Blog 4_SS2015

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Eulalia Garcia on May 13, 2015 at 12:09pm

     My lesson was a practical one. To me it is still difficult to create a unit plan by myself considering that I am learning how to do it. For that reason I was taking notes from my secondary book of Spanish Two and being helped by my professor and classmates. Before those activities I thought that teachers follow a book to teach, but in time I am learning that we are guided and teachers must create the material that we want students to learn. Moreover, today I am learning how to apply the theory and the concepts of the education classes. At least at this time I was able to make the class set interested in the activity. It was something that I wanted to achieve. I have learned that once students have the interest of learning they try to understand what is taught to them. And to make the language communication happen it is necessary that I learn and understand the standards of foreign language learning concepts and how these concepts apply into the everyday leaning process like the “5Cs” functions: Communication, cultures connections, comparisons, and communities. Each concept has its own purpose in learning a L2.

     The aspects of the lesson that did not go so well are still the English communication as it’s my second language so sometimes I had problems communicating with fluency.  I did not explain the standard concepts and I feel that it is necessary to better myself with these concepts. From this lesson I think the students learn that the practical of the language in pairs as well as with the whole class is enjoyable. All the students were able to participate and were able to understand the exercise. The consequence of this way of teaching is that students have to put in practice what they had learned from the language. The students interact with each other by working together and I was helping them too.  Most of the objectives on the lesson were achieved because I was able to have the students involved in the activity. The class was able to understand the different types of housing between Spanish and an American person. Where they live and how they live. For the following class this lesson should begin by applying the exercise the student’s personal information. Where students live and if they like it where do they live? Yes there other ways to teach this lesson, first to be able to make a better understanding of this lesson I should better explain the objectives, because, once students know what is required to learn and why. It is easy for them to follow instructions and process the information for the work to do.  Is it necessary if I let students know about the process of the activity and explain the grammatical rules of the language. Also to give students examples of the activity and I should interact constantly with them by asking if they understood or need help. If it is necessary to reteach what was not understood, I will summarize the most relevant parts of the lesson to give information.

Permalink Reply by Katherine Brillante on May 13, 2015 at 12:29pm

After creating my first "unit plan", I would not say that I created the unit plan to the best of its ability. After seeing my classmates prepared unit plans, there are some adjustments that I would make (specifically, one or two of the activities I decided to use in my unit plan). My reasoning for this is because, when teaching a language, we should try to keep the learning process as simple as possible. You don't want to overwhelm your students with loads of work, and handing a student a paper with so many words and questions might discourage them from wanting to learn the material. As a student who did not grow up speaking Italian, while creating my unit plan I tried to keep in mind some methods I may have used while learning the language to help make the learning process for my students a little bit simpler. In regards to the activity I chose to present, I feel very satisfied, and I think it was a lesson that would work out well in the classroom. I chose to introduce the new material to my students in a new way, in order to avoid the traditional methods that are being used in classrooms today. In order to fulfill this, I first provided my students with simple phrases and photographs to help them make meaning of the phrases. (And for next time, I will provide the resources for images as well in order to prevent plagiarism.) The purpose of me doing was this was to get my students thinking, and to have them actually figure out the situation of the phrase by using background knowledge (schemata). I made it clear that for this specific lesson, it should be assumed that students already covered the present perfect tense (the other topic being covered in the unit plan). Then, after exposing them to the new material, I provided them with the rules and conjugations of the verbs at the end of the lesson. If I was to re-teach this specific lesson, there are one or two things I might change about it. I would definitely consider reading the listening comprehension passage more than once, and also informing the students before the reading how many verbs they should have heard by the end of the passage. Another thing I would also change, is to practice the conjugation of an -are, -ere, and -ire verb BEFORE going into the production part of my unit plan. I would do this so that it would make it a little easier for my students to recognize the verbs conjugated in the imperfect tense from the listening passage I provided them with. Overall, I felt I did an average job, but that is how we learn and how we benefit from each other in order to better ourselves as future language teachers. :)

