Thank you note to MS. ROSS

Because Ms Ross is a very busy person, I did not have time to tell what I thought of her lessons and how thankful I am, so I wrote a letter, reflecting my thoughts on her class.

1)The students in Spanish classes are very different from the students in Japanese classes. By the time they decide to register Japanese, most of the students are a lot more committed to learn Japanese than those students who need foreign language credits and who are not motivated in Spanish.
---In regard to this subject, I have learned from you that I need to choose the battle with them. I cannot make the horses to drink water, even though I can supply them with water. This analogy eased me greatly because I was certainly depressed about the fact I could not teach to All of them effectively. How to handle them will be on-going subject for me. I wish that we can somehow separate them from those who want to learn Spanish seriously.

2) Your style of classroom control was AMAZING!
It is always my problem how to control the students during the lesson. Because in the classroom in Japan, I did not have to deal with this type of discipline problems, it seems to me that I always have a problem controlling the American students here in USA (excuse excuse excuse!) I was amazed that your presence alone in the room made the huge meaning to the students. Thus as soon as you leave, they started to get noisy, and as soon as you come back, immediately they became quiet. It was like a magic. I observed that in between you and the students, there are unsaid (or announced in the beginning?) contract that you expect them to be quiet when you want them to. While you give them an autonomous freedom to study, they know when they need to pay attention. You mentioned me about contacting to the parent in front of them, and not writing too many White-cards. That was a brilliant idea! I will certainly try this technique.

3) How to grade the students.
As you are in charge of so many students in a day, your way to grade the students’ work and record it in the book as well as online was very innovative. I know I have to be waaaaaaaaaaaaay more organized to be able to handle all these students daily. Keep it simple. That was the lesson for me from you. I was doing too complicated which (in the end) doesn’t matter to the students. There are a lot of wisdoms of your teaching career in this technique and I really appreciate that you shared with me.

4) How to teach the material.
I did not have many opportunities to observe you teach because lots of presentations were previously scheduled, but when I did observe you about Direct Object Pronoun, I saw 1) the full attentions from the students, 2) the way you introduced this unfamiliar grammatical subject (DOP) to the students, and 3) how clear and straight forward to explain the concept. For 1), again the students knew when to pay attention and you had a trust-contract type of good relationship with students. For 2), DOP is a very boring grammatical concept, but you started to introduce with English DOP that are familiar with, so that they will not be scared to learn DOP. Comparing with English which they use English DOP without recognizing made the bridge between them and Spanish DOP. For 3), this was incredible. How clear, precise, and condensed with only important materials without confusion. I really saw the ART of teaching here. I hope I can teach like you in the future…. (need more practice.)

These are a few points that I have learned from you and I want to recreate your techniques in my future teaching. Absolutely these were not only points, but most of all I felt the very solid authority (yet very kind) figure in you.
I do not know how to thank you for taking me as a student teacher, and I hope you don’t mind to keep instructing, consulting, and guiding me to the world of Spanish teaching in USA.

Thank you very much.

The sixth week (03/29 Monday - 04/01 Thursday)

Hooray! My student teaching is officially ended on April 1st, and this is NOT APRIL FOOL!

2/22 -2/26 (15 hours)
3/1 - 3/5 (15 hours)
3/8 - 3/11R (12 hours)
3/15 - 3/19 (15 hours)
3/22 - 3/26 (15 hours)
3/29 - 4/1 R (12 hours)---84 hours total

Connection with Marzano

This week I would like to talk about Lesson 4 of Marzano, Reinforcing effort and proving recognition.

The sixth week was only four days (Monday - Thursday) since no school for students on Friday.
Since last Friday (3/26), the students were assigned to prepare a skit to present as a performance assessment (see my precious blog on HW). They have been creating their dialogue, and during the class, I tried to correct their mistakes in dialogue so that they will not memorize incorrect lines. Most of them took seriously and started to work, and only handful of students who usually do not work at all were pushed to do so because this assessment requires a team effort. The eager peers were pushing those unable students to participate in the practice, because on Monday I gave them a rubic (below) chart that I am going to grade while they perform to the class.

