Category Archives: Teacher effectiveness

Fun with Functional Chunks!

Published by:

With over 30 years teaching middle school, it doesn’t take research to convince me that the average teenage brain can only focus intently for about 12 minutes. Building structured activities into lesson plans that provide opportunities for students to interact with each other and practice the target language is brain friendly instruction and good for everyone.  These structured activities give the teacher’s voice a rest while the students are practicing the target language, but more importantly it allows the teacher to walk around and provide some individualized feedback in a relaxed non threatening environment.  I am curating all of my favorite activities into a presentation called “Fun with Functional Chunks.”

Functional Chunks of Language are expressions, phrases or words that students learn as a chunk without necessarily understanding the grammatical structure.  However, they learn where and when to say them when communicating.  These functional chunks of language empower students to use the language early and often and help students and teachers stay in the target language.

I will be presenting a workshop on this topic called “Put the Fun in Functional Chunks” on March 18th at the WAFLT Spring Regional at Eastside Catholic School in Sammamish.  In this workshop common language chunks and language functions at various levels will be presented and discussed.  Engaging activities to practice interpretive and interpersonal communications skills with functional chunks of language will be presented and practiced by participants.  Let’s put the fun back in language functions.

Here are the top ten language functions, can we create relevant related tasks?

 

Here is an example of one of my structured activities.  I learned it as Pancho Carrancho, but in French we say Mon Frère Pierre.  For now, here is a list of structured activities I posted earlier. Strategies-for-Guiding-Interactions   The new and improved list will be coming out soon.

Please join us at the WAFLT Spring Regional: Saturday, March 18th at Eastside Catholic School in Sammamish, Washington. The price is $35 WAFLT members / $45 non-members.

Registration is now open:  http://tinyurl.com/gvnnpna  

Sessions will begin at 9am and run until 4pm, with lunch from 12-1 (included in registration fee). Pre-registration is accepted until Thursday, March 16, 2017. Pre-registration will guarantee that you will have lunch. Registration includes 6 free clock hours, lunch, and all conference materials. Please consider becoming a WAFLT member.  For more information go to the WAFLT website.

 

Feeling Lucky

Published by:

I am a lucky person.  I have won a trip to the Philippines, a TV, hundreds in free groceries, free paint and sip classes, novels, and much more.  This week I won a hand-painted wine class from a wine event, an autographed poster from Señorwooly, and $100.00 off registration for me and another teacher to the iFLT conference in Denver.

So I am hoping to spread the luck.  I would like to offer $100 off registration to the International Forum on Language Teaching (iFLT) conference to a teacher who has not been to an iFLT conference before.  I also have a companion ticket for Alaska Airlines that we could use to reduce the cost of airfare, and of course split the cost of a hotel room in Denver.

As a conference junkie, I have attended hundreds of conferences and think the iFLT conferences by Fluency Matters are awesome. Carol Gaab and her team are among the best in the business.  I attended the iFLT conference in Breckenridge, Colorado and learned a lot. This years conference is July 11-14 with Fluency Fast classes available before the conference July 7-10. For more information on the conference go to the Fluency Matters website.  If you are interested contact me at JohnstonL@edmonds.wednet.edu.

Here is my submission to the contest as to What Fluency Matters means to me.

Congratulations To Our Runners-Up:

Runners-up will receive $100 off iFLT registration for themselves and $100 off iFLT registration for a colleague!**

Lynn Johnston
I feel like I am learning how to teach in the target language 90% of the time with novices from day one because of the Fluency Matters team. Every time I am lucky enough to secure a spot in a Carol Gaab presentation I leave with new ideas and inspiration. The class sets of novels and teachers guides have made teaching easier for me and reading more enjoyable for my students. However, my light bulb moment was at an ACTFL session when Carol Gaab demonstrated higher order thinking using compelling comprehensible input. Probable or possible or its variations logical and illogical are now standard in my teaching. Students are hearing vocabulary in context and are thinking at a higher level, but are able to respond with very little forced language. Who might say is another higher order thinking activity I learned from Fluency Matters. Students must infer who might say something based on context, content and/or verb form. Another activity I learned from the fluency matters team is the action chain. Students love to act and I get lots of repetitions of the language structures while having students determine a logical order for the events. This summer I discovered the webinars and the CI peek blog. I plan to use these a lot more in the future. I would really love to attend the IFLT conference and bring a new teacher I am mentoring in my district.

 

 

 

Word Ladders in World Language

Published by:

I just discovered the spark.adobe.com website for making free graphics and have lost the past two days of my President’s day weekend.  I was interested in creating word ladders to help my students with interpersonal communication tasks.  These can be made into posters, added to presentations, kept in student notebooks, stored on rings on hooks in the room, turned into literacy mats, or for my current purpose, use at a chat station.