Word count: 475

Permalink Reply by Joel Peña on May 13, 2015 at 4:30pm

I had other thoughts and other plans as to how to approach my final. After creating my “Unit plan”, I saw a lot of great aspects about it. One great aspect that I thought my lesson had a great impact on was incorporating most of the 5 C’s. I thought I did a pretty good job in that aspect and if you look over my lesson, I am pretty sure that the 5 C’s stand out a lot. After seeing my classmates’ lessons I think that I also went wrong in an area or two. I think that maybe I could have incorporated maybe a video to show visual input to the students. This could have given the students a better understanding and grasp the idea of the lesson very quickly. Another aspect where I think I didn’t do so great in, using tables and explaining it visually. I think I could have used tables and charts because this helps the students actually see (visual) how the task at hand is being introduced and it gives a great example so the students can follow it. Whether is conjugating, using the past, present, future, etc. I think that students did learn a lot for the most part. Not only did they the students learn but the lesson also provided a great purpose. I wanted the students to not only learn how to use action verbs correctly but I wanted them to also learn how to stay healthy at the same time. I don’t believe there were any unanticipated consequences, I could only say that in the end I noticed that I said a word or two in English and one of my tasks was to keep the lesson strictly in Spanish. I tried to use a method or two to keep the lesson in Spanish only and not have the students speak in English to each other. In order to keep the students interacting with each other I gave them an activity to work in pairs. I had them read each others papers so that way they can interact with each other. I paced around the room to make sure this was being applied. I had them interact with me when I asked them to share what they had written. At the beginning I also had told my students the way I stay in shape and asked them to tell to tell me what they do to stay in shape. For the most part the objectives of the lesson were achieved. I incorporated most of the 5 C’s; I also had the cognitive skills incorporated and the four goals. For the next class the following lesson should continue with recycling some vocabulary words and ne words that we have learned along the way. I could also ask the students what did they do yesterday to maintain their shape and to stay fit. This way it refreshes their memory and they can get a little recap of what we did the previous days. If I were to reteach this lesson I certainty would change a thing or two. One thing for sure is to incorporate more reading comprehension and ask more questions so that I can realize if the students comprehend the lesson. I could also ask more questions and have them come up to the board and write their answers down, of course in an actual high school class. Overall, I think the lesson went pretty well and the students enjoyed it.

Word count: 581

Permalink Reply by Kimberly Romhin on May 13, 2015 at 4:31pm

 For this unit plan, I created two lesson plans with their respective activities. When presenting the unit plan, I explained its consistence and how it would be use in the classroom. I focused more on presenting my unit plan and how the four goals and ACTFL standards were implemented instead of focusing more in the activities planned for the class but there was a bad understanding with respect to it.  Two aspects that went well of the lesson were the instructor(myself) making clear what the students were suppose to do, and the students understanding the lesson and activities having any kind of concern. An aspect that did not go so well was the lack of time because I had to rush in other to explain/present the entire unit . There was any unanticipated consequence but something that I learned from this experience was the less the better and the quality is better than the quantity. The  best out of all was the connection that I had with the students, they were able to understand and even better participate. The students were assigned to work individually for a specific activity but also in pairs for another specific activity. In other words, they worked individually and in pairs how is mentioned in Teaching Cooperative Skills from the book that we read in class. Something that the students took away was the knowledge of knowing the culture of how  family of the target language enjoy holidays/parties  together.  The objectives were achieved, everything that was meant to be done and said was complete. There was a lot of vocabulary work done and learned by the students, because having the students learned vocabulary words will help me for the following class were they will already have knowledge of a lot of vocabulary words of the target language.  Definitely, there is another way of teaching this lesson, well part of it.  I will focus more in the activities and the students instead of expending the time on explaining the unit plan. But not forget to mention that most of the Five C's were implemented in my lessons as part of the foreign language education.
This was my first unit plan, and I tried what I could. It was not perfect but it was done by myself and have to mention that I have not experiences doing this before but by this being my first time, I experienced a lot. And what will help me for the future unit plans are the comments or critics done by my instructor.

