WLED 495B

The purpose of this assignment is to learn more about the educational setting and climate of the district you are assigned to.

I. Critical information about the school district, the school, and the World Languages Department.

II. Reflect on the information gathered using the shared experience in CI 412W-Mapping the Community, Field Task#1.

5. Policy for placement in a particular language (is there an assessment given in English used to place students into different languages?)

8. Comparing class time for core courses and time for World Languages classes, is WL study a requirement or an elective?

After the first week of your field experience, you should have new ideas about classroom management, teacher’s roles, and the World Language classroom community in general. Reflect on your position—as a pre-service teacher and guest in the classroom--- and its effectiveness and appropriateness (2-5 pages) with the following items to consider.

· Your philosophy or beliefs about classroom management. (you should write a journal before going to your placement that will be re- reexamined later)

· Plans for structuring a classroom environment that encourages student participation in language learning activities.

· Your reaction to “inappropriate” student behavior and potential consequences.

· Contextual details of current placement (teacher, students, location of school, time of day and amount of time for the class).

· Students’ role in the World Languages classroom (what you expected, and what you actually found).

· A reexamination of the beliefs and expectations stated previously and reflection on their appropriateness/applicability for the given context.

· A response to a specific situation when a student did not meet the expectations set forth and your action as follow up.

INQUIRY III: Inquiry into STUDENT LEARNING

For this experience, you will plan and implement a minimum of 5-10 lessons. From those lessons you will be able to analyze student assessment data using the following items to consider:
analyses of student learning.

· What are the criteria you used to evaluate student work? How do you know these are important and relevant criteria?

· Implement (one) individual Learner Assessment for a special needs student in your class.

· Specify at least two actions students should undertake to improve their learning and performance.

INQUIRY IV: Inquiry into MY TEACHING

For this experience, you will plan and implement a minimum of 5-10 lessons. Two-four (2-4) of the five-ten (5-10) lesson plans should be analyzed and critique considering the following questions:

· What did you learn through the process of planning and implementing this lesson?

· What did you learn about managing the learning environment during this lesson?

· What alternative instructional and assessment strategies could you have used?

· If you were going to implement this lesson again in your future classrooms, what would you revise to improve it?

INQUIRY V: Analysis of Teaching of World Languages

In this assignment, you need to analyze and critique your middle field teaching experience in the World Languages classroom. Please concentrate on your own teaching strengths and limitations. As always, you are encouraged to address any other aspects that you consider relevant to your teaching experience. Please concentrate on your teaching and not on your mentor teacher’s teaching.

You will need to include examples to illustrate your analysis and critiques, these could be—but are not limited to, field experience assignments, mentor teacher evaluations, and course instructor evaluations. As a way to conclude this assignment, consider what your goals may be for your upcoming student-teaching experience in the World Languages classroom.

Title: Review of expressions used to respond to questions/comments, review of Si, Review of “aimer”, using “si” and review with other subject pronouns, reviewing classroom vocabulary, and classifying school subjects

Prerequisite skills: School subjects - vocabulary, agree/disagree expressions, aimer forms

Goals: to use expressions to agree/disagree with other subject pronouns, to classify objects

How would we answer “yes I do like ___” to “Tu n’aimes pas ____?” (“si, j’aime __)

Ask students which question we would use (using TU) – make sure they come up with the appropriate school subject for each – and then ask another student how we could answer that question (using JE)

How do we say “He doesn’t like Spanish.” ? à Il n’aime pas l’espagnol.

We can use “SI” for other pronouns – not just for “JE” and “TU”…

So on page 48, how could ask if Michel doesn’t like French? “Il n’aime pas le français?”

Complete the rest of the activity using Il/Elle n’aime pas … « Si » and the appropriate school subject.

Make sure they understand that les professeurs could be replaced with « ils ».

(4.1) **What happens with VOUS? Ie. Talking to the whole class --- why vous???

“Vous n’aimez pas l’espagnol?” « Si, nous aimons l’espagnol »

Then ask students questions, using “vous” or “tu”…and different situations for “vous” to review the use of these subject pronouns in questions/answers..

