuable communication.
(value of learning X expectation) + affective environment + sustained, meaning-bearing comprehensible input = Language Learning
This means that a student has to catch that there is a meaning she is supposed to understand in the utterance. The student also needs to be able to understand some portion of the communication.
This is a pretty clear description of a language teacher's job. These work out to these action steps:
1.) Sell the value of the learning. This means explaining reasons that a student should learn languages, but also why a student would want to. (I always think of the Rosetta Stone ad: "He was a farm boy from Iowa. She was an Italian supermodel. He had one chance to impress her.") This corresponds to increasing the value of learning.
2.) Increase the expectation of success. Celebrate baby steps. Define milestones, and move heaven and earth to drag your students towards them. Once they get there, make a big deal over it.
3.) Run your classroom well. I've had a lot to say about this. Marzano has a lot to say about this. Jackson has a lot to say about this, Wong and Wong have a lot to say about this, and Sprick has a whole lot to say about this. It sort of boils down to these.
- Have a very few rules which apply all the time. Be consistent about reinforcing them positively and correcting them when necessary.
- Have procedures for everything. Teach them explicitly and rehearse them. (Behaviorism at its finest, but it will help if the students create their own procedures.)
- Make your classroom a place where it's okay to make mistakes, and teach students how to make GOOD mistakes. As Kryza likes to say, "This is a risk-taking, mistake-making classroom." In fact, Corder (as cited in Lee and VanPatten (1997)) says that mistakes are "indispensable to the learner himself" (in Lee and VanPatten, p. 22.)
4.) Give your students language they can chew. Lee & VanPatten say that if your students are at level N of comprehension, then you should communicate with them at N + 1. That's a hard number to hit consistently, especially with a class of 20, 30, 40 language learners. (Not that I have a class of 40 people, but it's probably not far off for many of my colleagues.) Lee & VanPatten have things to say about that, too.
So, there. I've defined what a WL teacher's job is. Not exactly my original goal, but that's okay. My next trick: Matching this up with Marzano's 10 reflection questions from The Art and Science of Teaching, Jackson's 7 principles of master teachers, Kryza's "Chunk / Chew / Check" lesson-planning and differentiation model, the National Board's teacher assessment tool, and Kris's "Hook your students" principle. Also, what this means to what my class looks like.
Resources:
Jackson, R. (2009). Never work harder than your students. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Lee, J., & VanPatten, B. (1997). Making communicative language teaching happen. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Marzano, R. (2008). The art and science of teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Sprick, R. (2008). Interventions audio. Eugene, OR: Northwest Publishing.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Education fu, episode 1
PROFE: Let's go over this again. The purpose of homework is to...
SEÑOR COSBY: Allow students to practice skills they already know, Profe.
PROFE: And the objective of this practice is...
COSBY: To improve the speed and accuracy of the skill.
PROFE: So far, so good. Now: The purpose of assessment.
COSBY: The purpose of assessment is to determine how well a student has learned the skills and knowledge taught. This can be used as data-gathering for how well the teacher instructed the lesson.
PROFE: Is it? Is that the purpose? [Waits expectantly.]
COSBY: Oh! That's summative assessment.
PROFE: Okay, not so bad. What's the other kind of assessment, and what's it for?
COSBY: Formative assessment, used to inform instruction.
PROFE: What does that mean, "inform instruction?"
COSBY: It's like a stepping stone in a learner's learning. It gives the instructor information about what he needs to do to maximize learning.
PROFE: It gives the instructor information?
COSBY: Well, I suppose it lets the learner know how she's doing, too.
PROFE: You should do more than "suppose," Saltamontes. It's a vital form of feedback to the student. Working a system for students to keep track of their progress is a vital component of classroom management, motivation, and self-directed learning.
COSBY: Yes, Profe.
PROFE: Now, on to providing feedback. Tell me your thoughts about it.
COSBY: It needs to be immediate and contingent.
PROFE: I think you're thinking of behavior correction.
COSBY: Hmm. Well, immediacy is important, I know.
PROFE: Yes. What's immediacy mean?
COSBY: It means you give feedback right away. If you give an assignment, correct it and give it back.
PROFE: Instead of doing what with them?
COSBY: Letting them sit on your desk until they start to decompose, then throw them out at the end of the term, Profe.
PROFE: And this is important because...?
COSBY: If you're going to have a student do the work, you have to recognize the effort.
PROFE: WRONG!
COSBY: Uh...
PROFE: Feedback has nothing to do with effort. It has everything to do with learning. The learner shows you what she knows. You take that and tell the student how to take the next step. In that way, feedback helps both student learning AND teacher's instructions.
COSBY: Isn't that...formative assessment!
PROFE: Good, Saltamontes. You may just get this through your thick skull yet. What does formative assessment have to do with grades?
COSBY [promptly]: Nothing.
PROFE: Nothing? Do you mean to tell me that you're going to make a student work through a whole lesson, turn in a homework assignment, and it's not going to show up on their grade?
