Feedback on Evaluative Questions

2. Instruction – The teacher uses research-based instructional practices to meet the needs of all students.

• 2.1 Using Questioning and Discussion Techniques

Most of the teacher’s questions are of high quality. Adequate time is provided for students to respond.

• 2.2 Engaging Students in Learning

Most activities and assignments are appropriate to students, and almost all students are cognitively engaged in exploring content.

• 2.3 Reflecting on Teaching

Teacher makes an accurate assessment of a lesson’s effectiveness and the extent to which it achieved its instructional outcomes and can cite general references to support the judgment.

I have mentioned previously about the socratic seminars I have been doing in my Latin 2 classes on history and mythology. A few weeks ago we did a short discussion on Augustus and his policies that were enacted during his reign. To prepare for this brief discussion I had students write one evaluative questions as well finish the comprehension questions from the reading they were assigned on Augustus. I warned students that if they did not write a question to be discussed then they would not get full credit and would have to take minutes/notes on the discussion. I had my students at the end of the period turn their questions into me for me to look over and grade. I only had about 3-4 students who did not do the questions in both of my Latin 2 periods.

The discussions overall were great and students were even more comfortable voicing their opinions since this was nothing new for them. With two other seminars behind them my students were capable of formulating great evaluative questions and were making modern day connections without prompting. I did not need to prompt discussion much which was great to see my students take that step towards self prompting.

When I was going through the questions, the evaluative questions I was looking for a few things, a true evaluative question, whether it was original and whether it would encourage discussion. A number of questions were similar but some students came up with some really good questions, making observations and connections I had not thought about. I was careful about the feedback I gave, focusing on 1 or 2 good points but then in turn asking a question of my own that would encourage my student to delve deeper into the question they had originally asked. Some students who were not present for the seminar or who did not write their questions could make up the assignment for full points as long as they did three things:

1. Finished answering the comprehension questions on Augustus
2. Wrote one evaluative question about Augustus
3. Answered their own question fully

This seemed the best solution to help those students who were not present for the seminar but could still participate in way. It also encouraged those students who didn’t do the assignment originally to get it done. After receiving this flood of questions and responses I got to see even more from my students and their thought processes. I had more material from these to give more in depth feedback and ask more pointed questions.

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Now looking at standard 2 and the sub-standards of it I would say that this activity definitely fit all three sub-categories, I asked questions, helping direct discussion but maintain a facilitator type position. I made sure to encourage all students to do the assignment and move towards higher thinking questions. I also returned these assignments with not only a grade but also some feedback/question that would encourage even more thought process on the students end. I look forward to using these seminar style discussions even more in the future. I wanted to incorporate more feedback in my grading, especially with the seminar questions and after reading more about how to use feedback from my EDU class this quarter I was able to glean some very helpful tips. Such as asking the student a question and pointing out some good things as well as ask for more development.

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Standard 5: Learning Environment

5.1 Component 2a: Creating an environment of respect and rapport

5.4 Component 2d: Managing student behavior by establishing expectations

Classroom management does not sound very interesting, fun, or all that important besides laying down the law in the classroom. Taking my Classroom Management Class and actually reading and defining classroom management has proven these preconceived ideas as wrong. Classroom management is:

“Classroom management is the act of creating an environment where the teacher can teach and the students can learn. It is the way a class is organized, not the way it is disciplined. A classroom that is effectively managed provides students with opportunities to succeed because of the procedures that are in place.”

Management is not about punishment or consequences, that plays a part but it is not the end all, be all. No, classroom management from what I have gleaned from readings and class is an atmosphere and relation. Teachers need to cultivate a relationship with their students so that those students needs are met, easy enough right? Not really, but this is where the true passion and joy of teaching comes into play. Putting in the effort to build up a relationship with your students will demonstrate to the students the sort of classroom you want. This in turn will help make the healthy, thriving atmosphere all teachers should strive for. A place where learning takes off, discoveries are made and successes are celebrated. This is the sort of classroom I want to foster and am now confident I can build after actually defining classroom management. I definitely have a lot more to learn but I know I am headed in the right direction and look forward to continuing this learning in my own classroom with my own students.

image:http://www.sharemylesson.com/TESAssets/SML/Images/classroom%20management.jpg

Learning Latin is like Learning Art

My Teaching Statement:

Teaching and learning have been the same thing for me since I started pursuing a career in education. The instances where I am the teacher in the classroom are few, but I realized that when I am in the teaching mode, I am also in that learning mode. An idea that I have held onto for a long time is “you know what you know when you can teach it” a paraphrase of another quote that my high school art teacher said to me. It has been something that I never truly understood until I got to step into the teacher role.

There still is a difference between teacher and student; one has knowledge on the subject, and the student needs to learn that subject. In my case that would be Latin. Yet from my own experience as a student and as a teacher, the students can teach you just as much in the classroom. I want to make it a point in my classroom to listen to my students, their frustrations and successes, their passions and curious inquiries. My hope for my classroom would be one that fulfills all the requirements of a traditional foreign language classroom but also a classroom where students are comfortable and excited.

