Helloooo up there!!
I got sick of having my replies to your comments rejected because of the number of characters, and that was 4,000+. You can see why I feel constrained by Twitter!!!
So here are my comments in the form of a post. Sorry they're so long winded but this process really helps me to get my head around things.
First of all, I'm having a lovely time with my Bear down here for Easter. The weather has been very kind and mild so far and we've been enjoying the beaches and cafes in equal measure.I'll be sorry to see him go back on Tuesday.
I'm not surprised that my 100 question questionnaire elicited your astonishment as it seems, as you say, out of character for me. I'm nothing if not unpredictable! :-) What may be a little difficult to understand from your perspective, without knowing the students, is the fine line that I'm treading here with my Year 11 class, to whom I gave it. They are pretty nervous about NCEA and any time spent not obviously focussing on it seems to some of them like time wasted. This was certainly the case with our Lithuania exchange for some although the majority thought it was very cool.
So my questionnaire was just a quick way into starting the process of reflecting on learning and it has yielded up some pretty predictable results of teacher dependency and lack of autonomy. So their perception of learning and themselves as learners is on the whole very conservative and it will take a series of sensitively handled steps to wean them off spoon feeding and make them more proactive. It's been interesting to correlate the results of my wee ten-question diagnostic test (based on what they're supposed to have covered last year) with the results of the questionnaire. The very few pro-active ones who want to take responsibility for their own learning and are not risk-averse and who find creative ways to reinforce new learning are of course the ones whose diagnostic results showed that they had fully mastered prior learning.
The two portfolio standards, to my mind, are very closely tied to self-direction and self-management so my main aim before Easter is to help them develop these particular skills and get cracking on the writing and interact portfolios. The session with Shirley and Jo really reinforced my understanding of how they're supposed to be handled and restored my confidence after a few days of nagging self-doubt. It won't be easy but it's where we've got to go. Our first task after Easter will be to make a MyPortfolio account for Year 11. Jacqueline and I are rolling it out to all our French classes following the enthusiastic take-up of it at Year 9. I'm sure we'll have a host of questions to ask you as we proceed. One of my first is 'What happened to my nice Primary school dashboard?' It disappeared when I changed institutions and I've been unable to find out a way of customising it.
I agree that I could have done both the diag test and questionnaire electronically, but I'm not quite at that point yet. It will eventually save me a lot of time and when they all have MyPortfolio accounts I guess that will make things even easier. That's the next step. First things first. A spreadsheet would certainly help to filter out certain bits of info. It might help my learning if I fed the results into a spreadsheet when I have a moment. It was an idea that grew out of my worrying about how to proceed with them and it was simply quicker for me to do it the old-fashioned way. I really want them to reflect on learning and their own in particular but in some ways it's likely to be easier with my younger classes who have less external pressure. The Year 11s will be spending time with me individually over the next week so we can work out together where we're going and decide on an individualised approach. I've detected from the class dynamic that there's a certain resistance from some to working with some of the others. We can handle that. I think choice will be a key factor and the fact that I have my two little break-out rooms will enable anyone who feels they don't need what I'm offering to go and do some extension, self-directed learning or recording of interactions for example. As I see them 5 times a week I'm planning, with their approval to spend 3 of those periods working more or less together and 2 on supporting them in whatever aspects of their learning they've identified as being most in need of attention. That's where the trusting that the learning will take place comes in.
I heartily concur with all your comments. First of all, I was disappointed that only one student accompanied her mother to the parents evening. It would've been so much more productive if they'd come in pairs. They don't seem to encourage it at the school. This particular interview changed my perception of that student radically with her mother there, and in a very positive way. One poor mother said her daughter doesn't communicate with her except through texts and I've already had a taste of being cut dead by this student. When we're theorising on what's desirable in the classroom we tend not to take into account the considerable affective factor which adds so much complexity to the teaching and learning process not to mention the teacher student relationship. It's such a psychological tightrope with some students, and it's so easy to 'blow it'. It brings you back with a jolt from any idealistic 'adviser drift' which has set in.
I'll need some more tuition on QR codes before I act on your suggestion. At the moment I'm just struggling to keep my head above water for much of the time. It's been a monumental mousewheel of activity. It sounds a really good idea - a good one for a wee skype tutorial perhaps. If you have a moment when I come back to Hammy in the hols, maybe a trip over the hill to Tauranga would be in order???
The poster I referred to is just one that you stick post-its onto as ideas come up. It would perhaps be good if they made their own electronic ones and customised them but I imagined that the comments and suggestions would probably be in English. I think they'd be more likely to be acted upon if they were.
We do have both Moodle (although I don't know of anyone who uses it) and Kamar (just new this year for school admin) and of course wikis. There's not a lot of evidence of Google Apps being used, at least by teachers. I haven't had a chance to ask the students if they use them. I'm sure we could do with your whizzy ideas there. These things are more easily demonstrated than talked about.
I'm really looking forward to hearing about your latest experiences both with the National Advisers and on your recent MyPortfolio sessions. I'd love to hear how some other schools are going with it and other language teachers in particular. I can hear you calling yourself into question over your effectiveness. I constantly put myself through the same process. I guess it's a way of remaining vigilant and aware rather than blundering on complacently thinking that your own way of doing things is the right way and that everyone should get real and jump on board. It just doesn't happen like that. People come to things when they're ready, if ever!! For me it's a constant process of give and take. That's what keeps it stimulating, I guess.
Our wee intercultural interlude with the Lithuanian art students was fun and I felt it was particularly successful with the juniors who had only a day's warning, dived into research on Lithuania on their laptops and were ready for action on the day. They brought along a couple of guitars and sang some Maori songs to the Lithuanians and they had a guitar too and they all sang pop songs together. They were totally amped. The Lithuanians had done a poster of each student's name in Year 11. They're lovely and Grazina has shared them with me on dropbox because they were a bit 'flou' on skype. We'll print them off and put them on the wall as very special artifacts. They also showed us the lovely Easter eggs they were decorating. Fun.