COSBY: Yes, Profe. It comes back to what you just said--it's about learning. I believe it was Sensei Marzano who said that learners must do activities without grades attached, to do learning activities just to learn from them, not for the grades. Besides, if they're graded on it, lots of students won't do it.
PROFE: Do you even have to record who's done it and who hasn't, then? If it doesn't count, then you're not marking it in your grade book, are you?
COSBY: Respectfully, I disagree, Profe. If it really is formative assessment, then you need to know how well your learners have done on it, so you know what you need to do to make them better, or whether they're good enough and you can move on.
PROFE: What about the ones who don't do it?
COSBY: There's value in knowing who those students are, too. Maybe they don't know how to do it at all. Maybe they can do some of it with help. Maybe they were just absent that day. The point is, you don't know unless you record the data somewhere.
PROFE [thinks for a moment]: What is the source of Education Fu?
COSBY: Profe? I'm not sure I understand.
PROFE: Formative assessments. Summative assessments. Learning activities. Instruction. Where does it all begin?
COSBY: Umm....Classroom management?
PROFE: Wrong! That's just the dojo, that's just where it happens. Where does it come from?
COSBY [takes a slow breath in through the nose, lets it out through the mouth]: Learning goals.
PROFE: Hmm. Your learning seems to be progressing, Saltamontes. 10 more years of hard training, and you might--might, I say--be ready to begin teaching at the professional level.
SEÑOR COSBY: Allow students to practice skills they already know, Profe.
PROFE: And the objective of this practice is...
COSBY: To improve the speed and accuracy of the skill.
PROFE: So far, so good. Now: The purpose of assessment.
COSBY: The purpose of assessment is to determine how well a student has learned the skills and knowledge taught. This can be used as data-gathering for how well the teacher instructed the lesson.
PROFE: Is it? Is that the purpose? [Waits expectantly.]
COSBY: Oh! That's summative assessment.
PROFE: Okay, not so bad. What's the other kind of assessment, and what's it for?
COSBY: Formative assessment, used to inform instruction.
PROFE: What does that mean, "inform instruction?"
COSBY: It's like a stepping stone in a learner's learning. It gives the instructor information about what he needs to do to maximize learning.
PROFE: It gives the instructor information?
COSBY: Well, I suppose it lets the learner know how she's doing, too.
PROFE: You should do more than "suppose," Saltamontes. It's a vital form of feedback to the student. Working a system for students to keep track of their progress is a vital component of classroom management, motivation, and self-directed learning.
COSBY: Yes, Profe.
PROFE: Now, on to providing feedback. Tell me your thoughts about it.
COSBY: It needs to be immediate and contingent.
PROFE: I think you're thinking of behavior correction.
COSBY: Hmm. Well, immediacy is important, I know.
PROFE: Yes. What's immediacy mean?
COSBY: It means you give feedback right away. If you give an assignment, correct it and give it back.
PROFE: Instead of doing what with them?
COSBY: Letting them sit on your desk until they start to decompose, then throw them out at the end of the term, Profe.
PROFE: And this is important because...?
COSBY: If you're going to have a student do the work, you have to recognize the effort.
PROFE: WRONG!
COSBY: Uh...
PROFE: Feedback has nothing to do with effort. It has everything to do with learning. The learner shows you what she knows. You take that and tell the student how to take the next step. In that way, feedback helps both student learning AND teacher's instructions.
COSBY: Isn't that...formative assessment!
PROFE: Good, Saltamontes. You may just get this through your thick skull yet. What does formative assessment have to do with grades?
COSBY [promptly]: Nothing.
PROFE: Nothing? Do you mean to tell me that you're going to make a student work through a whole lesson, turn in a homework assignment, and it's not going to show up on their grade?
COSBY: Yes, Profe. It comes back to what you just said--it's about learning. I believe it was Sensei Marzano who said that learners must do activities without grades attached, to do learning activities just to learn from them, not for the grades. Besides, if they're graded on it, lots of students won't do it.
PROFE: Do you even have to record who's done it and who hasn't, then? If it doesn't count, then you're not marking it in your grade book, are you?
COSBY: Respectfully, I disagree, Profe. If it really is formative assessment, then you need to know how well your learners have done on it, so you know what you need to do to make them better, or whether they're good enough and you can move on.
PROFE: What about the ones who don't do it?
COSBY: There's value in knowing who those students are, too. Maybe they don't know how to do it at all. Maybe they can do some of it with help. Maybe they were just absent that day. The point is, you don't know unless you record the data somewhere.
PROFE [thinks for a moment]: What is the source of Education Fu?
COSBY: Profe? I'm not sure I understand.
PROFE: Formative assessments. Summative assessments. Learning activities. Instruction. Where does it all begin?
COSBY: Umm....Classroom management?
PROFE: Wrong! That's just the dojo, that's just where it happens. Where does it come from?
COSBY [takes a slow breath in through the nose, lets it out through the mouth]: Learning goals.
PROFE: Hmm. Your learning seems to be progressing, Saltamontes. 10 more years of hard training, and you might--might, I say--be ready to begin teaching at the professional level.
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