Afmlta presentation 2013
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Inspiring, Innovating and Interacting in the classroom. A Journey. An attempt to illustrate how I think I am using the conference themes in my classroom.
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Afmlta presentation 2013
- 1. Inspiring, innovating and interacting in the classroom. A Journey Andrew Jeppesen Knox Grammar School, Sydney
- 3. Made with “SimpleMind+” app
- 4. QuickTime™ and a decompressor are needed to see this picture.
- 6. Inspire
- 7. Classroom Link between pedagogy and space Turn your classroom into a space where students can enter into the world of your TL
- 10. CorridorExtend the learning space beyond the classroom door
- 11. Use your colleagues to help advocate for languages http://bit.ly/languageis
- 13. These posters made using the ‘motivator’ or ‘mosaic’ tools at: bighugelabs.com These posters made using the ‘motivator’ or ‘mosaic’ tools at: bighugelabs.com
- 16. Community
- 17. Community Spreading the value of language further into our community
- 18. Innovate
- 20. Student Pages
- 22. Edmodo
- 23. Interact
- 25. How do you celebrate?
Editor's Notes
- So what am I trying to do today?
- AdvocacyFinding the spark that will light the students passion for the language
- For me that means exposing students, colleagues and parents to the TL as much as possible.We have to market our subject effectively and try to catch the students’ interests in our net. It’s about raising our profile and making sure we are always visible as subjects and departments.
- For me, inspiring my students to continue a lifelong journey with a language is about ‘advocacy’ and helping language seem more relevant to them and useful to them. It’s about ‘marketing’ the language and putting it in their face as a useful option in their lives. Exposure is key. I see what we are trying to do as boiling down to the 3 Cs of advocacy: the classroom, the corridor and the community.
- If you’re lucky enough to have your own classroom or have a dedicated language classroom, I believe that the environment you create can have an impact on the students engagement with your subject and set their imagination alight; even help them see the relevance of language to them. Previously the classroom I use was fairly drab and so I’ve constantly been trying to add some life to it and bring Japan to my students.
- So in the past few years I have slowly added more and more to the classroom in an attempt to make their subject relevant. I have tried to use wallspaces to highlight different cultural themes like cooking or sport (important for the boys) and of course anime / manga. I even crossed one of the final frontiers of poster placement and have a couple of things on the roof - just in case anyone dozes off or looks up there. The other thing I wanted to do was, as the library does, have rolling displays of books and realia on a particular theme, like a festival or cultural element. I do this for things like the Children’s Day festival, anime / manga or historical events like Hiroshima.
- Most of the items in the room have either come from my house (as no longer needed or wanted items), donated by visiting Japanese schools or bought at the 100yen shop in Japan. I also try to use the space in different ways. we are a laptop school but chalk gets used in my classroom too - mainly for writing the script on the desks (it comes off pretty easily). I have been know to write on the walls in chalk too but you probably need to let people know if you’re going to do that to be sure others don’t think it’s been graffitied.
- if your languages area has noticeboards or a corridor of some sort, extend the learning space beyond the classroom and promote language in your corridors and hallways. I try to have a rolling display relevant to Japanese outside my room and have also played with QR codes and augmented reality to try and take that promotion one or two steps further into the students’ lives and into their mobile devices. QR codes are bar codes that when scanned will reveal a message or take you to a link. The ones in this display take you to a website that explains the picture further or to a song on youtube. Rolling displays I use are (spring, rainy season, summer, Hiroshima, anime, etc), QR codes and Aurasma.
- Use your colleagues to help advocate for languages. If there are language speakers on staff, ask them what language means to them and where they learnt it. Make language speaking relevant to all in the school - students and staff. You can use this survey of you like - anyone with a device please do it now. If you have discovered Glen Agua’s password, you may have done this already. Show them the results (live).
- We use the corridor to not only promote specific languages but for promoting language in general.
- Bighuge labs is a great website where you can make motivational posters, mosaics and heaps of other things for free. You can then save them to your computer, print them out and laminate them. If you have a flickr account you can also save them to your flickr account for easy access or to share with others.
- You can find most of my posters here
- I think it is also very important to promote language learning in our community but also languages as being a community. We try to do this through the usual sorts of things like excursions, incursions, language day, language days with other schools in the area, school visits from Japanese schools and sending our students on exchange to France, Germany and Japan.
- Over the past 3 years we have also introduced parent courses after school, which are also attended by a few staff. These have been favourably received by those looking to renew past skills in a language or start something new. Funding for the courses is through the AIS Languages Grants (Federal Government funding). There were budget cuts in education spending in May which may affect future funding? Participants do not pay to attend.The teachers are paid by the Grant money (about $75 per hour). This is an extra, so does not count towards co-curricular. This year we are running Japanese and French. Other ideas we don’t do yet but I have seen or heard of others doing: Language ambassadors, Mentors coming in to speak
- I’m always looking for new ways to connect with students in the classroom and to inspire them to connect with languages. Recently I have been looking at gamification as a means to get students more engaged with the TL.
- This was largely inspired by a day with Steve Collis and the fact that my Yr8 class last year were less than inspired to study language. So I looked for ways to keep them engaged and learning by ‘gamifying’ the lessons. Essentially, completing particular tasks earned them badges and points which they could (after reaching a minimum amount) spend in our virtual shop. A bit of fun but last year’s class (a lower ability class) really enjoyed it and it worked well for them. This year I have changed the layout on the site a little but the principles remain the same.
- Last year I used class dojo to award points for completing various tasks and for each 5 points they earned they received a class dojo badge via edmodo. This translated into the virtual cash that could be spent in the online store. This year, however, I have been using a spreadsheet in google drive to keep track of points. It is simpler for me to add the points and keep track of them. Students are also able to see the spreadsheet, without being able to change it. This year’s class are not motivated as much as last year’s by the badges and virtual rewards and so it’s something you need to adapt to different classes.
- For submission we used Edmodo as our virtual classroom where students can easily upload work, ask questions, complete quizess or access resources. It’s secure and really easy to use in all sorts of ways with your classes. Edmodo allows you to give badges to students as well for completing tasks or for general things like working hard, helping out, etc. You can make our own badges aswell.
- Interact is all about connecting - with students, colleagues and in this age with students in countries where the TL is spoken.
- Last term we again hooked up with Kitatoshima (this time with Year 9) and repeated a project we had done before on how we celebrate particular activities or festivals in each of our countries. This time we used Google Hangouts, which worked really well. Having a chat function also allows for written questions. It’s always tricky finding a time that matches up but our students enjoyed the first session so much that they came back after school on the last day of term to work with the Tokyo teacher’s other class.
- Interacting doesn’t only mean connecting students with students but it’s also important to remember we need more teachers interacting, and not only at events like this. So, if you haven’t connected with other language teachers via twitter, facebook, google or whatever else is out there, it is probably time that you did. I highly recommend it.
- If you’re a Japanese teacher, start here. For other languages, why not start your own community.
- So I encourage us all to continue inspiring our staff and students as well as trying something new and connecting with someone new as well. All links mentioned today, and more can be found here.