Improve student learning through teacher’s decisions and technology – harry.g.tuttle at gmail
When we apply critical thinking to how we use images/photos/flickr in Web 2.0, we can assess how well our students communicate.
The following rubric applies the “Universal Intellectual Standards” by Linda Elder and and Richard Paul which was modified by Gerald Noisch in his Learning to Think Things Through.
In my English class I was reviewing basic paragraph writing. I found that of 66 students (3 classes), only two students had had a visual way to remember what goes in a paragraph. One had a snowman analogy and one had a hamburger analogy. When I introduced them to the hand analogy, one student commented that her teachers did not give her visuals of writing.
The visual act as a scaffold to guide the students as they write. In addition, they can self-check themselves by using the visual.
How do you visualize the critical information in your course in a visual only (no-text) manner to help all students to learn?
One way to help students and to help ourselves is to create “I Can” sheets which also list the formative feedback strategies so that we do not have to list them each time. We can use a student’s “I can” sheet and circle which formative feedback we feel will be most appropriate or have the student select. We have to verify that each activity will lead to improved learning.
For example, this partial “I can” list can be expanded to include formative feedback
___I can identify items in a topic/situation.
–I can make statements about a topic/situation.
___I can ask questions about a topic/situation
For a Spanish student who has trouble with talking and particularly talking about a topic with a visual, the “I can” statement can be expanded:
–I can make statements about a topic/situation from a visual
by describing
each person by clothing (shirt, shoes) and/or by personal description (tall, thin…),
each object by its description (color- red, shape-round) and what it is used for (There is water in the glass).
what actions are in the picture (shop, buy, sell, walk)
the nature (tree, bird) and the weather (sunny)
by saying as much as I can about any object or person before I go to the next person or object.
by listening to other students as they describe a visual and them imitating them or listening to sample speaking podcast.
by watching the “Spanish speaking” YouTube video where the instructor shows how to speak about a visual as you “read” it
By creating formative assessment “I can” sheets, we already have numerous possible formative feedback from which to select.
Do you do “I can” sheets with formative assessments so your students “Can”?
I do like to visually guide my students through a learning goal by creating Power Points but it takes me a long time to create them. I’ve been using another method, finding an existing Power Point on that learning goal and then adding my own Power Point for any missing points or things I want to emphasize. An easy way to find Power Points is to put the category such as narrative writing in quotations “narrative writing” and add .ppt (the ending for Power Point files) so the search would look like “narrative writing” +.ptt. A search for a Civil War Power Point would look like “Civil War” +.ppt while a search for a Power Point on the Three Little Pigs would appear as “The Three Little Pigs” +.ppt.
I found that within a few minutes of searching I can usually find a Power Point that captures much of what I want the students to learn. Then I create a mini-Power Point to add any additional information and I call it the topic plus “more” such as “NarrativeMore”. I have cut my creation down drastically and often have a learning tool that is much better than I had thought of.
Here are a variety of hispanic streets. Please share with your Spanish teacher so that he/she can help the students to improve their speaking and writing through visuals.
CALLE
Calle de las flores, Andalucia, Espana
http://www.flickr.com/photos/guijarro85/1172646698/
Calle Zamora decorada para la navidad, Salmanca, Espana
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marioquartz/311952341/
Calle feliz, Iquitos Loreto Peru
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pierre_pouliquin/267491002/
Calle que lleva nuestro nombre, Montevideo, Uruguay
http://www.flickr.com/photos/car_tav/342443115/
Calle Obispo with the Hotel Ambos Mundos (Hemingway’s haunt), Havana, Cuba
http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulmannix/314096627/
Calle Santa Isabel, Madrid, Espana
http://www.flickr.com/photos/photocapy/399184789/
Calle del leon (hisortia, Madrid, Espana
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nafria/411676144/
Fútbol en la Calle 26 de Marzo #8, Montevideo, Uruguay
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cuducos/1633470952/
Calle del diamante, Xalapa, Mexico
http://www.flickr.com/photos/63095335@N00/361694634/
Frutería. Calle San Esteban. Sevilla, Espana
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gonzalez-alba/1458921303/
A stall in Calle Heredia, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba
http://www.flickr.com/photos/barrycornelius/802221898/
Pinturas en la Calle El Conde, Santo Domingo, República Dominicana.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tecnorrante/99238955/
Other Spanish (Hispanic) images:
Spanish streets – Calle
https://eduwithtechn.wordpress.com/2007/10/30/spanish-street-callescenes-photos-from-flickr/
Spanish sports –Deporte
https://eduwithtechn.wordpress.com/2007/10/19/spanish-sport-deporte-pictures-from-flickr-for-student-conversations/
Spanish transportation Transportes
https://eduwithtechn.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/spanish-language-transportes-transportations-from-various-hispanic-countries/
Spanish restaurant Restaurante
https://eduwithtechn.wordpress.com/2007/09/16/restaurant-pictures-from-flickr-for-spanish-and-other-language-conversations/
If you have ideas you would like to share about the problems that students have in being fluent speakers and, if possible, the possible solutions, please add as a comment. For example, some students can not keep a conversation focused on the topic – a solution is to start them with a series of pictures about the topic or for them to focus on a specific problem such as an ordering problem in a restaurant.
Education with Technology
Education with Technology Harry G. Tuttle 