Reflection

Home Reflection Creating this unit was an interesting experience for me. Before this class I had created units of study and understood some of the reasons why creating a unit is more beneficial than just teaching single lessons. I like the idea of creating units, especially for bilingual classes because they allow the teacher to tie many concepts together. I think this is beneficial to the students because it gives them more contexts to connect to and help understand what is going on, especially when the class is being taught in a language other than your own or in multiple languages. The task of planning a unit around a specific theme was not terrible difficult for me. When I was planning the individual lesson I tried to think about the lessons in the ways that were talked about in our Soltero book as well as how they related to other things we had read in class. I wanted to make sure that my lessons were hands on. For this reason I chose to create the part of our unit where the students were creating a Quinceañera or Sweet 16 party. I felt like this was a very hands on activity that really allowed the students to apply what they have learned as well as practice their language skills in a cooperative setting. As I thought about these lessons I was challenged by the bilingual language portion of them. As a team we decided that the lessons would be taught in English and Spanish alternatively. This was good for the instructional portions of the lessons but how would I structure the students’ final products? Since the students were working within scenarios that decided if they were creating a Quinceañera or a Sweet 16 and the intention would be to have about half and half I decided that those students working on a Quinceañera would have final products in Spanish and those working on a Sweet 16 would have final products in English. It is my hope that since each group would be designed to have 2 native English speakers and 2 native Spanish speakers that this would be appropriately challenging for all of the groups. I also decided to choose the language of the final product in this way because that would add to the cultural experience of the planning. Most likely a family planning a Quinceañera is talking about the plans for the party in Spanish and there is a subset of vocabulary that is specific to this // fiesta //. I am concerned that when the students are working independently that they will fall back on their native languages, which may not be a bad thing if the Spanish speaking students are speaking Spanish to the English speaking students and vice versa there is still language learning going on as well as an exchange of culture and information. More challenging for me was thinking about the unit as it relates to culture and making sure that we were not just teaching about a topic, but also about specific cultural elements. Also challenging for me was preparing the unit for a grade level that I really know nothing about. I have been observing in the primary grades for the last two classes because that is where most bilingual classes take place and my student teaching was in 8th grade. I found myself slightly frustrated because I could not picture the classroom that I was making plans for. This made it more difficult for me to think of activities because I felt as though I had not frame of reference for the students’ abilities and preferences. This is one of the reasons that I decided to take the decision making part of the planning in a step by step method rather than just give the students the information and allow them to work completely independently. Also completing this part of the assignment in this manner allows the teacher to better gauge which groups are understanding the information and which groups are lost. The concept that I learned the most about during this class/assignment is family involvement. When I was in school I don’t remember there being much family involvement encouraged within the classroom. I don’t ever remember having a time when our families were invited to share in our achievements during the school day or as part of a unit of study. I really like this idea and the information presented by Soltero and the Teaching Diverse Learners website as well as our conversations in class and my experiences at our observation school really opened my eyes to how beneficial this practice can be for both the students and the families. When families participate in the classroom there is a sharing of culture. I really liked the idea of there being an opportunity for the families who attend the fiesta of our unit to be able to share their own experiences about attending and planning Quinceañera and Sweet 16 parties. This opportunity for an exchange of stories/information could make the unit so much richer and give the students more concrete examples to relate to. Dr. Fishman’s article also put this concept into perspective for me because he talked about how important the “mother tongue” is for language development. When we invite our families to participate then we are creating a stronger bridge for the school and home relationship and more specifically for the bridge between school and home language/vocabulary. The parents are able to see what is going on in the class and talk about it outside of the classroom with the students, which I think is a very important concept. I also think that when the families are invited to join in on classroom activities they become more supportive of what is going on in the classroom and have a better relationship with the teacher. I was able to see evidence of this relationship bridge during my observations at our school and it makes me excited to provide these opportunities to my students when I have my own classroom. References Collier, V. and Thomas, W. (2004). The astounding effectiveness of dual language education for all. // NABE Journal of Research and Practice  //, // 2 //:1 Winter, 1-20. Families and communities. (2006). In // Teaching diverse learners. // Retrieved from http://www.alliance.brown.edu/tdl/community/index.shtml Fishman, J. (1997). What do you lose when you lose your language? [|http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/SIL/Fishman1.pdf] Soltero, S. (2003). Dual Language: Teaching and learning in two languages. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.