Monitoring my GAME plan progress

     As of right now, my main focus for my GAME plan is to teach the students the French language. We are working in Leçon 3 in our textbook Discovering French- Bleu by Holt McDougal. This chapter focuses on food and the culture of cafés and bistros in France. The culture of this chapter is rather eye opening for the students. They are learning about shopping in specialty stores, eating various animals we do not typically eat in the US, and how one respects the waiters and chefs in France. This will be setting the students up for discussing the foods offered in restaurants in their Francophone cities. They will be sharing some traditional foods that are eaten in those cities with the class. It has been shocking to some of them to learn that the French eat rabbit, snails, horse, and pigeon. But I am proud to say that they did not become overly disgusted and treated the differences in the foods with respect and maturity.
     I do not feel the need to modify my action plan just yet. The students are now comfortable with studying their vocabulary terms and the verb conjugations, they know what is expected form them. Now is the time to build their vocabulary and increase their comfort with the language and speaking in front of each other. Presently, my students are working on dialogs with partners. They must incorporate terms from all previous chapters to have a conversation, which they will present in front of the class. They are also completing audio exercises in their online textbooks. I love being able to hear the students  using the language in the comfort of their own homes. I am able to give each student the needed attention they deserve to give them pronunciation pointers as I grade the assignments. I am able to praise them and build their confidence for using the language in class.
     I am rethinking one aspect of the action plan. The audio segment of the project. This seems to be the hardest part for most students during the creation of the presentation. Not all software programs are user friendly when it comes to inserting audio. Therefore, I am exploring Voice Thread as an alternative program for the students to create their projects. It seems that some students have difficulty recording their voices on their computers (I found this out while doing the audio exercises from the online text). Therefore, I am investigating Voice Thread since it can be used on their phones as well, something they are all familiar with using. Wish me luck!

Carrying Out My GAME Plan

The Goal I will be concentrating on is for Standard 1c - Promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes. My students will be creating a presentation of a Francophone city in French. They will need to research the city so they will need to use search engines and the Internet. They will need organization software like Kidspiration for concept mapping. Students will use presentation software like Prezi, Google Docs, Power Point, Powtoons, iMovie, Movie Maker, or Animoto to create their city presentation. Students will need a tutorial on how to insert movies and videos into the presentation. I will use YouTube tutorials to show the students how to use this for their projects. The students and I will need to use computers, the Internet, and I will also use a projector to show samples and tutorials to the class. 

I will be incorporating several different learning strategies during this project. I will have the students brainstorming some topics that they would like to know about Francophone cities. They will be completing individual research and creating individual presentations about their chosen city In French. Students will be completing handouts to evaluate their research and verify their facts. They will review their facts and answer class generated questions about their presentations to verify that they have enough and interesting facts about their cities. The audience will also be choosing which cities they would like to visit based on their peer's presentations. They will also explain why they would like to visit that particular city.




The most important aspect of this project is having the students use French to describe their city. As of today, this is the only aspect that I have worked on with the students. We have covered two chapters where they have learned to describe themselves using adjectives, how to use the verbs to be and to have, introduce people and things to others,  and they have learned their numbers in French. So far they have practiced speaking French into audio recorders and are experienced at listening to themselves and critiquing their work and possibly deciding to rerecord their audio segments. These skills will again be used for their Francophone city presentations. So far so good.

My GAME plans

There are two National Standards for Teachers from the International Society for Technology in Education that I would like to become more confident with. They are: Standard One- Facilitate and inspire student learning and creativity: c- Promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes, and Standard Four- Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility: d- Develop and model cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with colleagues and students of other cultures using digital age communication and collaboration tools (International Society for Technology in Education, 2015). In Technology Integration for Meaningful Classroom Use: A Standards-Based Approach by Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer (2009), the authors explain how the “Game Plan” is used to set goals, take action to meet those goals, monitor one’s progress towards reaching those goals, and evaluate whether the goals were accomplished and extend one’s learning for the future.

My GAME Plan for Standard 1c - Promote student reflection using collaborative tools to reveal and clarify students’ conceptual understanding and thinking, planning, and creative processes is as follows.

GOAL- My goal is to have my students reflect on their work of creating a presentation about a Francophone city around the world. I want my students to feel that they researched the city in enough depth to give an enticing description of the city and all it has to offer, so that others will want to visit there. I hope that my students will feel that they did not simply state places to visit but helped make the city come alive to the audience.

ACTION- I will require the students to research tourist and monument sites to gather information about the places to visit in their Francophone cities. They will be asked to watch you tube videos and virtual tours of those places. They will be asked to describe what they saw and learned about using very descriptive language.

MONITOR- My students will be asked to review the information they are finding and compare it with a questionnaire provided by the teacher. Will the audience be able to answer the questionnaire after viewing the individual’s presentation? What more needs to be added to the presentation to help the audience answer those questions? Does the student need to complete more research? Does the student need to use better adjectives? Does the student need to better understand the monument they are explaining?

EVALUATE AND EXTEND- The evaluation will be the grading of the presentation and the use of French to showcase their Francophone city. Students will be required to present their city to the class using their presentation and showing videos and photos of their cities. Students will take notes on the presentations and complete a wish list of places they would like to visit and must state why they would like to visit those cities, using the information that they obtained from the presentations.

My GAME Plan for Standard 4 d- Develop and model cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with colleagues and students of other cultures using digital age communication and collaboration tools is as follows.

GOAL- My goal is to use ePal to create a link with a school in either France or a Francophone country.  I would like my students to create relationships with students from around the world to be able to compare their lives and cultures to those in the French-speaking world. I would like my students to become more comfortable speaking French to native speakers so they can become more confident in their language use.

ACTION- I need to take action to learn about ePal. I need to research how to sign up and what measures are taken to protect the students while using this form of communication. I need to get permission from my administration to use this type of site with my middle school students. I will also need to find a teacher in a French speaking country that would be willing to partner up with my class.

MONITOR- In order to gage if I am making sufficient progress towards my goal, I will need to set up a time frame for myself to ensure that all of my research of the site is completed and able to be presented to my administration for approval. Once that is competed I will need to have parents sign permission slips allowing their children to participate in the activity. I will need to monitor the emails to and from my students on a weekly basis to ensure they are communicating in the target language and completing the assignments I set up for them.

EVALUATE AND EXTEND- I will be evaluating my students based on the weekly communications with their ePal.  I will be monitoring their use of grammar and vocabulary and on whether they accomplished their goals set forth on the assignment sheets provided. I will also be evaluating the amount of growth the students have made while communicating with a student from another country. Most of my students can be very egocentric and believe that the only way to do things is the way that they have always done them. This will give them a view into other cultures and customs and see how the other parts of the world function. I hope to be able to see the difference in my students when discussing ways other parts of the world celebrate and function.

References

Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2009). Technology integration for meaningful

            classroom use: A standards-based approach. (Laureate Education, Inc., Custom

            ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

International Society for Technology in Education. (2008). National education standards

            for teachers (NETS-T). Retrieved from

            http://www.iste.org/standards/iste-standards/standards-for-teachers.