If it's August 15, I must be scrambling to get the new school year ready.
Today's objective: Review and revise beginning-of-year paperwork (syllabus, rules, procedures, etc.). Look over Wong and Wong's "First Days of School" and Sprick's "Discipline in the Secondary Classroom" as a refresher.
Draft new paperwork: Portfolio sheet and 2-year topic outline. (Notably for Spanish 1 and the middle schools.) Review portfolio assessment from Edutopia, Curtain & Dahlberg's "Languages and Children," and Shrum & Glisan's "Teacher's Handbook."
Get all paperwork possible ready to print and copy when I go in to school tomorrow.
Any time left over should be spent reviewing new "Michigan Learns Online" materials and setting up online supplies through CLEAR.
All that should only take me, mmm, 16 hours or so. I should be done in time to start tomorrow's to-do list.
Showing posts with label Randy Sprick. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Randy Sprick. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
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.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
"So, what do you do in Spanish class?" (1 of 2)
Categories of classroom activities
At the last MiBLSi conference I went to--actually a coaches' meeting, which I wouldn't normally attend--some of the local experts shared a lot of techniques on how to work with our peers on classroom management techniques. The title of the meeting was probably something like "Coaching teachers," in fact. At the meeting, one of the tools they shared was a "classroom behavior" matrix. It looks just like the school-wide behavior matrix, but instead of different locations, the up-and-down categories are different kinds of classroom activities. (If I can find the example they showed online, and I figure out how to cite it properly, I'll try to post it here.)
Doing this had only begun to start to commence to consider crossing my mind at the end of August. At that time, I resisted the idea--"we do SO MANY different types of activities in Spanish class," I told myself, "that putting them into few enough categories to be meaningful would be impossible." Then, I ran out of prep time (read: summer vacation) and started teaching again. The idea was quickly forgotten--"besides," I thought, "I have a whole summer planning and practicing an improved version of my classroom management system; surely this year will be better than last year."
Well, fair enough, but when the idea of a classroom activity behavior matrix came up again, I was supremely intrigued. But what sort of categories would classroom activities fit into? How do you take all of the multiple intelligences, and varied interests, and differentiated levels of activities, and put them into categories? And not just any categories--the categories, I'm thinking, should have the following characteristics:
1.) They should be specific enough to be meaningful. I don't think "Vocabulary practice" will be specific enough, although I reserve the right to change my mind.
2.) They should be general enough that 5 or 6 of them should describe the vast majority of on-task classroom time. "Flyswatter game" carries its own special rule set, but doesn't necessarily belong here.
3.) They should (obviously) increase transparency of the workings of the classroom--that's the whole point in defining things, to take the mystery and guesswork out of it. This will help the students know what is expected of them, and help the teacher know which set of rules everybody's playing by at any given time.
The sample they gave us (man, I wish I could find it online! Well, maybe I'll end up reproducing the hard copy they gave us) had such things as "Beginning class," "Individual practice," "Small-group practice," "Whole class practice," "Instruction," and "Leaving class." Maybe these are good enough, but I have my doubts--there are different kinds of practice, the variety of activities really IS tremendous, etc. But following the "Ready! Fire! Aim!" philosophy I'm trying with good practice, I'm going to make a sample matrix, using these as activities.
Before doing all of this, a teacher has his or her classroom rules. (Or you could tie them into school-wide expectations.) And the matrix shows how students behave during each kind of activity for each rule or behavior expectation. So, using the categories above, mine might look something like this:
Expectations (top row): Use your languages respectfully / Use classroom materials appropriately / Stay on task.
Categories (first column): Beginning of class / Whole class instruction / Paired- and small-group / Individual Practice / Ending of Class
And then the intersections of the rows and the columns would contain more specific descriptions of behaviors for each of these categories.
In part 2 of this post, I'll take some of the commoner activities we do in Spanish class, and figure out (1) how they fit into this schema, and (2) where on the chunk-chew-check / I do-we do-you do forms that Kathleen Kryza has been talking to us about.
NB. As I type this, I'm left with the vague impression that this specific technique is out of Randy Sprick's Safe and Civil Schools series. I'll look through such materials as I have access to, and if I can find it, I'll give credit where credit is due, and let the expert show you what I'm trying to tell you. Also, in my mind there were specific categories that went along with it.
Update, 2 Jan: I found the classroom behavior expectation matrix in the handouts. It comes without citation, and 2 minutes' Googling didn't come up with it. (I did find another example, from Best Behavior from Sprague and Golly.) The categories I was trying to remember earlier: Outcomes, what you have to have done at the end of the activity; Voice, how loud you can talk and what about; Help, how to get help from the teacher and your classmates; Movement, how, when and why to move around and out of the room; Engagement, how and how much to interact with the materials; and Materials, which materials to use, and how to get and use your pencils and whatnot.
Also updated to fix some formatting.