Permalink Reply by Joseph Mansur on May 13, 2015 at 6:13pm

My Unit Plan was made with the future tense in mind. There are many different ways to teach the future tense, or to see examples of it. It can be seen through a dialogue, in a group setting, in a visual or audio clip, etc. My Unit Plan was called "Come sarà il futuro?", which means "How will the future be?". I thought that this was a great way to show students that they will be learning the future tense, without actually saying word for word, "We are now going to learn the future tense". The lesson plan that was covered in class was called "Se farà bel tempo domani...", which we learned means "If tomorrow it is beautiful outside". 

This lesson opens the door to not only reviewing and or teaching the actual tense and its conjugations, but by learns about what/if clauses. These clauses are seen very often in the future tense, and allows students to be introduced to what/if scenarios in the target language. Overall, many aspects of the lesson went well. The PowerPoint was made to facilitate the lesson very well. PowerPoints also add to the idea of Differentiated Instruction, as per Blaz in her text Differentiated Instruction, and in Susan Reese's text How Do You Support Every Learner? Having technology in the classroom is a great way to incorporated Differentiated Instruction, and it is a great way to facilitate the learning of the target language.  The instructional setting also sticks out as being excellent, as Lee & VanPatten would concur in Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen, in their chapter on classroom settings. The classroom was set up in a way that the instructor was able to interact with students easily, and the students were able to interact with the instructor and with their fellow classmates. This did indeed happen during the lesson. Interaction is a key to success in learning.

I would have preferred to have more time to teach the lesson, so I can see how time management would genuinely exist in the classroom. The students definitely had an understanding of the future tense, and all objectives and goals were achieved. Next time to teach the lesson, I would definitely try and incorporate more audio and visual clips. Overall, a great final teaching slice! Some unanticipated consequences were that some students had questions on certain parts that were perceived or predicted to be easy to understand. Time was taken away to handle these concerns. This interaction though was good, and it facilitated their learning. The following class, there should be a review, and then the class will use the future tense with reading comprehension exercises and different pieces of Italian Literature.

Word Count :447

Permalink Reply by Nataly Herrera on May 13, 2015 at 8:27pm

My lesson "Mi clase favorita" was made for students to learn how to express their favorite and least favorite classes and what interests of theirs make that class their favorite. I believe the activity I had presented flowed smoothly. Students had used their prior knowledge of class subjects and were able to put into practice their reading skills and use context clues to organize and schedule for Juan. I believe to make this lesson better, I could have tried to incorporate culture more into.  From this lesson, students should have been able to take away how to properly form a sentence when saying what their favorite classes are. They should have learned the different subjects there are. They should also have learned how to express what activities they like and dislike according to the subject classes they are taking. Teacher-student interaction was seen when I would read the sentences i had presented and students would fill in the blank with the subject.Student-student interaction was seen during activity 3 of practice. Students had to read a dialogue together and once read, they were to create a schedule for Juan based on his interests in the dialogue. This allowed them to put their ideas together help each other out with the reading. Student-student interaction would also have been seen in the production phase of my lesson where students would have read their written paragraphs aloud to their partner and their partner would have guessed what classes they are taking based on their interests. This would have put their listening skills into practice where they would listen to someone speak the target language other than the teacher. Since the Unit Plan is focused on "la escuela", for the next lesson, students will be learning about items in the classroom and location. For example "El lapiz esta encima del escritorio." 

Permalink Reply by Sarai Herreros on May 13, 2015 at 9:11pm

 My unit plan was extremely fun to create and I really loved my final outcome and presentation.  At first, I was very hesitant about how to go about making a unit plan and simply where to start. I knew that my goal was to engage students and have them really benefit from the activities and the information that I would provide them. The name of my unit plan was “Recuerdos del pasado”. I wanted to create something that would have all students dig in to their past and think of something that had impacted them or remember often. Since my topic was Memories of the past I focused on using the past tense format for students to express themselves. I named my first lesson “La infancia” because I focused on the students’ childhood and experiences. My goal was to incorporate the four cognitive skills throughout the lesson dispersed around so that I could fully unravel each skill with the students. I asked questions such as “¿Que recuerdo les viene a la mente de su infancia? I also provided a video for this lesson to incorporate culture and show a child’s life style in another country. One thing that I would have done differently is asked questions that were a bit more thorough. My questions were a bit vague and I could have made the questions a little less obvious. I named my second lesson plan “Alguien Especial” because this would focus more on their latest years and it refers to someone specific. I think that the students were able to benefit from these lessons because they could learn to value life and take in a new perspective of people and their various experiences. These lessons include lots of communication both verbal and written because students need to interact as well as interact with their own thoughts.

