Enjoy your festive day with a look at yours truly when I was as young as the kids I'm now teaching.
Monday, March 17, 2014
MACUL 2014
Wow! What a blast. My first professional conference, and I had an amazing time. I attended some FANTASTIC talks.
One was given by David Theune who hooked me immediately with the title of his talk "Friday Night Lights In The Classroom." He started out his talk with a toast, complete with flavored sparkling water, served in cute glasses for all of his guests. A toast to what? You might ask. A toast to failure. Progressive failure, that is. A toast to shooting so far in your aspirations, that you come up short. A toast to pushing yourself further than you can possibly accomplish, while knowing full well that you may never get there. A toast to failing, and continuing to take pride in your failure. Progressive failure. From that point on, I knew we'd have a great session.
He followed this up by speaking about authentic assessment and performance. As a French teacher, I am extremely interested in this. Language is something that is always used on relation to others: Reading a book someone else wrote, speaking with another person, writing to another person. Language is all about communication, so why not communicate the language education we are giving to our students with the rest of the world? I feel that language SHOULD be one of the easiest topics to have authentic assessment and performance with, yet so often it occurs in a vacuum. I was excited for this talk to energize me and open my mind to the possibilities that I could take on in my classroom.
David spoke about 6 specific audiences: parents, world, local non-profits, choice, younger students in the district, and peers. He has had his students present to each of these groups of people, and gave us a small view into his world of doing so.
One of the ideas I took from this presentation that I could definitely use with my students is the idea of a digital narrative. Students write their own digital narrative, and put it on youtube. This is a method of sharing with the world. Some students only got about 35 views - from their grand-parents, parents, and let's face it - the student themselves. But some of his students really found an audience through this project. For instance, this student who was a quiet, removed student without many connections in her classroom really found community through her video. Take a look, it is extremely moving and I dare you to watch the first 30 seconds before making a decision about watching the rest. It will hook you!!
One of the ideas I took from this presentation that I could definitely use with my students is the idea of a digital narrative. Students write their own digital narrative, and put it on youtube. This is a method of sharing with the world. Some students only got about 35 views - from their grand-parents, parents, and let's face it - the student themselves. But some of his students really found an audience through this project. For instance, this student who was a quiet, removed student without many connections in her classroom really found community through her video. Take a look, it is extremely moving and I dare you to watch the first 30 seconds before making a decision about watching the rest. It will hook you!!
Another idea he talked about was reaching out to the community asking for donations. David Theune was able to raise $2000 in donations to give back to non-profit organizations. His students did research papers on non-profit organizations in their community, and read each others in class. The top papers were read by all students and the top 4 were selected. The $2000 was divided among those top four, and the students were able to meet with the head of the non-profit organization they wrote about and hand them the check and the paper. How cool is that! So inspiring.
One of the things I am struggling with as a beginning French teacher is how to do things like this in my classroom. The personal narrative seems feasible because students can do one without needing to know many words. Adjectives would work just fine. However, the other ideas we discussed in our talk this weekend, were much more detailed, such as the non-profit organization essay. My students don't have enough vocabulary to be able to execute something like this.
Do any World Language teachers have suggestions for me?
What kinds of authentic assessments and performances do you do?
I am willing to take any and all suggestions. Always looking for more! :)
What kinds of authentic assessments and performances do you do?
I am willing to take any and all suggestions. Always looking for more! :)
If you are interested in learning more about David Theune, check him out on twitter at @DavidTheune.
If you are interested in some new reading material, he recommended two books I recently purchased on my kindle which will likely inspire later blog posts. 1) Drive - Daniel Pink 2) Sticks and Stones - Emily Bazelon. If you read them - let me know what you think!!
More posts about MACUL coming soon... :)
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