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Assignment:
Now that you have read the research and viewed the video discussion on engaging students in community interactions, you will examine the topic further by planning a community outing for students.
A. Planning a Community Experience
For this activity, you will plan an outing to a local restaurant where the wait staff speak your target language. You can focus on an actual restaurant in your area or imagine the type of restaurant that would be a good community experience for your students. As you prepare for the restaurant visit, consider the following three stages of a well-planned community interaction:
You will now plan for each of these stages in an interactive activity. On the final page of each stage, you will have the opportunity to print what you have written. Be sure to save a copy of each stage to submit as part of your assignment.
Note: The restaurant scenario is just one example of a community experience in which students can participate. This planning process can also be applied to many other community activities, such as attending a movie or concert or visiting a store.
B. Reflect on the Activity
If you have the opportunity to take students to a restaurant or other community event, you will want to reflect on the activity afterwards to judge its effectiveness and to consider what you might do differently next time. You can use the following questions for reflection:
Assignment:
Submit your plan for the three stages of a community interaction from the interactive activity as an assignment.
In this section, you will apply what you have learned to your own teaching. The following activities are designed to assist you in developing opportunities for students to use their developing language and cultural knowledge. Choose one or both of the activities below.
Activity A: Creating Electronic Communities
Electronic communication can help teachers — especially those who teach a language in the absence of a local community of speakers — provide their students with opportunities to interact with native speakers. Throughout this session, you have seen several examples of email interactions. In the article “Communities of Learners,” Spanish-language students in New York communicated with students in Chile. In the video, students in Marylee DiGennaro’s Italian class exchanged information about U.S. and Italian homes with students in Italy.
For this activity, imagine that you have set up an email exchange with a classroom in a region where your target language is spoken. Design email tasks for students that will span the entire school year. You can use the Plan for Email Interactions (PDF, 56 K) form.
Assignment:
Submit your plan for email interactions as an assignment.
In this section, you will apply what you have learned to your own teaching. The following activities are designed to assist you in developing opportunities for students to use their developing language and cultural knowledge. Choose one or both of the activities below.
Activity B: Observing Language in the Local Community
Foreign languages are used in many communities throughout the U.S. They may be spoken by residents, printed on street signs, or heard on local radio or television programs. Some place names are even derived from foreign words — Los Angeles, for example. Other cities and towns are named after places in another country.
For this activity, you will design a task that gives students an opportunity to observe examples of the target language in their local community.
Evidence of Target Language in the Community | ||
Observation | Date | Description |
Local towns have French names: Dubois, Duquesne, Versailles Township | 11/22 | These Pennsylvania towns were named at the time of the French and Indian Wars. |
Tourists at Bryce Canyon were speaking Japanese with a guide. | 9/29 | The National Park Service has Japanese-speaking guides who give daily tours to speakers of Japanese. |
4. Recording interactions. As a follow-up activity, shift the focus from students simply observing the language in the community to students interacting and negotiating meaning in the target language. Develop specific tasks that encourage students to seek out opportunities for interactions, but keep the activity flexible enough to allow students to include additional events as they naturally arise. Be sure to plan for regular in-class check-ins to learn about the types of interactions students are having and how they are experiencing them.
To help students keep track of their interactions, develop a form that they can fill out as each opportunity arises. You may also want to start a new class display where students can share their experiences with one another. The following chart is an example of a form you could create for students or for the class display:
My Interactions in the Target Language | ||
Event | Date | Description |
At a local concert, I sat next to an Italian exchange student from another school. | 5/17 | I spoke Italian with the student to learn where she is from, how she liked the concert, whether the group is popular in Italy, whether she and her friends go to concerts there, and whether they have “raves” in Italy. |
As a volunteer at the local hospital, I have had to speak Spanish with patients and their families. | 3/14 | I found that my three years of Spanish allowed me to talk with patients and their visiting relatives in the hospital, and that this is much appreciated. |
Assignment:
Submit your design for community observations and interactions tasks as an assignment.
The following four-step process will help you plan a small action research project to explore your questions about engaging students in community experiences, implement action plans for designing interactions between students and native speakers either inside or outside the classroom, and collect information to assess your instructional innovations. Before you begin this section, you can go to About Action Research for an introduction to the process of designing and conducting action research projects. If you are taking this workshop for credit, you will need to complete one action research project from any one of the eight workshop sessions as an assignment.
If you would like to focus on community interactions for your action research project, use the following questions and examples to help frame your thinking and shape your action research project.
I. Thinking
II. Acting
III. Reflecting
IV. Rethinking
Note: The final step of the action research project is to reevaluate your teaching practice based on your research data. Because it takes time to complete an action research project, it may not be possible to do this step during the course of this workshop. However, if you are taking this workshop for credit, you will need to complete one action research project during or after the course of the workshop to submit as an assignment.
Assignment:
If you are taking the workshop for graduate credit, submit your completed action research project on any one of the eight session topics.
Assignments:
In this session, you analyzed ways of creating successful interactions between students and native speakers of your target language. You will now write a summary of what you have learned and how you plan to apply it in your classroom. Review the notes you have taken during this session, as well as your answers to the Reflect on Your Experience questions. Use the questions below to guide your writing.
Assignments:
Submit your summary as an assignment.