My third activity was rather interesting and very interactive. I would have the students choose an article from a “memory box” and have them briefly write about what it reminds them of from their childhood. Then they would share with the class and see if anyone had similar thoughts too. Overall my objectives were achieved. In a regular classroom I would have really enjoyed unraveling an activity because I know that the students would participate and enjoy the activity. The next lesson would begin at focusing on someone special. The most efficient way to reteach a part of this lesson is to really focus on having the students engaged to participate with the memory box activity and have the students really analyze the article they chose. (:

word count: 432

Permalink Reply by Sindy Caceres on May 13, 2015 at 9:17pm

For this unit plan I created two lessons which were based on one’s pastimes and community. I believe that some aspects that went well throughout my lessons would be how the 4 goals and the 5C’s were well implemented in my lesson. The guideline of using the 3P’s when creating my lessons was very helpful because it help me organize the information that would be taught to the students. I believe that the lesson that I created that was based on one’s pastimes went well, however, there is always room for improvement. The way I presented the big hook and small hook in my lesson were features in my lesson that went well. I think that my activities were at the right level for the proficiency level of the students. Some things that might not have gone as planned would be when I gave instructions to the students in the target language. I think I spoke very quickly and didn’t use as many gestures as I would have wanted to use.  However, this is working progress.  Another aspect I think didn’t go well would be probably adding to my presentation the grammatical structure of the indirect object pronouns since that’s something the students have been working on throughout the week. That can be a helpful reminder to students when completing a task. 

                From the lesson that I created and presented I believe that students took away many things that they can find very useful when communicating to someone. I believe that the topic of pastimes is a topic of one’s interest which is within the interest of the students. When teaching any lesson in general I believe that one as an instructor should try to implement Realia as much as possible. In other words, teachers should use real and authentic materials when teaching a lesson to make it more interesting. Students can get bored very easily but if one as an instructor provides students interest within the lesson then it makes the lesson more entertaining. As for unanticipated consequences I would expect some students to have questions or concerns because not everyone has the ability to grasp so much information within a 40 minutes class period. The student’s interaction with each other was seen throughout the first activity because throughout this activity students were able to communicate with their classmates and share each one’s enjoyment as a pastime. The interaction that they would have had with the instructor (me) would be when the students share their classmate’s responses. They were able to communicate their expressions and share their emotions.  I believe the objectives of the lesson were reached and that the students learned different types of hobbies that one enjoys doing as their pastime. I believe that the next class should begin with a short review of the previous class. Reviewing some of the adjectives and indirect object pronouns.  The next class we can expand more on the different ways we can create sentences using this indirect object pronouns. There can be so many different ways in which one as an instructor can teach a lesson. This lesson could have been retaught by probably implementing more audiovisual techniques throughout the presentation instead of just using visual pictures.  

Permalink Reply by Jose J. Diaz on May 13, 2015 at 9:27pm

We are at the end of this semester and I learn many things since the day one about how to create a lesson that included. For this final project, "Creating a Lesson plan" I was able to apply all the knowledge I acquired during this semester. I am not going to say that my lesson were the one hundred per cent excellent, but I am sure that every lesson was created in such a way that the students would be able to get the most put each activity. One of the main target for my lesson plan was to create an environment in which students would be will be able to use the L2 as much as they could. Teaching the class in a 90 per cent in the target language is something that could be achieved as long as the all the part of the lesson are planned carefully. As many of my colleagues, next time I use any material from the web, I will make sure to cite my sources in order to avoid plagiarism. Since the topic for my lesson was about mass media, I believe that through the students would be able to learn that could learn so much more about others' culture throughout the media. The implementation of the 5 Cs by using Big and Small C items throughout the lesson unit was something that  would makes the students to appreciate as  well as to comprehend  the Hispanic community that surround them in and outside the classroom. One of the advice I will apply next time I present a video would be putting closed captions, this is with the solo purpose of helping the students to get the most out of the video I am presenting. Asking questing during the video, pointing out interesting part of the video, these are the things I need to do to make the any video presentation more interactive. Taking my papers, presentations an any other kind of written material to a fellow teacher to check them  is something I will keep in mind because I have to make sure that the material I am presenting has not errors.

