Bonjour! My name is Hanne and I will be exploring the French language through the project ‘French Language Growth Plan.’ Please feel free to follow along with me and observe my progress. This journey will explore one of the Big Ideas and one Content connection in each of the grades 5 through 8, with activities I will complete along the way. Additionally, I will be recording most of my development for my teacher and others to observe.
I am always open to feedback as it helps me learn and grow. I am quite new to speaking French so this will be a wonderful reflection tool to look back on when I am more confident and capable. Posting the videos will also help me challenge myself and move outside of my comfort zone.
This week I am focusing on practising describing myself and my two dogs! I wrote myself a script to read off, but want to get to the point where I am more comfortable and natural speaking about my dogs and myself.
I think it will be more helpful when I have someone I can speak french with to help with my pronunciation and fluency. There is also a need to practice the proper dictation of my tone and voice.
Here is the script I wrote and followed. As you can see, there were several mistakes that I corrected with the help of the references at the bottom of this post. I think making mistakes is important for learning, and self-correction can be less pressure than having someone else correct you. Both are important though!
Here is my corrected and typed script to follow:
The challenge with running through a script like this on my own is that I don’t have anyone to ask if I’ve made mistakes before they occur. I did use several sources to help me with sentence structure and pronunciation, but as languages are living I think it would be more helpful to have someone I can practice with in person. The sources I used are linked at the bottom of the post.
I am looking forward to my next activities! Here are a few photos of my dogs I was describing in my video for reference. đ
This week I focused on learning a French song to teach students (and myself) a conversational greeting and several responses in a fun and engaging manner! Here is my practice run-through of the song below:
As I was not able to go into a classroom this semester, I recorded myself with a couple of my willing participants engaging in my French teaching song! I promise they were not bribed đ
Thank you for joining us and watching our Online Learning Inquiry Presentation on MagicSchool Artificial Intelligence (AI) Generator!
MagicSchool is an education-focused AI Generator that aims to supply teaching and learning resources and to improve the efficiency of creating these resources. Our group chose this tool because none of us have ever used it before and wanted to try it out to test the efficiency and capability of it’s use.
Please watch the video below to observe our findings!
A project by Anna Palmer, Mady Chase, Nicole Bell, Hanne Deener, Finlay Jessop
Overview
As identified in the article, Why Literary Devices Matter by Lorraine K.C. Yeung, the impact of literary devices in fiction and poetry plays a crucial role in evoking emotions among readers and writers. According to Yeung, the purpose of literary devices is to contribute to the emotional depth of a piece and grasp readersâ attention âin a way that prompts their emotional engagement even before any meaningful content for cognitive judgments is available to themâ (p. 35). Similar to Yeungâs analysis of literary devices and looking into how literary devices are important in poetry, Joan Peskin from the University of Toronto talks in her article, The Development of Poetic Literacy During the School Years about the impact these devices have on poetry. For example, she states how â… poetic interpretation is driven by the intrinsic textual features of a poem. There is now evidence that poetic processing is both reader-driven and text-driven (p. 77).â Therefore, to fully grasp the importance of literary devices in poetry and other writing, we need to be learning and teaching this topic in a variety of ways, such as auditory or visually.
One of the most common misconceptions about poetry is that it is boring. One of the biggest reasons for this is that, specifically with young students, it is thought that all poetry must rhyme, which they may find uninteresting or juvenile. Another misconception in relation to poetic devices is that they donât actually hold a purpose within the poem. Students think that devices are unnecessary and just for show; however, they donât realize that the devices are often what gives the poem a deeper meaning and a more impactful effect.
This topic is of particular interest to us because all of us are hoping to be elementary or middle school educators. This is a resource that would be useful to elementary school teachers who are introducing poetry to their students, and show them that poetry can be interesting and fun.
