Finish/Start by iLike
One of the struggles I have as a French teacher is to get my students speaking nothing but French in class by the end of eighth grade French I. Since I began teaching six years ago, this has been a goal that I have not been able to achieve. I realized this summer during a summer teacher institute, that I have never looked at this problem in a systematic way, like I would any other curricular issue I have. A goal of mine this year was to tackle this issue and figure out a way to make it happen in my classroom.
I got off to a great start this year speaking French but it quickly went downhill. My students were willing to speak nothing but French, but I found they would just not talk instead of trying out the French. One issue that I recognized is that we use technology often in my class and my students didn’t have a good enough vocabulary of technology terms to keep them from reverting to English. That worked for a few days, but then other issues popped up. Just like every other year, it worked well for a few weeks and now we are speaking way too much English in our classes. Thankfully, I have to tackle a problem I see in my classes for my Instructional Design class and implement a plan to make it work. Speaking French in class is the perfect issue to tackle.
For my Instructional Design project, I am going to use backwards design, as found in Understanding by Design by Wiggins and McTighe, to design a path that will lead to only French being spoken in my eighth grade classes. I have used bits and pieces of it in my own unit planning since I learned about it in a class for my teaching certificate. Last year we read it as a faculty in my school and we have been tasked with implementing it in our classes. The first step was to come up with essential questions for each class as a way to focus and inspire the learning. “How will learning a language enhance my life?” is the essential question for our class. Since my school encourages backwards design, it seems prudent to use that model. I am hoping that using backwards design will help me meet my goal of having a French I class that speaks nothing but French.
In order to make sure I understand the backwards design model, I found two articles that will help me with my journey. In the book Understanding by Design, they give many foreign language examples so I was hoping to find some articles pertaining specifically to French, but I couldn’t find any.
The first article , “Evidence of Learning: A conversation with Jay McTighe” is an interview with Jay McTighe, one of the authors of Understanding by Design. The article is filled with advice for principals who are looking to implement backwards design in their schools. According to McTighe, a few key steps are crucial. First of all, there is way too much content in standards. Teachers must instead pick a few essential understandings that each student must know instead of focusing on “covering” all of the content. By bundling the content into these understandings, students will be able to get the big picture and use the information in other contexts.
The next important step is to find out how the students will be able to show the outcomes you are looking for. What type of assessments will show the learning? For my project, I am going to have to figure out how to assess students speaking French in class. Just from reading this article, I see that a huge hole in my process as I’ve been doing it, is that there are no real assessments and benchmarks for speaking French in class. I have treated it as either they are, or they aren’t speaking French. Other than a few quizzes and tests that include a speaking part, there are no assessments that clearly show whether or not they are speaking French in class. Obviously, this is a huge reason for my failure up to this point. Without a clear way to measure the goal, how can I assess their progress. How can they know where they stand?
McTighe also emphasises the importance of working as part of a team to come up with the enduring understandings and assessments. Although some teachers may worry about losing autonomy and a chance for creativity and spontaneity, the common goal is crucial for success. If different teachers have different enduring understandings for the same content, two students could have a completely different set of outcomes. Plus, sharing is a great way to get the best of everyone and to use it as a bank of great ideas.
The most helpful part of the article to me were the sports analogies. I have coached field hockey and lacrosse for years with much success in getting athletes to improve and in winning games. I never thought of looking at my teaching the same way I look at coaching. I always would start with the team we would be playing next and work on specific skills in practice that would help us beat them. We would practice the skills in isolation and then during game-like situations. I would stop scrimmages and give immediate feedback on how they used the skills. Often, I would get them to go back and try a different way of solving the same issue. For example, if a player came up to a defender and tried to dribble the ball right through her stick, I might remind her of the dodges we had worked on and then have her go through the same situation again. How often in the classroom do we give students a chance at a redo like this?
Another important part of backwards design is to make sure that the students are in on the plan. Do they know the essential question? Do they know what is required of them and the ways to get there? I am thrilled to be completely transparent with my students about this entire process. My eighth grade class this year is only five students whom I have taught for three years now. Last year they helped me with another project that I did involving recording some of my classes and analyzing them. They were an integral part of that project’s success so I know they will be glad to be a part of this one.
The second article I chose, “Backwards Design”, intrigued me because it came from the journal, Teaching Exceptional Children. I teach in a school with many gifted students and I was hoping that this article would give me some insight into how using backwards design can benefit them. Not only did the article not mention any specifics about gifted students, many of its resources were from journals about students with learning disabilities. Apparently I misunderstood the exceptional children part, but really, aren’t all children exceptional? Thankfully, the suggestions given for students with learning disabilities, such as scaffolding and knowing your students, are just good teaching practice, no matter what students you have.
The article gave a comprehensive overview of backwards design, starting with why to use it. One of the main benefits of using backwards design is that it gives the student a reason to learn the material and connects it to their own lives. How many times as a teacher have you heard, “why do we have to know this?” Thankfully in my French classes, I don’t get any questions like that, but students do want the chance to use their French in real situations with “real” French speakers. In this class, they will do a collaborative project with a French immersion school in Canada. That will help show them the great results they will get from their speaking. I can use that as a great reason to work on speaking their French.
The article gives suggestions on how to make the most of the unit in backwards design. Not only is knowing a student’s prior knowledge important, but also the context of that knowledge. For example, when we are learning about travel in my French class, it would be important to know that I have students who have already traveled the world, and some who have never been on an airplane. Some scaffolding might be needed to make sure that all of my students will be ready to learn the material.
Then the main tenet of backwards design prevails and the teacher must decide what evidence will show that the student has not only learned the material, but also understands what it means and can use it. The final step of the process is to create learning activities with formative assessments woven in, that will get students to the desired understanding. The article specifically addresses how this style of design can be adapted to students with learning disabilities to make sure that each student is achieving the highest level of understanding possible. This article helped me to think about the different needs that my students may have and to make sure that I keep their needs in mind when designing my instruction.
Backwards design fits my problem especially since I already have a clear end goal in mind. I know what success looks like in a French speaking classroom, I just need to figure out what will get it there. I have never really thought about what steps would be necessary to get my students to the point of speaking only French in class. One issue might be that this isn’t a specific unit, but rather a need to change the culture of my classroom. Getting behavioral changes in myself and in my students will be required to achieve the goal of a French classroom. I will also need to examine what kinds of phrases and vocabulary my students need to use in class so I can teach them those specific things.
I am looking forward to working on this process with my students!
References
Childre, A., Sands, J. R., & Pope, S. T. (2009). Backwards design. Teaching exceptional children, 41(5), 6-14. Retrieved October 3, 2010, from the Wilson Web database.
Richardson, J. (2009). Evidence of learning: a conversation with Jay McTighe. Principal Leadership, 9(1), 30-4. Retrieved October 3, 2010, from the Wilson Web database.
Photo credits
I like, “Finish/Start”, October 3, 2010 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution.
