I thought class was really interesting today. As I mentioned in my last post, I was pretty skeptical about how possible it would be to talk about the Japan tsunami in a German class, let alone plan a whole day of activities for it. And then, when we were assigned our groups, it was me, Brianne, my fellow Germanophile, and Mary, our resident Latin expert. This is what went through my mind: "Are you kidding? We have the three people with the subjects least related to Japan." But after sitting down and putting our heads together, we actually came up with some good ideas and I think we all got excited about some of our findings. I guess I need to not get pessimistic so quickly...and now that I really think about it, I'm pretty sure you could make connections between any two countries or more in a foreign language classroom. It's just about looking beyond grammar and vocab and looking at culture and history...which is really what makes a language fun to learn (for me).
I also learned a lot from Sue, the librarian we were working with. She had some good ideas about looking for resources that went beyond google. She also had a lot of good tips for how to design a lesson plan and how to assess what we wanted students to learn. The thing I appreciate most about her was her willingness to help and share ideas. I hope that the school I'm placed in and wherever I end up working has a librarian who is as open, friendly, and helpful as Sue was.
Also, the Brandon Center is pretty awesome.
I love that in our respective blog posts we independently made the same points.
ReplyDeleteI am still brainstorming about how this scenario would play out in along with the trials of a school year. Let's say the students have really been struggling with a specific grammatical structure. Do you just abandon that for this lesson and get farther behind in grammar, or do you find a way to make the grammar still be the main attraction? My grammar-loving brain is inclined to think the latter.
How you incorporate the grammar would depend on what it is, though. This morning we talked about describing pictures in the news to practice adjective endings, but what if da-compounds are the road block? It seems to me that it would be good practice to constantly try to think of ways to incorporate current events into lessons on Grammatik.
Glad it was a great day! Sue is a terrific person (and a former colleague of mine), and I would describe her exactly as you did.
ReplyDeleteUhm, Caroline...GREAT blog post title.
ReplyDeleteThe Brandon Center is AWESOME!
ReplyDeleteYou said that "Sue had some good ideas about looking for resources that went beyond google."
It is interesting!! Our librarian, named Rachel, discussed all the uses of Google!! Did you know that Google has a bunch of resources for Teachers and even has tutorials and powerpoints on how to use Google for research. She also showed us how Google gets its search results and how using Google isn't searching the web, but rather searching their index of the web! Google isn't overrated, just saying.
I definitely don't think Google is overrated. I love Google and all the neat things it can do. It was nice, however, to break away for a bit and find some other resources outside of the Google empire.
ReplyDeleteYeah, Sue is awesome. I also agree that learning the culture and history of a country definitely contribute to making foreign language fun, but (nerd that I am) I also really like the grammar and vocab stuff, especially for Latin because it can be so complex and yet so simple. Of course, for this activity, the cultural/historical factor became central to our lesson planning, and I agree that our group was really creative with finding ways to connect our "weird" languages to Japan.
ReplyDeleteGah, librarians are amazing! I love that one group learned to move beyond google and another learned more deeply about google and how it works and other possibilities that it offers. Amazing!
ReplyDeleteI forgot entirely to comment on the Brandon Center itself, but you're right: it was awesome! We were all very cozy in our little situation room!