Grading Rubrics

	Task completion (25) Written dialogue	Communication Pronunciation (20)	Vocabulary (30) Lesson 3 vocabulary and grammar use	Language control (25) Without the notes, paper.	Others: (volume, eye contact , confidence, gestures, etc.) Extra points(10)
Does not meet expectations 54%-73%	Minimal completion the task and/or responses frequently inappropriate	Frequently interferes with communication.	Inadequate and/or inaccurate use of vocabulary	Inadequate and/or inaccurate use of basic language structures.	Does not speak for the audience.
Almost meets expectations 74 % - 83%	Partial completion of the task, responses mostly appropriate yet undeveloped	Occasionally interferes with communication.	Somewhat inadequate and/or inaccurate use of vocabulary	Emerging use of basic language structures.	Partially speak for the audience.
Meets expectations 84 % - 93%	Completion of the task, responses appropriate and adequately developed.	Does not interfere with communication.	Adequate and accurate use of vocabulary.	Emerging control of basic language structures.	Adequately speak for the audience.
Exceeds expectations 93.5 % - 100 %	Superior completion of the task, responses appropriate and with elaboration	Enhances communication.	Rich use of vocabulary.	Control of basic language structures.	Superiorly speak for the audience.

There are many students who openly says that he/she does not want to study Spanish. They are put in the class so that they will meet the graduate requirement. They show me absolutely no motivation to learn. I had two boys who are baseball players and they cheat on the quizzes, sleep in class, and absolutely do nothing in Spanish class.
As Marzano's book says to teach about effort using well-known athletes (p51), so I used the example of Ichiro (a Japanese Mejor Leaguer in Seattle Mariners). Before Ichiro bats in the batting box, he always images himself that he can hit home run, almost hypnotyzing himself to do so. Image training for Ichiro worked so well, making him one of the best batters. Ichiro says when he images, he feels the gush of adrenaline which makes him feel good, and this is his technique to get through the difficult time (he says).

Did this story of Ichiro make them participate in class?
The answer is no.
But they were listening to Ichiro story with interest, and if they try Ichiro's technique in their baseball game or the difficult time other than Spanish, I believe they will remember about the learning in Spanish class, and eventually they will participate in Spanish class.

During my student teaching, I tried to use different ways to grade them, including daily oral participation, workbook assignment, 2 project assignments mid-term exam, vocabulary quizzes, and comprehensive performance presentation.
Of these above, I think the last one , the comprehensive performance presentation was new to the students, and I received very interesting performance results. Those students I expected the least did really well in this performance exam, and A students who do really well with pen-pencil exams have moderately struggled. That was a very interesting outcome.
In the rubric, I not only circled the appropriate boxes with their performance, I commented on the deducted points so that they can fix next time. Also I added some quick feedback about how their overall performance went throughout this project.

They really liked the immediate feedback, because I tried to write something good about them with lots of rooms to fix such as pronunciations. Verbal rewards seem to work. I particularly praised aloud to the baseball players who performed in front, take 2, take 3, and take 4. (four redos!!!:-) I think I did not embarrass them to have done so, because all the classmates know they do not participate.
" I loved you both tried, participated, performed and did really well."

Other students were also paying attention during classmates' performance with great interest, because I asked them what they were talking about to the class after each performance. It was a great way to assess them other than pen-pencil exams that will tend to favor the visual learners.

On the last day, however, I gave them my homemade cream puffs (thing to reward) to each student as a thank-you. They know how time-comsuming to make 60 cream puffs a night before after Dr. Huhn's class at Marshall, so I hope I showed them the EFFORT.
With cream puffs, cookies, chips, and salsas, etc, we had a small fiesta. I have them write one thing they liked about my teaching, and what they did not like about my class. Many students did not like the fact I gave them vocabulary quiz too soon after introducing, or too many assignments and strict participation requirement. Their feedback were very precious and I sure want to reflect to next Clinical III.

HOMEWORK

3/27/2010

Connection with Marzano

I believe homework is very important component of language learning as Marzano says it is an instructional technique. If you do not use Spanish every day, you will lost it. More exposure to Spanish is better. That was my belief, which during this student teaching, it started to make me rethink about it.

There are a lot of intertwined considerations I have to take into account, than simply said "more exposure is better."

The amount of HW is very difficult to decide. To the motivated students, the amount I have been giving might not be enough while to non-motivated students it was absolutely too much.

To those who want to do more, upon returning I wrote the comment of "if you want to expand your SPanish more, write a diary or 3 sentences a day about anything you did, you want to do etc, and turn it in for my correction. Two students actually did this activity weekly and have been turning in to me.

