Dictogloss in the works

It's been a white since I mentioned dictogloss. Yesterday I did the research class for the dictogloss collaborative chapter for the TESOL Classroom series.

The group are 2 Jr high school boys and 2 Jr High School girls, all 2nd year students.

My aspect of the dictogloss for this chapter is the V-task approach, or collaborative learning in the classroom and creating student autonomy.

Although the passage I used for the class was long, and the approach I took was different from my colleagues, I was really impressed with the results.

My focus in my conversation class is on the use of interlanguage and using the language outside of the 'set phrases' taught in the textbook. The students responded really well to the conversation, often the discussion becoming very heated at times, one student having heard 'Well', another student having heard 'Wow', yet in context 'wow' just didn't fit. The discussion about the language becomes the most prevalent. The final conversation had 'good' mistakes, and there were some not so good mistakes, but the whole approach to the learning was a great experience for the students.

We've only got a month to get this chapter done!

culture day at school

Today I taught my elementary school classes, 3rd and 4th year students. I brought my cello today, it's been getting a little dusty, so I thought it would be good to have the students see and hear a real cello up close.
They all had a chance to play it for a little bit for those who wanted to, and even those who were shy at first got a turn.
I taught them about the bow, the horsehair, rosin, the cello, the donut so the cello won't slide around when you play.

I find it really amazing that there are so few violin, viola players and cello players up in this neck of the woods.

Music is so wonderful as a hobby and I thank my parents constantly for giving my such a gift when I was young. You can bet at that time I wanted to play outside and not worry about the cello, and I'm sure kids haven't changed these days. Now I barely get enough time to practice and if I do, its only for the orchestra. Oh well, once this MA is over, I'll get a chance to go out and give a few concerts here and there.

Thanks mom and dad.

Imogen Heap

I thought this was so amazing. What a voice!

Rostropovich

This is one of my heroes. I met Rostropovich for the first time in 1985 in Toronto. He had played the Dvorak Cello Concerto. My own teacher had studied with Rostropovich and sent me to the concert with a greeting to pass along. I met him again on several occasions after that, the most memorable being here in my own town of Hanamaki, Iwate, Japan, where he performed the Hadyn Cello Concerto in C and Tchaikovsky's Roccoco Variations, under Seiji Osawa. It was a private concert, only about 200 people attended, outside in the August heat.

The most memorable CD I have is his recording of the Dvorak with Von Karajan conducting. Powerful, astonishing, beautiful, breath taking...

His death, a few months ago, brings much sadness. From my childhood, he was the cellist to listen to.

I will practise more... I promise!

This year in Hiroshima

A few of my colleagues took the trip down to Hiroshima this year for the annual University of Birmingham seminars. I was unable to head down, much to my own disappointment. We want to start a new program called MASH, which Steve launched this year to the audience of new MA students.
MASH will assist students in their studies in their MA in TEFL/TESL and linguistics through the help of collaborative learning and podcast seminars. I've taken it upon myself to learn all about podcasting, .m4a and .mp3 files as well as enhancing podcasts, creating them, uploading them an publishing them. It was a five hour course, but I can now say that I'm a little bit more in tune with the new world of podcasts and the audience that they can reach. Still need to get myself in tune with the RSS feeds and such, but, little by little.

Sorry I couldn't make it down to Hiroshima to contribute to the launch seminar, but I'll be there next year!

Widening the ZPD

At first glance the title might seem a bit odd, it may seem the opposite of what we want to achieve and it is. This may be a greater issue than we think. Normally a student which can't do something may ask for help from a peer or a more capable peer. Or in the case of a question, the student who doesn't know the answer may take a while to process something to answer. As Sir Ken Robinson said in his speech 'If children don't know, then they'll have a go.'

If a student can't answer right away, it is our jobs as teachers to allow the process time to naturally occur or to evaluate the interaction occurring and perhaps elicit from another student. But not to provide the answer.


Why do so many teachers answer their own question for the students? This gets into the whole issue of display questions and referential questions, but I've seen many teachers as a student a question only to answer it for them a few seconds later, not even waiting for that process time to occur.

They are essentially robbing the students' of their journey through their ZPD.

What we need to do, is help students discover their own ZPD, discover their abilities and in doing so narrow their ZPD's to the point where the student can incrementally process his or her own abilities and discover their own limits. By knowing their own abilities they will be more likely to be autonomous learners and be able to stretch their imaginations and gain confidence in whatever they do. They will be able to challenge anything. We will have taught them that they can.

But, the most disappointing of all is the teachers who don't allow students to process. If a student is working through a problem, there is silence, which some teachers fear. Why?

This silence is necessary for students to work out an answer, so why do teachers intervene and answer for them to spur the class along? It doesn't do any good for the student and it teachers them two things.

1. That if they don't answer, the answer will be provided for them.

2. If they don't answer fast enough, then something is wrong. It teachers them that thinking through something is wrong and it isolates their disability to answer fast enough.

So, students who don't like to answer, get the answer provided and students who need a little more time get robbed of their opportunity to answer. No one discovers their own abilities and the ZPD widens.

The students who wait for the answer, don't learn to think and never discover their abilities. They are too busy avoiding them.

The students who need more time to process learn that they can't answer and despite the fact that they may really know the answer, may end up just giving up because their journey through their 'self' ZPD was interrupted.

I don't think this is what Vygotsky had in mind in his ZPD theory.
Students who may know the answer but are told the answer before the processing is finished learn a very great bad thing.
They learn that getting help from a more capable peer means that the answer is provided whether they want it or not. They learn that their abilities are limited and someone thinks that their ZPD is too wide to be able to process on their own. They learn that there is a teacher who they hold in high regard doesn't think they have ability. The ZPD is not just a concept, it is our responsibility to help students learn to process their way through it through scaffolding and through collaborative efforts. The ZPD is I think, directly linked to self worth and self recognition.

So for teachers who don't pause, who don't wait for that process time to occur are not helping. We need to challenge our students and help our students really discover their own abilities. Not provide the answers because we want to hurry the class along.