Working , reading , thinking , questioning my work , changing ……………so many things to do !
A very demanding task indeed!
At first I felt a little bit lost among all the terms given this week : PBL, Rubrics, assessment, webquests , holistic grading …and step by step I made links between the training we receive as teachers in France , the French school curriculum we follow and what I was reading in this course , this week .
Actually many techniques presented this week can be found in what we call the CECRL (the common European framework of languages) which was published in 2001 by the European Council of Europe but started being used in school in 2005/2007.
For years , I and my colleagues , centered our teaching on "learning" "feeding students" and for 7/8 years now , we are focusing on learners to accompany them in their learning.
All these techniques presented this week in the course ,create a relationship between the learner -the teacher - the learning.
These tools can be very efficient to involve the learners in their evolution , their progress , their way of learning , their bond with their peers.
But it also requires trust, respect , will to progress , envy to learn , to share between each student , the group he/she belongs to and the teacher ……which is not always the case …..
Our goal as teacher is "to create a supportive classroom environment in which students feel comfortable with one another " and with their own learning , as it is said in http://www.nclrc.org/ (alternative assessment ) ; but the reality of the class is not always as idyllic !
Anyway ,PBL and webquest are what I worked the most on this week but I definitely have to complete my reading of alternative assessment and holistic grading . These are topics , techniques that I have to deepen and master to be able to use them with my classes.
Finally , as far as rubrics are concerned , after reading some of my foreign colleagues , I noticed that the one I proposed is maybe too centered on the quality of the language and maybe not enough focused on students' behavior and involvement .
Changing habits is always hard but I am working on it !
Hi Christine,
ReplyDeleteThis week was quite demanding for everyone I think. WebQuest and PBL can involve a lot of preparation and work from both teacher and student side. Since I also live in Europe, although not in the EU, we're using the CEFRL and I do agree with you that sometimes even with the clear guidelines that we're given and all the energy we're putting in creating a supportive classroom environment we're not able to motivate our high school students. Just out of curiosity, which textbooks are you using at time?
Keep up the good work!
Maida
Thank you Maida!
ReplyDeleteYes we have a textbook entitled "meeting point " published by a french publisher (nathan). It is quite well done and useful for us.
The high school books we use at school are done to prepare our students for the "baccalaureat" .
We also have a program me to follow given by our ministry of education .
We cannot do exactly what we want !
How does it work for you in Turkey I guess?