Lesson Design Planning TemplateÂ
Resources
PowerPoint presentation
Example poems
Writing materials or personal computers
Paper or journals
Roles and Responsibilities
Mady: One misconception (Poetry is boring) in the Overview, Learning Outcomes portion of the Lesson Design Planning Template Anna: Connection to common practice in our field in the Overview, Big Ideas portion of the Lesson Design Planning Template Nicole: One misconception (that poetic devices in literacy donât hold a purpose) in the Overview, Evidence of Learning of the Lesson Design Planning Template Hanne: One academic resource (Why Literary Devices Matter) in the Overview, Assessment portion of the Lesson Design Planning Template Finlay: One academic resource (The Development of Poetic Literacy During the School Years) in the Overview, the learning activities portion of the Lesson Design Planning Template
My name is Hanne and I am in school to become an elementary school teacher! I am going into my third year of the BEd program through UVic. I was an Education Assistant previously and have worked with children since I was about ten years old. I currently work as a nanny, as a tutor, and as a Community Support Worker with people in the disability community.
I have many hobbies and work several jobs, which keep me busy and my life fairly full. With two family dogs and a love for the outdoors, I like to keep active on hikes, swimming, cycling, and general walks. I also love gardening, organizing, making candles and bath bombs, and going to the beach!
These are my dogs: Juno (left) and Riley (right)
I am interested in the Information Communication Technology certificate courses to help integrate more technology into my teaching practices to encompass Universal Design for learning aspects and accessibility implementation. Additionally, the ICT certificate counts towards upgrading professionally to teaching category 5 with the Teacher Qualification Services.
My experience has been one technology course as part of my BEd required courses and that is all, so I am very excited to learn more and pull out some useful strategies and aspects to include in my own practice as a teacher!
A poster I made with the kids on my final day of practicum
Thank you for learning a bit more about me! Please leave a comment about anything you relate to or any questions you may have about my learning journey and experience. đ
While watching and listening to the YouTube video, I was in the shower and let the reflective thoughts from Jon Dron flow while I pondered. I usually do my best thinking in the shower, which can be hard when I don’t have a pad and paper to write down what made sense; but writing it into my waterproof phone does allow me to document my reflection.
Among many intriguing points of conversation, Dr. Dron expressed something that piqued my interest: when you increase extrinsic reward, you decrease intrinsic reward. I hadn’t considered the ramifications of extrinsic motivation and the actions of encouraging such. From my new understanding, it can actually draw the effectiveness away from feeling internal accomplishments and I know that the latter is a better determinant of long-term resilience and success, as detailed in a study conduced in the Journal of Informatics Education and Research. What I have to gain from this learning is the process of teaching -or more so encouraging the exploration of- self discipline and discovery of intrinsic motivators. But, how do I teach this is if I’m extrinsically motivated myself? Is it a fault to teach something you have yet to discover? There exist marriage counsellors who are divorced and counsellors who are still unpacking their own traumas⊠maybe the flawed existence and continual strive for improvement is only human. I have more to learn and explore on this topic.
Back to Jon Dron’s conversational exchange. He spoke about students’ specific experiences with distanced and alternative learning. For example, portfolios are opportunities that allow students to choose their best work to be submitted for review from the teacher. Conducting a pedagogical approach such as this allows more autonomy over students’ learning assessment and encourages growth. This, paired with formal assessments in the manner of tests helps, students assess their own levels and be responsible for their education, productivity, and effort as they are able to continually progress and reflect.
The second speaker with Dr. Dron isolates the theory that to make a big change in learning we must de-couple assessment and learning. This is hard, as I consider how deeply ingrained assessment is in institutions. I need to think about this more deeply as I haven’t heard this directly from an academic. I have felt similarly for a while, especially when studying for a big exam, but I have to keep wondering how education can progress with this while so much of it is standardized to push students through a system that has been breaking down for a long time now. If anyone would want to argue the latter sentence, I would encourage some reading on the decline of literacy rates in Canada and the skill levels that seldom correspond to the grade level. This has been my own observation and research.
There are many aspects of this conversation that I have to consider further and would appreciate having some exchanges to flush out the ideas more for my own comprehension and consideration. It appears I have a lot to learn… and to unlearn.
References: Role of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Rewards in Motivating Employees. (2024). Journal of Informatics Education and Research. https://doi.org/10.52783/jier.v4i2.1185
