Understanding

I spent my entire evening yesterday combing back through Understanding by Design.  My principal gave me his copy of the workbook that goes with it, and today I made a "Unit Planning" kit out of the templates that I liked and found useful.

It's so amazing how different the unit already is after one template.

I found out that my unit on "Identity" isn't actually about Identity at all, but self and social acceptance.  The film that inspired me to attack this unit is "Ma Vie en Rose", about a seven-year-old boy who is transgender.  I picked it because it's rather benign compared to most French films (no nudity!  no sex!  no cussing!) except that it is rated R.  We can't have little boys wearing dresses, now can we?  Let's examine that!  I also picked it because it reviews simple vocabulary.  Locations in the community, house, family, clothing, adjectives, but with a twist. 

As I write this, I think... are there French men who choose to use feminine forms of adjectives, and vice-versa?  I've heard about japanese girls using "boku" which is the masculine casual form of "I", while girls are are supposed to stick with the long "watashi".  I'll have to ask Didier what the implications of adjective switching are.

Four templates later, and the bell rings for my final exams.  My students finish, turn them in, give me solid fives (outstanding!) for the teaching and course review, and then reluctantly leave.  They promise to return and visit as often as they can.  In a school of 150 kids, it's not like I won't see them every minute of every day regardless of which classes they have, but it's good to be loved.

One area where they scored me low (4 for above average) was "Encouraged students to express their views and opinions."  I completely agree, because this almost always related to off-topic tangent voyages.  But as I plan my lessons for Semester 2, I find myself trying to cram as many opportunities for this as possible.

The lower-level immersion course was great preparation.  I have so many rubrics that I love, that make sense, and that will hopefully encourage the students to take a more active role from day one.

My biggest concern: I have big classes, 23, 23, and 14.  Because of these class sizes, the way I assess them will have to be different, although I'm not sure how I will do this.

I've added a daily journal for the 3 and 4 class, where they identify objectives each week that they want to work on, such as "actively participating in class discussion" or "writing better quality"  or "listening comprehension" and they pick and build from a list of verbs and nouns to build thigs like "I will listen to my classmates carefully" or "I will take notes during discussions".  This journal will be pretty central.  They will start each morning with a brief free-write on a picture that I display (first block juniors will be certainly groggy), they can take notes during class, and at the end of class they will write a daily reflection on the day's conversation based on a prompt, and then assess their participation.  In 90 minutes, I think that's doable.  I just have to structure the class right.

Structure, structure, structure.

Small pieces, start smaller than small. That's what I tell myself.  Build from pairs to three, threes to fours, fours to sixes, and then back to the whole class. 

I wish I didn't have such stupid individual desks.  Where are the tables and chairs of social interaction?  Bah.

It's almost 6 pm and I'm in my classroom writing this, listening to music, avoiding going home to work on my research project.  I want to bury my arms elbow-deep in UBD, but I have nothing to do all day tomorrow until 12:15 for my semester 1 classes... so I should leave it here at school.

oh look.... somehow the books all got into my bag. 

Oh look... the computer is logging off and the lights are turning out. 

Looks like UBD and I will be sharing dinner.

Note to self: After grad school, get a social life.

Ending Beginning

This semester is ending, and I will be changing classes.

Teaching Immersion is hard.  Because it requires so much thought.  Because I have to plan.  It takes time, time, time, and creativity.

I was not perfect.  There were times I used English, especially once my students began to assert themselves as active learners.

I give myself a seven out of eight.  Seven students committed.  The eighth cannot be saved because he's not ready yet to save himself.  It goes deeper than the immersion.  For him it's personal.  I have to be aware of that, and separate it out from my own self-critique.
 
I could have continued to try harder, but my patience gave out.  I am rejuvenated this week.  Three new classes, all full speed ahead French.

I'm more stressed out about the physical structure of the class than I am about using the French.  How much credit to assign?  Which documents to use?

That is the source of the stress.  There is no fear now, only stress.

Thankfully stress can be identified, hacked up into little pieces, and then annihilated step by step.

as my exiting students tell my entering students, the first two weeks are tough, but it's not hard.  You got this.

:)

The good news

The immersion program is working for five of my eight students. I shouldn't say that.  It's working for all of them, even the three mousquetaires.  I smacked down some rules about the behavior I've been struggling with, and ended the group work.  Some kids just can't handle partner work, and that's sad, but I have to move on.  This week we begin instructional videos about irregular verbs Venir and Aller.  They have three days in the computer lab to build the videos.  This should be interesting.

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.