Blog 1_SS2018

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Maria Sciortino on February 21, 2018 at 6:10pm

Hello,Xochiti,I enjoyed your presentation, I thought it was very creative. The issue with the computer was not your fault or your partners' fault, but like you suggested we always should make sure our technology works before starting our presentation. We are all here to learn and any obstacle can be considered as a challenge for improvement.

I don't agree with Margarita about students feeling left out when a teacher does a differentiated lesson,  if we were teaching younger students, that can probably happen, but with student in junior high or high school I feel that they are aware of their classmates' issues and they are able to understand the reason behind differentiation. Of course this is my opinion.

Permalink Reply by Maria Sciortino on February 20, 2018 at 10:38am

When Mary and I planned our micro-teaching activity, our goal was to introduce the qualificative adjectives by introducing grammar through culture. We took Ned Seelye’s words as our lead: "Learning a language in isolation of its cultural roots prevents one from becoming socialized into its contextual use. Knowledge of linguistic structure alone does not carry with it any special insight into the political, social, religious, or economic system (1976)." What made our activity strong was the use of the culture to introduce grammar. I found the activity very interesting because we introduced a cultural event that best represents our Italian culture, "il Carnevale.” Most people in Italy get enthusiastically involved in this manifestation. Kids all over Italy eagerly wait for this event every year to put own their costumes and masks. We sought it opportune to show the class how people got involved, and we hoped to engage the students by making them visualize the cultural event using a video. I believe we reached our goal because the students all participated in the activities we proposed and all were interested in learning about the holiday. Even though it took me a long time to find the right video. We searched for one which was accurate and with a simple language, and it was important to find it with an audio/visual correlation. The only mistake we made was to use a long video. Although it was less than 4 minutes, while it was projected, we realized that the student’s attention span was less than that. In our next lesson, we will make sure to use shorter videos or to divide it into shorter sequences, allowing students to stay focused.
If I had the need to differentiate the lesson for students that had a different level of proficiency, I would have provided each of them a graphic organizer. This would have allowed them to visualize the relations between concepts. In part I think our poster was a successful as a graphic organizer because we associated pictures of “Carnevale's Maschere” (masks) to three adjectives that better show the characters’ qualities. If the root of differentiation were connected to another dimension of difference, for example, a learning disability issue that involves poor memory, I would have provided a pre-reading or pre-listening. I would have also repeated concepts more than once to give them the opportunity to learn using different modalities that better fit the leaners' needs.
I believe we incorporated the culture well enough. If I had to add something else I would have introduced the specific culture of the Carnevale in my small town, showing how it differentiate from the big cities' events that everybody is used to see on tv or internet. I would have showed how one big cultural event has different characteristics when comparing northern and southern Italy, and how each town in Italy makes the event its own by creating something unique, from food, to masks, to dance and much more.
I enjoyed working with my partner, we were able to approach this project with lots of enthusiasm, and I think that enthusiasm is the key to success, especially in teaching.

Permalink Reply by Maria Rodriguez on February 21, 2018 at 7:56pm

Hello, Maria, I like the strategies that you have implemented into the lesson because the materials were appropriate for students’ cognitive level. The cultural video was an excellent tool because it provided visual information about a target language. Students seem motivated and engaged to learn about the tradition of Italy. I like the way you communicate your thoughts and how to interact with the students. Students were able to participate during the discussion because they were able to understand the vocabulary.

Permalink Reply by Oscar Bustamante on February 21, 2018 at 11:34pm

       Ciao Maria Sciortino,

       I liked your presentation a lot. I really enjoyed "Il Carnevale" where you show us in the video a part of the Italian culture such as the colors, the masks, the customs, and the people.  The adjectives you presented, such as  "colorato" and "allegro", did not need a lot of grammar to understand  because you used a lot of illustrations. I also loved the interactive class with the students. The only thing that was missing, as you mention, was to shorten the video a bit and show a student with a disability and how you would approach the lesson to him. In conclusion, your presentation was very entertaining, colorful, interactive, but above all, very cultural. Bravo!

 

 

Permalink Reply by Gloria Payne on February 20, 2018 at 8:17pm

Good Evening All:

My group sought to educate the class about selective mutism, and how to work with those individuals who suffer from this disorder in a classroom setting. Further we believe this subject was important to discuss, as many students today suffer from this disorder in various degrees. Therefore, understanding who your students are, and making sure to incorporate them within the lesson plan is of vital importance. I believe the activity we did in class set the foundation on how we as future educator would go about integrating a lesson plan that is inclusive to all. We will encounter many students with various learning disorders and disabilities, and it is important that we are trained and understand how to appropriately deal with these students. The activity enabled us to prepare a subject that captivated the classroom, which was both educational and encouraged participation.
From my prospective there were several opportunities for improvement. I believe we missed the opportunity for my group to provide everyone a copy of our handout material, so they could properly follow our lesson plan. Further, we should have better informed the classroom that our purpose was twofold – which was having a keen knowledge of our student’s abilities and incorporating various techniques to bring everyone along no matter what their deficiencies may be. This round into understanding the culture of the classroom. We live in a society with many different groups, each with their own reasoning and understanding. Being knowledgeable and understanding of these differences, will enable us further to incorporate these into our lesson plans which will enrich both educators and students.

