The natural curiosity of children is undeniable. While my high school students might not ask the same "why?" questions as a small child, they maintain the desire to understand the world around them. We, as educators, do our students a disservice when we quell their curiosity by forcing them to sit through a disjointed, independent, and passive classes each day. We need to consider curriculum because it provides the framework for our daily instruction and interactions with our students.
A recurring theme in our current study is that we cannot teach our students from lists of required topics. Wiggins makes his point excruciatingly clear: it is impossible to teach our students every thing that they must know before they leave school. Rather than teaching through a list of topics, we need to allow our students to become owners of their own learning. They must be allowed to actively engage in learning by asking questions, discussing answers/solutions, and reconsidering the results.
Allowing students to form an "essential question" is a strategy that lends itself easily to the foreign language classroom at each level. In the introductory phases, students need to know how to talk about themselves, how to ask about others, etc. As they learn more, they want to know: How would I act in a restaurant? How would I ask for help? How would I help someone who is sick? In more advanced levels, students can ask questions about cultural understanding, literature, and the connections between the histories of Spanish-speaking countries and their own. The important factor in using an essential question is that it must be student driven. These must be questions that students genuinely have an interest in answering.
We do need to reconsider curriculum. In the past, my students have always enjoyed learning about the "exploration" of the Americas. I have observed that my students enjoy the discussion because they have previous knowledge of the explorers from World Civ. or US history. They enjoy the twist in perspective as we discuss the "conquistadores" from the viewpoint of the Mayan or Incan Indians because they are simply adding to previous learning. As I evaluate my teaching, I am determined to find other areas of connection with my students' other content areas so that my students discover the relevance of my curriculum as they look at the complex world around them from a new perspective.
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Teaching a world language lends itself very easily to teach interdisciplinarily. Even though I am somewhat restricted because of my students age (k-2) I am always making connections between cultures and disciplines. It makes sense if we want them to learn about the world!!! Kudos to you!!! Que Bien!!!
ReplyDeleteI love to hear from you language teachers- such a wonderful perspective on curriculum. I like what you say about children's natural curiosity and how a curriculum should build upon that (and foster it as well). I do think though it takes a real teacher as leader to facilitate that kind of climate in the classroom and perhaps we need to think about how we train teachers at our end. I know that we up here in higher ed. also feel the pressure of lists and facts so that our scores are good- just like you- perhaps the system needs to reevaluate at all stages- hmmm
ReplyDeleteFor your second paragraph, I believe what you were trying to say is students should be able to communicate with others. That is my principal when designing curriculums. For foreign languages, communications and culture are the most important things. After learning the lanugage, students should be able to PRODUCE (not copy) real conversations according to real information and situations and make connections with the culture.
ReplyDeleteI have always enjoyed BEING a student, and I try to share that enthusiasm with my students. I think that positive attitudes about learning are contagious. My students stay engaged when I am engaged in the lesson. I am in complete agreement with you Xue. I think that World Language is unique in that we are not successful if our students are not making connections to other areas; if so, they are not able to speak proficiently.
ReplyDeleteI agree that we need to get our students to ask the important questions of "why" and "how" instead of "when am I going to use this". As a math teacher I get the last question a lot and am trying to use the idea of using applications to make it more real for my students. It sounds like you do that really well by drawing on your students past knowledge. Hopefully I can do this better with my students and make Algebra a little more fun and memorable to the them! Buena suerte con tus classes de espanol! Me gusta esspanol mucho porque tuve buenos profesores (pero mi gramatica no es perfecto)!
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