Teachonteacher's Blog

PartIII

Teach on Teacher — Mon, 11 May 2009 00:03:25 +0000

I found that Andre had not done well on the essay according to the basic requirements. His essay was on Africans living in Canada. His examples of traditions, beliefs and arts sounded strong when he was questioned Andre did well at defending his position. Now when Andre wrote some of his examples they were poorly written and hard to understand. The framework was average in that he did have five paragraphs and understood the basic function of each paragraph. What it came down to was that Andre could clearly articulate examples and parts of his essay orally based on his research but could demonstrate knowledge in writing

Part II:The oral doesn’t always translate into the written

Teach on Teacher — Sun, 10 May 2009 23:48:32 +0000

Why Andre interest me is because he is poetic but his writing skills are low. I thought that if students can verbally think through and come to thoughtful ideas and answers that it will be easier for them to write this information down with guidance. For a recent essay on culture I gave students research time in class along with graphic organizers to document their findings and guide their writing. I then had feedback time in class where students orally shared their findings with the class. Andre demonstrated that he would do well on his essay by orally participating and sharing findings that were appropriate findings for each graphic organizer given. This led me to believe that he would do well on his essay on culture. What I found was different.

Case Study: Andre the Poetic Giant

Teach on Teacher — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:59:46 +0000

The student I will be focusing on is, “Andre” and he is a poet and also an athlete. Andre is African American and speaks Black English and English for academic purposes. He is in my African American Studies course and is a freshman. At home and with his friends he speaks Black English.

Andre is one of the highly gifted student in class. He use of oral language is advance. He uses English for academic purposes with ease and appropriately uses intonation to serve his message, comment or answer in class. This is really interesting to me. I also find it interesting that Andre has low writing skills for someone who has such high oral English skills. This is be the interest point for my case study. What does a student need to do to translate oral skills to written and why do they not translate on their own?

Walqui Scaffolds

Teach on Teacher — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 01:31:41 +0000

Two of Aida Walqui’s scaffolds that I have used are modeling and metaconitive development.

1. Modeling- I used Walqui’s modeling scaffold to demonstrate to students what good readers do. We can up with a checklist with all of the things good readers do. Some of them were:
-changes tone with the text
-reads puncutation
-pauses when periods
-reads loudly
-speaks clearly
-reads with emotion
After modeling items from the checklist students, I modeled reading without using items from the checklist. Students laughed and could more clearly see the difference. Through modeling students have become better readers over the course of the semester.

2.Metacognitive Development-another of Walqui’s scaffold that I have practiced in my class is metacognitive development. I institute this by using daily exit slips and reflective writing paragraphs about the process of their learning.

Students recently finished a 5 paragragh essay that they then wrote a extra paragraph explaining their writing process to me. Students were instructed to write about what was difficult about the writing process and what steps they took to practice wwhat was difficult to them.

This allows students to develop a awareness of their learning. It also helps me as their teacher see where they are in the process.

Tayeshawn…I said, “hello.”

Teach on Teacher — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 03:47:12 +0000

Tayeshawn I said, “hello.” Tayeshawn nods, “what’s up.” This is something that occurs frequently in the class. My students are be the smartest students I have ever taught. They do great with work that is high level thinking. In starting my unit on Pan Africanism I have been pushing their thinking and challenging their ideology(one of our vocabulary words) even if it one that I totally agree with.

With this said, I still find it frustrating that with all the smarts they do not know how to start social conversations in a academic setting. Forget questioning, simple greetings and small talk is hard to get out of them unless I initiate it. They are great(and I’m in love with this class for the record), but I know that is a academic way of speaking that is vital for them to learn. This is something that is within the ELD standards and that I need to formally incorporate into my course.

My new essential standard:

Negotiate and initiate social conversations by questioning, restating,

Delivery of Oral soliciting information, and paraphrasing the communication of

Communication others.

Language Oppression

Teach on Teacher — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:41:08 +0000

In my graduate class on race and racism in U.S. education, I use personal experience panels for my students to talk about their personal histories with regard to certain issues [trust, emotion, being targets of racism, white people seeing racism, and language oppression, etc]. Last week was the panel on language oppression. The questions I asked were:

1.     What are your early memories of attending school as an English learner?
2.        How did you acquire English proficiency?
3.       How did you feel about your native or home language?
4. How has language affected your relationships?
5. How do your experiences around language affect you today?

