This blog post came to be as a result of an assignment in a course I took this summer. I'm taking the Professional Master of Education program through Queens University, and I've chosen a literacy concentration. I wanted to share this information because it was one of the best pieces of learning that came my … Continue reading
In a second language environment, one of the most challenging skills is listening. I've heard anecdotal evidence in my school district to confirm that this is the area of greatest challenge for most of our secondary level language students, and I've seen firsthand in my classes that it can lead to high levels of frustration. … Continue reading
As I've gone through course work this summer I've dug deep into my own thinking behind learning maps and developed a better understanding of what they are and how I will be integrating them into my instruction. My students, however, were not along for that ride. Some of them have not used learning maps before, … Continue reading
As I've been documenting on this blog, I spent 7 weeks of my summer completing the first two of 10 courses towards earning an MEd degree from Queen's University. One of those courses, PME 800 or Self-Regulated Inquiry and Learning, required me to complete an inquiry project and to learn how self-regulated learning facilitates and … Continue reading
As I have documented my learning through my self-regulated inquiry course project this summer, I have... ...begun looking at the big ideas on learning maps as big goals which students will reach by the end of the course. ...revised my existing learning map for French 8 using the most recent curriculum update....summarized research I'm using … Continue reading
This blog post is a continuation in a series of posts about my self-regulated inquiry project in a course I'm taking this summer. Up to this point, I have... ...begun looking at the big ideas on learning maps as big goals which students will reach by the end of the course. ...revised my existing learning … Continue reading
This is the third in a series of blog posts about my inquiry project for my current coursework. The first two can be found here and here. This post represents the second step in what I had outlined as my monitoring process, and it was much bigger than I had anticipated. Here's what I wrote … Continue reading
In my last blog post, I wrote about my distal goal in the course I'm currently taking, which is to change my focus on learning maps from an assessment lens to a goal-setting lens. I'm looking at learning maps as a set of distal goals, and using that perspective to purposefully select and use templates … Continue reading
During my years as a second language teacher, I have learned some things about my student's struggles with pronunciation. This scene from My Fair Lady shows poorEliza struggling to master one lesson right after another, using a bewildering and changing array of learning strategies. https://youtu.be/MJr9SSJKkII First, I've learned that despite many teachers' complaints to the … Continue reading
It's one of the standard forms of human interaction - ask a question, give (or get) an answer. We do it thousands of times a day, but it can be deceptively simple for second language students. The best thing to help students learn how to ask and answer questions is practice. Repetition. Lots and lots … Continue reading
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