No Real Destination No Real Learning

I enjoy “talking” with other teachers.  However, I am often amazed at how  they  describe the final learning destination.

A writing teacher may say, “We are doing contrast essays”, a modern language teacher says, “I want my students to speak the language”, a social studies teacher says “My students will be citizens of the world.”  What does each of these mean in a practical sense? How will these teachers know if their  students have reached the final destination  and how well they have done it?  Would another educator be able to identify the  same success?

I have been working in developing some foreign language assessments so that I can quantify the various types of speaking and how well students do on each.  I do not want to say “My students speak the language”  which is a vague concept but to specify what type speaking they do  and how well they do each. Once I can identify what the end learning looks like/sounds like, I can work backward to provide scaffolded  steps to help the students get there at a high level. In addition, I can build in formative assessment to monitor their upward process.

In order for athletes to win, they visualize exactly what they will do; they visualize their success.  Our students need to visualize exactly what they are to do.

How do you identify the end learning for the students so they can become successful at it?  How do they climb the ladder of success in that learning goal?

My  book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

My book,  Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

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Aligning activities and end goal

When a  colleague was teaching a remedial English course, she was told to focus on the creative aspects of writing.   Those beginning college students needed to able to write academic  papers for college, not to write poetry and personal narratives.  They would  become good academic writers by focusing on the standard forms of academic writing  of writing such as contrast and argument papers.

Although this is an extreme example, I wonder how often teachers forget the real purpose of the students’  learning and have their students spend time doing something that does not directly lead to learning that goal.    A question to ask  is “How does this directly and efficiently lead students to being proficient in this skill?”  I remember watching a social studies class where  ninth grade students were coloring in the countries of South America, each country in different color.  The real purpose was to learn where each country was on the map but they spent about a third of the class on coloring.    Locating  countries on a map is a memorization activity so do memorization activities such as study a map with the names shown for  half the countries  and then , see a map without the names and put the names in.  Likewise, in a modern language class, students do not improve in their speaking ability by doing grammar drills. A student can be proficient in grammar but not  be a proficient speaker.  Students become more skillful in speaking as they speak more in class through structured activities.  Likewise, English students do not become better writers by just reading and answering questions about long literary essays.  When educators take students through the writing process with a focus on the specific type of writing, then these students become better writers.

So how does what your students do directly and efficiently lead them  to being proficient in a specific skill?

My  book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

My book,  Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Integrating Culture into the Foreign Language Classroom Through Technology

I recently did a presentation in which I showed three ways to integrate culture into the Foreign Language/Modern Language classroom. Each way presents current daily culture.

The first  presentation focused on using Flickr photos to show the culture in a country. It demonstrates how to find images and how to create a cultural topic photo list.

Another presentation showed how to create an iGoogle foreign language website that will display much current culture (photos, weather, TV stations, news reports, etc.). The  information changes each day.

A third showed a process to allow students to do mini-cultural presentations on topics of interest to them.

My new book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Talk About or Show Learning for Success

Last semester I had several sections of the same English class. Idid some action research.  Both classes had about the same average on the last essay so they were equal in ability.  In Class A, I explained in detail how to do a classification essay for a full period; I went step by step through how to develop this essay type.  The students did several exercises.  In Class B, instead of explaining a classification essay,  I went over two classification exemplars and pointed out what the writers had done.  The students highlighted the classifications, characteristics, etc.   Each class worked through the writing process for their own classification essay and wrote their draft.  I did a quick grading  of the drafts of both classes by using a classification rubric.  Class B with the exemplars averaged more than a full letter grade above Class A with explanations.  As one student in Class B explained, “It was easy. I knew how to organize the essay.”

Let’s show the students the end product we desire (the content and quality) through the work of previous students and help our students  to understand that product.

Which do you do more of telling or showing?

My new book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.