Language Sensei

A Language Teacher's Journey

Skills Give You Talking Points…Proficiency Gives You A Goal…

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It’s been a quick start to the year. I’ve made few promises of instant ‘change’ beyond Learning Targets for all classes this fall and the idea of a soft introduction of proficiency goals with my Year 2’s.  The other ‘change’ has been the inclusion in the syllabus of skills that a student acquires beyond the language itself in our classes.  I have to add that these changes have been made so much easier for me because I have a great colleague in my school who is making these changes with me (what a blessing to have someone to ask, reflect & struggle with). Let me talk briefly about how the inclusion of proficiency and skills has altered my experience already with students.

Skills: To be honest this is the big surprise for me. I talked with my students about the skills page that I included in their course outline. That they will be developing their risk-taking, reflective, initiative-taking, group and  They were very honest in their personal responses to me about their perceived skills and their strengths and weaknesses. But the real value has been to me is in having me use these words when framing or encouraging in an activity. I found myself saying things like ” this is a great place for you to use your initiative” or “I am asking to take that risk and…”. Wow.  It’s going to be a great semester-long reference point for us for all activities!

Proficiency: My colleague Connie & I have had a lot of talks about including proficiency, the reasons for and the how prior to the start of the year. I am going all in with my Yr 1”s and 2’s as I feel they are closest to lower Novice for them to really see the proficiency progression.  My students listened as I talked about goals and we went over what their target for the semester is. I asked them to think about this goal as part of their reflections on the course outline. Many of them had great ways to describe what they saw as the difference between novice and intermediate and my favourite was the student who said “A novice is a robotic speaker…an intermediate is a robot with developing AI abilities to do their own thing”. The idea of ‘creating rather than competing’ came through in many of their observations. Talking about and using proficiency will allow me to consistently remind students to try to challenge themselves ‘push’ to ‘go beyond’ to ‘create’ with what they are learning. It adds such legitimacy to what I have always been trying to do.

Two changes that seemed actually quite ‘small’ but already two big impacts in my classroom interaction with my students!

C

 

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