Reflection #1 (Spring 2020)

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Lady Castano on February 22, 2020 at 6:43am

In our micro-teaching lesson, my partner and I had to do translation-based activities. We found this lesson to be interesting and strong because we had to incorporate communicative methods in the translation activities. The students in the classroom will learn in a way that’s more dynamic and clearer, the students will feel motivated and happy to learn because of the fun and interaction with other students. We found that traditional activities for translation based are more repetitive and mechanical. The mechanical way makes students feel like they are obligated to memorize, just do a task and not really motivated to learn.

What we would have done differently in our activities would be spending less time explaining the traditional methods and more time incorporating pictures to show the difference between conventional and communicative activities. Pictures would show visually what we wrote in the texts to explain clearer the ideas we were presenting. An effective method would have been to incorporate items into the presentation, just to make a visual example of what objects these would be, then have students pick a random item name and place it to the correct piece. Another helpful instruction to have added into our presentation, would be a short video showing a real class doing the same or similar activity of charades.

The procedure to have incorporated more culture into the activities would be grouping students, giving them a country of the same language but with different cultures, food and music, and then have the groups presenting to the class what they learned from the other countries and this has to be in the language they are learning. The other groups with other countries will give similarities and differences between their countries and their cultures.

Permalink Reply by Maria Pavia on February 26, 2020 at 6:04pm

Hi Tanya and Lady,

 I like how you and your partner were so clear and straightforward on your Lesson on translation based. I also liked the games you included in the lesson plan of charades student acting out the word which is a real motivational interaction among students. In addition, I think next time add more visual for visual learners because just by adding picture is another way of also hooking the learner’s attention without them really knowing it. I agree adding culture to your presentations is also essential to add, I think you can include this by showing student diverse cultures of countries to have them make comparisons.

Permalink Reply by Maria Pavia on February 22, 2020 at 5:36pm

In this micro teaching lesson, I collaboratively worked with My partner on Lee and VanPatten based on the ideology of Communicative method. Through this framework we had to present repetition-based activities. I found this lesson significantly interesting because I was able to incorporate some of my ideas with my partners idea, we were able to come up with a lesson plan. With this in mind, we have noticed the difference of how mechanical and meaningful conventional learners are not really learning but memorizing work and the need to understand the work comprehend what is going on in order to respond. This showed us just how student learn more affectively through a more communicative based I believe this lesson was a strong way to help us include communicative drill not just in the presentation but also something to include in a classroom setting and making the lesson more interactive and real-world task for students.  Something I would have done differently is that I could have incorporated a subtitle to show the difference between conventional and the modification. Also, we could have implemented a more culture into our project such as, for L2 learners we could have explained/shared other ways of saying of saying there daily routine and if anyone can relate or differentiate and even included a video to show also how other countries have a different routine then we do. As a result, students engage and share within their groups something new they have learned that they did not know before.

Permalink Reply by Maritza M. Vega on February 23, 2020 at 8:34pm

Hi Maria, your micro teaching lesson really interested me. The ideology of the communicative method shows us the differences that exist between this and the mechanical and conventional form of learning. I am in agreement with you because I think we need to leave the mechanical and conventional way of remembering lessons in the past, and instead teach them better methods of learning and remembering lessons. This includes incorporating new methods of teaching that invoke activity in students for learning. This would be for their longtime remembrance of information because a lot of memories are short term memories and it is important to prioritize the memories that hold more importance with incorporating communicative methods of learning.

Permalink Reply by Jenise Duran on February 23, 2020 at 10:02pm

Hello Maria and Maritza,

I agree with you both regarding the fact that the mechanical and conventional way of learning is not the most effective way. These new methods of teaching that we are learning seem like a much better approach. I believe that this conventional way will always continue to fail the students because they fail to have a communicative approach and that is one of the aspects that need to be present when teaching, in order for children to succeed.  

Permalink Reply by talia zeferino on February 26, 2020 at 3:43pm

Hey Maria, you and your partner did a great job on the micro teaching lesson. I found your lesson very informative but at the same time very fun for students. I was able to see different strategies in your lesson that I felt students would appreciate. For example the tic - tac game, I find that game to be very interactive and it allows students to have fun and practice their task at the same time. I agree with you, incorporating a subtitle to show the difference between  conventional and modification activities will allow us to have more clarity between the activities.   