On the other hand, some did not even complete or turned in. The small amount of HW was too much because they do not want to do at all. Even for those who think it is OK if managable amount, too much HW could shut them down. creating not wanting to do at all.

Then I read on Marzano's book, "the purpose of HW should be identified and articulated. Yes, this is it! I should tell them why this HW is important, and after this HW, what they are able to do. I thought this could motivate them to do and turn it in.

Wrong.

My students are tougher than I expected. Some of them are absolutely non-motivated to begin with. They are in this class because they need to be in order to graduate, (not with their own will). I asked Ms. Ross how she is handling. It was very simple. Her HW is usually project based which requires more thoughts putting into it or online research, and my type of activities from Workbook and textbook are done during the class time period and turned in at the end. (thus most of students turn in.)

I started to do the same which improve the turn-in rate. But where is the 50 minutes instruction? Because they are allowed to help each other (cooperative learning), some students are just copying the answers from the able student. I don't think they are learning in this way.

Back to the my way of HW assignment. I give instruction and practice during the class, and they do HW activity (very small amount) outside of the class.

Of course, in the HW return, I write many feedbacks related to the learning progress and correction, as well as classroom participation level, the room for improvement, personal comment, encouragement etc. Amazingly I started to receive more participation from the students who used do other class's assignments during my Spanish class (because that has been OK to do so.)

It might be a little late, but I established my way of HW expectation. To those who missed the class, check Ed-line. (My weekly lesson plans as well as HW is listed on there.). Each HW is due next day and has 10 points to turn-in plus 0-100 points depending upon the correct answer rate. I not only gave them this rule in writing, but have them read aloud in class.

Sure they hate the authority, and I think I lost some students' interest and cooperation due to this policy, but in the end I needed to do what I needed to do. (I cannot save all???)

My last assignment was given this past Friday which they moaned when they received.

As a last stage of my student teaching in Unit 3, the HW was given as follows.

Instead of another written test, we will have an oral performance sessions on next Wed (3/31) and Thu (4/1). You and your partner will create a dialogue in Spanish using the vocabulary and grammar from Lesson 3A and 3B. In this dialogue, it should be a format of A-B-A-B-A-B so that each presenter has at least 3 lines to talk. The grading criteria (100) is:

1. inclusion of the content of Lesson 3A and 3 B (30)

2. Spanish pronunciation and understandability (20)

3. Without paper (you both need to memorize the dialogue) (25)

4. Before you present to the class, you and your partner need to turn in the written form of your dialogue to me. (25)

HW is to start making the dialogue with the partner. Decide the part, and memorize the dialogue. Some students even asked me if I would give them a time to work on it during the class period. I usually would not like it, but I said I would because this project needs cooperation from the partner which can be difficult to do for some students during the outside of the class period.

Another reason for agreeing to provide the time during the class is if this is solely the work at home, I would not know how they memorize the dialogue with correct pronunciation. I would rather them memorize it correctly, than doing at home.

Thus, lesson for me is that I really have to put the thoughts into HW. I think I need the entire summer to look into the textbook and develop UbD/DI including HW as an instructional (effective) tool.

The fifth week (03/22 Monday - 03/26 Friday)

We basically did not have SPRING BREAK (of Marshall University), because we are teaching at schools.... :-(

Even though Ms. Ross had a family emergency and sent her sub teachers on two days this week, I did not get panicked. I felt pretty comfortable with students (have remembered all their names finally). What I did not expect was that they started to get tired of me because I make them WORK more than Ms. Ross. Every lesson is involved with lots of speaking, listening, writing notes, and reading. At first, it was fresh, but now I think many students who are not used to work work work, they use my nationality and culture as excuse, saying "Mrs. Egnor, you are Japanese, but we are Americans and not used to work hard like that." WHAT a bull----

But I know all about it, because my kids sometime use similar bull-excuses. :-)

I tell them "if you think so, this is a great opportunity to learn the virtue of WORKING HARD.!!"

It is always difficult to do after some other teachers when students are not get used to do in MY way. That is something I need to get used to, and learn to collaborate with other Spanish teachers. I often ask questions what and how they are teaching to other Spanish teachers too.

I wish the teachers have more opportunities to discuss formally (not just during the lunch or ISE day), but at least once a week or so.

