TPACK Project

In this project, students worked in partners. Each person establish a problem of practice he or she has in the classroom. The partner, then, act as an consultant. The consultant is responsible to come up with five possible solutions through research and professional learning network and narrowing down to one. With the refined solution, the partner develops a prototype of the solution.

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Through this project, I learned about the TPACK framework and learned how to apply such framework into teaching by helping a peer come up with a plan. This experience was valuable because I had the chance to connect with educators around the world and was able to learn how others apply the framework.

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Below are my problem of practice and the solution with TPACK my peer had provided me, as well as my peer's problem and the solution I came up for her with TPACK.

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TPACK – My problem of practice

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Identifying a Problem of Practice

As the society values more in globalization and global citizenship, foreign language has become a critical job skill in the 21st centuries (Vaznis, 2016.) Language immersion programs has become very popular and suggested as the best practice to learn a foreign language in schools across the globe. Teaching a language in the immersion setting requires teachers to teach more than just the mechanics of a foreign language, but, as well as the culture in the target language. Teachers are no longer teaching solely by vocabularies or grammar structures, but rather, immerse students in a setting where only the target language is present for students to articulate the language in similar ways as how they learned their first language.

 

As ideal as it sounds, choosing the best practices to maximize this unique learning opportunity could be something challenging for teachers. In my classroom, I have not used any particular teaching methods or practices in teaching Chinese. Some of my students made tremendous growth throughout second grade, but others made minimal growth. As vocabularies are still the fundamental element of any language, I think students could be making more growth the main problem could be the lack of vocabularies my students have. Many of my students found speaking frustrating due to their lack of vocabularies. My problem of practice is to deliver spoken language and culture to students at the same time in an effective way to increase their vocabularies.

 

Vaznis, J. (2016, April). In a global economy, Mass. Lags in Teaching Foreign Languages. Retrieved from: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/04/03/global-economy-mass-lags-teaching-foreign-languages/HO2IL1ddRvYMZ7BYuiSElL/story.html

 

 

Analyzing the Problem

Context: Develop the image of the learning environment you work within: the students you teach, the classroom resources available, the time allotted, and any advantages or limitations given by your context.

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I have second grade students in the Chinese immersion program with about 24 kids in a class at a time. Students have very basic knowledge of the language, the highest child could be equivalent to a 5 year-old

Limitations last year: not having access to appropriate read-a-loud books and posters. Last year, there was a chrome cart shared among two grade levels. This year, we are getting new carts, so each grade level will be sharing one cart. I should be able to have access to the chrome books more often.

Content: When considering what it is that you want students to learn, evaluate which are the challenging concepts or big ideas? Reflect on prior knowledge and assess the strength of this foundation for new learning. Are there any misconceptions, which interfere with their ability to properly connect the new information?

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I want students to be able to understand when, where, and how to use more vocabularies through context and remember them better.

Pedagogy: Consider the content you wish for students to learn and evaluate the pedagogical approach you have used in the past and whether it is the best choice.  Consider the instructional strategies implemented to support the learning and their value in developing understanding. What practices needs refined?

In the past, I have been teaching vocabularies by topics from the textbook and apply vocabularies through everyday use. I also rephrase a lot of vocabularies in Chinese when students speak in English. I also give students lots of opportunities to practice with each other on topics related to everyday life. Learning a language through the immersion setting can be difficult to determine whether or not students have developed understanding of the language. It is just like when we learned our first language; it took years and constant language input before we were able to form correct output. Depending on the quality, quantity, and a lot of other variables, we start creating our output. I think for what I do, in terms of speaking and interacting with them, I am doing a fine job. However, I need to implement different kinds methods to better help my students.

Technology: What tools have you previously used to support the development of content knowledge and the pedagogical approach to learning? Conclude any drawbacks to the resources you used for instruction and cross-reference this with the strengths of the tools applied. Consider how technology could possibly transform the learning experience you are trying to provide.

I have not incorporate a lot of technological pedagogical method in helping my students to learn Chinese. The most I’ve used is my google classroom. Each week, in my google classroom, I will post a question or topic, then students go up and type up their answers or comment on their classmates. Through this activity, students have to apply their reading skills, speaking/writing skills, spelling skills, as well as their typing skills. Other than that, I just have resources for students to play games and review vocabularies via Quizlet and other simple games with minimal Chinese audio instruction such as sorting.

The downside of use these are that students are still learning vocabularies in a isolating way, just like any second language teaching. Students are not necessary learning through a context such as in a story.

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TPACK – Consultant 

For this TPACK project, students worked in partners. Each person comes up with a problem of practice they struggle in their own teaching, and the partner conduct research and comes up with possible solutions.

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I worked Tess Sterling. Tess Sterling PE teacher in Soul, Korea. Here is a little bit about her class and problem of practice.

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https://tessiejeter.wordpress.com/maet-yr-2/tpack-pe/tpack-identifying-a-problem-of-practice/

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Basically, Tess’ problem of practice was to “effectively give each student quality feedback consistently so they may improve in a Physical Education setting with class sizes of up to 30 students.”

 

Empathizing

Here are some of the questions I asked Tess to help me further understand the problem.

Q: what age of students in this?
A: Middle/ high school, or across all ages

 

Q: how do you measure improvements?
A: See the growth from not knowing what to do to being able to explain (teach) to someone else

 

Q: How did you unitize peer teaching?
A: Use peer teaching by organizing stations from students who already knew about the sport or skill.

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Q: how did you group your students?
A: Random, but made sure each group has a mix of different skill levels. She measure students’ skill levels by asking students’ self-assessment, and then ask students to explain to assess students’ knowledge.

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Q: What are your expectations of “quality feedback?”

A: By the time the class ends, check in by how students’ feeling toward the lesson. Ask, notecards to jot down feedbacks,
ask if there’s anything the teacher can do to help.

 

Define

The true problem of Tess’ seems to be the time and limited resources given to check on each student individually as well as students’ confidence and interest in Physical Education.

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To help brainstorm ideas to help solve the problem as well as getting to know thoughts from other educators in the field. To build Personal Learning Network, I reached out on twitter and Facebook to PE teachers I knew and did not know. Through some conversations and messages, I have gotten many different ideas.

 

Ideate

Here are things that some of the teachers I have talked to had:

1. Every lesson, focus on three or four students each time. Take notes and watch them.

2. Take a video of student themselves, and compare to the model one. Video with paper addressing the main cues of feet position, for example.

3. Empower students to observe something small. Break each move down into smaller parts, and have them do in partner work to monitor and help give feedback.

4. Create Google presentation of basketball. Each slide is a problem, observing the game. Thy start to look for issues on the court. Match with watching peers play and talk about it. Try to find a way to solve the problem. Claim what they use this gamesense (10 things you can do) effectively in this game.” Kids claim and discuss. Four lessons in two week. Try different things physically and have the conversations throughout. After two week are done, write about it in silence.

5. Centers: 1-5 centers. Each center focuses on different things in effort, ability, teamwork, and behavior. In basketball for example, the centers would be grabbling, lay-ups, set shots, zone defense, man-to-man defense.

6. Peer assessment to measure learning and understanding, so they score a partner out of 10, if they don’t give 10/10, for example, 7/10, the three reasons for not giving full marks. If they give 10/10, then 10 reasons for the full marks.

 

Prototype/Test

After getting ideas from different PE teachers and coming up with ideas. I have come up with a way to somehow combine these ideas and incorporate the essential element of each good ideas into one.

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