ORIGINAL POST
Mme Naditz's French Class Blog
Hoping to go farther
So, being sick set me a bit behind, but it did give me time to catch up on some professional reading. That, in turn, has reinvigorated my desire to move away from business as usual in the classroom and continue looking for ways to make learning more meaningful, relevant and engaging for my students.
Don't get me wrong; I haven't found the answers I'm looking for yet. But I realized that I've somewhat lost my way on that path. Oh sure, my lessons are always planned, and some of them are even good. Yet, when I ask myself, "Is each lesson relevant to my students?" I have to conclude that the answer is probably "no."
Have I gone out of my way to tailor lessons to my students interests? Maybe not. I've tried. I gave French 4/AP a choice on how to proceed for the next several weeks, and our lessons are based on the results of their discussion and vote. I've tried to provide opportunities for French 3 and 4/AP students to have real conversations with French teenagers through their epals wikis. French 4/AP is also trying to make a difference in Burkina Faso. Somehow, though, it feels like these are more my pet projects than theirs. There isn't nearly as much excitement for communicating with other teenagers (native French speakers) as I hoped there would be. Our Burkina Faso solar project has generated the feeling that we're making a difference beyond our classrooms, and connecting with another part of the French-speaking world.
French 1 students prepared questions a little over a week ago that they may able to use to interview French-speaking celebrities and athletes through their fan sites. I still have to put together a list for them and find the fan sites, but this was one way I hoped to make their learning more relevant for them as well. Yet, for French 1, I still need to do so much more. I want to build their foundational language skills so that they will be prepared to take on more complex linguistical challenges in subsequent levels, but I really feel a need to spend more time tailoring to their interests. Perhaps a survey (either learning styles, interests or combination) is in order!
I keep seeing technology as a way to relevance, but I'm not finding it as easy as I'd hoped to seamlessly embed communicative technologies in our lessons. Issues of access at home have somewhat hindered our progress and our access on the mobile computer lab at school can be problematic, especially on the internet. My experiment with the wiki culture projects didn't quite turn out as I'd hope, but that was mainly because I was overwhelmed in grading so many projects and I realized that I hadn't set up appropriate structures, such as a rubric, to grade them effectively. Ideally, culture shouldn't be separate from the curriculum anyway, but rather integrated into the linguistic content of each lesson. While I feel I do that rather well through class discussions and also through the use of authentic documents (menus, TV guides, phone book pages, web sites, advertisements, etc.), I don't find that I am easily able to assess their cultural knowledge other than by asking specific questions on tests. That seems somewhat limited and contrary to the goals of the cultural components of lessons.
Clearly, I still have a long way to go towards becoming the teacher I want to be. When I get there, I'll likely have learned so much that I will find many more things I need to learn to take my practice even further. On the upside, I am still going. I don't believe in treading water just to stay in the same place. I'd rather swim.