Permalink Reply by Katheryn Gutierrez on February 21, 2018 at 7:54pm

Hello Gloria, 

  I like how you informed the students on what is selective mutism and making them aware, also the strategies you and your fellow group members used to involve the student in your class who needed special accommodation. And like you said as future educators we need to be knowledgeable and understand the differences in the classroom.

Permalink Reply by Mary Mata on February 22, 2018 at 10:48am

Hi Gloria,

I enjoyed your group presentation a lot. I think it was creative, illustrative, and helpful for students to connect what they are learning to the power point slides that you have presented. Even the activities were very interesting. Especially when you called me to the board. If it was un-purpose to call me, that makes me think that your group was trying to apply equity to achieve equality between students. In other words, you gave the weakest student in your class (me) a little more attention than you gave the others to make everybody be at the same level.

Permalink Reply by Oscar Bustamante on February 20, 2018 at 11:44pm

               Hi everyone:             

               In my presentation of the teaching slice, I explained the professions in Spanish in an illustrative way, showing 20 professions in clip art images with three alternatives each, in PowerPoint. Then I taught the students how to pronounce these words correctly. After that, at random, I asked some of the students, pointing to some of the figures, which word was the correct choice. Later, I came near the student with Selective Mutism, and asked him to point out what his correct answer was on the paper he was previously given.

               At the beginning of the presentation, the colleague of my group, Gloria, explained what Selective Mutism is. This is a psychological disorder in which the child feels very shy talking in class but can speak at home and in other places. In my group we had to choose a type of disability because it was required. We had to demonstrate how to teach a lesson including a student with a disability, that's why we treated this special student in this way to understand his limitation better and to show the class how we approached it.

               At the end of the presentation, our teacher gave us his feedback. He gave us a positive review except that he mentioned that my group had technical difficulties at the beginning, which caused a delay in the presentation. He also commented that the timing of the participants in my group was a bit unbalanced since one took more time than the others. Another mistake was that we did not look at students as teenagers.

               Regarding to comments from my classmates, most of them had positive reviews for my group such as the use of technology and the interactive class we used. Only one of them commented that she did not understand very well what I said about the figures.

               Perhaps in my group, we missed some  important approaches to teach in our teaching slices but, again, our focus, as our teacher instructed, was a student with a disability and his special needs in classroom that required special attention from our part. This presentation was the first one and I know we had mistakes. With time and more experience we will be polishing these errors.

Permalink Reply by David Vazquez on February 21, 2018 at 5:27pm

Hello Oscar,
I feel like your group did a wonderful job. I felt like I was part of your group as well. You guys did a very good job in not excluding the student with disability. You made it possible for him to be involved, and not fall behind. Your use of technology was great, especially for a student with disability. It is like you said, it's the first presentation, through time, we will all get better with our teaching slices.

Permalink Reply by Oscar Bustamante on February 21, 2018 at 9:53pm

               I just wanted to  to add to my blog that with regards to culture, I believe I should have used images more related to Latinoamerican customs and traditions, for example, types of food, holidays, history, tourist attractions, etc. With that approach I would not only have taught Spanish but also I would have incorporated culture to my teaching micro-lesson.

Permalink Reply by Maria Sciortino on February 22, 2018 at 9:19am

Hi Oscar 

I found your mini-lesson very interesting and creative. As I said to Xochiti, Technical issues were not your fault, but we can use this incident to remember to check our technology before start any other presentation or when in the future we are going to teach our classes. We can use our mistakes to improve and learn how not to make these mistakes again.The only thing I would have done differently in your presentation was alternating talking among the three of you, during all the time of presentation instead of dividing the presentation in three parts.Other than this, I Ioved it!

Permalink Reply by Maria Rodriguez on February 21, 2018 at 3:51pm

The goal of the micro-teaching lesson was to address the diverse learning needs of the students in a class with different cultural and linguistic levels. The lesson had to be differentiated with two approaches to accommodate and address the needs of the students.
The lesson was based on the introduction of Fruits and Vegetables in Spanish/ English. The students had the opportunity to visualize pictures of the Fruits and Vegetables as well their name in Spanish/ English. After students engaged in a conversation activity with a partner to practice and identify the new vocabulary in Spanish. These activities were differentiated with two approaches in order to accommodate the learning needs of the students.
One of the strategies implemented was Cooperative learning in which students were partner with another student. A student with higher Spanish level was placed in the group of low level. This strategy allows students to engage in conversation and ask open question about the items. This strategy helps students in the language learning process to comprehend the meaning of the words.
Another strategy implemented in the lesson was visual imagery in which students had the opportunity to see real pictures of the vegetables and fruits with their names in Spanish. This facilitated better understanding of the meaning of the words.
One thing that I would have done differently in the lesson, would be to provide a video and expose students with real fruit and vegetables. A video would provide information about the region and the habitat that some fruit and vegetables need in order to grow. Students would have the opportunity to taste real vegetable and fruits.
Another thing that I would incorporate into the lesson is culture by teaching the different way to name the vegetables and the fruits according to their country. This would promote linguistic awareness and enhance vocabulary.

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next ›
• Page