It was moving to hear about how being second language learners in the United States affected them. Two of the people spoke from a written manuscript and I asked them if I could report some of their written statements. And they agreed. I thought you might find their comments interesting.

A woman who grew up in Korea and came here to study at age 25, said in part:

Ò I could not understand what a professor was talking about the first time at the university. I wanted to learn English, but I could not understand how I could if I could not understand the professor. My friends told me the best way to learn English is to listen only to spoken English. So in my first several months, I tried not to speak or listen to any Korean. However I soon realized that I was tired emotionally, since my effort to learn English did not quickly lead to understanding or help me communicate my feelings or ideas. I was frustratedÉ

Before coming to America, I was an active person with high confidence. However among English speakers, I found that I was afraid of people and did not speak in front of other people. I was loosing all confidence and felt some shame. I started being very quite and avoiding eye-contact with others. I was unable to even communicate in simple sentences.Ó

With a considerable amount of tears, a woman who attended elementary school in Mexico until 3rd grade, said in part:

ÒI remember feeling really confused because I couldn’t understand the teachers. I was placed in ESL [English as a Second Language] classes, however I don’t feel that the ESL courses helped me integrate into the school. . . . I felt very lonely because I couldn’t communicate with my teachers, because most of them spoke only English. If I had a problem, I didn’t get help. I tended to hang around other students that spoke Spanish throughout elementary, middle and high school, which in a way helped me build friendships, but I didn’t have the opportunity to practice the English language.

At home and in my community I spoke Spanish so I felt really comfortable there. But once in school I felt really dumb. Many times I withdrew from class. Every time I tried to speak English people would look at me weird or would tell me they didn’t understand me. So after hearing this many times, I stopped speaking English.

Having an accent, especially a Mexican accent, was bad and I understood this at a really young age. Even now I don’t speak a lot in classes because I am embarrassed or afraid that I might say something wrong or that people won’t understand me. For a long time I hated myself because I felt like I was not from here – an outsider. And now little by little I have lost a lot of my Spanish language, which hurts me a lot. And I feel that even though I have been here since the 4th grade I still have not fully acquired the English language, and that sometimes makes me feel so incapable.Ó

I imagine that many people in the U.S. have ancestors who immigrated to a country that spoke a language that they did not know. If so, they went through something similar to the above. Without emotional healing distress and unawareness gets passed down from generation to generation. This may help explain why it is a struggle to gain awareness in the area of language.

Julian Weissglass

Teaching Pan-Africanism

Teach on Teacher — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:30:13 +0000

Today I started my unit on Pan Africanism and it went well. I feel well versed in this topic however I had some interesting moments in class while I was teaching. These moments were more about timing and how timing can affect content delivery.

As I was leading direct instruction I would asked students to complete a task and then felt like some students needed more information so I would address the whole class again, this is when my brain would stutter(I do not really think my brain was stuttering, but it was the only word I could think of). This stuttering create interesting pauses during my teaching.

The length of time that my brain would stutter was a max 5 seconds. What made this interesting was that students looked lost and were waiting for me to finish. It is almost like they saw the wheels turning. I was trying to finding another way to further their understanding, a metaphor that could explain the concept in a meaningful. Timing proved to be so important because within these 3-5 seconds I would loose students. 3-5 seconds do not seem like a long time but it was enough to knock students off the pace of their learning.

Cognitive Science Happy Hour…hmmm

Teach on Teacher — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:49:39 +0000

Cognitive Science Happy Hour

Sunday February 8, 2009 at 3:00pm

Sugar Cafe, 679 Sutter St

Sugar Cafe, 679 Sutter St. San Francisco, CA
San Francisco, California 94102 Get Directions

After a break for the holidays, the SF Cognitive Science Happy Hour is back for 2009. We’re very lucky to have Keith Lang from Melbourne, Australia as our speaker this month. Keith blogs at UIandUs, and is the co-creator and UI designer extraordinaire at Skitch. Keith will be talking about the link between autism, the ‘extreme male brain’ and computer design.

We’re trying a new time and a new venue this time around in the hope that it will allow more people to come. Feedback on both the time and the venue is very welcome. (This is that academic stuff that I think takes too much time. If you have to ask why people are not coming to happy hour, there is a problem). We look forward to seeing you on Sunday!

Yea, you won’t see me here.