Time to think about food, before a family skype session later.
Bisous bisous
^. .^
=+=
31 March 2013
24 March 2013
Time for a breather and some reflection......
It's been a stimulating and full-on first three weeks back in the classroom. I think I've got nearly all the students' names learned (thanks to the wee photo gallery I made of each class), which is a great help both from the point of view of showing the students that I'm interested in them personally and also to give me a sense of having a handle on things.
Now it's Sunday night, but no school here tomorrow as it's Otago Anniversary Day. Tuesday is also out with the regional NCEA Jumbo Day with Shirley and Jo Guthrie doing the honours. Good opportunity to 'renouer avec' Otago French teachers. Unfortunately the door was closed on the Southland teachers as there were deemed to be too many to accommodate. I think that's a pity. They can't be all that numerous. So, I have a two-day week before more R&R over Easter. I'm enjoying the peace and quiet of my little house and listening to the incredible amount of birdsong from the Town Belt. Balm to the soul. Not that my soul really needs balm, but it's very uplifting to hear these sounds again after 40 years, especially when I'm working up a sweat on the forest tracks.
I've just devised a 100 question questionnaire for my Year 11s called 'What sort of a Learner are you'? It's a tick-box one that shouldn't take long but should give me valuable insight into their perception of themselves as learners. It's Guy Claxton inspired, of course, but from a language learning perspective. I was rather rattled after parents' night on Thursday by a mother who told me her daughter was feeling pretty 'déstabilisée' by the radical change in teaching style and that perhaps I should make a more gentle transition and that maybe this feeling wasn't confined to her daughter. Fortunately, there's no evidence that the rest of the class is feeling similarly short-changed and the rest of the parents were very positive. Funny how one tends to focus on the negative feed-back and forget the positive. I defended my pedagogy, pointing out that I felt it was a lost opportunity not to be using French as much as possible as the transactional language, that we were learning French through using it to communicate rather than learning about it to prepare for assessments. Because we're not moving from chapter to chapter in a systematic manner, she feels she's not learning anything. It makes me realise that I should consistently spend more time at the end of each lesson making sure that everyone knows what the focus of the lesson was and reflects on how they feel and whether it was valuable. I don't like to spell things out too much at the beginning as I prefer the students to reflect on the purpose of the activities as they're doing them. If it makes them feel more secure I might even resort to making a list of useful structures (gleaned from the old curriculum) that we'll be covering sometime throughout the year in the natural course of events, so that they can tick them off when they first encounter them and then once they've understood them and finally once they feel they've really sussed them and can transfer the knowledge to a variety of contexts (a la SOLO taxonomy). It might not be helpful to those who are confused by the analytical approach but could appeal to the others. I've also brought down with me a resource which I made a good 15 years ago to fit the old 1987 syllabus. It's a series of stories I wrote based on all the old topics but from a Year 11 perspective. A quick read through has made me think that the content is still highly relevant to the reading standard and if I make a sound recording of each one, it'll be good for listening practice as well. As you can imagine, because I wrote them, some of them are quite quirky and non-neutral, to make them more memorable. I can pop them on MyPortfolio in digital form.
At the moment the Year 11s are learning some French poetry, ostensibly for the purpose of sharing it with some Lithuanian students on Skype on Thursday, but the more perceptive ones have realised that it's really about developing confidence, fluency and memorising skills. The repetition should also help to reinforce patterns even though they're not all doing the same poems. That's differentiation. I'm trying to make them understand that whatever we do in class has a purpose in the wider scheme of things and that a narrow exam focus gives rise to mechanical academic engagement rather than deeper intellectual engagement. It's quite a departure from the ethos of the school, I feel, but I'm sure my methodology and optimum student achievement are compatible. I can also justify my pedagogy in terms of the NZC which is reassuring.
I'm pretty excited about how smoothly the initial uptake of MyPortfolio is going. The digital natives love it and can see already how useful it could be to store things on the cloud in one tidy place rather than having digital bits and pieces in various places. Of course by the time you come down we'll have plenty of questions to ask you and will be ready to learn new tricks and shortcuts. Here's one for starters. How would you manage a running record of students, class by class, on MyPortfolio? I just wanted to have a sort of page for each class with each student's name and comments that occur to me, which could come in very handy at report time. This doesn't have anything to do with my communication with the students through comments on their work. Do you think it's best to do it directly on MyPortfolio or keep it on some other sort of document that I could upload to MyPortfolio? I'd like to think I was making maximum use of the tool.
What else have I been doing? With the junior German classes I've been doing the donut activity with an inner circle and and outer circle which moves when I tinkle one of my bells (the cow bell this week) and say 'Tauscht!' (Change). They seem to really see the relevance of holding the same conversation with different class members. I'm lucky to have a delightful German student-teacher at the moment who's a great resource for my minimal German.
I nearly forgot to answer your question about target language in class. It varies from class to class and I do it au pif because it comes naturally or the opportunity arises but I'm no stickler for rules as you know. I tend to use more French with the students I've already identified as being able to cope with it rather than looking at me perplexed. Once again it's about differentiation. The juniors are pretty good about using the formulaic expressions now plastered all over the back wall but like Mainland cheese the habit takes time to form. I quite often say something in French then translate it if necessary. Other times I forget myself and answer a common question asked in English but then chastise myself publicly. Jacqueline and I always talk to each other in French in front of the students and most of the time between ourselves. It sets a good example and is also a pleasure.
Another thing waiting on my wall for students to add their contributions is a blank poster with a cloud in the middle with 'apprendre le français'. Soon I hope it will be adorned with multi-coloured post-its full of good ideas about what learning French might entail. Guy Claxton's Magnificent 8 Qualities are also up there in multi-coloured splendour. I'll post some photos next week.