Activity with school subjects: classify the vocab (with a partner) into the following groups : 10 minutes (1.2, 4.2)

Les Sciences (5) --- together as a class the students will come up with the following : les sciences naturelles, les travaux pratiques de chimie, la biologie, la chimie, la physique

Write the classes you have, the name of your professor, and if you like the class: introducing a form of “avoir” (from the next chapter) J

Friday, November 12

Observation day! I was very happy to see that they remembered “si” from yesterday’s lesson and I am working on trying to have other students volunteer to answer questions. As Luz Marina noticed, there is one student who participates very frequently, which is nice, because she has the right answers, but I hate to call on her all the time. Today I especially tried to call on other students (even if they didn’t have their hands raised – I especially called on students to answer particular questions if I had seen they did the question right during their pair activity). Their behavior was also fairly well (especially compared to previous classes) and I think the lesson went well. I think that they needed the extra practice using “si” vs. “oui”…I think some of the students are still a little bit confused but I’m hoping to clear that confusion on Tuesday with the review I’m going to do for their quiz on Wednesday. I think the presentation on answering questions using different subject pronouns went well, especially using “vous”. And even though my watch had the wrong time towards the end of class (!) timing went well. I would have liked to go over the categories they did with the vocabulary, but in observing how they did this with their partner and reading their answers they had on their papers, I’m confident that they did the activity well and correctly, even without going over it before class ended.

I feel that I am enjoying this experience much more now that I am able to teach the class. I also am enjoying it much more since I am no longer worried about whether or not I need continue the expectations the mentor teacher has for behavior/academic effort and skills. When I am teaching the class, I’ve been able to find that “happy medium” where I feel that the class is being productive and reasonably behaved. I think that if this was my student teaching experience and I had the students for a longer period of time, there are additional changes I would make to the current situation, but for the time being and under the current situation, I feel pleased with the way things are going right now. I am hoping that the students will do well on next week’s quiz, since I have been teaching them a few times now in preparation for it! I feel pretty confident that many of the students will really earn their grades, instead of relying on receiving 50% just for trying.

P.S. I was glad to see that Luz Marina was also frustrated with the way things were handled in the classroom by the mentor teacher and it wasn’t just me!

1. What went well? They remembered “si” from last class J and I think it was a very good idea that I reviewed the verb “aimer”. I really tried to structure this class around preparing them for their quiz next week. Students have improved a lot on their pronunciation of many of the subject vocabulary words.

2. What was learned about planning? Something I had been using when writing my unit lesson plans was something to do with additional time. I decided to include this section in the lesson I planned for today, and I think it was a good thing to have. I had originally planned to use it for an activity for the class if additional time remained, however, during class time on Friday, I used this activity for students who finished earlier than others. This way, they still were completing a task, practicing French, and not distracting other students or misbehaving. I think this is something that is good to have and I plan to include this section in future lesson plans. I will have a section or have ideas that students can do if they finish before the rest of the class is ready to move on.

3. What was learned about teaching? Luz Marina informed me of particular students that had been talking while I was checking on other groups. From what she told me, there was a lot of things that I was unaware of! These students were not loud at all and were not causing a major disruption, but they were off task and they were doing this behind my back. This means that I really need to work on keeping my eyes on all the students while working with individual groups!

4. What did my students learn? How do I know they learned? The students were practicing on vocabulary and grammar they will be required to know for the quiz on Wednesday. I feel that based on class participation and checking their work while they were working in groups that the students were doing well. In particular, I noticed that they did well classifying the school subjects. I was glad that some of the students asked for clarification on certain parts of the lesson, particularly the use of “si” and questions (ie. Tu n’aimes pas ____). One of my favorite moments of today’s class was when I was working with two girls while they were working on a partner activity using “si”. They were very confused with the use of the question and “si”, and I worked through it with them and it was very rewarding to see that “ah-ha” look in their eyes when they understood it!

5. What improvements will I make in an effort to be more effective with this particular class of students? In talking to Luz Marina, I realize that I do favor this one particular student – she does participate, and is very helpful, and I feel that she is one of the leaders of the class and I want to become “allies” with her as part of my classroom management (since she often tells others to be quiet). Yet I realize that I did not tell her to be quiet today even though she was talking to someone on several occasions during class...and I really cannot make exceptions like this. I also need to work on having awareness of what everyone in the class is doing when I am working with individuals or with groups!

Title: French I: Review of Les Jours de la Semaine, L’emploi du temps, and Introduce #21-59

Goals: Students will review days/times of days and be introduced to numbers #21-59

Practice the days of the week again – erase one at a time (many of the students were absent Monday) *make sure these students get a check for the days of the week before the end of class

Practice: L’emploi du temps – Activity 16, page 53 (as a class) – (5-10 minutes)

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Today my mentor teacher was absent and it was also observation day! I just taught French 1, period 1 today…We reviewed avoir, days of the week, talked about a French student’s schedule, and learned numbers 21-59.

