Interactive Student/Learner Notebooks, part 2

Here are my modified guidelines with the added #hashtags information. I've also included instructions on adding a personalized cover based on ideas from Mr. Cassutto's webpage.

And, the guidelines are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, so feel free to use and modify as you see fit.

Interactive Student/Learner Notebooks

I've been working on sessions and scheduling for this year's orientation (which starts next week), and yesterday I got around to working on the session about interactive student notebooks. As I was modifying another teacher's guidelines I struggled with how I was going to explain how I wanted my teachers to create both a table of contents and an index. Mostly, I was struggling with how I wanted to explain keywords for the index in what will be their TL - English. All the teachers were interviewed and we are happy with their English skills, but by the nature of calendars, we don't have the luxury of waiting for jet lag to dissipate before beginning training. So, I'm always looking for "shortcuts" that may reduce how much I have to talk. Then it hit me: they use social media (WeChat, among others) and already know about #hashtags.

Hashtags, in a 21st century way, are really keywords for social media. How else do people try to communicate complex concepts in the fewest characters and create cross linked trends? (One can argue that emojiis communicate complex ideas in a single character, but they don't really cross link topics. 😒)

So, I'm going to go back today and modify my guidelines even more to include a fourth column in the table of contents for #hashtags; to list page number, date, and #hashtags to each page header; and instructions on how to create an index based on those #hashtags.

After I get my guidelines finished, I'll post them on the blog as a follow up.

Initial Reflections on Tell Collab Austin 2016

from: Photos from TELL Project's Austin TELL Collab 2016

This year's TELL Collab Austin was my first experience with an un-conference. I've attended quite a few conferences with sessions that were mostly seat-time and less learning. The TELL Collab was not one of those -- by any means. Everything started on Friday morning with a quick explanation of the format followed by the posting of questions (pictured above). Based on those questions, the wonderful coordinators from the TELL Project and COERLL then created the schedule for the learning sessions.

The TELL Collab schedule includes notes on all of the sessions, so I'm just going to link to it for future reference.

In the meantime, here are some of my reactions. I'll dig more into some of these ideas in future posts as I study more resources and put more ideas together.

• "No teacher gets up in the morning and wants to be a bad teacher." — I had a principal who used to tell his teachers that parents send the best kids they had to school. I figure, if you combine both these ideas, then you can create a climate for success. Next Step: Plan lessons that teach and encourage proficiency for our teachers, our students, and their parents.
• Being a good teacher isn't a linear growth, it's a 3D continuum (thus the TELL Project logo).
• Proficiency
• Measuring proficiency is like taking your temperature — you'll always have growth and progress, unless you're dead. (I don't remember who said this, but it's brilliant.)
• Students will play video games and hit reset repeatedly to level up. We should strive to make language proficiency the same thing. (from Meredith White, @PRHSspanish)
• Proficiency levels should be things that students can brag about. (also from Meredith)
• Buy-in is important from all stakeholders: students, parents, teachers, and administration. Many teachers have lessons to teach proficiency to students and handouts to send home to parents. Next Step: Research more about lessons and create something that we can use in our classrooms.
• "The only way to earn a zero, is to give me zero." This doesn't necessarily mean "free points" but it does mean that they should receive proficiency feedback for anything that they produce. 
• Authentic Resources
• Resources should be evaluated for tasks with various modes.
• If the resource (input) is complex, keep the task simple, and vice versa.
• Have a good resource but don't know what to do with it? Ask the students to determine: What is it? How do you know? and Where would you find it? An additional follow-up question would be "What else did you understand?"
• There's nothing wrong with asking the students to find authentic resources. And, you can have upper levels find resources that your lower levels can use.
• An authentic photo can be a good prompt (either interpersonal or presentational). A good set of questions: What happened before? What in the photo resonates with you? What will happen after the photo?
• Remember, however much time you give the students to complete a task, they'll use. It's better to give them less time and hold them to it so that they don't get off task and stray out of the TL.
• Adding Culture to the Unit
• The Essential Question is key. With the right question for culture, the resources will make themselves available.
• For units about schedules, ID cards, etc., assign a global ID to the students that they use instead of their own identifications. This gives them the chance to research a different city, country, culture, and so on. Students can then discuss various things their global ID would like: foods, music, television shows and movies, sports, local places, etc.
• It's important to let students and parents know what grading in your classroom looks like. Are you using proficiency based assessments? How does that "translate" to the gradebook (or how does it not translate)?
• Several schools use rubrics for the various modes. Other schools have rubrics for different proficiency levels. Next Step: Research more about the rubrics.

There's more than what I've listed here, but these are the big points that I want to let ferment. In the next few weeks as we prepare for our fall classes, I'll be digging more into these ideas and planning more. Stay tuned.

About Me

I am an administrator for a Chinese language program focused on teaching (mainly) oral and listening skills to K12 schools and community members (in non-credit classes). My program is at the University, but we teach undergrads very rarely. Still, this allows me the opportunity to work with professors and researchers who are studying new and better ways to teach languages.

My world language background is in Spanish. I studied for 3 years in high school, 2 years in college, and then married into a Spanish speaking family, which led to both an increase in travel to Spanish language environments and the opportunity to raise my daughter with native speakers.

In the meantime, I had other travel opportunities and travel abroad study opportunities and studied polite phrases for French, German, Flemish, and Italian. Not much, but I already had an ear for the Romantic and Germanic languages.

In 2009, I began with the Confucius Institute, but with a focus on program management and marketing. I grew up listening to my dad’s parents speaking “kitchen Cantonese” (language that was mostly family and food based), so I knew what I thought was some Chinese. It was -- but not Mandarin Chinese. So, I was first exposed to input in Mandarin in 2009. Since then, I’ve traveled to China quite often, and I work with a Chinese staff, so my input opportunities are great. After 7 years, I’m just about to begin my output phase.

With all that in mind, I began this blog to gather my learnings on my journey to gain new language skills and my learnings on teaching World Languages. Now I am working with Professional Development for my Institute, so I also plan to use this blog as a reflection space and to ferment ideas that I will then share in Professional Development sessions.

Thanks for joining me on my journey!