Collect Calls

Teach on Teacher — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:32:32 +0000

Van Lier- ” As experienced language users engaging largely in familiar activities, we are able, on the basis of few clues, to predict much of what will be said next. The more familiar we are with the speaker, the topic, the setting and so on, the less energy we need to spend on scrutinizing all the layers, one by one. (pg. 47)

I talk to my brother who is caged up in the prison industrial complex and has been since I was 15 over the phone occasionally. Our phone calls are short and interrupted over couple of minutes with a recording that reminds us that my brother is in a correctional facility as if we forgot. This all means that these phone calls are short lived and must maintain a rhythm. We must jump right into our flow because these phone calls are expensive and do not come too often.

The way that I jump into the conversation flow with my brother during these phone calls is by making my brother familiar with me-by using his family nickname and by immediately bringing up a topic that is natural for us to talk about.

In order for me to be successful at this I have to imagine that I am still my brother’s sister and by remembering that I used to play with this kid and share my nachos with him after all these years. I have to also convey love to him. This has to be done fast as the calls cut off without notice. It’s like science. You have to know what you are going to say and think quickly how you are going to respond. At the end I usually have some words of encouragement that I leave him with, and if I do not maintain the rhythm the call cuts off and I don’t have the opportunity to tell him things like stay up and keep strong. Often times my I love you’s get cut off.

The rules of engagement in academic spoken language are different. The process is much more time consuming. It may go like this:

a: greetings and introductions

b: formally greets back and politely thanks someone for something

a: thanks someone for something and presents topic

b: agree to discuss topic (jargon…)

a: talks about topic (here is why I am talking about it…)

b: presents information for or against topic (well I know what I’m talking about too)

a: rebuttal or future agrees (have you read this?)

b: rebuttal or talks some more (yes, the author and I were roommates in college)

so on and so on…

Now, a conversation with my brother is more like this:

(Minutes before my brother has been talking to my mom and pops)

me: (call connects with me on 3-way) yo, got your letter papito and agree that I need to do…(interrupts and not taken as being rude)

papito: i know well you did say…

me: member when we…(familiar instance)

papito: yup and thats why I told you to…and am telling you again

machine: you are talking to someone in a California State Correctional Facility, your call is being recorded…

papito: hey its bout to cut (I interrupt)

me: ok well love you like Pac says, “Thug Life ’til I die,” but I want you to live so be good and I love you.

papito: me too

If I spoke in the voice and with the language that I speak in when I am in academic setting the conversation would take a lot longer because my brother would be “scrutinizing all the layers” paying more careful attention to the inner circles.

Yoruba

Teach on Teacher — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 09:07:32 +0000

Learning new languages has always been fun for me. It always felt like playing dress up. Instead of actually dressing up I would mimic what I perceived the swagger of the language was.

My godparents are Nigerian and speak Yoruba and English. Their daughter is my best friend and rarely speaks Yoruba to me even now. I speak to them in English but about four years ago something in me wanted to pick up Yoruba. Around this same time my roommate happen to also be Nigerian and spoke Yoruba. This all contributed to me being around the language and culture during a time that I desired to learn the language. I had been listening to the tone and diction for years. This happened very fast in my mind. One day I wanted to learn to speak Yoruba and the next month I was speaking very broken Yoruba. It took a lot of hard work and a lot of socializing. I hung out all the time with my Nigerian friends, went to Nigerian parties, I mean the works. I would speak the little Yoruba I knew and people would be impressed and make it their duty to text me words of the day, emails in yoruba, Internet How To sites, and speak to me in the language. It helped a great deal that many of my friends are Nigerian and whether or not they spoke Yoruba the had the same Nigerian swag.

Now after years of learning to speak Yoruba my excitement has since sizzled away and I speak intermediate Yoruba. I still speak on a weekly basis because many of my loved ones speak Yoruba. While I may not speak in full sentences anymore I have retained mastered the art of the swag of Yoruba. This includes but is not limited to: tempo, gestures, slang, body language, humming sounds, snares, excitement, Niaja shakara(attitude) and my personal favorite-adorning the end of each sentence with a “now”.

What has been difficult for me is maintaining the same level of hunger to learn the language. Since I have not dedicated myself to learning Yoruba along the years with the rigor I have lost some of my vocabulary.

Along the way my teachers were: Toyin, mommy and daddy, Bimbo, Baba, Jebose and Fela.

This is by one of my Yoruba teachers and a must have.