Teaching a foreign language is very different from teaching other subjects, like science or music or PE. I will admit that Latin is an odd foreign language, but it also a classical and respected language. Latin was used for a long time and though some would consider it “a dead language” I would beg to differ. Not all subjects are the same that is for sure, but language is all about communication. In this case the communication happens a lot in reading and writing, but there are also times when speaking Latin has a great effect. We see this in everyday life when we say things like, “Carpe Diem” or “non sequitor”. I want to ensure that my students understand that even though there is more reading and writing it is still a form of communication, one that we still use today and we can still get our points across. With this in mind I want to encourage my students to communicate in this way, using their knowledge and readings to communicate new ideas and bring attention to old views.

The only other subject in school that I have come close to relating language with is art. As a student I could never figure out how my art teacher graded our art. How do you judge someone’s artwork against another? How finished is it? How well executed the subject was done? How much skill does the does the student have in rendering the piece? These are a sampling of questions that my art teacher would ask when critiquing our work. She always graded us against ourselves, our progress, never against another student’s skill. I liked this idea of grading our current work against our past work and the progress we have made. There was this constant link between what we have learned and what we are currently learning. Where we are constantly comparing our knowledge to where we started to where we have come. It is a form of communication between the progresses we have made, our teacher, and us.

I found myself asking the same questions in my language class. How do you grade a student on their speaking of a language that is no longer spoken? How do you determine the correct way to formulate a sentence when word order doesn’t matter? How can you pick just one translation when the words have many other options? And this is where I saw that art was like Latin. As in art where there is communication going on between the artist, the art piece, and the viewer, there is a similar communication set up in Latin between the speaker, the language used, and the listener.

In these same art classes we did a lot of group critiques, which at times were painful but after a really good group critique sessions, well my art got better or at least my future art did. We were graded on our current art in comparison to where we have come from. That’s what I want to implement into my classroom is a level of comfort that allows for easy communication and critique. I want there to be growth by introducing hard concepts and slowly working my students through it. I want to introduce them to great writers, people who we have come to see as classic writers but were visionaries in their own time; they wrote about things that were anti-government; they were the rebels of their time, by bringing issues to the public’s eye and making people think. I want to give my students many different perspectives of the Roman people and of those who were affected by them.

Latin allows a lot more freedom in its use because of the lack of its contemporary use. I want my students to see that freedom the language allows. There are rules, but those same rules allow for interesting degrees of freedoms within the language. There are special endings and conjugations, but because of that you can arrange a sentence however you want. Most Latin words have multiple meanings so you can have two very different translations based on the same reading. For example the phrase “brutum fulmen” (Pliny the elder) is translated commonly as “senseless thunderbolt” but the adjective “brutum” has many meanings: dull, stupid, irrational, heavy, etc. And the noun “fulmen” could mean crushing blow, flash or lightening. So you could translate “brutum fulmen” as “stupid crushing blow”. This is why I love Latin; it reminds me of the freedom I experienced after reaching a higher level in art. After learning all the structural aspects of art, learning about shading, light distribution and proportion I got to change things around. I got to rearrange the sentence so to speak. Instead of making picture perfect paintings I twisted my subjects or deformed my still lifes to something that I found interesting and new. I did the same in my Latin classes; I saw the prearranged sentences and thought that it was boring, but then realized that I could change it all. I want to help my students realize this. Like art, Latin has some freedoms to it after learning all of the rules.

In my classroom I will treat it like any other language classroom, there will be communication, there will be culture, and there will be a level of interpersonal comfort. As a future Latin teacher I will not only be held by the World Language standards but also by the Classical Language Standards, both making points about communication, community, culture, comparisons and going beyond the classroom. With the ideas mentioned above I believe I can meet those standards.

image: Gustav Klimt, Pallas Athena, 1898

Using Error Correction with Sequencing in a Latin Classroom

When building a foreign language lesson plan, Brandl has a simple chart to follow: Input: instructional period, giving students the tools to do the intended task Assimilation: Working on examples of the task and putting the new informational to practice. Includes language exercises verbally, reading and writing. Application: Students putting the information practice by themselves, possibly through homework or in class work in the communicative language.

This chart is an easy enough outline to follow for lesson planning. Although when I first read through this chart I was confused with the terms “input” and “assimilation” but after I read over what these words meant. When writing up a lesson plan on a particular Latin chapter in The Essential Latin Textbook I found the chart to be helpful in breaking up a class period for instruction and work time. Another concept I cam across with Brandl was the error correction methodology. For foreign language there are a lot different ways to go about correcting students in a verbal setting. There is positive and negative feedback, I am big supporter of positive feedback, encouraging, praising, confirming and repetition for the benefit of the rest of the class; such feedback is essential to inform students when they saying something right and that they are grasping the material. It encourages myself as a future teacher to make effort to listen an pay attention to my students not only when they make a mistake but also when they correctly speak the language.