Here are a couple I created for expressing likes and dislikes.

 

 

 

 

You can télécharger your own pictures, use one of their themes, or just choose from lots of colors.

Here are some ladders for frequency.  I decided printing them on a white background takes up less ink, and if you use black or grey you can print them at school without your husband screaming at you again for using all the colored printer ink at home.I

I am also going to use this website for inspirational quotes at school and at home!  Better yet, I am going to have students create word ladders on different topics and post them to my padlet page.  My students have chromebooks so this is going to be a create station, create a meme, quote, or word ladder and share with class on padlet.com.

#TELLcollabseattle

Published by:

tellcollabseattlefullcolor

Today at TELLCollab in Seattle, Thomas Sauer reaffirmed my belief in the posting, copying, chanting, and choral reading of the learning targets with students.

images2

The Washington State Teacher and Principal Evaluation Project (TPEP) has eight criterion.  Public school districts in Washington State evaluate teachers on these eight criterion using one of three frameworks: Marzano, Danielson, or CEL5D+.   There are differences between the frameworks but for criterion number one, all three models agree that teachers need to communicate clear learning targets to students.  Below is how each of the frameworks addresses criterion number one and the commonalities.

Criterion 1: Centering instruction on high expectations for student achievement.

 The Marzano Teacher Evaluation Model

1.1: Providing Clear Learning Goals and Scales (Rubrics)

1.2: Celebrating Success

1.3: Understanding Students’ Interests and Backgrounds

1.4: Demonstrating Value and Respect for Typically Underserved Students

 

CEL 5D+™ Teacher Evaluation Rubric

P1: Connection to standards, broader purpose and transferable skill

P4: Communication of learning target(s)

P5: Success and performance task(s)

SE3: Work of high cognitive demand

CEC3: Discussion, collaboration and accountability

 

Danielson’s Framework for Teaching

2b: Establishing a Culture for Learning

3a: Communicating with Students

3c: Engaging Students In Learning

 

Learning targets are best when they are consistently used and revisited during, and at the end of each class.  Teachers can check for understanding during the lesson by having students ask each other how they are doing in relation to reaching the target for the day.  Have students self-evaluate at the end of class on their progress toward the learning target.  How do you communicate learning targets to students?  Follow the conversation at #TELLcollabseattle.

Moving_Target

 

Here is a comparison of the three frameworks used for Washington State Teacher Evaluation. commonalities among frameworks

Let’s Talk at TELLcollab Seattle!

Published by:

Give yourself the gift of professional rejuvenation!  Reserve your spot now to join state and national leaders in world language education as we come together January 21st and 22nd, 2017 for TELLcollab Seattle!  This “unconference” is a different type of professional learning experience where according to Thomas Sauer “whoever comes are the right people” and “there are no attendees only participants.”

tellcollabseattlefullcolor

Catherine Ousselin and I attended this unconference in Austin, Texas in June 2016 and we left inspired, invigorated, and we would like to personally invite you to join us for a weekend of collaboration.  Check out my blog posts about the experience.

For more information go to the website and register here http://www.tellcollabseattle.org/.  The cost is $99 + $6.44 processing fee for advanced registrations. At the door it will be $129 + $8.09. The Washington Association for Language Teachers (WAFLT) is providing free clock hours. Morning refreshments and lunches are included. There will be an optional evening activity on Saturday night to further network, make friends, and show off our beautiful city to the out-of-town participants.

making-friends

Organizer Michele Aoki states “This is a unique opportunity for teachers. Not only will you have access to two of the strongest leaders in K-12 World Language education in the country from the TELL Project, Thomas Sauer and Alyssa Villarreal, but you’ll have their expert facilitation to help us get the most out of our own local expertise. In other words, it’s not just new information about language teaching and learning, it’s a new personal experience in learning. WE EDUCATORS need to continually refresh ourselves so that we feel inspired and ready to inspire our students.”

This is a great way to take a leadership role and bring a different kind of professional development experience to your building. So, please register, come, and help spread the word among your colleagues.   Check out the flyer here  tell_collab_uw_2017.

Progress toward Proficiency: Supporting Student Learning.

Published by:

reflect

After a learning experience, I try to reflect on ideas I want to incorporate into my teaching.  This blog post is a reflection of the Tellcollab Unconference I attended in June.  I decided to do three blog posts: preparing for student learning, advancing student learning, and supporting student learning.  I also decided to publish one in June, one in July, and one in August, so that I would revisit and refresh my memory and carry it into my school year which starts after Labor day. Plus, this area is the one I most need to work on, hence it took me the longest to write.  So here is part three, what I learned at Tellcollab about supporting student learning.

