As I was cleaning out my desk today, I found my student surveys from the end of last year. I decided to throw them out, but I read them one more time first. It made me cringe to think of who I was last year with those students. These two classes were TERRIBLE and I treated them just as terribly. The students still felt like I cared and like they learned French, but I know how much better I could have been. And that was just last year! When I think back to my first or second year of teaching, I cringe even more!!!
It does, however, make me excited to see what kind of teacher I will be in five years or ten years!
Friday, March 9, 2012
Embedded Writing
This week, I had to come up with an independent activity that kids could do while I did a speaking test. I decided to take the idea of embedded reading and twist it so that students were doing an embedded writing instead. I gave the students three sentences and then asked them to double that "story" by adding details. I really had to model this a LOT for my kids because they could not understand what I meant. It helped to say "Imagine cutting and pasting the text and then adding details or sentences between those words or sentences."
Once they had doubled the initial story, I had them give their paper to another student and double someone else's story. Then, if there was time, they did it one last time.
As I read over what they came up with, I was pretty impressed. Of course, some students still didn't understand the concept and changed the story or started writing their own...but, for the most part, the students did a great job of using vocabulary from waaaay back and synthesizing French.
I will definitely do this activity again and I'll be interested to see how this activity impacts their next round of free-writes. I'm hoping they'll be longer and more detailed.
Once they had doubled the initial story, I had them give their paper to another student and double someone else's story. Then, if there was time, they did it one last time.
As I read over what they came up with, I was pretty impressed. Of course, some students still didn't understand the concept and changed the story or started writing their own...but, for the most part, the students did a great job of using vocabulary from waaaay back and synthesizing French.
I will definitely do this activity again and I'll be interested to see how this activity impacts their next round of free-writes. I'm hoping they'll be longer and more detailed.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Teacher tenure on the chopping block
Since "Waiting for Superman" made such a splash on the Oprah Winfrey show, teacher tenure has been on the chopping block in Missouri. It's finally up for a vote, so this is what I wrote to my representative. If you are a Missouri resident, I highly recommend you contact your representative!!
As a teacher, I am begging you to protect our tenure. In our society right now, there is a huge push to blame teachers for everything that is wrong with education. I can tell you that this is simply not true. Having lived and traveled abroad, where the educational system is "better," there are a multitude of reasons for this, none of which have to do with better teachers. In fact, the teachers there work fewer hours, have fewer students, and are, in most cases, less educated than the American teacher.
We have chosen a profession for ourselves that is consistently attacked by parents, politicians, and the media. Tenure is the one thing we have to protect our jobs under such scrutiny. Also, there is nothing in the current law that says that a teacher who is doing a terrible job cannot be fired: the administrators simply need to follow the procedures to do so, just like in any other profession. Tenure protects us from the politicians on the school board, protects those of us who join a union, and protect us from powerful parents unhappy with a grade their students receive.
I would invite you to come and visit me any time at my job if you need further clarification of what life is like as a teacher. I think it would be eye-opening...
As a teacher, I am begging you to protect our tenure. In our society right now, there is a huge push to blame teachers for everything that is wrong with education. I can tell you that this is simply not true. Having lived and traveled abroad, where the educational system is "better," there are a multitude of reasons for this, none of which have to do with better teachers. In fact, the teachers there work fewer hours, have fewer students, and are, in most cases, less educated than the American teacher.
We have chosen a profession for ourselves that is consistently attacked by parents, politicians, and the media. Tenure is the one thing we have to protect our jobs under such scrutiny. Also, there is nothing in the current law that says that a teacher who is doing a terrible job cannot be fired: the administrators simply need to follow the procedures to do so, just like in any other profession. Tenure protects us from the politicians on the school board, protects those of us who join a union, and protect us from powerful parents unhappy with a grade their students receive.
I would invite you to come and visit me any time at my job if you need further clarification of what life is like as a teacher. I think it would be eye-opening...
Monday, January 30, 2012
The weekend
Today we talked about what the kids did this weekend, as we do every Monday. It is honestly my goal for them to talk the entire hour, but it's funny how they think they're "pulling one over on me" by trying to drag it out. I just see so much benefit in this one silly activity. My kids get words like effrayant/scary, poulet/chicken, etc without me teaching those words explicitly. I realized today that most of my students will learn food vocabulary on Mondays by telling me what they ate at a restaurant...
Shhhhh....it's also a time for me to get on my moral high horse and ask them if the parents were at that party they went to and admonish them for playing violent video games. It's all done with a wink and a smile, but I hope they get my hidden message that I care about them and want them to make the right choices in life (not that going to a party without parents equals a life of debauchery...).