That about wraps it up for the moment.
Hearty salutations to you and the yoga baleines.
^. .^
=+=
Now it's Sunday night, but no school here tomorrow as it's Otago Anniversary Day. Tuesday is also out with the regional NCEA Jumbo Day with Shirley and Jo Guthrie doing the honours. Good opportunity to 'renouer avec' Otago French teachers. Unfortunately the door was closed on the Southland teachers as there were deemed to be too many to accommodate. I think that's a pity. They can't be all that numerous. So, I have a two-day week before more R&R over Easter. I'm enjoying the peace and quiet of my little house and listening to the incredible amount of birdsong from the Town Belt. Balm to the soul. Not that my soul really needs balm, but it's very uplifting to hear these sounds again after 40 years, especially when I'm working up a sweat on the forest tracks.
I've just devised a 100 question questionnaire for my Year 11s called 'What sort of a Learner are you'? It's a tick-box one that shouldn't take long but should give me valuable insight into their perception of themselves as learners. It's Guy Claxton inspired, of course, but from a language learning perspective. I was rather rattled after parents' night on Thursday by a mother who told me her daughter was feeling pretty 'déstabilisée' by the radical change in teaching style and that perhaps I should make a more gentle transition and that maybe this feeling wasn't confined to her daughter. Fortunately, there's no evidence that the rest of the class is feeling similarly short-changed and the rest of the parents were very positive. Funny how one tends to focus on the negative feed-back and forget the positive. I defended my pedagogy, pointing out that I felt it was a lost opportunity not to be using French as much as possible as the transactional language, that we were learning French through using it to communicate rather than learning about it to prepare for assessments. Because we're not moving from chapter to chapter in a systematic manner, she feels she's not learning anything. It makes me realise that I should consistently spend more time at the end of each lesson making sure that everyone knows what the focus of the lesson was and reflects on how they feel and whether it was valuable. I don't like to spell things out too much at the beginning as I prefer the students to reflect on the purpose of the activities as they're doing them. If it makes them feel more secure I might even resort to making a list of useful structures (gleaned from the old curriculum) that we'll be covering sometime throughout the year in the natural course of events, so that they can tick them off when they first encounter them and then once they've understood them and finally once they feel they've really sussed them and can transfer the knowledge to a variety of contexts (a la SOLO taxonomy). It might not be helpful to those who are confused by the analytical approach but could appeal to the others. I've also brought down with me a resource which I made a good 15 years ago to fit the old 1987 syllabus. It's a series of stories I wrote based on all the old topics but from a Year 11 perspective. A quick read through has made me think that the content is still highly relevant to the reading standard and if I make a sound recording of each one, it'll be good for listening practice as well. As you can imagine, because I wrote them, some of them are quite quirky and non-neutral, to make them more memorable. I can pop them on MyPortfolio in digital form.
At the moment the Year 11s are learning some French poetry, ostensibly for the purpose of sharing it with some Lithuanian students on Skype on Thursday, but the more perceptive ones have realised that it's really about developing confidence, fluency and memorising skills. The repetition should also help to reinforce patterns even though they're not all doing the same poems. That's differentiation. I'm trying to make them understand that whatever we do in class has a purpose in the wider scheme of things and that a narrow exam focus gives rise to mechanical academic engagement rather than deeper intellectual engagement. It's quite a departure from the ethos of the school, I feel, but I'm sure my methodology and optimum student achievement are compatible. I can also justify my pedagogy in terms of the NZC which is reassuring.
I'm pretty excited about how smoothly the initial uptake of MyPortfolio is going. The digital natives love it and can see already how useful it could be to store things on the cloud in one tidy place rather than having digital bits and pieces in various places. Of course by the time you come down we'll have plenty of questions to ask you and will be ready to learn new tricks and shortcuts. Here's one for starters. How would you manage a running record of students, class by class, on MyPortfolio? I just wanted to have a sort of page for each class with each student's name and comments that occur to me, which could come in very handy at report time. This doesn't have anything to do with my communication with the students through comments on their work. Do you think it's best to do it directly on MyPortfolio or keep it on some other sort of document that I could upload to MyPortfolio? I'd like to think I was making maximum use of the tool.
What else have I been doing? With the junior German classes I've been doing the donut activity with an inner circle and and outer circle which moves when I tinkle one of my bells (the cow bell this week) and say 'Tauscht!' (Change). They seem to really see the relevance of holding the same conversation with different class members. I'm lucky to have a delightful German student-teacher at the moment who's a great resource for my minimal German.
I nearly forgot to answer your question about target language in class. It varies from class to class and I do it au pif because it comes naturally or the opportunity arises but I'm no stickler for rules as you know. I tend to use more French with the students I've already identified as being able to cope with it rather than looking at me perplexed. Once again it's about differentiation. The juniors are pretty good about using the formulaic expressions now plastered all over the back wall but like Mainland cheese the habit takes time to form. I quite often say something in French then translate it if necessary. Other times I forget myself and answer a common question asked in English but then chastise myself publicly. Jacqueline and I always talk to each other in French in front of the students and most of the time between ourselves. It sets a good example and is also a pleasure.
Another thing waiting on my wall for students to add their contributions is a blank poster with a cloud in the middle with 'apprendre le français'. Soon I hope it will be adorned with multi-coloured post-its full of good ideas about what learning French might entail. Guy Claxton's Magnificent 8 Qualities are also up there in multi-coloured splendour. I'll post some photos next week.
That about wraps it up for the moment.
Hearty salutations to you and the yoga baleines.
^. .^
=+=
19 March 2013
Bonsoir Madame!
