...is slow. I think my "inner mental map" of how data transfer works is a little bit clearer but still lacking. However, I have made great progress on some of my other goals like improving my TPR-S instruction (see blog post below), aligning my lessons with my colleagues' and learning more about what I can do with a wiki. :) Yay me. Managing over 135 wiki pages does pose challenges but can be managed! I am very excited about the possibilities! I need to look up some other great resources! Through my Walden courses I have become acquainted with more great resources than I can learn at once.
The next assignment, involving a wiki, will be very useful in advancing my GAME plan. In a week or so I will have a much better idea about what a wiki can do and, more importantly, how!
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
My TPR-S Workshop-Blaine Ray-November 13, 2010
TPR-S is a method of teaching a second language that has evolved quite a bit in the last three decades but has proven to improve student fluency and raise test scores of all students by one standard deviation (that is 36%!!!) and is just much more fun than laboring and belaboring grammar and vocabulary lists. The main goal is to get as much comprehensible input in the time that you have in a class as possible. The teacher "asks" a story. This involves the teacher asking a lot of questions, some of which allow students to determine details and direction of the story. The rest if just to review the story and check for understanding and to put add humor. The key is to incorporate tons, tons and tons of repetition. Did I say repetition? Ways of keeping these repetitions interesting enough for the students are to use props, pictures, content that is about the students themselves and student actors.
Problems that I have had with using TPR-S: student not staying in Spanish, boredom (the death knell to all learning!), lots of work for me with little apparent return, department head not on board, difficulty adapting the method to the brand new text book.
At this workshop the necessity of going slow was emphasized. To bring this need into clarity a new language was taught, using this method, and I now know some German! (Es gab ein madchen. Das madchen heist Heidi. Heidi ist eine gutes madchen. Heidi mochte ein grosse kuh. Heidi geht zu Dingdong, TX. In Dingdong Tx es gab ein man. Der man ist Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt hatte drei kuh...All this a week later in two minutes and no previous German!) As I learned this German (one hour by the way) I realized how very slow Blaine was going and how fast it seemed to me.
Another point that was made clear was HOW to maximize repetitions! Frankly getting in 50-125 (range required to convert into long-term memory) repetitions of one word or structure without adding new material is difficult! There are ways to do it. First, after you ask the question, always restate the answer after the students have answered. Second, add another detail (when, where, how and/or why). Third, add in more characters if I have run out of ways to ask, state or reiterate a structure.
A further modification that has proven to get good results is to always, always use student actors and when using student actors: ask the actor the questions so that the change in perspective is demonstrated. A change in tense can also be used. The key is to
Another thing that became glaringly obvious to me is that the teacher is to be 100% in control of the story, class, content and atmosphere; My initial impression of the TPR-S method was that it was very relaxed. Upon further observation, I noticed how very strict the teacher actually was about how everything went, what was said and how it was said. Everyone had fun and was engaged but the atmosphere was very much under his control.
The benefits of TPR-S method are: less paper work, you get more grammar and students will be more fluent.
In one week of TPR-S the first day of the story should be all background, all kinds of details. The second day should be action but first review and add in details that "you forgot" to say yesterday. Again, as many repetitions as possible! As many repetitions as possible!!! You must go very, very slowly. Third day, read! The process will be similar to the story asking. Do rewrites, retells, draw the stories. Timed writes and relaxed writes are next. Quizzes should be as brief and focus on comprehension.
Problems that I have had with using TPR-S: student not staying in Spanish, boredom (the death knell to all learning!), lots of work for me with little apparent return, department head not on board, difficulty adapting the method to the brand new text book.
At this workshop the necessity of going slow was emphasized. To bring this need into clarity a new language was taught, using this method, and I now know some German! (Es gab ein madchen. Das madchen heist Heidi. Heidi ist eine gutes madchen. Heidi mochte ein grosse kuh. Heidi geht zu Dingdong, TX. In Dingdong Tx es gab ein man. Der man ist Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt hatte drei kuh...All this a week later in two minutes and no previous German!) As I learned this German (one hour by the way) I realized how very slow Blaine was going and how fast it seemed to me.
Another point that was made clear was HOW to maximize repetitions! Frankly getting in 50-125 (range required to convert into long-term memory) repetitions of one word or structure without adding new material is difficult! There are ways to do it. First, after you ask the question, always restate the answer after the students have answered. Second, add another detail (when, where, how and/or why). Third, add in more characters if I have run out of ways to ask, state or reiterate a structure.
A further modification that has proven to get good results is to always, always use student actors and when using student actors: ask the actor the questions so that the change in perspective is demonstrated. A change in tense can also be used. The key is to
Another thing that became glaringly obvious to me is that the teacher is to be 100% in control of the story, class, content and atmosphere; My initial impression of the TPR-S method was that it was very relaxed. Upon further observation, I noticed how very strict the teacher actually was about how everything went, what was said and how it was said. Everyone had fun and was engaged but the atmosphere was very much under his control.
The benefits of TPR-S method are: less paper work, you get more grammar and students will be more fluent.
