2005-2006
I am writing all of this from memory, since I did not keep a journal my first year of teaching, and the website design was completely different. I continue to make changes to this journal as I write it, and most of it is still incomplete, it’s a work in progress.
I started my first year teaching with two sections of Mandarin I. The class was for nonnative speakers and it was a fun experience. Like any other new teacher I made new teacher mistakes – thinking class can only be fun, and students will learn if they enjoy it – which is only partially true.
(Bryce was in my period 4 Mandarin class in 2005-2006)
So I started my first year doing only activities, and, because of my credentialing program, most of these activities had to do with single vocabulary words – only a couple used actual sentences. Games that have to do with learning new words and practicing new words mostly use either single words or very simple sentences – not to mention they don’t reflect real-life language use. No matter, I was new and everything was an experiment anyway – and the students went with it quite well. We had a lot of fun and I started developing this website. The picture above was our first classroom – it was actually a temporary trailer until the new classrooms for world languages were built – which wouldn’t finish until around the middle of the next school year.
Some of the activities we used were:
PAPER CHAIN RACES
The teacher passes out paper strips that can be wrapped into circles and connected in a chain, as you can see from the picture. Students practice multiple forms of grammar by answering questions from a prompt and then writing them on a chain. They then connected the chain and see which group could finish the chain first. In the end we made a big chain together and wrapped it around the classroom.
FLY SWATTER
Students sit next to each other and put this piece of paper in the middle of their desks, in a place where they can both reach:
Then the teacher would say a number (or a vocabulary word, but in this case numbers) out loud, and the two students would compete to see who could find the number first and circle it. Students had a lot of fun, again, not very real-life, but it’s a fun activity.
BLUFF
Bluff is a fun review/independent practice game for the entire class. Like all activities the requirement is all students are engaged in the activity, not just a couple, some, or most of them.
The teacher splits the class into two groups, then a random group is chosen to start first.
The teacher either asks a question in the target language and asks for an answer, or in this case I showed pictures and asked the students to describe them:
(The correct answer is “I drive my car to go home” in the target language)
Now, suppose it is the turn of group 1. The more students that are able to describe the picture (or answer a teacher question), the more points the group gets. The group may discuss the answer up to one minute. Then every student that thinks he/she may know the answer must stand up. Even students that do not know the answer may stand up. The teacher then picks a student to answer the question/describe the picture. If the student chosen answers the question correctly, the group gets all the points for the number of people standing (eg. group 1 had 10 people standing up, then group 1 gets 10 points). If the student answers incorrectly, the entire group gets no points.
If a group answers incorrectly, the opposing group has a chance to “steal” the points by answering the question correctly.
For a list of other similar activities if you are a beginning teacher, you can contact me through the Contact page.
In any case, these activities are fun and can be used in parts of the language teaching class, but it isn’t nearly enough for students to simply play these types of games. As a result, my students were not very proficient in Mandarin after my first year of teaching, but we did our best together.
Paige was in my Mandarin first year class, helping run Back to School Night.
2006-2007
I had a new Chinese I class this year, and there were two Korean girls that were studying at our school, almost as exchange students. This is the family project for one of them:
(The sound and animation is gone from the pdf conversion but it’s still a nice project)
That same year we started a club. It was supposed to be a Chinese Club, but my world language chair asked me to convert it to an International Club. Our T-shirts still looked very Chinese, of course.
2007-2008
This was the only year out of my six years of teaching that I didn’t have students. I began working on a four year grant installing a high school and middle school Mandarin program. The first year of the grant focused only on program development, which meant I didn’t get to teach. Instead I worked in an office, working on curriculum, budgeting, and gathering community resources.
After meeting with the principals at each school site (two elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school). The city’s Chinese association generously invited me to their leadership meeting. The meeting was intended for the superintendent, and I was a very happy secondary guest. At the meeting, the Chinese Club described their mission, activities, and desire to collaborate with the District in building a mutually beneficial partnership.
Two professors of world languages were also kind enough to come discuss their involvement at lunch. With their commitment and involvement to the community advisory council, which met once a month, the program began being built.
The ACTFL Conference
One week before Thanksgiving, I arrived in San Antonio for the annual ACTFL conference. I picked up many useful materials and ideas for curriculum, as well as innovative language learning technologies. The main reason for the visit, however, was for the grant session, with information regarding budget regulations and performance measures. Prior to attending that session I had been learning everything through reading government websites. The session helped clarify many details.
The conference also featured vendors from all over the world (see picture below), everything from exchange programs to innovative language programs to new technologies. It was bountiful in offerings.
This picture was taken a few minutes after attendees were allowed to enter the vendor booths.
There were also many professional presentation sessions, everything from demonstrations of language teaching to discussions of issues in foreign language teaching and program development. The picture below shows a presenter using the target language (in this case Mandarin) while also teaching content. Even though the lesson was intended for younger students (she was teaching shapes, animals and numbers), it was still a wonderful display of a lesson in true target language immersion (that is, not only is the entire lesson in the target language, the lesson is completely understandable due to the presentation, and not because of cognates, which are words in the target language that resemble the learner’s native language, such as the word “hamburger” in English and “햄버거” in Korean). Many times a lesson will appear to be in true target language immersion simply due to the fact that the entire lesson is in the target language, but using the target language 100% of the time in the lesson does not guarantee the learner will understand 100% of the lesson. The ability to deliver the lesson even to students that have trouble picking up gestures and other visual clues is key to an immersion lesson.
This is a picture of the session I described above. This was the best session I attended during this conference.
Overall it was a very valuable experience and I had a wonderful time at thie ACTFL 2007 Convention and Expo.
When I returned we were contacted by the Huntington Library to collaborate on a Chinese program for the new Chinese Gardens at the Huntington Library.
This was an amazing opportunity, since the Huntington Library had just completed phase 1 of its stunning Chinese Garden based on poetic visions and traditional SuZhou/HangZhou designs. The word to describe it is “picturesque”.
(From the Los Angeles Times)
The traditional structures house a tea house with a view of the lake and also a dim sum shop, which in southern California is the best of both worlds.
To be continued…