Permalink Reply by Oralia Lainez on February 23, 2020 at 8:52am

In our micro-teaching lesson, my partner Talia and I worked on creating activities that would benefit the heritage language learners in the class. We found this one-day lesson to be strong and interesting due to the reality that in most Spanish classes heritage language learners are ignored. Most of the time all the students will receive an ordinary activity leaving heritage language learners doing work they already know and not being able to grow. The activities we picked each allowed the heritage language learners to not only focus on improving their writing but as well as their reading. Most of the time heritage learners are able to speak the language well but when it comes to writing and reading majority struggle. The activities also allow the heritage learners to express a bit more about their culture and background. We also believed that the order in which the activities were planned in would allow the teacher to assess the heritage learners and their ability to write.

What we would have done differently due to differentiating instruction reasons is not give separate word counts. Both the heritage students and the rest of the class should have the same word count and expectations. We should’ve given the whole class the same end result, the whole class is learning how to properly write in the language.

To incorporate more culture into the micro-lesson, my partner and I could have made the second activity a culture-based food charade. Giving students each a paper and allowing them to write a traditional food from their culture and then allowing kids to try and draw/guess what it was. This would’ve been the perfect transition to our last activity which was the recipe and journal of a traditional food in their culture.

Permalink Reply by Jenise Duran on February 23, 2020 at 9:55pm

Hello Oralia,

I found your lesson to be extremely interesting because of the approach you guys took. You tried to match and meet the needs of all of the students in the classroom, while considering the level of knowledge they had as heritage learners. I love the way you said you would change up the second activity because each student has the chance to share with others what their likes and dislikes are while incorporating their culture and their traditions . This new idea also gives you a better transition between activities, which means your entire lesson will flow better because of it. 

Permalink Reply by Tanya Salazar on February 26, 2020 at 9:17pm

Hello Jenise,

I agree. The way Talia and Oralia created such an interesting lesson would benefit Heritage learners.They took everything into consideration and even used culture base methods. Other than that the lesson would really have the classroom engaged. They met all the needs. Just a slight problem on the standards but you guys were able to fix it. Great job! 

Permalink Reply by talia zeferino on February 23, 2020 at 7:55pm

In this micro- teaching lesson, my partner Oralia and I focused on creating three activities that would help heritage learners. Most teachers don’t normally create different activities that can benefit  heritage learners improve. In many cases students that speak the language at home lose focus in a language class being that they feel like they already know the topic. Although, keeping heritage learners attention isn’t an easy task, it sure can be done. My partner and I tried to create three activities that will grasp all the students attention. We modified the activities for heritage learners to help them improve both their writing and reading. We created activities that allow students to talk about their culture and be able to practice new words while still having fun, which is what makes this lesson strong.

One thing that I can say I would change about one of our activities is where we required students fo create a short journal expressing why the the recipe was important to them because we decided to assign more work to the heritage learners. We learned that it is not fair to them. Instead, we should include activities that can allow the students to think on their own. 

one way my partner and I could have included more culture is by grouping students and allow them to share their recipe and then instruct them to create a unique recipe using some of their ingredients. Students will find it fun and will be very engaged. They will also learn a lot about other food in different countries.

overall I found the micro- teaching lesson very beneficial to me because it allow me to see the importance of accommodating heritage learners. Even though they speak the language it doesn’t mean that a student can’t learn more.

Permalink Reply by Lady Castano on February 24, 2020 at 12:58pm

Hello Talia and Oralia,

I found your presentation to be very beneficial to heritage students. I thought you guys did a great job with the activities you incorporated into the presentation. I do agree about the journal with 200 words may be too long and the students might get bored and just add words just to add them. However, you guys were able to fix that and meet the goal of the micro-teaching lesson your group were given.

Permalink Reply by Tanya Salazar on February 24, 2020 at 5:27pm

Hello Lady, 
 I totally agree with you. Their presentation is beneficial for our heritage speakers that are always forgotten about. They did a great job by meeting the needs not only for traditional students but for the  modified ones as well. Just remember to be fair when it comes to standards. But other than that, keep up the good work! 

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