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
In 22 years of teaching a second language, I have learned that all students, now matter how good their academic ability in any other area, struggle with listening. I've asked them how they see listening tasks, and their answers are pretty consistent. They say things like "you either get it or you don't", "sometimes I … 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
I love maps, especially old ones. I have a terrible sense of direction, so a map is often an essential tool for me. Using a map implies a destination - I'm going somewhere, and I want to get there in the most efficient way possible, because my focus is on what I'm going to do … 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
I recently wrote a blog post about the new books I was able to take home after participating in a resource review. New books have always been exciting to me, but once they hit my bookshelf, my main goal is to not let them gather dust. My biggest wish after each of the reviews I've … Continue reading
For teachers, finding opportunities to get involved in one's school district is usually not difficult at all. The challenge often comes in deciding which opportunities to choose, because it's impossible to participate in all of them. For the past few years, I have chosen to participate in LRS (Learning Resources Services) reviews of French books. … Continue reading
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