Reflection on "Teddy Bears Go Blogging"

Teddy Bears Go Blogging by Brenda Sherry, who is a teacher member of iEARN.  Sherry participated in a project of iEARN and decided to use blog instead e-mail to give her students to read and write in an interesting, relevant and cultural exchange through the Teddy Bear.
My reflections are the following:

1.      It is interesting application of current technology

2.      It is creative and well designed project

3.      It enables students to have primary input

4.      It is safe because the teacher retains control

5.      Parents can have access, therefore it assures them of the safety

6.      Borden the globalization aspects

7.      Facilitates cultural exchange

8.      It is friendly easy use blog

As a Chinese language teacher, this approach gives me much more insight about the blog and the knowing about iEARN project.  (I just became a teacher member of iEARN). 
An exchange student from Taiwan will attend my class, starting next Monday.  This is the first network (Convent of the Sacred Heart schools) exchange students from Asia.  I intend to facilitate this idea to start a conversation or discussion among students.  In effect, the visitor will be like a Teddy Bear to provide various information and cultural difference between two countries.

CT curriculum standrads

What standard am I going to using as a target of focus this semester?

I am a Chinese language teacher; I concentrate on world language discipline.  There are nine standards.  Some of the content standards are very similar to ACTFL's five C’s standards that are familiar to me.  I have embedded into my daily teaching plans. 
Today, I would like to use grades 9-12 on standard 2 “Communication Interpretive” as a target of focus this semester.  This is my fourth year teaching Upper School Chinese.  From my personal experience, students are not strong in communication interpretive skill to improve a better and deeper understanding of the language and the culture.  Therefore, I like to focus on providing spoken and written language such as: presentations, lectures, newspapers, native recordings, authentic poems, painting, and songs for students to have a higher skill to interpret variety of topics. 

How can I link activities for different learning styles to this standard?

1.      Research the background of an authentic Chinese poem.  Recite it with correct tones and gestures to interpret the authors feeling.

2.      Understand this poem and the main ideas and transform it into a painting

3.      Post the poem on voice thread or blog for others to comment

4.      Select culturally significant songs for students to understand the artwork, the background, and the appropriate social behavior.  Then, students can analyze a culture phenomenon

5.      Listen to current important news to understand the main idea, give your opinion of why it might be important to the people who hear it

6.      Use Flip or Wimba to record live conversation for students to interpret the main ideas and important details

7.      Total Physical Response, charades and information gap classroom activities for students to comprehend the meanings.

I truly believe that these linking activities will make learning Chinese effective and interesting.

Visual texts

1/18, Tuesday, the first class, my team read an article “The Ant and the Grasshopper".  It showed the difference between frivolous play and diligent work.  An ant works hard during the summer to prepare for the winter.  Grasshoppers just play.  We read and decided to give one snapshot to show the hard working ant stored the food, and had big smile when winter came.  The grasshopper just laid on the floor and died.

This learning standard is content standard 2: use visual texts to develop ideas, telling a story or/and an experience.  I felt excited about this content standard which I did not apply before.  I have been using the content standard 1: students identify the text (reading, writing, graphic, drawing, etc) and responded in a comprehensive writing.

To give individual student’s attention and fulfill assorted students’ needs in the same class, have been challenges. As a Chinese language teacher to teach American students, I strive to plan lessons for my stutdents with various content standards.  It attracts them to continue learning deeper and broader. 

Blog

This is my first time blogging.  It is fun, easy and cool.  I believe that I can connect blogging tech in my Chinese teaching.  I am looking forward to learning more tricks.