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.
No comments:
Post a Comment