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Saturday, May 3, 2014

I've created this blog to organize my thoughts and activities and to experience the blogging world. I am a veteran teacher of Spanish, who only has about 10 years of experience in my SC teaching certificate. I have taught K-6th and 9th - 12th grades. Currently, I teach levels 1-3.

This year, some things rocked my predictable world. I went to the HSTW conference where I was introduced to PBL as an instructional strategy, our district went to 1:1 technology with iPads, I am in a Masters program for Divergent Learning at Columbia College, I attended a workshop that introduced me to the new Modern Languages National and State standards and  I joined a PLN of World Language professionals #langchat in Twitter. All of a sudden, I find myself in a paradigm shift from the old way that I was teaching to a new and more efficient way of instruction.
It has been a whirlwind for me and at times I have found myself carried away by a vortex of new knowledge, spinning in the air and trying to hang on. New knowledge is coming at me at lightning speed, as only Twitter can make it happen, and I am having trouble processing the new information so fast. I want to be on the other side of this journey where I have mastered these new standards and it is comfortable. However, it IS a journey so I might as well settled down a bit because it will take me a little while to get to my destination.
I have used  my Spanish 3 kids as my alpha testers and they have been absolutely awesome about going on this journey with me. So, here comes the stream of consciousness writing so that I can get my thoughts organized.

This is what I was doing before, which was good.
1. I stayed in the TL about 80% of the time.
2. I taught vocabulary and grammar in context (though in a structured approach)
3. I am a performer type of teacher:very animated and passionate about the language and I love to work with teenagers.
4. I aimed for proficiency in speaking and writing.
5. I had great classroom management
6. I used PBL at least once a year.
7. I worked well cooperatively with my colleagues and like to share what I am doing.

This is what I was doing which was outdated
1. taught with a grammar and vocabulary list based approach
2. I gave grammar tests which a lot of kids failed.
3. I used vocabulary sheets and gave vocab tests
4. the readings were not CI i+1 (but maye +3 or 4) and were too difficult for students
5. I didn't differentiate but expected all students to reach the same level of fluency at the same time, if they didn't they failed
6. I didn't teach with a proficiency based approach (though I thought  I did
7. The rubrics were too harsh and didn't give useful feedback.


1 comment:

  1. I think everybody should do exactly this type of reflection regularly.

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