Shhhhh....it's also a time for me to get on my moral high horse and ask them if the parents were at that party they went to and admonish them for playing violent video games. It's all done with a wink and a smile, but I hope they get my hidden message that I care about them and want them to make the right choices in life (not that going to a party without parents equals a life of debauchery...).
Hounding students
My department has decided this semester to "hound" students who get below a certain grade and make them re-learn the material through home study time and re-take assessments. Friday, I sent an email to the parents, letting them know about this new requirement and to let them know that their student didn't do so hot on the first assessment of the semester.
I got a response from a very conscientious parent telling me that her daughter is usually very good about studying hard the night before a test and asking how much notice they had for this test. My response was that my tests are unannounced because I want to know how much they have acquired, not how much they've memorized for a test. And now I'm nervous that this will not make the parent very happy. I know that I'm right...but it sounds weird telling a parent that you don't want his/her student to study. And I worry that in this culture of questioning and belittling teachers, I'll be taken to task for this. Thoughts??
I got a response from a very conscientious parent telling me that her daughter is usually very good about studying hard the night before a test and asking how much notice they had for this test. My response was that my tests are unannounced because I want to know how much they have acquired, not how much they've memorized for a test. And now I'm nervous that this will not make the parent very happy. I know that I'm right...but it sounds weird telling a parent that you don't want his/her student to study. And I worry that in this culture of questioning and belittling teachers, I'll be taken to task for this. Thoughts??
Thursday, January 26, 2012
SBG and Assessments
I just gave a listening assessment to my first years and a reading assessment to my second years. The results were ho-hum...
What do you guys think? The class average was a low B, but with our SBG scale, that means that most of the students were not meeting my expectations. Did I give them a test that was too hard? Do I let it go because a B-average on a test is pretty good?
What do you guys think? The class average was a low B, but with our SBG scale, that means that most of the students were not meeting my expectations. Did I give them a test that was too hard? Do I let it go because a B-average on a test is pretty good?
This week's stories
Well, we are back in the TPRS swing around my classroom. This week, we worked on "wanted to buy," "looked for," "needed," and "found it." I've found that it always works well if the main character is missing pants. The kids are instantly engaged. My first telling of the story went beautifully, thanks to the creative answers of my kids...so I led my other class in the same direction and had two home run stories!
Here was the basic story: some chick was missing pants and wanted to buy white pants with green polka-dots. She went to a nightclub (not sure why...probably because my first character lived in the Jersey Shore) and saw some outrageous singer there (think Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga). The singer had the opposite pants on (green with white dots), but the lead was not sad because she got to dance! At this point, I went over to my computer and queued up the French version of "I'm Sexy and I know It!" (it exists!). My lead danced (I had a great male actor in my second class playing the girl and he LOVED hamming it up!). Stop the music! There was a problem!! L'il Wayne worked at the club and he was mad. He tells the lead "No pants, no club." So the lead leaves and goes to a store. At the store, they have beautiful white pants with green dots. Sadly, the lead does not have any money (pretty impossible to carry money around with no pants), so she hits the worker (someone fun like an Oompa Loompa or whoever the kids suggest), who falls asleep and she returns to the club to dance some more. Everyone is happy and dancing at the end!
Things that worked: Adding the music and the silly dancing in the middle. Having "masks" for the famous people...I printed off color pictures and pasted them to card stock (thanks Carol Gaab for the idea). The idea that the actor doesn't have any pants on.
Hooray for home run days! My upper-level stories were not nearly as interesting this week. Oh well, maybe next time!
Here was the basic story: some chick was missing pants and wanted to buy white pants with green polka-dots. She went to a nightclub (not sure why...probably because my first character lived in the Jersey Shore) and saw some outrageous singer there (think Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga). The singer had the opposite pants on (green with white dots), but the lead was not sad because she got to dance! At this point, I went over to my computer and queued up the French version of "I'm Sexy and I know It!" (it exists!). My lead danced (I had a great male actor in my second class playing the girl and he LOVED hamming it up!). Stop the music! There was a problem!! L'il Wayne worked at the club and he was mad. He tells the lead "No pants, no club." So the lead leaves and goes to a store. At the store, they have beautiful white pants with green dots. Sadly, the lead does not have any money (pretty impossible to carry money around with no pants), so she hits the worker (someone fun like an Oompa Loompa or whoever the kids suggest), who falls asleep and she returns to the club to dance some more. Everyone is happy and dancing at the end!
Things that worked: Adding the music and the silly dancing in the middle. Having "masks" for the famous people...I printed off color pictures and pasted them to card stock (thanks Carol Gaab for the idea). The idea that the actor doesn't have any pants on.
Hooray for home run days! My upper-level stories were not nearly as interesting this week. Oh well, maybe next time!
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