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.