Laoshi all over the building

Today Grade 6 made laoshi signs in Chinese characters for all of their favorite teachers. They signed the teachers' names first and then added the 2 characters that comprise "laoshi" afterwards. When they had completed their signs, they knew how to address every teacher in the building in Chinese properly, speaking and in writing. Lucky teachers who will get the signs throughout the building!

Level 3 at the High School is about to wrap up their work on activities, hobbies, sports, and their school schedule. Soon, they will each be presenting their schedules to the class formally.

Level 1 at the high school has almost completed their year and the text, Level 1 of Chinese Made Easy. They are almost ready to give a presentation about themselves that is fairly comprehensive in Chinese. Today they discussed xue kai che or Drivers' Ed and what it takes to get a Driver's License.

At the Middle School, the Chinese 1 Grade 8 is completing a bulletin board about transportation including not only cars, planes and trains but also wheelchairs, skateboards, walking on two feet, riding a camel. Very creative and they really expanded the vocabulary for the Transportation Unit.

We hope to have several going to China to study at the University of Kunming next summer. The two from last year are featured on the MPR station if you look under Chinese students travel far, you will find the story of Lamont Diggs and Nima Hassan who spent a month in China. We also are working to have a group at the Concordia Language Villages for weeks in the summer.

This weekend, we all go to Chinese Camp for a four-day weekend. With the target language - immersion - games, drama, great food, projects, and lots of friends, we will have a great time. I look forward to being in the teachers' cabin with my teacher friends.

- yimlaoshi

Assessment & What's the Big Idea

In the real Chinese classroom, we are going to complete Level 1 Chinese with talking about transportation and telling time.

In Chinese 3, we are talking about our daily schedule and getting around the school building.

In the intro course, we are signing the classroom and building with Chinese signs.

How can we make sure we will complete these with mastery and depth of understanding?

In a class at the University of MN we are looking at Wiggins & McTighe for the second language classroom, using Backwards Design:

1. Give some examples of “big ideas” (a la “UbD”) that might be appropriate in a language teaching context (emphasis on world and indigenous languages):

Learning a second language will help me be a global citizen. Learning a second language and culture will help me better understand my own. These are Essential Understandings in our IB Curriculum.

2. How do Wiggins and McTighe define assessment? p. 6 the act of determining the extent to which the desired results are on the way to being achieved and to what extent they have been achieved, in other words, gathering evidence of meeting desired results.

3. In a nutshell, what does “backward design” mean? Designing curriculum that begins with the end in mind and designs toward that end.

4. What do Wiggins and McTighe define as the “twin sins” of traditional design? What do these “twin sins” look like in a typical language classroom? Activity-focused teaching that can evolve into busywork and coverage-focused teaching like using the table of contents as the lesson plan. The activity of a pinata in a Spanish language classroom does not replace the clear language objectives of developing the Spanish vocabulary for such an event. The coverage of the pinata unit without regard to language objectives and cultural understandings would be simply coverage.

5. What is the difference between knowledge and understanding? Give an example that relates to the language teaching context. Knowledge is the fact that a Chinese character is called a hanzi. Understanding involves knowing and using hanzi as logographic.

6. Describe Stage 1: Identify desired results, highlighting the goals of the unit.

Established Goals are the State Standards and exit-level outcomes, for example, a student will be able to tell time in Chinese.

What understandings are desired: Students will understand the concept of time in their own culture and another culture.

Essential Questions: How do the Chinese tell time, and how is that alike/different from a Westerner.

What key knowledge and skills will students acquire: they will tell time in Chinese.

For Wiggins and McTighe are standards and goals the same? Goals and standards are the same. Goals are, for example, the State Standards. How would Wiggins & McTighe assess or critique our national standards for foreign language learning? They would fully support our national standards as these are as evidenced by p.59: "The Skill box is meant to include more than just long-term process objectives. The designer is also asked here to infer the enabling skills required by the unit performance goals, understandings, and questions ) and, therefore the complex performance tasks identified in Stage 2." This is completely in line with the National Standards for Second Language.

Questions related to Hall reading (1999) on Communication Standards:

1. In a sentence or two, describe the meaning of each of the communicative domains (or modes):

What key words would you use to associate with these modes?

Give a concrete example of a classroom task you have used to elicit each of these modes.

a. Interpersonal: 2 people communicating; conversation, dialogue, informal, spontaneous; a conversation between two classmates on a given topic

b. Interpretive: following an authentic text or film, explaining or interpreting; authentic, film, text, interpretation; seeing a film and explaining or interpreting the film.

c. Presentational: giving a formal presentation, with planning; report, speech, poster; a student researches and presents a regional weather report.

p. 60ff: Standards can be too numerous or too large/small or too nebulous, therefore the answer is to unpack them to reveal big ideas and core tasks.

General Question:

What constitutes language proficiency? In other words, what is important for assessment?

Foreign language proficiency is defined here as the ability to use the language modalities (listening, reading, writing, speaking), and to assume the cultural framework of the language being studied for the purpose of communicating ideas and information: Proficiency Guidelines of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL, 1982). from the CAL website

Student-led discussion with a native speaker guest

Greetings and welcome to my real Chinese classroom, with sections ranging from an Intro Grade 6 class to a Level 4 with High School 10th Graders. We share what is happening in our classrooms, what works, our challenges, the latest methods, materials and research as it plays out in a real classroom.

Highlight of our week: On Thursday during Chinese Club we had a native speaker visitor from Taiwan, all spoken in Chinese! The students loved this opportunity with a native speaker. They wonder, "Will my Chinese really work with them? Will I understand them and they understand me?"

YES! to all of these questions. Our speaker introduced herself and then we opened up for questions.

Students raised their hands and she called on them for short interchanges with individual students. The students initiated the questions themselves, all in Chinese:

- Where are you from?
- How many people in your family? Who are they? (she discussed both her husband and children and her family of origin - parents and so on.)
- Where have you traveled?
- How long have you been in the US?
- Do you have a pet? Do you like cats?
- Do the students in Taiwan look like those in the US (boys' length of hair, i.e., was discussed)?

When the bell rang, students were still engaged and very satisfied that their Chinese worked!