Supporting student learning, it’s a shift. This year I am going to focus on what students can do, not what they can’t.  It’s about growth and opportunities to compare their current performance to their previous performance.  Progress is addicting and I want to get them hooked.

hooked 2

How do I provide more effective feedback to push that progress?  How do I get students to provide quality feedback for each other?  They need to see quality feedback modeled, and have meaningful practice on how to assess peers.  One suggestion is to watch the television show The Voice and listen to how the judges give specific descriptive feedback.  I posted this before but I LOVE this example of descriptive feedback called Austin’s Butterfly.  tiger

Critique their peer feedback sometimes, not necessarily just their work.  Find ways to link feedback to spontaneous output, and for them to reflect on it! Possibly record themselves and transcribe for homework? Have them ask how did I do? What do I need to do to get to the next step?  Provide in the moment feedback… to get to the top layer you need to…

scoop

Other ideas from the unconference: give the students a punch list of 5 things and score your partner. Provide demonstrations on quality feedback and practice activities like fish bowl, think a-louds, and Socratic seminar. I want to create a list of comments students can say to provide feedback to each other in French and Spanish.

Technology has made it much easier to record students and easier for me to provide feedback.  Check out this Google form for self-evaluation from Catherine Oussselin.  Students can call google voice and respond to a prompt, record, and keep all their recordings in google classroom from Sept to May to show growth. Other recording options include Flipgrid, WEvideo, and Vacaroo.

My biggest take away from the unconference is that this year I am going to use more student reflections.  This can be as simple as highlight something you are proud of, or highlight something you are not sure of in a different color, or write me a question.  Reflecting on learning is higher order thinking.

reflect 5

I plan to introduce quality reflection processes to students at the beginning of the year.  I want to keep a running dialogue with students about their progress in their interactive notebooks.

04.-The-Law-Of-Reflection

Don’t forget to use these self assessment and feedback tools from the Tellproject.org on yourself.

 

Progress Toward Proficiency: Advancing Student Learning

Published by:

Now that we know where we want to go, how do we get there?  How do you advance student learning?

confused_sign_post

Well you build your arsenal of activities, curate authentic resources, continually add to your tool box of techniques for providing comprehensible input, and provide opportunities for students to be autonomous learners.  A really good place to start is at Tellcollab.org/Startalk.  There are videos of classroom vignettes, interviews with veteran teachers, essays, self-assessment tools, and my favorites, the infographics!

An interesting activity that I just added to my arsenal, is the day two opening activity of the Tellcollab Unconference called Powerpoint Karaoke.   Prepare slides with various random pictures that can be described in the target language.  Give each student a minute to describe the images and vote on the best one by audience applause! See the video on twitter #TELLcollab.

karaoke

Teaching grammar in context was one of the session topics.  Here is an example of how I teach grammar in context.  I prefer to use the pace model and storytelling, Teaching-Grammar-in-Context.  How do you teach grammar in context?

To keep students in the target language, provide lots of practice in circumlocution and clarification techniques.  To teach circumlocution, there are a couple of phrases that are very helpful:  It’s a thing that… It’s a person that…. It’s a food that…Play the Pyramid game.  Have one student with back to board, the rest of the team takes turns to get through list of 6 words.

pyramid2

Another tool I intend to incorporate this year is Interactive Student Notebooks.  In the target language, we will set up interactive notebooks with proficiency charts and their first day writing sample.  In the first day lesson, the students do a 5 minute write, if possible they describe themselves in the target language or list all the words they know.  If they don’t know any French or Spanish I have them write about themselves in English which also gives me information about them and their writing abilities.  I write the proficiency level on the paper and it becomes evidence of student growth for me, the student, the parents, and my administrators.  Here are more websites with information on interactive notebooks. Here is a blog in french and this one too.  Here is one in Spanish and this one.  Most importantly, interactive notebooks are not craft projects. It’s about students organizing and reflecting on their learning and becoming more autonomous.

Check out the TELL videos on Youtube and below are links to those infographics I mentioned.

AdvanceLearning_Engagement_InfographicAdvanceLearning_TargetLanguage_InfographicAdvanceLearning_EmpoweringLanguageUse_Infographic

Progress Toward Proficiency: Planning

Published by:

One of our first tasks at TELLcollab was to describe an effective language educator in three words. It was amazing how many different variations there were, I chose progress toward proficiency.  This would be a great activity to use with students. Use three words to describe yourself, three words to summarize a reading, three words to describe an event, simply share out, or create memes and post to a padlet page.progresss 3

It’s not what the teacher knows it’s what they do.  What are these things the teacher does that make them more effective?  The TELL framework divides these things into seven domains.  These seven domains fit into three categories: planning for learning, advancing learning, and supporting learning.

tell

Planning for Learning: Goal #2 How do you get started?