Update 2: I found the source of the matrix, and it was Sprick. CHAMPS is an acronym for Conversation (can the students talk or not? when? how? with whom? what about?), Help (how do students get their questions answered?), Activity (what is the task, and what is the end product?) Movement (Can students move? When? How? Where?), and Participation (what are students doing during this time?). This is paraphrased from p. 92 of Discipline in the secondary classroom by Sprick, 2006. The ones in the matrix I gave earlier are probably originals from one of the presenters I saw, based on Sprick's ideas.
At the last MiBLSi conference I went to--actually a coaches' meeting, which I wouldn't normally attend--some of the local experts shared a lot of techniques on how to work with our peers on classroom management techniques. The title of the meeting was probably something like "Coaching teachers," in fact. At the meeting, one of the tools they shared was a "classroom behavior" matrix. It looks just like the school-wide behavior matrix, but instead of different locations, the up-and-down categories are different kinds of classroom activities. (If I can find the example they showed online, and I figure out how to cite it properly, I'll try to post it here.)
Doing this had only begun to start to commence to consider crossing my mind at the end of August. At that time, I resisted the idea--"we do SO MANY different types of activities in Spanish class," I told myself, "that putting them into few enough categories to be meaningful would be impossible." Then, I ran out of prep time (read: summer vacation) and started teaching again. The idea was quickly forgotten--"besides," I thought, "I have a whole summer planning and practicing an improved version of my classroom management system; surely this year will be better than last year."
Well, fair enough, but when the idea of a classroom activity behavior matrix came up again, I was supremely intrigued. But what sort of categories would classroom activities fit into? How do you take all of the multiple intelligences, and varied interests, and differentiated levels of activities, and put them into categories? And not just any categories--the categories, I'm thinking, should have the following characteristics:
1.) They should be specific enough to be meaningful. I don't think "Vocabulary practice" will be specific enough, although I reserve the right to change my mind.
2.) They should be general enough that 5 or 6 of them should describe the vast majority of on-task classroom time. "Flyswatter game" carries its own special rule set, but doesn't necessarily belong here.
3.) They should (obviously) increase transparency of the workings of the classroom--that's the whole point in defining things, to take the mystery and guesswork out of it. This will help the students know what is expected of them, and help the teacher know which set of rules everybody's playing by at any given time.
The sample they gave us (man, I wish I could find it online! Well, maybe I'll end up reproducing the hard copy they gave us) had such things as "Beginning class," "Individual practice," "Small-group practice," "Whole class practice," "Instruction," and "Leaving class." Maybe these are good enough, but I have my doubts--there are different kinds of practice, the variety of activities really IS tremendous, etc. But following the "Ready! Fire! Aim!" philosophy I'm trying with good practice, I'm going to make a sample matrix, using these as activities.
Before doing all of this, a teacher has his or her classroom rules. (Or you could tie them into school-wide expectations.) And the matrix shows how students behave during each kind of activity for each rule or behavior expectation. So, using the categories above, mine might look something like this:
Expectations (top row): Use your languages respectfully / Use classroom materials appropriately / Stay on task.
Categories (first column): Beginning of class / Whole class instruction / Paired- and small-group / Individual Practice / Ending of Class
And then the intersections of the rows and the columns would contain more specific descriptions of behaviors for each of these categories.
In part 2 of this post, I'll take some of the commoner activities we do in Spanish class, and figure out (1) how they fit into this schema, and (2) where on the chunk-chew-check / I do-we do-you do forms that Kathleen Kryza has been talking to us about.
NB. As I type this, I'm left with the vague impression that this specific technique is out of Randy Sprick's Safe and Civil Schools series. I'll look through such materials as I have access to, and if I can find it, I'll give credit where credit is due, and let the expert show you what I'm trying to tell you. Also, in my mind there were specific categories that went along with it.
Update, 2 Jan: I found the classroom behavior expectation matrix in the handouts. It comes without citation, and 2 minutes' Googling didn't come up with it. (I did find another example, from Best Behavior from Sprague and Golly.) The categories I was trying to remember earlier: Outcomes, what you have to have done at the end of the activity; Voice, how loud you can talk and what about; Help, how to get help from the teacher and your classmates; Movement, how, when and why to move around and out of the room; Engagement, how and how much to interact with the materials; and Materials, which materials to use, and how to get and use your pencils and whatnot.
Also updated to fix some formatting.
Update 2: I found the source of the matrix, and it was Sprick. CHAMPS is an acronym for Conversation (can the students talk or not? when? how? with whom? what about?), Help (how do students get their questions answered?), Activity (what is the task, and what is the end product?) Movement (Can students move? When? How? Where?), and Participation (what are students doing during this time?). This is paraphrased from p. 92 of Discipline in the secondary classroom by Sprick, 2006. The ones in the matrix I gave earlier are probably originals from one of the presenters I saw, based on Sprick's ideas.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
