vlog 8

This week's reading made me think of my students' signing skills. I remember being shocked during midterms because they didn't score as well as I had hoped. Looking back, I believe it is mostly my fault for not really enforcing a true total immersion classroom because I allowed them to talk to build community. What really grabbed me this week was the different types of feedback. As I read the definition and some examples of each one, I thought about which ones I use most of the time. I do recasts a lot because I try to model correct signing forms; I do a little elicitation by asking students to repeat themselves; I also do some repetition hoping the students will see what is incorrect. I try to stay away from explicit feedback because I don't want to hinder students from taking risks. I don't think many of my students (or many ASL 1 students in general) feel comfortable taking risks in the language because they don't know all of the inner workings of ASL. On a sidenote: I went to a training this week focusing on lesson planning. The trainers talked about teaching to the students' learning styles. I posed a question that turned into a hot topic because no one really understood the idea of a total immersion class. My question was this: How can I teach to students' learning styles when my content area lends itself to visual and kinesthetic learning? What about the auditory learners? I did try something different this week, and played music written and performed by Sean Forbes, a Deaf man and member of D-PAN. The kids seemed to focus a little more, but I can't do that very often for obvious reasons. Anyone have some ideas of how to integrate various learning styles into lessons?

Category:

Education

Tags:

• asl
• sign
• language
• valencia
• community
• college