One our goals in creating this blog was to provide more opportunities for you to pursue your own professional development experiences. By seeing the work of your peers, other WL blogs, and strategies that really work in the WL classroom, I hope you are continuing to individualize your own path to PD. Here are a few more ideas and tools for your toolkit:
World Language Week Highlights...WL teachers at LHS got together and had their students create a Wall of Peace in celebration of WL Week. Students wrote about what peace meant or looked like to them, in all different languages. What a powerful way to connect language learning to a larger perspective on life. Talk, Read, Talk, WriteTRTW is a literacy strategy that helps you teach through text. It puts the burden of the learning onto the students (remember, whoever is doing the work is doing the learning), and requires active engagement from all students. The article in the examples below is what she used with us at the conference, your article would probably be much shorter, depending on the proficiency level of your students. Kristin Ziemke"It's not the technology, it's what we do with it that counts." says Kristin Ziemke, co-author of the book Amplify. I had the good fortune to attend her workshop this week, and I'm passing the learning on to you. First of all, her website and blog are full of great links and information on digital learning and teaching. She says, "Use tech to bring kids to text." Integrating technology in the classroom does not mean that we are replacing books, we are simply focusing on our students' digital literacy as well. Kristen encourages a close reading of pictures as text. This gets students talking and making observations, even if they are not yet fluent in the language. For example, before introducing some reading and writing that students were going to do about Puerto Rico, Liz Carter (LMS) shared a picture of the bioluminescent bay. This got students wondering, questioning and excited about the topic. She said she saw a real difference between their writing this year, versus when she did the same activity last year, but without the picture. Questions you might ask, "What questions do you have? What are you wondering? What else would you like to know? Where could you look to find answers?" You could tie photos to a place, topic, question, etc.
Here are some other images your students might be interested in. International Borders Weird Toilets of the World (use with caution depending on student maturity level) What's Going on in This Picture? NY Times
2 Comments
Jill Hnat
3/23/2017 10:53:44 am
Love the wall of peace!! Students write so much more when they are REACTING to something. I have found the short videoclips or pictures the best writing prompts out there.
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Elizabeth Ben Yahia
3/23/2017 12:27:24 pm
Thank you for sharing, this is very inspiring!
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