Things are moving apace in the direction of MyPortfolio. Our Principal is very keen to get you down in term two to do some preliminary work with the willing. She's requested your contact details and I have no doubt that, being a woman of action, she'll be in touch with you very soon. Once we've developed a core of expertise, with your indispensable guidance then the school would look to extending it to all teachers probably in term 4, with a view to being up and running for all students by the beginning of 2014. So if you're keen and available it looks like two trips to Dunedin are in the offing. Bed overlooking harbour chez Bourchier ready at any time. Jacqueline and I are going to be the prime movers and will start with our Year 9's. The administration, which is currently with one of the teachers who doesn't seem to use it, will pass to one of the IT guys who will create a MyPortfolio ID for all staff and students to tap into whenever they're ready, How does that sound?? Not bad moving and shaking for 2 and a bit weeks. The planets were quite simply aligned, particularly with Jacqueline being so keen and IT savvy. She'd be a good Guy Claxton model. Lovely to work with. It's as always a matter of grabbing learning opportunities when they arise. Now to convince the students of this rather than relying on a programme set in concrete and driven by summative assessment for which they haven't yet done the learning but too bad because that's when it's scheduled!! I've just run a wee diagnostic test on the Y11s to see how much of what they covered last year has sunk to the bottom. It varies a great deal but for some it's still floating helplessly on the surface. The challenge is to encourage them to reflect constantly on what they're doing and why. Arousing their curiosity to ask good questions is also a challenge, but a rewarding one. I think that when I wax lyrical about the quality of the questions asked by some students, it might prompt others to do the same.
Lots going on in all my classes but no time to go into detail tonight. Ce sera pour une autre fois......
Watch this space......
Bises
^. .^
=+=
Things are moving apace in the direction of MyPortfolio. Our Principal is very keen to get you down in term two to do some preliminary work with the willing. She's requested your contact details and I have no doubt that, being a woman of action, she'll be in touch with you very soon. Once we've developed a core of expertise, with your indispensable guidance then the school would look to extending it to all teachers probably in term 4, with a view to being up and running for all students by the beginning of 2014. So if you're keen and available it looks like two trips to Dunedin are in the offing. Bed overlooking harbour chez Bourchier ready at any time. Jacqueline and I are going to be the prime movers and will start with our Year 9's. The administration, which is currently with one of the teachers who doesn't seem to use it, will pass to one of the IT guys who will create a MyPortfolio ID for all staff and students to tap into whenever they're ready, How does that sound?? Not bad moving and shaking for 2 and a bit weeks. The planets were quite simply aligned, particularly with Jacqueline being so keen and IT savvy. She'd be a good Guy Claxton model. Lovely to work with. It's as always a matter of grabbing learning opportunities when they arise. Now to convince the students of this rather than relying on a programme set in concrete and driven by summative assessment for which they haven't yet done the learning but too bad because that's when it's scheduled!! I've just run a wee diagnostic test on the Y11s to see how much of what they covered last year has sunk to the bottom. It varies a great deal but for some it's still floating helplessly on the surface. The challenge is to encourage them to reflect constantly on what they're doing and why. Arousing their curiosity to ask good questions is also a challenge, but a rewarding one. I think that when I wax lyrical about the quality of the questions asked by some students, it might prompt others to do the same.
Lots going on in all my classes but no time to go into detail tonight. Ce sera pour une autre fois......
Watch this space......
Bises
^. .^
=+=
16 March 2013
Update from the sunny south
Coucou Pascale,
Well, I've survived my second week, culminating in a couple of hours at the school fair today, keeping an eye on my form class running a Jelly Fish stall, involving large plastic boxes of lurid coloured jelly in which participants fish for marbles which win them prizes of varying values depending on the colour of the marbles. Actually it was a good opportunity to observe which students get right in there and do their bit and which ones skive off. I'm noting it down for 'managing self', 'relating to others' and 'contributing'. It's a perfect context to make a judgement on that. I was pretty amazed at how onto it some of them were in the planning stages. I just handed over to them and they organised the whole kaboodle.
Definite progress has been made on the name-learning front. I only have a couple of classes to master and I'll feel I have a much better handle on things. It's amazing the difference it made to both my feeling of adequacy and the response of the students, particularly in the most challenging class, Y5 German. They seemed really chuffed that I was able to name them all correctly. It also helped that I had a young German intern with me who's going to be a great asset.
My HOD and I have been continuing to muse on MyPortfolio. I think she's contacted you, hasn't she? It seems we already have an administrator for the school so that's a start. It occurred to me last night, as I was thinking about the most efficient way of sharing a powerpoint I'd made for Year 11, that maybe this would be the perfect entry into MyPortfolio. Instead of putting it on a wiki, or airdropping it laboriously to each student's laptop, or dropboxing it, they could each start a MyPortfolio account and we could do some sharing. They seem keen on the e-portfolio idea. So, my texpert, how do you suggest we proceed.?I've still got MoE as my institution. Is there any necessity for me to change this?
Friday morning we had a brief Skype session with Grazina in Lithuania, checking that all is well in the technical arena for our meeting up with her students in a couple of weeks. My Year 11s were blown away to suddenly be joined by a lovely, friendly teacher speaking to us in French with a Russian accent. I think they'll now be more motivated to get some poetry up their sleeves for sharing on that occasion. The Lithuanians are doing an over-nighter so they can connect with us live. Grazina is a veteran of virtual exchanges. I feel quite comfortable with the fact that it probably won't be on-going. Short projects can possibly provide a much-needed reality shot in the arm and awaken students to the possibilities that are open to language learners these days. I'd be very happy if they are then inspired to do individual or small group exchanges as I think they may be more sustainable than the big ambitious 'projet pédagogique' with clearly defined objectives, although there's probably a place for this too. Certainly the real-time exchange isn't really feasible on a regular basis unless students are doing it independantly, because of the 'décalage horaire'.
How am I coping with the huge change in my life? Psychologically it's fine, at the moment. It's the aging body that tires. I manage it by enjoying my solitude when at home. I'll emerge from my cocoon and be a bit more sociable once I'm settled but right now I need that down time with minimal stimulation. I'm very fortunate to live in such a refreshing physical environment. Here's the view from my terrace today, and in fact from most of the rooms of the house. You'll just have to imagine the bird song from the Town Belt and the big fat wood pigeons roosting in the magnificent native tree next door.
