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An Observation
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9 thoughts on “An Observation”
This is great, Ben. It’s so helpful to everyone to have someone sitting in that is capable of noticing and pointing out those little things that good teachers do without even knowing they’re doing them.
I am reminded of Bryce’s “Host” student job. A well-articulated student does just as much to help observers who don’t teach a language, or don’t teach a language well enough to understand what’s happening in the room.
Pure gold! Thanks Ben!
I agree – this is great. I felt like I was getting a personal observation from Connie. I will keep her comments in mind when I teach next week. And I will try to figure out out the “Four Corners” activity.
Also, I had my students do a couple of Running Dictation exercises this past week – an excellent May activity in my opinion. I used six sentences from a passage we had just read in “Pirates” for French 1, and then 6 sentences from “Problèmes au Paradis¨ for French 2. The exercise took about 15 minutes. What a great strategy for getting the students out of their seats!
Yes, agreed, Running dictation was great in my second to last classes with Chinese 1 & 2.
Don (or Diane), would you be able to describe a “running dictation” more?
Thanks!
Tim, Here’s a description: https://benslavic.com/blog/dictatio-currendo/
Also Tim there is this:
Strategy #24 – Running/Drawing Dictation:
Running Dictation is a good way to get the students out of their seats and moving around, especially if things are dragging. It’s not a brain break, however. We use running dictation when we have completed a regular story or anytime we want to get students reading and writing after some auditory CI.
Here’s the process:
Take five sentences from the completed story and cut them into strips, putting each sentence up around the room in random places on the walls. The font should be fairly large to make them easy to read.
Next, pair up the students. One student writes and one runs. The runner finds a sentence on the wall and runs back to tell the writer what the sentence is, who then writes it.
Once the students have found and recorded all the sentences, they try to arrange them in the proper order. The first team to do that wins the game.
Drawing Dictation is similar. A copy of a simple drawing is handed out to each student. An artist goes to the whiteboard. The students as a class describe the drawing to the artist. When done, the students and artist compare notes. This is a good activity to teach prepositions. Since this drawing activity, and running dictation as well, require some degree of output, it is best to avoid using them too much in first year classes.
Don Read comments on this activity:
“I had my students do a couple of Running Dictation exercises this past week – an excellent May activity in my opinion. I used six sentences from a passage we had just read in “Pirates” for French 1, and then 6 sentences from “Problèmes au Paradis¨ for French 2. The exercise took about 15 minutes. What a great strategy for getting the students out of their seats!”
There are examples of Running Dictation and Drawing Dictation on YouTube.
I’ll bet most of us would be a lot less cynical about our WL teacher evaluation process if we had someone like Connie in our classrooms, with her keen eye for what matters/ is most effective in our classes (plus she comprehends the language interactions!)
While I have enjoyed positive feedback when visitors/evaluators are observing, it’s mostly generic and useless – i.e., ‘so fun!’ ‘So engaging!’ ‘I love the x, y, or z (stories, props, costumes).’ Connie’s all about the nitty gritty – the communication and practices that hold the classroom community together!
I’d like Danielson to put THAT in her pipe and smoke it…