The way in which I would implement this practice the most is during the assimilation point in Brandl’s chart. After giving my students the new information, based off of earlier material they have already learned, I would have them put it into practice. For example, if I instruct my students on verb and noun agreement I would give them a phrase and ask if my construction of the phrase was correct, if not, then why was it wrong and how I should have constructed the phrase.

Puella ambulant.

It should be: Puellae ambulant, or Puella ambulat; depending if I want the noun to be plural or the verb.

After my students tell me what is wrong I would have them write the wrong and the write phrase down. This sort of self correction encourages my students to take on the role of teaching and put the material into their own words. After this sort of exercise I would have my students form a series of phrases using the new and old vocabulary then partner up and correct each others sentences. This sort of exercise would also allow them work with both English and Latin.

Another exercise that I could work use correction in would be doing a “mad lib” type exercise, having my students create a story using past and new concepts. Written correction is something I would see in grading homework or tests, which is kind of hard to do in a language classroom, I want my students to hold onto the knowledge for the long term instead of cramming the night before for a test. I would probably do pop quizzes, without warning, so that my students are always mindful of the material. The homework would most likely be only to assess how well my students are grasping the material, it would probably be a way to tell what my students need to look at more. i would circle or mark the wrong answer and point them towards what they need to look at, and leave them to try and determine the problem and solution. On quizzes I would just give them the correct answer and have them write it out multiple times with the explanation as to why my correction is the solution.

My end goal in all this is to make sure my students are getting the information and placing into their long term memory. I want to see my students succeed in “knowing” the language, verbally, written, and in reading.

image: http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/product/Communicative-Language-Teaching-in-Action-Putting-Principles-to-Work/9780131579064.page

Bloom’s Taxonomy and A First Year Latin Student

A few skills that any Latin student will gain in their first year of Latin would be learning a ton of vocabulary and charts on nouns and verbs which would fall under Blooms Remembering bar. Students will gather many words and learn how to chant noun declensions as well as verb conjugations. With these words and charts students will be able to explain why these words need the specific endings, why a plural feminine word needs a plural verb and adjective. That these endings allow a student to see what role the word plays in the sentence. With this knowledge students will also see and understand how the syntactical form that Latin takes circles back to English. How verbs have to match their nouns as well as the adjectives. By applying this understanding of specified endings and agreement students will have a better grasp on the English language. After memorizing the different forms a noun takes in each case or how each ending changes in a verb conjugation students will be able to pick out from texts which words are connected and in agreement, therefore making translation and understanding the text that much more understandable. Students will only have to analyze a text for these specific endings and they will be able to give a loose translation of the text. With these application skills first year students can then look at these same texts and support their translation with their understanding of the endings and their uses, they can evaluate how the sentence or text should best be translated and give evidence for that decision. With all of these skills first year students should then be able to create their own works of writing, simple but still using endings and vocab and rules and other pieces of knowledge they have gleaned over the year.

In the book I am reading, When Dead Tongues Speak, by John Gruber-Miller, I was surprised how forward he was in naming the different issues a first year Latin may face, or even a senior teacher. The first thing he talks about was how as new teacher himself he was faced with the problem of having a purely grammar based Latin course. Taking Latin for a little more than ten years now I also was in this grammar based mindset for my future students. The problem he stated was that no student could fully grasp the material and the language from such a route, by making Latin so foreign from other languages in that it was not spoken anymore, he set his students up for below par in learning a language. In addition to taking away from students experience, the standards for Latin would also not be met. The standards speak of the need to educate ones students on the culture, the way in which they can apply this new knowledge in their own culture and the like. These standards also brought up some challenges that I will face in my future classroom. How can I teach my students about the culture, using texts and artwork that requires more than 1 years of Latin to decipher. Where can I find simple enough examples for my first year students to use without confusing them with advanced knowledge needed to understand the examples. Another problem being how can I make for them an opportunity to take this new knowledge and apply it to their other studies. maybe looking at poetry that is a predecessor to current or more modern poetry. Aside from the problem of having a grammar based course and addressing the standards other things that I quickly found issues with as a future Latin teacher were how to work with my students different learning skills, some being auditory, others visual, hands-on, etc. How could I take each of these different learning practices and try to reach them all or most in a language. Auditory and visual not so difficult, hands-on, a little more challenging to address. But by running into these problems I also began to think about possible lessons that could meet these needs. Like making a piece of artwork that embodies a Latin saying or Roman ideal. Another problem I came across in the reading was how could facilitate a communal environment with “dead language”. Maybe add some conversational Latin, but where does put my students? They couldn’t go outside the classroom and just start conversing in Latin, no one would understand them! How could I develop a sense of community in the classroom that could translate into other aspects of my students lives. These are the sorts of questions and problems I came across after reading the first chapter in Gruber-Miller’s book but hope to reconcile with further reading and experience.

image: http://epltt.coe.uga.edu/index.php?title=Bloom%27s_Taxonomy