Panel 5 says:
Provide learners with meaningful concrete experiences, making extensive use of visuals, props, realia, and hands-on activities.
I am kind of split on this one, but I am going to have to disagree. This implies that the teacher is this kind of Professor Magic with a deep bag of interesting tricks and activities (realia) that are supposed to engage the learner.
Key word there is supposed to. Teacher’s Discovery bells and whistles are not going to engage kids. Talking about the kids is going to engage kids. Again, it sounds great, but if you go into a Georgia classroom right now to see if this kind of thing works, you would see a few “A” students involved, and most of the class in a semi-confused state ranging from semi to total apathy, because they don’t understand.
The example given in panel 5 has a picture of a kid sitting at a desk with a bunch of foreign language cards and pictures, a little map, a stuffed animal, a baseball card thing, and a pair of scissors. This child is not ENGAGED with anyone in a PARTICIPATORY or VERBALLY RECIPROCAL way – he is just holding a card.
I would ask those who think that realia and activities like this actually work why they think that they work. I really don’t get it. At the bottom of the panel it has a picture of some cards, one with a butterfly on it, that the student is supposed to learn the language from.
Underneath the image it says “learning tools for varied learning styles”.
Let me see if I get this – by picking up a card of a butterfly, the learner is supposed to learn how to say something about butterflies in Spanish. Think about that. Last I heard, foreign language learners need to hear L2 in interesting and meaningful ways thousands of times in discussion that is about THEM to keep their interest. A card of a butterfly? Come on!
We go to 1 and 4. I hope y’all don’t do this bad in the NCAA tournament.