Writing

Asking my students to write anything is like asking them to perform surgery on their own pet while it's alive.  You'd think I was the cruelest prof in all the land. 

I think the next project will be a podcast, or a video where the students have to teach something in French.  Like the verbs Aller à and Venir de. 

Truth: I spend 75% of my energy in this class babysitting three students.  It's exhausting.  Especially since I put so much time and effort into the actual curriculum.  They are wearing me out.  I never want to teach this level class again.  It's not the class that's wear me out, it's the students that don't want to learn, but want to be in my room becuase I'm fun, but don't want to do any of the actual work because that means learning.  These students need a completely different environment.  I have to allow that I cannot be perfect in every way for every student, and in many ways, that feels like me giving up.  Immersion is great.  The behavior is not.  The work is not.  But the learning is there.  Now what?  I'm too exhausted to synthesize what this all adds up to, so I'll have to come back to it later.

Signing off... one fatiguée mademoiselle.

Collages: Action Research

Here are two collages that students made, which were studied in an action research project this semester.

Here are two pictures which relate to the second activity in my data.

Photos, first quarter

At the beginning of the year we did chalk drawings on the sidewalk to review what we knew how to say about ourselves.

 

This past week the kids have been making towns. 

They constructed the buildings from a website: http://www.yourchildlearns.com/letters/make-a-town.html 

and labeled them with vocabulary from the book.

Today they wrote sentences about which street everything is on.

Tomorrow they will be writing out directions to get to five places from their house in the town.

Then they will test the clarity of their directions with a partner.

One girl brought in 50 matchbox cars, so they all chose a car, and will use it to test out their directions.

French is fun!  :)

I even got my own street!

Exhausted.

Scaffolding.  Scaffolding is my weakness.  I need to be scaffolded in my scaffolding.

And my blog sucks.  The homework blog, not this blog.  I think the kids hate it.  I'm pretty sure they hate it.  I kinda hate it.

I've got to be more creative with it, I've been trying to use more images, more videos, but it poses a problem technologically with school software.  Erk!

That's another problem.  I feel like I've got to be the awesomest awesome all the time, and when I have an off-day, or don't organize something to the last minute, everything derails and is awful and impossible. I'm so very tired.  Halfway through the semester.  Hopefully, focusing on scaffolding will give me a better framework to plan my lessons.  Otherwise, this last quarter might just be my own personal hell: unproductive but incessant work.

Chinup, Sheldon.  You got this.

Student Quotes

What aspect of the course do you like the most?

-The learning.  Speaking French all the time is difficult but really helps you learn.
-using French more than we used to because this is the only time I ever use French

What aspect of the course do you like the least?
-The frustration of speaking French.
-I miss the games. 

How has the immersion changed your participation and your work in class, and why?
-I participate less because I become annoyed when I can't just say something, I have to really think.
-I pay more attention to speaking French

Direction direction direction

I am constantly reinventing this course.  It is difficult to find a stable ground or framework when I'm making it up as I go along.  In the future I look forward to being able to plan out the organization of it in advance.  This week I gave a survey about the structure, and let the kids answer in English.  We even had sort of an English allowed day, but they didn't use it.  They stuck with the French!  The classroom environment alone just four walls of my classroom urge them to speak French, they feel uncomfortable speaking English.  Mission accomplished there.  Now, about that teaching part...

Some of the responses:

-I am learning a lot, really learning it.

-When I go home from school, I'm in French mode for like two hours.  It's awesome.

-Sometimes I forget to speak English, and I speak French to my mom.

-I forget to do the blog. You should remind us every day.

-You should let us speak English when we don't understand the assignment and projects and stuff.

-I get really stressed when I don't understand the French when you're giving a project.


All of these responses are paraphrased from my memory, and I plan on posting some actual quotes later this week.

In short, we're moving beyond little grammar nuances like negation with indefinite articles and complex adjective agreement.  They have their lists and notes and I'd rather let them use those resources than waste class time trying to cram it into their brains.

Next week: Town vocabulary.  I'm wondering how I can get the kids to build their dream towns, and how I can connect that to a concept.  Living in a place?  What makes a good place to live?  Ugh.  It all seems so textbooky.  It's going to be a busy weekend.

The Concept: Identity

Sooooo.... today the kids discussed the concept of identity within the movie Spirited Away.  It sounds fancier than it really is.  Mostly because they don't know that this is what they're doing.

I'm actually hitting the same ideas with this group of kids as their English teacher.  She's teaching them the Crucible, and the difference between static and dynamic characters.  When I walked into her room today, and saw character maps, I realized that I was essentially doing the same thing.  She told me they were struggling.  *Gulp*  And here I was going to try to push them farther tomorrow!  Screeching halt.

Over the last two days the kids have been building collages that represent a change in identity in the main character, and why and how this happened.  Looking at where they are with their English class, I'm astounded with the work they did today.  They know they're struggling with it, but I'm probably asking them to do the work of seniors or juniors.  I have no concept of where these kids are with things like this, I'm used to chapter four vocabulary list stuff.

When I enrolled in college, I originally thought that I wanted to English teacher.  Then I thought to myself, "wait a minute, I hate English".  Meaning, I hate grading essays.  But I really don't hate English. I hate grading it and English grammar.  I love English class, and now I'm taking all the best parts and pushing it through a French sieve instead of an English one.

My hope is that the students will be able to transfer what we're doing with this main character to their own lives, and their own identities.  I'd like them to examine an aspect of their identity (that they are comfortable with discussing) and digging to see how events and people have come into contact with it, shaped, influenced, changed it.  Not bad for the chapter on adjective agreement, hein?

My action research project is focused on verbal and non-verbal perspective taking (thinking).  I had a colleague take field notes for me during the collage conversation activity.  I read them quickly before I left for the day.  The one that sticks with me is "student stroked his chin as if he had an imaginary beard".  Squeee!  What a great note!  Thanks English teacher colleague!

During the activity, I let my hearing wander.  I heard French.  French chatter.  French French French.  I let myself think back to the book exercises I was trying to get the kids to do last year, and how frustrated I was with their inability to transfer that info to anything in reality.  Now they do it on a constant basis.  Their favorite expression is "Je t'aime!" which they use as often as possible.  I use it often as well, especially when they are frustrated, or being particularly annoying.  they beam.  They know this expression, and don't have to "think" about it.  They just live those words.

I'm looking forward to going back through the video I took today and watching what I've got.  I let the kids manhandle whatever they wanted, be as off-task as they decided to be, and giggle and distract each other.  These are the behaviors that they think are non-learning behaviors.  I'm convinced there is a gold mine somewhere underneath.

One area that I MUST improve with, especially if I'm going to continue this immersion next semester with all three classes, is scaffolding.  Breaking down activities into really small pieces is difficult for me, and I find that i don't have the patience to do it.  I think back to my Japanese class in 2006, and how difficult it was to follow, and I was at the head of the pack.  The curse of knowledge is real, and it may be the only thing I remember from my methods class from my BA, but it's a key piece for me.  I think I need to blog regularly about my work, in all of my classes, the reflection is so important!  IB definitely has that part figured out.

So tomorrow: having the kids use their collages to build a huge character map on the board. Then discussing the ideas as a class.   I've got to find a way to get my sleepy space-cadet boy involved in this... I'm going make him the marker captain I think.  That way he has to write what everyone says on the board instead of spacing out.  Next week they'll be working on their individual projects while I'm in Michigan, music, song, video, mobile, collage, whatever it is they want to do that shows an aspect of their own identity.  Wish me luck!