Goal #9: Reflection
The beginning teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates the effects of his/her choices and actions on others and actively seeks opportunities to grow professionally.
To demonstrate my understanding as outlined in program goal 9, I am submitting three artifacts: a novice level unit plan Entre Familia, a workshop I attended about Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling, and this portfolio.
When learning a foreign language, learning culture is as important as learning grammar. In order for students to become more aware of the differences in language, they must also be more aware of the differences in culture. By opening their minds to other cultures and ideas, students will become more open-minded and accepting citizens. Within the same unit, I emphasized on oral proficiency rather than grammatical rules. Grammar was presented in the forms of stories and brief explanations, but a larger emphasis was on the acquisition of the language by means of oral and reading comprehension.
In Assessment Artifacts D, E and F, students were formally assessed in the areas of listening, reading, writing, and translations. These are assessments from the textbook that I cut and pasted to create a test that assessed all parts of learning a language. By doing so, I was able to see what parts of the language students were struggling with and/or succeeding with.
There are many methods of teaching a foreign language, and I plan on incorporating several of these methods into my daily lessons. However, the method that stands out to me the most and is the method I plan to use more than other is TPRS, Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling. Formerly known as Total Physical Response-Storytelling, this method was developed in the 1980's and 90's by Blaine Ray, providing the critical vehicle storytelling to utilize and expand acquired vocabulary by contextualizing it in high-interest stories which students can hear, see, act out, retell, revise and rewrite. The keyword is proficiency. Students are more proficient in the target language when taught using this method versus any other method.
Recently, I attended a TPRS workshop presented by Susan Gross. My participation in this workshop will better enable me to teach Spanish using this method. The modern language department in the Lee’s Summit R-7 school district has adopted this method for teaching foreign languages. After attending this workshop I felt better prepared to student teach at one of their schools, Pleasant Lea Middle School.
As a result of my student teaching, I have adopted TPRS as a method of teaching Spanish to my future students. What truly convinced me was seeing the active learning in the students at PLMS. I noticed that they acquired the language in a much more natural way than the traditional grammar-translation methods I had observed at other schools. Their proficiency in reading, speaking and writing was much higher as well. Their ability to apply language in different settings was what gave me the final push to learn more about this method and incorporate it into both of my placements.
While putting together this portfolio, I was able to evaluate and reflect on everything that I had accomplished during the 14 weeks of student teaching. I have reflected on the decisions that I made involving assessments and units, and how those all apply to the different goals set up by UMKC.