Connection with Marzano

I want to talk about cues in lesson 10. I try to use lots of cues, instead of just giving them an answer. For example, when I am introducing new vocabulary, I purposefully do not use English translation of the words until they come up with one. (However, after they have an idea of the meaning of the words, I give them English translation to confirm their idea).

When I am introducing the word "el semáforo," which is difficult to guess from English, "the traffic light", they usually have clueless about its meaning. Instead of giving them the translated word, I tell them "cuando el semáforo está rojo, no puedes cruzar (when the SEMAFORO is red, you cannot cross), pero cuando está verde, sí puedes (but when it is green, yes you can cross.)" It is now sort of a riddle they have to solve, so they listen to my explanation, guess, and usually they get it. Then I show them the back of the flashcard that is spelled "el semáforo" which they will learn how to spell the word in Spanish, and orally confirm it is the traffic light (I do not need to help them spell "traffic light.")

As for Advance organizers (lesson 10), again, each unit has the big theme, and I am currently teaching Unit 3 Community. In the part 3A was more focused on the places to go and do such as pharmacy to buy toothpaste, medicine, or bank to cash the cheque etc. The 3B was the vocabulary of driving and safety.

I made an graphic organizer of vocabulary. Instead to just arrange the orders of words that appear in the text, I made the students categorize with the related words, using my graphic organizer. (in bold letters were new vocabulary)

place--------what to do-----------what things

farmacia ---comprar--------------- el cepillo de dientes, la pasta denta, el champú

el banco-------cobrar-----------------un cheque

la biblioteca --devolver ------------ los libros

----------------- sacar----------------los libros

------------------leer /estudiar-----------los libros

In this way, they construct Spanish sentence much easier than just memorize one by one. Chunking the vocabulary and memorizing together is most useful.

As Marzano says that advance organizers are most useful with information that is not well organized (p118), just memorizing all the vocabulary would be caotic and forgetful, and effort in vain. However with this organizer, the students can memorize the vocabulary as a chunk which is, in reality, much useful in comprehending the language.

I did the math!

I did the math.

75 hours of students teaching = 3 hours a day x 25 days......

25 days ÷ 5 days (a week) = 5 weeks......

One blog a week means only 5 blog postings................. I need to post two a week until I finish my student teaching (because Dr. Cartwright wants us to post 8 blogs in total).

OK, what am I going to talk about???

Connection with Marzano

I would like to talk about Nonlinguistic Representation (Chapter 6).

As a language teacher, nonlinguistic representation is definitely essential because many students do not know what I am talking about if I talk only in Spanish or in Japanese. I use lots of gestures, facial expression, and acting while I talk in only Spanish, and eventually I decrease the amount of those movement so that they can understand what I am saying by only listening the sound.

Language learning includes 4 disciplines (reading, listening, writing, and speaking). It is so easy to focus only on reading and listening because those two disciplines are more passive and receptive than other two. In the English literature class, it may be OK to focus on reading and writing, but in the class of foreign languages, we need to do all four disciplines.

In order to have students engage more in speaking, I use lots of pictures (without English). For example, when I introduce new vocabulary, I make a flash card with only pictures and the Spanish words on back, like the one I did for the peer teaching. In that way, the students were not relying on English to comprehend Spanish. They repeat after me for the correct pronunciation, as well as those oral movement will enhance the memorization of vocabulary by listening the sound, not just relying on the visual help to memorize the vocabulary. This type of practice is NOT utilized that much in the classroom of foreign languages.

Unfortunately at first I observed the teacher assigned the students to copy and write all the new vocabulary on the notebook and turn it in during the class, and she announced that there will be a vocabulary quiz on Monday (3 days to study for it). Yes, they might memorize all the vocabulary correctly by Monday, but where is the instruction of how to pronounce correctly and how to listen and understand what it means by auditory? This part of practice is so important to be able to communicate in Spanish.

I think the flashcard activity including repeating after the teacher may be childish to some students (but they don't know how effective in language learning), and some students who are not used to my way of learning have been expressing great discomfort. (which I believe they have been focused on intensively visual, and not enough auditory and kinesthetic learning.)