^. .^
=+=
Well, I've survived my second week, culminating in a couple of hours at the school fair today, keeping an eye on my form class running a Jelly Fish stall, involving large plastic boxes of lurid coloured jelly in which participants fish for marbles which win them prizes of varying values depending on the colour of the marbles. Actually it was a good opportunity to observe which students get right in there and do their bit and which ones skive off. I'm noting it down for 'managing self', 'relating to others' and 'contributing'. It's a perfect context to make a judgement on that. I was pretty amazed at how onto it some of them were in the planning stages. I just handed over to them and they organised the whole kaboodle.
Definite progress has been made on the name-learning front. I only have a couple of classes to master and I'll feel I have a much better handle on things. It's amazing the difference it made to both my feeling of adequacy and the response of the students, particularly in the most challenging class, Y5 German. They seemed really chuffed that I was able to name them all correctly. It also helped that I had a young German intern with me who's going to be a great asset.
My HOD and I have been continuing to muse on MyPortfolio. I think she's contacted you, hasn't she? It seems we already have an administrator for the school so that's a start. It occurred to me last night, as I was thinking about the most efficient way of sharing a powerpoint I'd made for Year 11, that maybe this would be the perfect entry into MyPortfolio. Instead of putting it on a wiki, or airdropping it laboriously to each student's laptop, or dropboxing it, they could each start a MyPortfolio account and we could do some sharing. They seem keen on the e-portfolio idea. So, my texpert, how do you suggest we proceed.?I've still got MoE as my institution. Is there any necessity for me to change this?
Friday morning we had a brief Skype session with Grazina in Lithuania, checking that all is well in the technical arena for our meeting up with her students in a couple of weeks. My Year 11s were blown away to suddenly be joined by a lovely, friendly teacher speaking to us in French with a Russian accent. I think they'll now be more motivated to get some poetry up their sleeves for sharing on that occasion. The Lithuanians are doing an over-nighter so they can connect with us live. Grazina is a veteran of virtual exchanges. I feel quite comfortable with the fact that it probably won't be on-going. Short projects can possibly provide a much-needed reality shot in the arm and awaken students to the possibilities that are open to language learners these days. I'd be very happy if they are then inspired to do individual or small group exchanges as I think they may be more sustainable than the big ambitious 'projet pédagogique' with clearly defined objectives, although there's probably a place for this too. Certainly the real-time exchange isn't really feasible on a regular basis unless students are doing it independantly, because of the 'décalage horaire'.
^. .^
=+=
11 March 2013
A quick look at the teaching environment
Since you'd like to see where I spend most of my day, here are some photos of G7. It used to be a language lab, which explains the two very useful little soundproof rooms to the side. It's like having ones own office and break-out rooms rolled into one. Great for interaction recording, videoing.....
Sorry no students in residence. Most of my classes are around 20 students or less. The conditions should be optimum for learning as long as we can establish the rich repertoire of formulaic language fairly promptly and wean them off being told what to do. It's interesting to see how little they retain from year to year when they don't have much (or any) input into the decision-making.
No time to elaborate just now. We'll reconvene after your West Coast adventures. We'll come to your Dunedin ones whenever they are.
Sorry no students in residence. Most of my classes are around 20 students or less. The conditions should be optimum for learning as long as we can establish the rich repertoire of formulaic language fairly promptly and wean them off being told what to do. It's interesting to see how little they retain from year to year when they don't have much (or any) input into the decision-making.
No time to elaborate just now. We'll reconvene after your West Coast adventures. We'll come to your Dunedin ones whenever they are.
10 March 2013
Deafening silence from Dunners
Coucou Pascale!
Here I am at last at 10.45 on Sunday night so I'll keep it brief. I did appreciate the tisane and I have been thinking of you and Back to the Drawing Board in my precious few moments of brain space. The Dephic Oracle's 'Know Thyself' is never more true than at the moment. I had an exceptionally busy end of week, cranking up to 6 periods on Friday and 4 hours talking to parents of students I didn't yet know on Thursday evening. Needless to say Friday night and the weekend have been given over to minimal auditory and visual stimulation while I charge my batteries for this week. I've been taming my home space with some plants and other embellishments to make it into my place and going for long walks up hill and down dale. My situation is really lovely with fantastic views over the harbour, sea and the town belt. I feel very fortunate. Looking forward to a visit from you.
I have raised the issue of e-portfolios with our IT guys (in particular the Mac expert) and he (and my HOD) would be delighted to see our department, or some of it, moving in this direction. At a staff meeting on Tues we were discussing the direction that the school's IT focus should be moving and I thought it was the ideal time to mention MyPortfolio. I also said I could recommend the ideal person to come and give us the PD. Schoolwide, I don't think it'll happen immediately as don't forget this is Mainland cheese country, but I'm hopeful that it will sometime this year. Once I feel I'm recovering from information overload, nudge me from time to time and we could even look at a bit of virtual PD to get at least some of my classes developing portfolios.
Thanks for the Virtues of Uncertainty clip. I have what must be an earlier version because mine isn't exactly the same. Actually I gave it to my HOD to read last week! It summarises very well where he's coming from and there are the Magnificent 8 qualities up in lights. I'm looking forward to discussing some of these things with my students.
They are lovely, by the way. It is an environment which is conducive to learning, with smallish classes and everyone with their own laptop. There is an ambiance of mutual respect so I don't anticipate that there will be a lot of classroom management issues.
Now to answer your questions. That's a good way of guaranteeing a response from me!!
What was the best aspect of you first week?
I felt very positive about it.
