Standard 2: Learning Differences
- The teacher understands individual learner differences and cultural and linguistic diversity.
- As all students come from different background, they learn differently. Some students may learn the best by visual while some may learn the best by sense of hearing.
Goal:
- My goal is to help students gain and develop their ability to use the target language-Chinese in class and beyond the class. I design some topic related computer materials for students to repeat learning topic at home or other place where has internet access.
Reflection:
- Designing an appropriate lesson plan to adapt to all students with or without special needs is the most important thing to reach the goal. To fulfill my goal, I follow Utah state Dual language immersion curriculum and lesson plan which provides by Chinese DLI team. I also do formal and informal assessment during the course which will help me to evaluate and measure students learning outcome more accurately and adjust the lesson plan to reach goal. Based on the assessment outcome, I design suitable computer materials, including topic related computer games, to fit students needs. For example, I design at least three different types of games which are listening, picture matching, and word matching, as some students learn better to hear the voice; some needs to see picture to help them memorize; and some can easily catch the meaning by wording.
Evidence:
- Adaptation of Curriculum
- The curriculum diamond
- Layered Curriculum
- Computer games (See below.)
Reflection:
- While designing lesson plan, I always have the concept of learning differences in my mind. The two types of strategies listed above are the ones I considered the most when designing lesson plan. Lightbown and Spada (2006) indicated that teachers should provide appropriate task difficulties for students. The best learning outcome will occur when the task is just a little beyond a language learner’s current level (i+1 which "i" is the learner's inter-language and "+1" is the next stage of language acquisition.). When a task is too difficult, students will be frustrated. If a task is too easy, students will be bored. They both result in students not learning. The curriculum diamond and layered curriculum activities can help students acquire knowledge, because it has different difficulty levels. In curriculum diamond, the adapted level can prevent lower level students from being frustrated on tasks that are too difficult for them and help them to reach their goals and objectives. The advanced level can prevent higher level students from feeling bored on the tasks that are too easy for them. The essential level can fulfill majority students’ needs. The layered curriculum also provides multiple activity difficulty levels for students on different levels. The curriculum diamond and layered curriculum are good tools for me to tailor the need for different level’s students in order to set an appropriate challenge for each level’s students. My goal is to help students gain and develop their ability to use the target language in real live. To reach my goal assessment is necessary to ensure my students is leaning. During the course, I do language assessments every week. The ongoing language assessments are used to make sure that the students understand vocabulary, grammar, and culture and can transfer their knowledge to form phrases or sentences for communication purposes. I adjust and modify my course and teaching pace according to their performance on each area of the learning assessments. The students' scores and feedback can help me redesign my course for the future. Next year I will continue to use differentiation strategy to help individual learner differences and cultural and linguistic diversity.
- I provide adapted level requirement for lower level students. For example, I provide a task with 5 questions where the minimum requirement is to answer 3 questions. The lower level students can only complete the minimum requirement and high level students can choose from to complete the rest of question for extra credit or play computer games. In this way, the lower level students can also meet the requirement without be pointed out that they are in lower level. I find that this strategy is useful and I will continue to use it.
Chinese games:
Chinese game: (Mandarin Matrix Unit 7): (For adapted and essential level students. Students need to choose correct picture.)
- Mandarin Matrix Unit 7: http://chinesedli.epizy.com/html5_listening_u7/html5_listening.html
Chinese game: (Mandarin Matrix Unit 7): (For essential and advanced level students. Students need to choose correct Chinese characters.)
- Mandarin Matrix Unit 7: http://chinesedli.epizy.com/html5_listening_u7-1/html5_listening.html
Chinese matching game:
- Mandarin Matrix Unit 7 : http://chinesedli.epizy.com/html5_match_u7/html5_match.html
Chinese sentence reconstruction (Youth Chinese Test):
Sentence Reconstruction Source: unscramble
Math game:
Addition:
- Addition PK game (2 students): http://chinesedli.epizy.com/html5_pk_add/html5_pk.html
- Addition PK2 game (4 students): http://chinesedli.epizy.com/html5_pk2_add/html5_pk2.html