My opening routine allows me to start from day one, minute one with 90% of the class period in the target language, however this year I am adding a refined focus on the learning of the proficiency levels which might require a little more English, but I think it will be worth it.  After modeling the greeting and singing the song of the week, I get a writing sample to determine the starting level for each student.

Then, I do a proficiency level demonstration in the target language introducing my family. First, I give examples from novice-low with just relationship words like my husband, my daughter, my sons, and then give another demonstration at the intermediate-mid level describing each person.  This year, as a comprehension check, we will use English to have students demonstrate knowledge of the proficiency levels by describing Seafair to someone who has never been to Seattle, this could be done with any topic like a circus, or a school environment. Here is my day one lesson plan, Progressing Toward Proficiency Curriculum by Lynn Johnston, and practice activities, Progressing Toward Proficiency.  Also, check out the resources at SCS world languages weebly and the Creative Language Classroom.

scoop

Step one, set targets and educate students and parents about the proficiency levels.  Step two, monitor progress toward goals.  Another thing I am going to try this year is proficiency bulletin boards.  I like the idea from the Creative Language Classroom website of having the path visible and as a manipulative for students to celebrate their progress.

wall5

wall 6

Other hot topics at the #TELLcollab unconference under the planning category included: staying in the target language 90%, using comprehensible input, using authentic resources, designing thematic units, and using Integrated Performance Assessments, check out the resources at tellproject.org/tools/startalk for more information on these topics. I really like this infographic.

AdvanceLearning_LearningTargets_Infographic_4

At the end of the first day we were asked to tweet out our learning or take way for the day.  This would also be a great closure activity with students.  You can see these on twitter at #TELLcollab.  My take away is that we are all progressing toward proficiency and we are never done learning.

 

#TELLcollab 2016

Published by:

What is Tellcollab?

june-2016-calendar

Wednesday, June 22, was my last day of school this year, a full work day for me, and I still had to get the groceries for my mom’s birthday dinner that evening.  Thursday, June 23, I spent the day traveling to Austin, Texas for the Tellcollab conference June 24-25.  I arrived back at my home in Seattle last night at 11pm, and I am up today, Sunday, June 26th at 6:00am excited to design my new first week of school unit, teaching the students about the path to proficiency.

schools-out-for-summer-cehrebfd

What inspired me to start planning the next school year before I even had a chance to celebrate the end of this one?  The Tellcollab conference on Teacher Effectiveness in Language Learning has me excited to take my students away from points, and focus on progressing toward proficiency instead.  This is going to be a huge shift after 33 years of playing the points game, but after this conference, shifts gotta happen.

Shift-Happens-You-Are-The-Key-To-Change

The Tellcollab conference is an unconference where the attendees set the schedule and collaborate around goals.  We started by identifying something we wanted to learn and something we could teach to others.  We wrote them on sticky notes and created sessions on common topics. There were no presenters or powerpoints, but like-minded educators sitting around a table discussing and creating to improve teacher effectiveness in World Language education.  You can check out the information shared at the conference and the hot seat speakers by clicking on the schedule links to the google documents that were created at the conference.

The Teacher Effectiveness for Language Learning (TELL) Framework establishes those characteristics and behaviors that model teachers exhibit. There is much more information and loads of teacher tools at tellproject.org.  You can follow the conversation on twitter at #tellcollab.

TELL_weblogo2

The framework is made up of seven domains that reflect the crucial characteristics of an effective world language teacher.

I am creating my first unit for next year teaching the proficiency levels to students and parents. I like the idea I heard from Alyssa Villarreal of having students describe a circus to an alien by proficiency level. So the group with novice-low can only use words, novice-mid can only use words and phrases, novice-high uses single sentences, intermediate-low uses sentences and connectors etc.  See her complete lesson plans here.  There are some other ideas posted here.

Over the next few days I will be sharing my learning on preparing for student learning, advancing student learning, and supporting student learning.  Two other fabulous resources are the Path2proficiency website and the SCS World Language Weebly.

path

One of the first activities was to record your self on flipgrid with your goals for the unconference. My original goal was to learn about the unconference, how it is structured, the benefits.  I left with so many new goals I didn’t even know I had before Friday.  Goal number one achieved.  Now on to creating student badges!