Here I am at last at 10.45 on Sunday night so I'll keep it brief. I did appreciate the tisane and I have been thinking of you and Back to the Drawing Board in my precious few moments of brain space. The Dephic Oracle's 'Know Thyself' is never more true than at the moment. I had an exceptionally busy end of week, cranking up to 6 periods on Friday and 4 hours talking to parents of students I didn't yet know on Thursday evening. Needless to say Friday night and the weekend have been given over to minimal auditory and visual stimulation while I charge my batteries for this week. I've been taming my home space with some plants and other embellishments to make it into my place and going for long walks up hill and down dale. My situation is really lovely with fantastic views over the harbour, sea and the town belt. I feel very fortunate. Looking forward to a visit from you.
I have raised the issue of e-portfolios with our IT guys (in particular the Mac expert) and he (and my HOD) would be delighted to see our department, or some of it, moving in this direction. At a staff meeting on Tues we were discussing the direction that the school's IT focus should be moving and I thought it was the ideal time to mention MyPortfolio. I also said I could recommend the ideal person to come and give us the PD. Schoolwide, I don't think it'll happen immediately as don't forget this is Mainland cheese country, but I'm hopeful that it will sometime this year. Once I feel I'm recovering from information overload, nudge me from time to time and we could even look at a bit of virtual PD to get at least some of my classes developing portfolios.
Thanks for the Virtues of Uncertainty clip. I have what must be an earlier version because mine isn't exactly the same. Actually I gave it to my HOD to read last week! It summarises very well where he's coming from and there are the Magnificent 8 qualities up in lights. I'm looking forward to discussing some of these things with my students.
They are lovely, by the way. It is an environment which is conducive to learning, with smallish classes and everyone with their own laptop. There is an ambiance of mutual respect so I don't anticipate that there will be a lot of classroom management issues.
Now to answer your questions. That's a good way of guaranteeing a response from me!!
What was the best aspect of you first week?
I felt very positive about it.
- If you identify one thing that is going to challenge you in the short term, what are you going to do about it?
The immediate challenge is to help the students develop a repertoire of transactional language. This appears to be lacking at all levels. I've made a consistent start on this and am interested to observe that it's the two Y9 classes which have more rapidly adapted and risen to the challenge with relish and gusto. The Y10 and Y11 are slower to take it on board as it hasn't been a feature of their learning. I am selling it as a fantastic opportunity to rapidly increase their fluency, confidence, repertoire in the context of a genuine interaction.
The second major challenge is that I have 8 classes and must learn their names as quickly as possible. I've used my usual strategy of photographing them holding a name label and I'm happy to say I'm making good progress. As I see the Y11s every day I already know them all. I hope to have the others down by the end of this week. Someone said 'Oh you could ask the office to print you off a class list with photos', but I pointed out that it would work better if I took my own photos. 'On ne connait que les choses que l'on apprivoise' (dit le renard)
- How is the Wifi? Can you use your phone in class?
Wifi's great. Students can use cellphones to record themselves and make videos. My year 7 German class enjoyed filming themselves doing dialogues with puppets and we then projected them on my humungous screen. It's so easy to incorporate technology in this school. I've arranged for my Year 11 class to link up with the class of my friend Grazina in Lithuania just before Easter. It'll be on skype and will entail exchanging poetry, so we're in the process of preparing for that. The Lithuanians are doing an all-nighter so we can go live. Should be fun. They hope to get a class in France to join up too.
- Are the systems in place straight forward to pick up?
Yep, pretty much. There seems to be a minimum of meetings and time spent on unnecessary admin. This is because the school employs a fair number of admin people to do these things instead of off-loading it on to the teachers. Only one form period a week, one assembly that the staff have to attend and two optional IT sessions that run from 8.30 - 9.00 (in my room, as it happens!!) So all good there.
- Can you take some pics of your learning environment (classroom/s) to show me?
I'll try and do that this week. It occurs to me that I could also post students videos on Vimeo or YouTube as long as they're using puppets because you can't see them. I'll think about that one. The other thing is to obtain permission from the parents or the principal and as lots of the students are boarders that might take a bit of time.
Now that I have to get up at 6.45 every morning, I must discipline myself not to burn the midnight oil so I'll say good night. By next weekend I should be thoroughly orientated, I hope, and ready to devote more time to Back to the Drawing Board (once I've done my duty at the school fair on Saturday!).
Have fun in the Naki and Manawatu. I look forward to hearing how it goes.
^. .^
=+=
9 March 2013
So?
Hello Ruth,
Congrats about reaching the end of Week One!
I have been thinking of you.
Thought you might appreciate a tisane and some R and R of some sort right now!
You may be interested to read this article by Guy Claxton, called
Also you may want to listen to this edTalk where Mark Osborne talks about Personalisation, one of the Ten Trends for 2013 identified by Core. If you have 5 minutes you will see why it resonates with me! Those trends are a prediction of what technology changes bring about in the world of NZ education. It talks about the drivers of change, the impact and the implications. Something for a rainy day maybe... (not that they are few and far between in your turangawaewae!)
Congrats about reaching the end of Week One!
I have been thinking of you.
 |
| Source |
You may be interested to read this article by Guy Claxton, called
Virtues of uncertainty
It is not new so you may well have read it before!
Also you may want to listen to this edTalk where Mark Osborne talks about Personalisation, one of the Ten Trends for 2013 identified by Core. If you have 5 minutes you will see why it resonates with me! Those trends are a prediction of what technology changes bring about in the world of NZ education. It talks about the drivers of change, the impact and the implications. Something for a rainy day maybe... (not that they are few and far between in your turangawaewae!)
Here are a few questions that I have been dying to ask you:
- What was the best aspect of your first week?
- If you identify one thing that is going to challenge you in the short term, what are you going to do about it?
- How is the Wifi? Can you use your phone in class?
- Are the systems in place straight forward to pick up?
- Can you take some pics of your learning environment (classroom/s) to show me?