In one week of TPR-S the first day of the story should be all background, all kinds of details. The second day should be action but first review and add in details that "you forgot" to say yesterday. Again, as many repetitions as possible! As many repetitions as possible!!! You must go very, very slowly. Third day, read! The process will be similar to the story asking. Do rewrites, retells, draw the stories. Timed writes and relaxed writes are next. Quizzes should be as brief and focus on comprehension.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
My GAME Plan Continued...
A very specific goal I have for my instruction is to incorporate class wiki's, one for each class. I want to get to the point that I maintain current information about each class on a regular basis so that those that are absent can access material they missed and students that struggle can get on and review. These wikis would also be the vehicle for learning. Students will create collaborative stories in Spanish for which they will add multi-media aspects and then future classes can access and "read" them. Further down the road we may even team up with a class in Spain or Guatemala or Chile.
To accomplish this goal I need access to a computer lab. I have that. I also need experience with wikis and how to teach using them. I have that (the hard way). Through the courses here at Walden I have played with podcasting and know how frustrating simple steps can become when the way to do them is not clear.
The only skill I lack is learning how to transfer different kinds of data from place to place. That act seems to be the one that gets me every time. I just need the data transfer skill. To try to develop this skill I need a tech hero (who doesn't). I could avail myself of the expertise of my school's IT guy. I don't have the mind map of how a podcast is moved and transferred (or transformed or why it even needs to be transformed) into different files that make it acceptable to other…platforms? I will keep you posted. If anyone knows of an awesome and very detailed "how-to" web-site please don't be shy. If the title is "Data Tranfer for Dummies" I won't be offended.
To accomplish this goal I need access to a computer lab. I have that. I also need experience with wikis and how to teach using them. I have that (the hard way). Through the courses here at Walden I have played with podcasting and know how frustrating simple steps can become when the way to do them is not clear.
The only skill I lack is learning how to transfer different kinds of data from place to place. That act seems to be the one that gets me every time. I just need the data transfer skill. To try to develop this skill I need a tech hero (who doesn't). I could avail myself of the expertise of my school's IT guy. I don't have the mind map of how a podcast is moved and transferred (or transformed or why it even needs to be transformed) into different files that make it acceptable to other…platforms? I will keep you posted. If anyone knows of an awesome and very detailed "how-to" web-site please don't be shy. If the title is "Data Tranfer for Dummies" I won't be offended.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
GAME Plan
One of my first lessons incorporating technology, a wiki page, flopped horribly. There was problem after problem that ranged from technical to bad management issues. I jumped prematurely into a lesson that would have been much more powerful had I been more proficient but I was eager because all the messages I was getting from Walden agreed with Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer (2009): technology would make my instruction better, engage my students and prepare them for their future job market. I didn't know enough at the time to do it well but I didn't know it or even have a good clue about where to start to change it before just jumping in. I am afraid my plan mostly involves standard one of the ISTE Net's ("Teachers use what they already knew AND technology to advance student 21st Century learning" http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-teachers/nets-for-teachers-2008.aspx) but we all have to start somewhere.
Last time I had the students create their own separate wikis. This time I am going to have one wiki from which all groups create a page or series of pages; also I will have my students work in groups of two per computer instead of one per. That will not only help to foster the collaborative nature of the learning but also circumvent the common technical problems that we run into in the lab. When all else fails I can have them switch computers. Another way that I will improve that lesson will be to learn more and become more comfortable with the technology I want them to use. Peggy Ertmer (Laureate Education, Inc. 2010) asserts that knowledge of technology and how to teach my content using that technology is of primary importance. I have to spend time on wiki sites and figure out how thingswork. This is why I will be spending my Labor Day doing just that. (Happy Veteran's day by the way!).
As for reflecting and evaluating my work I am not sure because there are not any other people in mybuilding that I have a feasible amount of time to work with. Maybe I should take some time off my masters' studies! That sounds really good to me right now! I could spend a bunch of time developing my Game plan and then come back and evaluate with my cohort group! Learning takes time and it seems I have none at this time! Any suggestion?
Reference:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P (2009). Technology Intergration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Excutive Producer). (2010). Program 3: Enriching content learning experiences with technology. Part 1. [DVD]. Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore, MD
Last time I had the students create their own separate wikis. This time I am going to have one wiki from which all groups create a page or series of pages; also I will have my students work in groups of two per computer instead of one per. That will not only help to foster the collaborative nature of the learning but also circumvent the common technical problems that we run into in the lab. When all else fails I can have them switch computers. Another way that I will improve that lesson will be to learn more and become more comfortable with the technology I want them to use. Peggy Ertmer (Laureate Education, Inc. 2010) asserts that knowledge of technology and how to teach my content using that technology is of primary importance. I have to spend time on wiki sites and figure out how thingswork. This is why I will be spending my Labor Day doing just that. (Happy Veteran's day by the way!).
As for reflecting and evaluating my work I am not sure because there are not any other people in mybuilding that I have a feasible amount of time to work with. Maybe I should take some time off my masters' studies! That sounds really good to me right now! I could spend a bunch of time developing my Game plan and then come back and evaluate with my cohort group! Learning takes time and it seems I have none at this time! Any suggestion?
Reference:
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P (2009). Technology Intergration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
Laureate Education, Inc. (Excutive Producer). (2010). Program 3: Enriching content learning experiences with technology. Part 1. [DVD]. Integrating technology across the content areas. Baltimore, MD
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