1. What went well? Definitely their behavior!! Luz Marina commented that they seem like a completely different class today than the last time she observed them – and I agree! The students were attentive, engaged in the material, and were really well behaved. What I liked best about the class today, is that I really feel that we worked well together and that they learned today. I did a mini-quiz at the end of class and 10/12 students had less than 2 wrong on the numbers quiz!! And 11/12 students had a 7/7 for the days of the week! J

2. What was learned about planning? I learned that writing out things in advance on the chalkboard was extremely helpful today – it helps to keep me and the students focused – and I also learned that having a prepared overhead can really help students for note taking and can save time – instead of writing that all on the board! (especially since we do not have a lot of chalkboard space in the classroom!)

3. What was learned about teaching? Again, I noticed that when the students were so well behaved, that I felt I could focus so much more on the content material – but also I could let my guard down a little bit and be more relaxed and have more fun with the students. I also learned that having a quiz at the end of class really helped the students, and me, to know how effective today was! And I also liked how I really took advantage of every minute of the class time – and when the students were losing interest in the French tape, that I turned it off and reviewed the numbers a little bit more –and then gave them the last minute of class to talk.

4. What improvements will I make for this class? I realized as soon as I asked them to pass up their papers, that I should have had them correct their mini quizzes themselves – so they would have immediate feedback about how they did!

First Week Reflections

Tuedsay : After my mentor teacher went over their writing activities, I was able to implement an activity. She had suggested that I use the transparency that goes along with the textbook, since they are familiar with this activity and she feels that it is a good way to review the material. My thoughts on this activity can be found on the reflections entry:

As you can see from the included lesson plans, I edited and modified my lesson plan several times before implementing it for the 1^st period French I class, but also it was modified for the 7^th period French I class. I had to adjust since I was given a smaller amount of time than originally expected. This was the main reason for the bulk of the modifications. The other modifications, in particular those done for the 7^th period class, was in hopes that things would go more smoothly, because I felt that once I asked the 1^st period class to work with a partner to review the expressions and vocabulary, most of the class became very off task. I did go around to each group and I asked them several questions in French. Most had difficulty understanding what I was asking for, or finding the appropriate way to respond. But for the most part, when given enough time, the majority of the students did okay with that. Yet, I was disappointed that the students did not do the activity unless I was standing right next to them (and sometimes then even they did not).

For this reason, when I did the activity for the 7^th period class, I changed it from a partner activity to an individual activity. I also changed the lesson plan for what was to be done before this activity. In the 1^st period class, I did not really have time to review the verb “aimer” or the activities, and since they had just gone over a worksheet as a class, I felt it was not completely necessary. The transparency activity went okay, but I think the students had difficulties deciding whether the person in the transparency was male or female, and what activity they were doing exactly. I was very flexible in the answers I accepted for this as a result. However, based on their answers, and particularly how they did the partner activity, I felt that I really should have probably done a review with them and that a more guided activity would have been perhaps better. For example, I could have written on the board the exact step by step procedures and expressions they would need to use. This perhaps would have kept some of them more on task during this activity as well.

As a result, for the 7^th period class, I did do a review of the subject pronouns and the verb “aimer” first. I wanted to get the students involved, and so I asked them all to write the subject pronouns first on a piece of paper and I would call someone up to write them on the board. Well, I was a little surprised as to how difficult it was to find someone who had them all correct. There was a moment where I was concerned that I would have to correct someone’s paper before allowing them to write them on the board. This made me think that perhaps this method has a disadvantage – you have to be sure that there will be students who will have the answers right, so that you can send some of them up to the board! Although, I have decided that I could have sent a student up, and together we could have corrected the subject pronouns as a class, if it had occurred that no one had them correct. In any case, I did find someone, and they put the pronouns on the board. Then I asked the students to write the forms of aimer. Again, it took me some time to find someone who had all the forms correct, but then they went and wrote them on the board. I felt this was good, since the students had become involved, and also now they had the correct forms on the board to look at for reference.

Then I asked them to look at the transparency and write down any activities they saw in the transparency. This was supposed to be a review of the activities they had been learning, however, when I walked to the back of the class to see how the students had been doing, I realized that because of the sunlight, it was nearly impossible to see the transparency from the back of the room. I told the class to just write down any activities they could remember from the chapter if they were unable to see the transparency. This helped to solve that problem, however, when we went to go over the transparency and review the activities in each room, I had to ask them specifically how to say each activity, since many of the students could not see clearly what the activity was. Then I asked them how we could say, “She likes to listen to music”. This activity went fairly smoothly.

Then I asked the students to write down one activity they liked to do. Then in order to get to know the class better, I wanted them to write down what two of their friends like to do. I had not expected that this would have to include a lot of class discussion and talking, and several of the students had started their own conversations at this point. So I was a little frustrated and I was not sure if the students had understood the directions or not, since there was so much talking and the students had made it into a group activity anyway.

