How to Create an Effective Curriculum Without a Textbook
Maite Lamberri, LCHS
[email protected] Brittany Probst, AFHS
[email protected] |
Daniela Osegueda, LCHS
[email protected] Mirna Smith, LCHS
[email protected] |
Objective: To give all in attendance the basic materials, resources, information and confidence needed to go beyond the textbook and develop an task-driven, proficiency-based curriculum for their own classrooms.
I. How it all began [5 minutes]
II. What we do in class/resources [20 minutes]
Classroom blogs
Google Classroom
- In Summer 2013, we decided to revise our curriculum to make it more task-based and driven by authentic resources.
- We met for three weeks, during which we came up with our curriculum. The entire curriculum is the same for French and Spanish with minor differences where necessary.
- We decided on five to six themes that were focused onthe AP themes so students would be exposed to the vocabulary and topics from the beginning.
- We used Lee County's modified UbD framework to plan out each unit.
- For each theme/unit, we came up with one to two final performance tasks that the students would complete at the end of each unit.
- We then broke the tasks into smaller skills and laid out the daily plans to teach those skills.
- We developed the vocabulary lists (which we post on Quizlet) by evaluating the vocabulary necessary for each performance task as well as looking at the theme-based vocabulary covered in a few of the textbooks we had encountered.
Spanish Vocabulary Quizlet
French Vocabulary Quizlet: Lee, Wake - We eliminated tests and decided to give quick, formative grammar/vocabulary quizzes frequently and use the final performance task as the measurement of mastery at the end of each unit.
- Most of the performance tasks require students to use multiple modes of language, such as writing and speaking, listening and speaking, or reading and writing.
- We met for three weeks, during which we came up with our curriculum. The entire curriculum is the same for French and Spanish with minor differences where necessary.
- You need a strong departmental bond and be willing to collaborate and delegate.
- You must understand the limitations of your technology
- Do your students all have computers?
- Are you able to project the activities?
- Work together through Google Drive and put EVERYTHING in the folders so that everyone can see, copy, and edit.
II. What we do in class/resources [20 minutes]
Classroom blogs
- We all run our classroom instruction through Weebly blogs. You can see our blogs here:
- The benefits of using blogs for instruction:
- Because there is no textbook, you need a place to put all of your resources that the students can access at any time.
- You can easily differentiate if you have multiple classes in one period (French 3 and 4) or if you have students with special needs.
- You can also easily assigned tiered activities to your classes.
- You can also easily create a substitute plan that students can follow.
- Absent students can also access the blog from home and make up the work on their own.
Google Classroom
- We use a variety of resources in our classroom, one of which is Google Classroom, so we will show you how that works.
- We use Google Classroom as an online platform to assign and turn in assignments, which requires your county to have Google Apps for Education.
- If your county does not have Google Apps for Education, do not despair, because it is free! You can talk to your school or district technology coordinator to set this up.
- Here is a student's view of Google Classroom.
- The Stream shows the assignments that are assigned to each class along with their due date or their status.
This is what it looks like when a student accesses an assignment from the stream.
- Students will see the teacher instructions at the top of the assignment.
- The student can open his/her own copy of the document and edit it on his/her own if the teacher chooses "Make a copy for each student."
- The whole class can collaborate if the teacher chooses "students can edit the document"
- Students will click TURN IN either on the document or the assignment when they have finished.
- Here is the teacher view of Google Classroom.
- Important resources:
- Here is a video that gives you more basic information about Google Classroom.
Interactive Notebooks
Additional Online Resources
The Analysis of Student Work
The Final "Exam"
IV. Questions/Evaluation [5 minutes]
- Interactive notebooks are a great way to complement paperless instruction, particularly for students who are visual or tactile learners.
- Here's how you can getstarted.
- Here's a Pinterest board that shows you even more!
Additional Online Resources
- We also have A LOT of resources that you can use in your classroom. Many of them are online, but they can be adapted to a non-one-to-one situation.
- Quizlet
Quizlet is a good resource for creating flashcards. Students can hear how vocabulary words are pronounced, and they can practice terms through different exercises and games. - Kahoot
This is a good resource for practicing different topics such as vocabulary and grammar. Through Kahoot, the teacher projects the Kahoot quiz. Students go to Kahoot.it on their computers or phones, type in the code, and choose a name. On their screens, they just see the answer choices. Students earn points based on correct answers and how fast they answer. This serves as a good formative assessment to see what your students have learned about specific topics. - Conjuguemos
This website has activities to practice conjugating verbs or to practice vocabulary. The conjugation activities provide a verb and a pronoun. Students conjugate the verb in the appropriate tense. For vocabulary activities, students see a vocabulary word in English, and they write the word in Spanish. There are also a variety of grammar activities available. You can use the free version, or your school can purchase teacher and student accounts on an "honor-system" pay schedule. - Vocaroo
This is a simple online voice recorder that students can use to record themselves in the target language. They can turn in the recordings through email or Google Classroom, or they can embed the recordings on Weebly. - Google Voice
This resource is good for voice recordings, especially for schools that don’t have computers. Teachers register for a Google Voice account to get a Google Voice number. Students call the number using a phone, and they can record a voice message. - Here are some French-specific resources.
- Here are some more Spanish-specific resources.
- We have seen a lot of improvement in our students' performance after having moved away from pointless worksheets and other busy work.
- To show what the students have accomplished, we have them keep their major assessments on a personal Weebly site that they keep from Level 1 all the way through the rest of their World Language courses. Here are some examples:
Level 1: Nicole, Raven, Kay (French)
Level 2: Nicole
Level 3: Leah
Level 4: Anna - Your school/county can also purchase Weebly for Education, which makes the sites a little more secure and gives the teachers access to the students' sites.
The Analysis of Student Work
- Having the students keep their own websites can make the ASW process a lot easier by requiring students to keep copies of their work and reflect on them for the final exam, so you are not left scrambling at the end of the semester to find evidence for each objective.
- The Weebly sites can also make the time lapse artifacts for the ASW process much easier because it includes all of the students' major assessments and you can easily pick out a specific assignment as an evidence.
The Final "Exam"
- In order to show improvement and mastery, our final exam is a portfolio-style rather than a learn-it-and-regurgitate-it pen and paper exam. Here is an example.
- Students are given anywhere from 1 1/2 to 2 weeks to complete the final exam (depending on the exam schedule).
- The revision portion of the final exam can also be helpful for the ASW because students are required to go back and correct/revise projects from the beginning of the year, which can show two points in time with the exact same assessment, which strengthens the evidence of improvement.
IV. Questions/Evaluation [5 minutes]
- Do you have any questions?
- You can always email one of us if you have any further questions and you will be able to access this presentation whenever you would like!