Although I believe I want to continue my way of vocabulary learning, I need to be aware of students' discomfort, and direct them to be comfortable with the new way of learning. Because I am also a strong visual learner and have experienced the same discomfort once, I now can understand what they have been through.... and because I speak 3 languages, I can convince them easier to bear with me..... :-)

As they become more comfortable speaking orally (which probably will not happen during my student teaching period), I would like to do other method of nonlinguistic representation which is "simulation." The students will be given a situation and create the dialogue in Spanish, and present to the class. This type of simulation exercises have been done in my Japanese classes and the students like this activity because they can demonstrate their creativity in Japanese (although some students do not like to present in front of the class).

Well, for now, for these Spanish 2 students with Chapter 3 (My community), since oral presentation would be too difficult, I assigned by next Friday (March 26) the students will make a poster sign (in Spanish) to express the rules in the community, such as Throw the trash in trash can, Don't drink or drive, Wear seat belt, pick up doggy crap... etc.. I am looking forward to the creative outcome of this assignment.

The fourth week (03/15 Monday - 03/19 Friday)

The fourth week was about Plan B!

I usually make lesson plans on weekend for the coming week, so that on Monday, I receive the approval from Mrs. Ross. Mrs. Ross wants me to place my lesson plans on her Ed-line. In this way the students who are absent can check what they have missed (although they have not fully utilized this Ed-line system :-(

Also according to Mrs. Ross, it is my protection and reasoning to leave no excuses for the students not to do the catch-up work. (great idea!)

Although I made lesson plans ahead of time, this week's experience was to have plan B and be FLEXIBLE because on Wednesday Mrs. Ross could not come to school, and she arranged the substitute teacher who extensively travelled around the world so that he could talk to the students about his experiences and inspired them. I knew that she would be absent, but I did not know that the sub teacher, Mr. D would take my teaching time to talk....

With his artifacts from south America displayed all over in the classroom, I decided to ask him to take over after a quick vocabulary review that I needed to do, and went on to the plan B which I believe, taking advantage the great opportunity of the guest speaker who happened to be the sub teacher for Mrs. Ross. His experiences in China to communicate with a Chinese doctor in Spanish had blown the students' mind. Stories of his Mexican wife who went to deep in Amazon in Bolivia and gift exchange with indigenous people were interesting. Usually students were very noisy but they were glued in his presentation. At first, Mr. D said I could do whatever I wanted including just carrying out my lesson plans and ignore him, but I am so glad I changed my plan A to plan B so that he could inspire the students. (However, that means I had to re-create the lesson plans for Thursday and Friday, and re-post on Ed-line. And I believe it worth the extra work!!)

Connection with Marzano

This week I used the Similarities and Differences (chapter 2) because Marzano says that they might be considered the "core " of all learning.

I did not want to just focus on language learning, and wanted them to know some hispanic culture. As the textbook suggests cultural connection with two Mexican artists, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, on Friday I planned to do some cultural exploration in English.

At first on Monday I assigned the students to research about one of these two Mexican artists by Friday, so that the students will be prepared some knowledge of unfamiliar Mexican artists, Frida and Diego. I allowed them to write down in English, because my focus for this activity is not a language learning, rather deeper understanding of history and culture.

On Friday those students who did the homework had a chance to present the information they researched to the class (unfortunately many students on 6th mod did not do the homework, even though I gave them a reminder throughout the week). Then I went over some more information on powerpoint, about their biographies, about their art (surrealism), and stories behind the paintings.

Then we compare and contrast these artists in Venn Diagram with the group. I used the student-directed activity which I anticipated the many different ideas from each group. However, I needed to give them a specific theme on similarity and differences, so half of the class was focusing on the biography (which I on-purposely assigned to the groups with difficulty), and the other half groups was focusing on the similarities and differences of artworks (which I assigned to the higher performance groups). In this way I was able to differentiate a little bit depending upon the students' ability. While the students were working on as a group, I moved around and checked every student's participation as well as answering some students' questions.

At the end, each group had a chance to talk about their outcome in Venn Diagram while I write on Smartboard what they said in order to create one big Venn Diagram as a whole class in each category of biography and artworks of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera.

Overall, the students were able to engage the activity, not just my boring lecture. Since I am going to have a vocabulary (Lesson 3B) quiz on Monday, I am going to add a question and ask them what they remembered about these two Mexican iconic artists.

What I liked about the activity of similarity and difference was 1) every student engaged in the activity, 2) I was able to differentiate depending upon the ability, and 3) they understood the class because performed in English, giving some struggling students a break from learning Spanish language (and I did receive more interested participation from these students.