Permalink Reply by Janeth Puma on May 13, 2015 at 9:59pm

I created a unit plan that introduced the students to the subjunctive using realia. In my intent to create this lesson plan I use the book MAKING COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING HAPPEN by Lee and Vanpatten. I used the information from the book and also I used the ACTFL standards to make an effective lesson plan. I incorporated realia and the 4 cognitive skills in my lesson plan.

In my presentation I gave an overview on how my lesson plan would look when is apply in a classroom. I believe that half of my lesson plan went well and the other one didn't. I think that the good part in my lesson plan was that I always kept the lesson in the TL. The other thing that went well is that I didn't need to give the student a formula of how to use the subjective instead I help them understand the TL. The realia helped me introduce the topic in a fun way in which the student related to the lesson. The students learn to use the language in a fun way instead of the traditional mechanical drilling way. Students learn in the lesson to express their feelings and wishes. For example James in class was ask to express if he will like to visit Ecuador. James unconsciously use the subjunctive to express that he will not like to visit Ecuador. I believe that with this lesson the students learn how to express themselves in the TL. The students were able to communicate their wishes in class with their partner and with the teacher. Even though I was able to do the production I was able to presented in class and I think that the production part will help the students get connected more with the culture and observe and practice more the subjunctive.

The part that I think didn't really work for my lesson was that I had a video that didn't help the lesson much. I think that a way to fix this part is by incorporating a video that helps me introduce the subjunctive and has more material to work with. Other way is to take away completely the video and incorporate pictures instead.

I think that the next lesson should start with how to express emotions with the use of subjunctive. I will teach the WEIRDO. I think that since I introduced already wish the next one should be emotions.  

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Permalink Reply by James López-Navarro on May 13, 2015 at 10:58pm

For this Unit Plan, ¿Qué te gusta comprar? (Intermediate Spanish), I was able to demonstrate the three mini activities that I had designed for my practice part of the Lesson Plan 1 (i.e., “El vestuario”). Based on the feedback I received from my colleagues, it is my belief that almost all my aspects went well from the student comprehension to the instructions of the activities given. One of the aspects that I should have been careful was that there was a picture of a man with weights on which students had to match the clothing articles. Even though it may seem to be something little, individual differences (e.g., anxiety) in an L2 learning plays a role to the degree that students have the tendency to feel overwhelmed especially when they have a limited time and do not know whether it will be collected and later graded. As a cooperative learning strategy, the students were able to interact with a partner while reading the blog presented to them. This allows them with their confidence because, as commonly said, two heads are better than one. However, there may be occasions when students may feel under pressure because, due to lack of prior knowledge or their schemata, they do not know everything the article deals with or are not good with context clues. By placing them with other students it helps them to rely on each other to the degree that, in some cases, it may push them a little further because they do not want to appear to be less intelligent than their partner. They had the opportunity to interact with me (their professor) when we did the in-class activity, which gave me the opportunity to ask them what the specific lexicon meant and what the clothing article was meant for. The reason why I did (and usually do) this was (and is) mainly because I just do not want my students to know the vocabulary, but, instead, I encourage them to go beyond and know other variations of the word, learn what the clothing or accessories is meant for, e.g., pants one can place items in the pockets to take with them (wallet, phone, keys, etc.). Therefore, the lesson was not meant to be started, as I stated during the presentation. Yet, it was meant to start with an extensive lexicon about clothing articles and learn when and where appropriate attire is considered, as well as what type of clothes one likes to wear to be able to grasp the student’s attention. All in all, I believe that any lesson can it be taught differently because others have different ideas, but it mostly depends on their students and we must accommodate to their learning style in order to have them benefit from what is being taught.