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... :)
Hi Leah,
ReplyDeleteI'm excited about this blog post--and honored, too. The fact that you are thinking about authentic assessment is exciting. It allows a different kind of connection between school and community. By showing students that people CARE about their work and what they put out into the world, we are asking them to take the entire process more seriously.
Thoughts for you? GoogleHangOut on air with another French class and then share that on Facebook, Twitter, etc? Just a thought. Even just inviting parents in for a class might be nice--and not a lot of work on your part.
I've got lots of ideas. Just you caring about this shows the kind of educator you are.
I look forward to connecting more later.
David
Thanks for the encouragement David! I will definitely have to look more into Google Hangout - I don't have that much experience with it but some of my teachers have used it. I would LOVE to invite parents in for a class. I will keep the questions coming at you! Thanks again for being an inspiration!
DeleteLeah
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLeah,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for sharing! What you shared in class today made it seem great and I'm sad I missed it! The idea of authentic assessments is something I want to do in my future classroom. This past week my school had Career Day where we had many professionals from the area come in and share with us what they do. Many of them talked about problem-solving and learning how to think, things also discuss in our classes. As I listened to the different engineers, contractors, and designers talk, I kept thinking about the project base learning that some of our fellow math/science interns are doing in their classrooms. I became really curious to if we could implement similar ideas in the world language classroom (like the workshop we did with the speaker in 649 over the summer on sustainable learning). What you shared from the session you attended reminded me of this and further encourages me to think about how to do this to incorporate an authentic situation where the students have to investigate something to learn while using the language.
Yes, Megan! I love the idea of project based learning and wish it was more taken over in WL education. I'd love to talk more with you about it and try to see if we could plan lessons to do in both of our languages to enhance their learning through projects. This was also the feeling I came away with from MACUL. Excited!
DeleteLeah I really enjoyed reading your blog post. From what you wrote about I wish I would have attended Mr. Theune's presentation. I like how he discussed, and how you conveyed the idea of progressive failure. As educators, it is imperative that we are always pushing our students, as well as ourselves, to do the best we can do. As cliché as it sounds, the idea of progressive failure reminds me of that old saying "shoot for the moon, and even if you miss you will land among the starts." Moreover, I would also love to incorporate more authentic assessments within my classroom as Mr. Theune touched upon. Anytime one can create and implement an assessment that mimics real world work or ideas I applaud the effort. Additionally Leah, I love the idea of having students create a digital narrative. I could see myself borrowing this idea and using it to learn about my students. The information I would gain from the digital narrative could really help me differentiate my teaching to my students various learner profiles, interest, etc. Thank you so much for sharing Leah.
ReplyDeleteI think I would have really enjoyed Mr. Theune's presentation as well. That toast idea I may use in my own classroom at some point. My students recently did not perform to their expectations on a test. Most students got frustrated with the grades and somewhat shut down. As I expected this, I planned a revision process for the students. A process where they would actually reflect on their mistakes and find the correct answers. I wonder how the conversation could have gone differently if I framed it the way he did. Progressive Failure.
ReplyDeleteI feel that society has constructed mistakes and failure to be negative where as we can't progress without making mistakes first. Life is full of educated guess and checks. It's great if you get it the first time but how often will that happen? I imagine that if I brought students sparking juice/cider, celebrated and embraced the failure, the revision process would have been smoother.
This could also be something that I use at the beginning of the year. Many teachers start the year off with the idea that everyone has 100%. However, this never made sense to me. You are consistently punished. However, if we start off at 0% then you have nothing to lose and are consistently rewarded moving up. So as long as we learn from mistakes then we will move up in points which would reflect our knowledge. You don't start off with 100% of the knowledge you need to pass the class. However, you will reach it through the class.
Your paragraph sure invoked lots of thought. :D
Leah,
ReplyDeleteNo doubt, authentic assessment is a huge motivator. It's amazing when kids say, "wait, someone is going to read this?" and then their entire demeanor changes. I would think that your easiest route to this would be connecting with French-speaking students around the world, via the internet. I wonder if digital narratives to these audiences might work (I'm sure you've thought of this).
Sounds like you entered the conference with an open mind and got a lot out of it. I always enjoy reading your insights.