However, after looking at the papers that I collected from the students, they pretty much all had written down the subject pronouns, the verb forms of aimer, and they made a list of the activities on the transparency, and then said what they, and two of their friends liked to do. After reviewing these papers, I felt much better about the lesson, yet I am still concerned about the amount of talking that was going on during the lesson. Also, I noticed that some of the students in both of the classes do not come prepared for class – some don’t have paper, or a pencil, or their textbook. There were also two students in the first period class who refused to do any of the activities. I talked to my mentor teacher about this and she said that she has experienced the same thing.

2. Asked students for volunteers to say what they had written down. Then I had hoped we could go through each of the rooms in the transparency and use the correct subject pronoun+correct form of aimer + activity shown, but the students found this to be confusing and complicated, so instead I asked them how to say the activity, and then I would add, Yes, elle aime écouter de la musique (example)

5. Students asked their partner what they liked to do and had to write it on their paper using the il/elle form (originally I had hoped that they would be able to review all the pronouns but because of time and the level they were at, I opted against it)

6. Then students had to find one thing that they both liked to do and write it on their paper using “Nous…”

7. I went around to each of the groups asking “what do you like to do” “what does he/she like to do” “what do you both like to do”, etc..students had difficulties with this, but with enough time and guidance, many started to catch on and many realized what the questions meant and how to answer them J

1. What went well? I felt that most of the students did write down activities from the transparency and they particularly liked when I asked them what they had written down – there were many students who volunteered their answers. Although I really had to force the students to be on task, and many of the students struggled when I asked them questions (during their partner activity), I was very happy when they eventually came to understand what I was trying to ask them. (I tried very hard to not translate the question for them in English). I was extremely happy when they were able to come up with an answer back for me!!

2. What was learned about planning? I felt that a review and guidance that they can see/refer back to is critical. This also may help students to stay on task more as well!

3. What was learned about teaching? I learned that it is essential to walk around the room at all times to make sure students are on task, and not causing disruptions for the other students – withitness!!

4. What did my students learn? I feel that they were able to review the activities that they had been learning, and particularly when I went around to each group and asked questions about each student, and other students, they were able to see how the vocabulary and expressions can be used in a “conversation” and “real life application”.

5. What improvements will I make to be more effective with this class? As mentioned above, I think that this class will require much guided, step-by-step procedures, and a very thorough review of what will be used in an activity.

1. Asked students to write down the subject pronouns – called up one student who had them right to write them on the board

2. Then asked students to write the correct form of aimer – again, called up one student to write them on the board.

4. Then asked students to write down activities they saw in the transparency (many could not see it well, so I asked them to write down any activities they could remember)

6. Then the students had to write down one thing they liked to do. Then we went over how to say he/she likes to ___

1. What went well? I think that the students realized that they needed to really study the subject pronouns and the forms of “aimer” since they had difficulties producing it during the review. I was happy with the papers that the students turned in, they all did the activities, and they also were very willing to share what activities they had written down from the transparency activity.

2. What was learned about planning? I cannot always be sure that there will be a student who will have the answers correct. Also, that it was very important to have this review time before the lesson, and before asking students to produce sentences on their own.

3. What was learned about teaching? Again, the importance of withitness. And also that classroom management, and maintaining control of the classroom is important. Perhaps I really need to have stressed that I wanted the students to work individually…and I also could have put the expectations on the board with a guided, step-by-step format.

4. What did my students learn? They had a review of subject pronouns, which I think many of them needed. In addition, they were able to learn how to take activities that they learn in a textbook and apply them to expressing something that is of interest to them – saying what their friends like to do.

5. What improvements will I make to be more effective with this class? Again, the guided, step-by-step procedures are important. Making sure I have clear expectations, and that students listen when I am explaining directions – I may have to experiment with this to see the best method for this particular group – whether it be just to stop talking until they stop, or walking over to them, or asking them to be quiet…etc..Something that Luz Marina mentioned in her email (which is included in this section) is to become “allies” with the leaders of the class. This is something that may work very well in this class.

Last Reflections

In addition, particularly on Tuesday, it was very rewarding to see how responsive the students were to my use of the target language. When I was working with some of the students individually and asking them questions in French – they didn’t always understand, and I really made an effort to continue asking the same question in different ways using French, and I was so happy to see their effort and curiosity to find out what I was saying! J

INQUIRY I: The Community and School Context

INQUIRY III: Inquiry into STUDENT LEARNING

INQUIRY IV: Inquiry into MY TEACHING

INQUIRY V: Analysis of Teaching of World Languages