Have a wonderful week end. Off to work with Glenda for a couple of days next week. I have been thinking of a post coming up on Professional Learning, what I ll do in Palmy and NP will certainly provide content.
A bientôt Ruth.
(When I come and visit I want to go there!)
2 March 2013
Cultural, intercultural, bicultural, multicultural - 3
So what tools have we got at our disposal to support the work of the Language teacher to be culturally and interculturally competent?
(I am writing this post to support the facilitation of some aspects of the upcoming ILEP workshops . It is a means to get my head round the complexity! It will be interesting to see how the "knowledge and experience in the room" during the workshop make the conversation evolve! I hope that participants do not turn up thinking they will be given ready solutions!)
Te Tātaiako- Cultural Competencies for Teachers of Maōri Learners has been developed to meet the goals of Ka Hikitia so that teachers think of what it takes to have success in teaching Maōri learners. Ka Hikitia, the Government Maōri Education strategy is being redeveloped for another 5 years starting 2013.
Te Tātaiako- Cultural Competencies for Teachers of Maōri Learners has been developed to meet the goals of Ka Hikitia so that teachers think of what it takes to have success in teaching Maōri learners. Ka Hikitia, the Government Maōri Education strategy is being redeveloped for another 5 years starting 2013.
 |
| Te Tātaiako |
It lists 5 main competencies (in orange my quick summary) :
Wānanga - dialogue with learners and communities
Whanaungatanga - active engagement in working relationships
Manaakitanga - integrity, sincerity and respect towards learners' culture
Tangata Whenuatanga - providing context where the identity, culture, language of the learners affirmed
Ako - teachers taking responsibility for their there own learning as well as for the learning of the learners
Then the document goes on to detail each competence with explanatory criteria as well as examples of learner voice and whanau voice. "For registered teachers, the focus is möhio: knowing how to validate and affirm Mäori and iwi culture, and applying that knowledge." (p.4 Te Tātaiako)
It is the must-print and the must-discuss when work is done around supporting the achievement of Maōri learners.
I would like to discuss with you and other Language teachers, who may have internalized these, if I am right in thinking that these competences and behaviours are also at the heart of Intercultural competencies, or if not at the heart where they sit in relation with the iCLTs.
Should this turn out to be verified, what needs to be mobilized by the teacher in order to:
- make the connections cultural competence-intercultural competence and ensure they are explicit for all learners?
- provide culturally responsive and engaging contexts for learning?
- provide regular timely feedback/feedforward to help progress and make it visible?
- develop a relationship with all the language learners, with respect of all of the languages and cultures they are bringing in the classroom?
- document classroom and outside actions, student voice, whanau engagement, achievement, success, trials, steps taken to support learner's progress?
- reflect upon progress against the criteria?
In comes the unmissable opportunity to see how ICTs and eLearning can help with evidencing the development and growth of the cultural and intercultural competence of the teacher.
There are many tools out there that allow to :
- access information (eg: MoE websites, professional reading, NZCER, Universities etc)
- initiate/participate in conversations (eg:, professional forums, VLN groups, listserves, social media...)
- collect evidence (eg: webtools, cloud drives, apps, pictures, videos, sound files)
- select and display evidence to demonstrate some particular aspect of the competence
- reflect (individually and/or through sharing with others, in or outside your school) on progress being made, where you were at when starting, where you are now, where you are going next.
I can see how an eportfolio* system like MyPortfolio come in as a handy tool as it allows for all of that to happen in one space!
And in order to document and think about what I am doing and how I am doing it, I really need a meaty driving question which is going to be at the heart of my professional goals for a determined period of time. Central to effective pedagogy is Teaching as Inquiry and this simple reflection tool can be a step to start the process. Teaching as Inquiry has plenty of benefits as it allows to incorporate all of the school/teacher initiatives (eg: particular aspects of Cultural Competence/elearning/ iCLT) in one cycle, and allows to establish a time scale for steps to happen by.
I would actually think along these same lines to document and reflect on my practice over time if my professional goals were assessed through Appraisal. It is a matter of lining up what I set out to do in knowledge of what I ought to do within my context with what I want to achieve over that cycle.
And if carrots are needed to effectively get started or get serious... Professional learning goals must be aligned with the Registered Teacher Criteria. Te Tātaiako have direct links with all of the twelve criteria. So by working on developing these competences, teachers are effectively working on demonstrating that they are meeting aspects of these criteria. But it is not a box ticking exercise that can be crammed in a month prior to renewing your Teacher Registration. It needs to be planned over a cycle (3 years), all twelve criteria need to be evidenced, the key indicators defining the set of values to measure against.
The Enabling eLearning Registered Teacher Criteria and eLearning is a "resource that illustrates how e-learning examples can be used to support the Registered Teacher Criteria. The twelve criteria have been "unpacked" with examples provided for each criteria"(Source). I used to refer to its precursor a lot and this current version is very recent. I will make use of this and link to MyPortfolio use in the upcoming workshops. Numerous tools are mentioned, there are many options to investigate.
Cultural Competence + Teaching as Inquiry + eLearning
=
effective culturally responsive Language Teacher
=
effective culturally responsive Language Teacher
Phew...
___________________________________________________________________________________*an eportfolio lands itself to this type of documenting: it is about filming the process. Understanding, developing, using competences and skills happen over time. It does not all happen at once nor is there a right or wrong. An eportfolio allows to show steps taken to work towards a competence (collecting and selecting evidence), in knowledge of the criteria, to reflect over these steps, to connect with others (HoD, colleagues etc) for feedback and feedforward, then to decide on the next steps in a learning process knowing what has come before. Hence an eportfolio suits an inquiry and along the way users of an eportfolio gain in digital competence and capability.
___________________________________________________________________________________
1 March 2013
Cultural, intercultural, bicultural, multicultural - 2
When I saw De and Whare presented, I jumped to the opportunity to "meet" them. I had listened to their Keynote Language, culture, identity and raising student achievement a while back. It had sat at the back of my mind since for two reasons:
- the importance and place of story and personal story telling
- the importance of history
in any educational context and more particularly the educational context of Aotearoa.
De and Whare in this Keynote pointed out that some Maōri students know little about their language their culture, their place, and that is a slow process to re establish that. Part of this process is acknowledging local histories and tikanga of the students, so that all are "comfortable in (their) own self, (their) own boots before moving on into the wide word".
Can iCLT techiques, which aim to foster interculturally competent learners who can confidently navigate intercultural interactions and relationships, apply to support Maōri learners learn as Maōri?
I need help understanding what cultural responsive pedagogy encompasses. For that I wrote Tamara Bell an email to ask her if she could help:
"... I was wondering if you could put me in the direction of a couple of edtalks or other short videos that could be used as a starter and/or support to conversations around teaching and learning strategies for Māori learners and raising/working on cultural responsiveness in the Language secondary classroom please.
I see there is a wealth of information out there. But I would like to make the right choices to instill curiosity and foster reflection for the participants at upcoming workshops for French and Spanish teachers, organised by ILEP,* to continue to look into this post workshop, to make connections with what is happening school wide in their institutions
Language teachers base their curriculum on the Six principles for intercultural communicative language teaching and if you had any suggestions to make on how this can, potentially, link with cultural responsiveness, I would be grateful for your input... "Tamara graciously replied really shortly afterwards with a wealth of resources! I felt so supported!
Here are some clips Tamara has recommended to watch:
(>what follows each resource are my quick notes upon listening)
Russell Bishop "A Culturally Responsive Pedagogy of Relations"
> care for Maōri students as Maōri, for their performance, that they learn/embrace/give opportunity for the funds of knowledge they bring to the classroom, interact, negociate, use strategies to engage effectively, keep evidence of student performance to guide where the teacher is taking the teaching and the students know their outcome in a formative way.
> improving teaching strategies and the effectiveness of teachers in increasing the engagement and academic achievement of Māori students.
Phoebe Davis "Critical Elements for Raising Maōri Achievement"
> forming relationship with students and whanau is fundamental
> know that there are a range of kids, which iwi and acknowledge whakapapa
> it says that you are for real and they are for real > what matters is that you try
> make the effort, think of activities that connect the teacher and the students (eg: acknowledge the different places, the people you may know in common etc)
> being culturally located > talk to maori iwi > Where is our school? what does it mean? acknowledge the community.
Maria Tibble "Professional Responsibility to Maōri students"
> what has had the most impact for Maria are Te Kotahitanga and Ka Hikitia as both allow to move away from an emotional approach to an evidence based professional approach to discuss the types of relationships, the pedagogy that make a difference for Maōri students.
> Rather than the teachers intellectualising the situation it is the students' voices that said that pedagogy, culture and relationship make the difference to Maōri students
> Maria urges all teachers to read, reflect, keep informed and relentlessly look into what makes a difference to Maōri Students, to commit to change.
Maria Tibble "Culture Counts"
> locate yourself culturally (where I am from, who I am )
> show you care about students as people (you invite students into your world as you culturally locate yourself, this opens a pathway for the students to follow and in return bring into the classroom their story)
> engender a relationship that has to be authentic, spend the time, authenticate your commitment to Maōri students by saying to them "your culture counts"
> show you care about their learning
Questions: So what to take away from these videos? Do I recognise the cultural differences? What does cultural responsiveness look like in the language classroom? How is the scene set? How do we know the rapport is building? Which activities foster inclusiveness? What has been tried and tested? Where is the part of the Target Language? How do we know it works? What do I adapt in my teaching?
Tamara also shared this acronym listing key ingredients to consider to that effect :
Questions: Which of these ingredients make it regularly, all the time, seldom in the language classroom? What do they look like in practice? Which activities are they incorporated in? How aware of them are we? What contributes to embedding them? What do we action to know the students in front of us? How do students and teachers keep trace of their performance? How do we know it works?Another two great resources Tamara shared for feeding the conversation and the reflection:
- Culturally Responsive Practice in a mainstream school
- a Refresher about What Works for Maōri Learners a forum on the VLN where educators exchange stories and ideas. Lots to read and learn from, and definitely the type of conversation to aim for with Language Learning in mind. Many Language teachers work with Te Reo teachers and form the same Department. What can be learnt from each other?
Where am I at now? Can iCLT techniques apply? - To move on to implement a more culturally responsive pedagogy there is need for conversation amongst teachers who are actively involved, for seeking and finding evidence, keeping track of it (taking responsibility for their learning), for making connection with the students, knowing what they have got to say, bearing it in mind in the teaching, using it to inform the next steps of learning, connecting and interacting with family and community, enabling support from within the institution, for wanting to keep informed and reflect on practice often and meaningfully. These to me are the tenets of effective pedagogy.
- What if a more culturally responsive pedagogy brought about the better more effective teacher and thus benefited all of our learners, regardless of cultural and ethnical backgrounds?
- And in order to make this learning journey "visible, traceable, rewindable and sharable" what if it was the perfect opportunity to blend in tools and online spaces in the practice to assist in this journey?
I also start to see where culturally responsive pedagogy and iCLT interweave as there is a common vocabulary and a common intent. It may be worth bearing in mind the teams of extremely competent educators that might support Language teachers in their inquiry, namely TMoA at Core Education and Te Toi Tupu Blended learning PLD (that I am aware of). I would like to suggest that NZALT and ILEP make contact with these organisations in order to invite them to facilitate workshops and give presentations.
*the workshop that I will facilitate aims to raise awareness of moments of learning, capturing these moments in order to be able to say how we know where we are at and decide on a next step: this can happen with the digitalising, collecting and organising of learning evidence (for students) and of professional engagement(for teachers) and the tools that support the necessary reflection that emanates from this process.
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